Horizon Zero Dawn tells a captivating story about a young woman’s discovery that the world as she knows it was originally far bigger, and that she is much more than a mere outcast in it. However, as soon as Aloy gains the knowledge necessary for saving the world, she may inadvertently take the first footsteps on a path that sets up an even darker fate.
Knowledge is power, and so knowledge is deadly. Ted Faro, the man at the center of the titular Zero Dawn, is a prime example of this: Faro originally invented the machines that destroy humanity, dooming us the first time around. Knowledge can also be used for good, however, as seen when the brilliant Elisabet Sobeck - Faro’s colleague - strives to undo the mistakes of her military-industrial co-worker. Faro and Sobeck knew the machines better than anyone, but if even they couldn’t control them, what proof do we have that Aloy’s authority will last? If the two scientists who knew Horizon’s machines inside out couldn’t maintain control, then how can a Nora with a narrow, limited perspective of the world possibly understand the machines enough to wield them forever?
Throughout the story, Aloy studies the machines in Cauldrons - basically optional dungeons - and learns the override codes for many of them, gaining further influence over the machines around her. Once she overrides one, it becomes docile and will allow her to use it as a mount, although this is playing with fire. Machines like Striders mind their own business in the world and normally scatter if they’re spooked regardless of whether or not they’re under control. Bigger machines like Thunderjaws, however, always fight unless they’re overridden. The illusion of control is precisely how Faro lost it in the first place and Aloy is treading through dangerously similar footprints. By believing that she understands the machines, Aloy could start to easily fall into the pretense of authority that destroyed the world the first time around.
Knowledge is a key theme throughout the game and is the main thing Aloy seeks out before embarking on other quests along the way. Aloy becomes stronger from what she learns - it shapes her into the hero the world needs. However, by sharing her knowledge between different groups of people, including the Nora, that knowledge becomes more dangerous.
Project Zero Dawn only came about because humanity created brilliant machines that were so technologically advanced they spun out of control, and it's this technology that Aloy could be accidentally rebooting. It was humanity’s understanding of tech and mechanics that led to the advent of monstrous machines that needed biomass as fuel - this obviously backfired once they exhausted biomass reserves and began to consume people instead. By advancing the world as we knew it, we inadvertently destroyed it. That's why Zero Dawn was created: to fix our mess and give life a fighting chance.
Throughout the game, you learn that Zero Dawn was essentially a self-destruction protocol designed to wipe out organic life and start again, with numerous AIs slowly rebuilding a new world in the image of pre-Faro civilization. The project worked until one of the AIs went rogue and decided to destroy the new world yet again, taking it back to the blank slate it was at the birth of the new world. This AI was appropriately named HADES, and is the Big Bad of the whole game.
Aloy eventually stops HADES - and the Shadow Carja working with it - thereby saving her world, but she also could have unknowingly unleashed a bigger problem. When she stops the AI, it is released into the world and re-captured by Sylens. Though he acts as a guide for Aloy, we learn throughout the story that Sylens is not as he appears. At first, you think he’s helping Aloy to rectify the mistakes he made by helping HADES initially, but when HADES is captured by him at the end of the game, you can clearly see he’s up to no good.
HADES was dangerous in the hands of the Shadow Carja, but they had little knowledge of it and how it worked. Sylens, however, has heaps of knowledge about the AI. In fact, Sylens already spent a long time studying HADES and providing it with information on the world prior to ever meeting Aloy, so it’s reasonable to assume he knows more than we’ve seen him display so far. By saving The World from one side of HADES, Aloy could have accidentally exposed it to a much deadlier side of the AI.
On top of that, information pertaining to the ‘Old World’ was lost to the ages, allowing life to blossom without encountering the mistakes of civilizations prior. Some areas became more tribal, while other societies enjoyed technological advancements that were still academically juvenile in comparison to the days of Faro and Sobeck. Unbeknownst to herself, Aloy digs up all of this valuable information and makes it more accessible to everyone, although by doing so, she could be starting the world on the path to self-destruction once more.
It was Ted Faro’s extensive knowledge of technology and science that allowed him to create the machines that ended the world in the first place. Conversely, the one tasked with giving life a second chance is an AI. Everything that goes wrong throughout the game is caused by the ownership of knowledge, both past and present.
Maybe the past was wiped out for a reason and the extensive knowledge we had needed to be forgotten.