Aloy: The strength to stand alone, and the courage to stand together

Aloy has gotten pathologically good at being alone.

Long before she was entrusted with saving the world Aloy learned that people could reject her for reasons she could neither understand nor control.

Aloy was an outcast before she'd been given a name. Learning to stand on her own was a survival skill at best, and her only option at worst. But much later Aloy learned something considerably harder for her: being able to stand on your own isn't the same thing as having to.

Neither Horizon Zero Dawn nor Horizon Forbidden West outright paint independence as a character flaw in need of correction, in fact it's one of Aloy's greatest strengths. It's allowed her to survive rejection, trust her own judgement, and keep moving even when no one understands what she's doing.

The problem arises when circumstances change but Aloy does not.

By the time Aloy has people who truly love her she has gotten too good at living as though she does not.

The Strength to Stand Alone

Aloy's relationship with belonging begins with a lot of initially unanswered questions. Why is she an outcast? Why does she have no mother? The Nora made a decision about Aloy before she'd been given the opportunity to become a person. Her life begins by being assigned an identity, and she's acutely aware of her position.

Aloy does what every child with something to prove does. She becomes an overachiever. When the time comes for the Proving and she's given the opportunity to finally be accepted by the Nora, she sets her mind to the task. She can't control the fact that the Nora rejected her, or understand why, but she can become so overwhelmingly capable that they have no choice but to acknowledge her.

There's a small wrinkle to Aloy's story as an outcast though.

Aloy was rejected. She was not unloved.

She has Rost. He's not a parent in the traditional sense. He's not warm or fatherly, but when a lesson needs to be taught, he teaches. When she is hurt there is someone who silently worries. Someone chose to defy the entire tribe just to give her a name. Somebody loves her, albeit in their own way.

Aloy spends much of her life understanding herself as someone who has learned to survive alone. The sentiment is not untrue, but it's also not the whole truth. Some realizations are best reserved for sequels.

For now, Rost teaches Aloy something she desperately needs to know: the rest of the world can reject you, but you will still stand.

Aloy then becomes extraordinarily good at standing, and it gets her far more than acceptance. Once she leaves the Womb of the Mountain everything changes.

"Surprise! You don't have a mom because you're a clone of a genius who built a terraforming system to rebuild the world after the apocalypse. Also, your genetic code is the only thing that can unlock the system that makes it work. You have six-ish months before the world ends (again). Good luck!"

Suddenly, the people who cast Aloy out don't just accept her. They bow down. They call her Anointed.

And Aloy wants none of it.

The Nora reversed their judgement without ever understanding it or correcting the mistake beneath it. They don't regret isolating a motherless child, they just think she's some kind of divine figure. The child they once considered unworthy is now being treated as an object of worship.

Outcast. Anointed.

These identities could not be more different, but for Aloy they have something in common. They are something the Nora decided Aloy should carry.

And she no longer needs either one.

The girl who became exceptional in the hopes of earning acceptance is standing in front of those same people, being offered what she believed she wanted, and has realized that she no longer needs it. The Nora rejected her before they knew her, and now they revere her without understanding why.

Aloy refuses to let their judgements define her any longer. That's not a failure of belonging, it's growth. She has learned that other people's rejection cannot determine her worth.

She has learned that she can stand alone, and takes that lesson with her beyond Barren Light.

When "Standing Alone" Becomes the Rule

There's a subtle difference between "I can do this alone" and "I should do this alone". By the beginning of Forbidden West, Aloy has crossed that line.

There are people that care for her, who want to help her, some have even crossed the country following in her footsteps.

It would be easy to write this off as a simple fear of attachment. The concept of connection is foreign to Aloy. She lost Rost, the only real relationship she's ever had. Caring about people means having people to lose.

But this explanation undersells Aloy.

From her perspective, working alone just makes sense. The opening of Forbidden West demonstrates this problem through Varl.

Varl is capable, brave, and cares about Aloy enough to follow her when she disappears. He also has no idea what she is talking about half the time.

That's not his fault, and Aloy knows it. She's had her Focus since she was a child. She's had years to piece together information about the Old Ones. She understands GAIA and HADES and can view ancient technology though it's appropriate cultural context.

Varl is years behind... and the world is dying.

Aloy doesn't believe she has the time to bring everybody up to speed, but taking someone into danger without explaining that danger means she also has to worry about keeping them alive.

