Horizon Forbidden West does a lot to recontextualize everything Aloy learned in her first outing, Horizon Zero Dawn. While Aloy and her pals might have taken down the rogue artificial intelligence Hades in the first game, they've only staved off extinction on Earth instead of completely preventing it. In Forbidden West, Aloy works to find a copy of the Gaia AI that can take control of the Zero Dawn terraforming systems in order to save the world. During that quest, she learns a lot more about how Hades gained sentience in the first place.

Like Zero Dawn, there are a lot of ins and outs in Forbidden West and a few unanswered questions drawing the story forward. Below, we dig into everything we learn in Forbidden West's endgame and what it means for the future of the series.

Spoiler warning: We're talking about the game's ending as well as big parts of the stories in both Forbidden West and Zero Dawn, so you'll likely want to complete them yourself before you read any further.