The Heroine Finally Appears!
Yes, it takes until the last third of this 25-page comic before we finally get to see Aloy play a role in the story. I think the writers are trying to compensate for the fact that Aloy is your player character in the Horizon Zero Dawn game, and give the other characters more focus. It just irks me a bit though.
In those few pages Aloy is on though, she has a pretty big role. You can tell in her interactions with Talanah that the two of them are pretty close, and that they’ve worked with each other for a while. They joke around and tease each other, but when things get serious, they go into full business mode immediately. They remind me of two special forces operators who’ve worked together for years, even though they must’ve known each other for mere weeks. Maybe a few months at most, judging from the timeframe of Horizon Zero Dawn‘s story. You can tell that they mesh together really well, and that definitely brings up their yuri potential.
We have two strong female main characters here who are clearly pretty close with one another, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Horizon Zero Dawn yuri fandom for Aloy and Talanah. I would certainly be among the first to ship those two. They’d make such an interesting couple, what with the differences in personality.
Approaching Speculation Territory
That robot with the black armor Talanah mentioned seems like it will play the role of a boss in this story. Talanah mentions previously encountering it when she was working with Aloy, so it’s likely that it’s a robot from the Horizon Zero Dawn game. As far as I know, there are two “species” of robots that have an all-black or primarily black color scheme. One is the Stalker.
The other is the Corruptor.
A Stalker can be pretty dangerous to individuals, what with its stealth systems combined with its sniper rifle and mine launcher. However, it doesn’t have the raw firepower to threaten a whole town the way Talanah implied the new robot would.
In all honesty, I’m betting that it’s some kind of variant of a Corruptor. Those things are nasty. Not only do they have a grenade/mine launcher and a rocket launcher, but they can also take control of other robots and order them around like puppets. This can allow a Corruptor to amass an army out of nearby robots. Something like this could definitely threaten a town, and maybe even a large city like Meridian.
Again though, this is just speculation. We’ll just have to see if this theory pans out in Horizon Zero Dawn #2.
Conclusion
The Horizon Zero Dawn comic so far seems like a worthy successor to the game. It’ll be very interesting to see how the story develops in the next issue, and it’ll be even more interesting to see how Aloy’s and Talanah’s relationship further develops.
I would like to thank Titan Comics for this look at the Horizon Zero Dawn comic, and for providing me with a free issue to preview. It’ll be great to see how the story develops when the next issue hits stores in September. It’s also a great way to tide yourself over while you wait for Horizon Forbidden West to come out for the PS5 sometime in 2021.
Source: Titan Comics Insider