For Aloy this is simple math.

Alone is faster. Fewer people to protect.

Alone means she can decide which risks are acceptable.

Alone means if something goes wrong, Aloy is responsible for Aloy.

There is a level of comfort in that kind of responsibility. Every variable that Aloy is able to control remains firmly in her own hands. And a smaller, softer part of her may be getting an emotional benefit from the solitude she's considerably less willing to admit.

Nobody can be taken from her if she goes alone.

Her practical and emotional reasoning both arrive at the same conclusion: do it by yourself. Theres one, fairly enormous, problem with her logic though.

Aloy is not expendable.

Aloy's strategy was to consolidate risk by concentrating the danger all on herself, which would be noble if she was not the only human on Earth (as far as she knows) who can avert the second end of the world.

If Aloy dies, the consequences do not end with Aloy, and there's something deeply unfair about that. She never volunteered for this. She didn't ask to be Elisabet Sobeck's clone, she didn't ask for the genetic access that comes with it. Elisabet's mantra that "through her all things are possible" may be true, but neither Aloy nor Elisabet should have been burdened with the weight of the world.

That said, unfair or not it's a task Aloy has chosen to complete. If she is carrying something so important, refusing backup isn't necessarily the safer option.

They Catch Up

There's another problem, the people around her refuse to stay behind. Inconveniently for Aloy's argument, her friends start catching up. They get Focuses; they ask questions. They begin understanding a world Aloy once had to navigate almost entirely by herself. Slowly the people Aloy thinks she had to protect become people capable of standing beside her.

This changes the moral equation too. Aloy wants to protect her friends, that's an expression of love, but there's an uncomfortable degree of control hidden inside of that protectiveness.

Aloy decides that something is too dangerous, that someone should stay behind, that risking herself is acceptable but allowing someone else to make the same decision is not.

Eventually she must recognize that the people around her have agency too. They know that Aloy's life is dangerous. They understand that helping her could get them killed. They're choosing her anyway.

At a certain point loving someone means respecting their right to make that choice. Once the people around Aloy understand what is happening and are capable of deciding what risks they are willing to take, protecting them can't always mean making decisions for them.

Aloy spent her entire life fighting against the identities assigned to her and the choices imposed on her, now she has to ensure her desire to protect the people she cares about doesn't become another way of deciding someone else's life for them.

But accepting that other people are capable of helping her is not quite the same as accepting that she needs people in her life,

For that, Aloy needs Beta.

Claimed Family

Aloy's early relationship with Beta was... difficult. In many ways Beta presents Aloy with a question she never had to consider before.

Here is another person with Elisabet Sobeck's genetic identity. Someone with extraordinary intelligence and enormous potential, but Beta is nothing like Aloy.

She's frightened, in constant need of assurance and unable to envision a future where things get better. When Aloy pushes forward Beta retreats. For Aloy it's inconceivable. The world is ending, what else is there to do but move ahead? Why can't Beta find the strength to do what needs to be done, just like Elisabet would? Why can't Beta hold herself to the same standard Aloy does?

During their most explosive fight it comes to a head. They have the same mind, the same heart, so why are they so different?

But Beta has already asked herself that. She doesn't know what piece of Elisabet she's missing. She doesn't know why Aloy can do what she can't.

Aloy then begins to realize the question itself is wrong. Beta isn't broken. She's not missing some essential quality that Aloy inherited and she didn't.

Aloy had Rost.

Yes, she was rejected, but she was never unloved. She was an outcast but she was never alone. Beta was a glorified slave raised by VR butlers. She knew neither connection nor kindness. There was no one to draw strength from. No formative experience to call back to when the world felt too dark to push back against. Aloy had someone who cared, even if that care didn't always feel like love.

I don't think this was the moment Aloy realized Rost loved her, I think that happened well before he sacrificed himself to save her. This was something more profound. This is the moment Aloy began to realize what being loved by Rost gave her.

"It was like having a strength that was always there. It's still there. Even now I hear him in my head when things get bad. 'When it looks impossible, look deeper, and fight like you can win.'"

Aloy has yet to take the time to really process losing Rost (according to her if you interact with the spear in her room) but Beta has given her reason to think about what it meant to have him. This realization changes the way Aloy sees Beta. She stops looking at her as someone who should just be stronger and starts to see her as someone who never had what Aloy did.

Then, she does something remarkable.

She becomes that person for Beta.

There's a line towards the end of Forbidden West that has made me cry on every single playthrough, because in some ways it feels like watching somebody you love grow up a little.

"That is between me and my sister."

It's the first time we see Aloy claim a person as hers. Beta may be her genetic match but, in this moment, she is choosing to make Beta her sister. For someone who's story began with questions about why she had no mother and why the people around her would not accept her, this is important.

Aloy has spent the formative years of her life learning how to exist without a family. Now she chooses one.

And Then There's Seyka...

By the time we reach the Burning Shores DLC Aloy's world has already undergone a pretty remarkable expansion. She has friends, she has claimed a family, and has saved the world twice.

Then, Aloy is called to the land formerly known as Los Angeles, and discovers an entirely different form of vulnerability - for which apparently nothing in her previous 20 years of life has prepared her.

Seyka's relationship with the Quen is complicated. When we meet her she is actively disobeying their direct orders. She's frustrated with their lack of action, and is willing to break their rules when she needs to.

But they are still her people.

Early on, Aloy can't quite understand why. At one point in their early interactions Aloy's response to Seyka's frustration with her people even comes dangerously close to offending her. Aloy isn't trying to be cruel, these two women just approach the idea of belonging from radically different histories. Of course, Aloy struggles to understand why the judgement of her people would matter to Seyka so much. Look what belonging meant to Aloy.

The first community she ever knew decided she should be cast out before she could speak. Aloy spent enough years wanting their acceptance. Now she knows she doesn't need it.

Seyka represents something different.

Her people frustrate and disappoint her, her relationship with them can be messy, but they still matter to her. For Aloy there is an implicit binary: "Either these people accept me or their acceptance means nothing to me."

Seyka quietly introduces another possibility: "I don't need my people to determine my worth, but they're still my people."

Belonging doesn't have to mean surrendering yourself to the group, it can mean having the same silent strength that Aloy felt from Rost.

Then, as if that concept were not foreign enough, Aloy realizes something else. Seyka makes her nervous.

There's something genuinely comical about watching it happen. Aloy has fought two wars. She has been captured, disarmed, thrown into a fighting pit under the assumption she would die, fought machines the size of mammoths, dealt with homicidal artificial intelligences and immortal billionaires who failed in their attempt at fully automated luxury space communism.

Aloy's general response to each of these potentially world ending disasters has been "Okay, what's next?"

Then she meets a woman who, within five minutes of knowing her, speaks to Aloy the same way Aloy speaks to everyone else she comes in contact with. "Step back, I got this." and suddenly, planet Earth's last hope has lost her words.

This woman can fight a mechanical dinosaur without having an existential crisis, but having a crush on a girl is where things get complicated.

But in a way it makes perfect sense. Danger gives Aloy something to do. Machine? Find its weakness. Impossible problem? Figure it out. Apocalypse? Stop it. (Again)

Crush on Seyka? .......

That's it. There's no problem to solve. She can't scan this with her Focus. Aloy cannot competence her way out of this problem, because there is no actual problem.

Aloy has simply discovered that she can want another person, and wanting someone means allowing them to matter. That's vulnerable in a way that no other kind of danger she's faced is.

Seyka also means something more here. Aloy hasn't just opened herself up to someone who can be folded into her life. Seyka has loyalties, obligations, and people she cares about. Caring about her means accepting that those things matter too, even when Aloy doesn't entirely understand them.

This echoes a lesson Aloy began learning when she was still in the Nora sacred lands, loving people means allowing them to remain people. They take risks Aloy doesn't choose for them, they care about things she doesn't understand, and they can choose to stand by her without surrendering everything that makes them who they are.

And Aloy can choose them back.

The Courage to Stand Together

Aloy's story doesn't end with her learning she was wrong to be independent. She wasn't. The little girl that the Nora rejected needed to learn that she could survive without them. She needed to know that the judgement of other people didn't determine her value. That strength stays with her.

What has changed is the necessity.

The people around her now aren't those who threw rocks and refused to speak to her. They are the people who chased her across a country because she tried to leave without them.

They weren't waiting on Aloy to complete the Proving, they didn't bow because they thought she was a sacred figure, they chose her because they wanted to.

Aloy still knows how to stand alone, but now she also knows that love, family, and friendship are not things she has to surrender in order to remain strong. The strength to stand alone was simply learning she could. The courage to stand together was finally allowing herself to choose otherwise.