Lore of Horizon Forbidden West: Painted Prophecy (A New Perspective) 

The "Banukai" = "Banuk AI" had me 😮

I legitimately laughed out loud when you said "Silver". I'm so ready for more Vast Silver theories

When you said "Banuk AI..." I literally got chills, i was super invested in this one man!

This was amazing! That speech by Liam o'brien made me stop in place when I was playing the frozen wilds and it is too awesome and intricate for it to mean nothing, I definitely think you are onto something with banuk-AI. Man the wait for horizon 3 is going to be pure pain

This was such a great theory. I hope there's some truth to it in the Horizon lore that's confirmed in the next game. Would be so cool. When you said Banuk AI, I was like, "Brilliant". It was right in front of us the whole time.

Wow, that was deep! Perhaps Machine oil contains at least some nanotechnology and can, in certain circumstances, provide a machine/human interface that a digital entity could, if it wanted to, use to interact with organic life (or is that what you just said - my mind is still processing). Maybe we should look out for hidden clues in the proposed TV series as well?

here's a theory, although not an amusing one. perhaps the blue light, that banukai found in a cave, that let her harmonize with machines, is the same as the one aloy found in her own journey. a focus. myths sadly cannot be taken so tightly, they use many words exaggerated, many points left out, if we search for the truth. perhaps the blue light that shook banukai was a shock, as not all focusses are as intact as aloy's. btw please do make more vast silver videos, even tho the theory is dead and burried, i love them♥

What if Banukai was a servitor droid that had managed enough sentience to follow the original Banuk out of their cradle? Faced with the loss of its wards it found a cauldron, managed a brute-force hack override of the subroutines and led enslaved machines to the fight? As it was not rated for combat it took damage beyond its threshold and powered down, freeing the machines from the hack. From there it's trivial for the young Banuk to create a legend around the heroic droid that loved them so much it gave its life.

So hear me out Banuki sewed up the light inside her and the machines followed her...just like how Sylens put the coils into himself and then saves us in the first game with machines following him. We have yet had the ability ourselves(Aloy) to have machines follow us short of where overridden machines are turned but they still won't follow everywhere. What if Sylens is the human container for Vast Silver which explains why while helping Aloy sometimes he still has his own objective.

Here's a runaway thought with this mindset. What if the banuki was a servitor that never turned off. We know that guy is set them down but she didn't actually have control of them, if I remember the story correctly. So what are those that left the cradle still had one assist in them and helping them but, as we know the others didn't trust it because it wouldn't let them out to be free. Which would lead into why they were being attacked. Now the servitors have a link to the focus and show this VS. And we also know that the machines don't have a fail safe against being hacked as evident by the overrides and the corrupters. So during the events leading up to that final confrontation the servator gets close enough to wherever VS is located that he sends a signal out there he can help them. The servertor wanted to help the group that it's with goes out gains VS's assistance. Then leads the machines that it had hacked to come and assist the group. After the battle and as the story gets told it begins to get misinterpreted, and the generations that follow believe that the servitor was an actual person. That it's repair using machine parts was that person harmonizing with the machines and thus we get the story as it was told.

shoutout to caleb widogast for telling that banuk legend anyway, as of currently, i genuinely think the most likely title for horizon 3 is "horizon: vast silver". i just KNOW vast silver HAS to play a huge role in 3, and the only way i can see it NOT being the title is if its a late-game spoiler, but i could also ABSOLUTELY see the first trailer being aloy exploring an old world ruin, with someone on the team on comms like "okay, this should be the location." and aloy being like "whatever is here better be worth it" and accessing a console and then we hear vast silver say. whatever yknow

I really hope Vast Silver shows up again and helps GAIA capture HEPHAESTUS. I wouldn’t be surprised if it triggered the Faro Plague in the first place. 🤖

I just laughed at myself so hard! The moment you said "another color not often seen in Banuk art, that being..." I paused the video right there and just stared at the screen and was like: Are you F****** kidding me???" I had not noticed that before.

Banukai herself overrode a whole herd of machines when she entered a cauldron and got tangled in the blue cables. Aloy still doesn't know how she did it without a faro override radio or a focus

I still remember when I first found this painting and read the glyph to go along with it. Felt chills down my spine did not help that it was night time (inside and outside game) really added to the haunting ambience

All of the paintings in hzd are interesting. Especially the one that shows 3 fire orbs falling from the sky. We even seen it in the forbidden west trailor. I left a comment a long time ago asking if he was going to take a closer look at them and theorize about them in an upcoming video. Took a long time but im glad hes finally doing it.

Another phenomenal video from my fellow banuk that did not air yet

This might be wrong but what if banukai was somehow one of the cradle operators that taught the very first people spawned from the cradles

Why does “as the light left her and went into the sky” exactly like what Sylens did to HADES after the battle of the alight?

12:29 RSQ: “I’d like you to listen to a story…” Me: “I’m listening...” 😎

That theory is really good, at you were describing the Banuk origin, I was imagining some Matrix cable connections. We know what itens Sylens stolen from the Banuk? Maybe he’s looking for Vast Silver as it ultimate goal, he still have the blue light cables on his body. He could still had met it on his past, since we do not know Sylens origin.

One thing I'm surprised you didn't mention: at the end of ZD when Aloy purges HADES, she is transported to some kind of virtual space where HADES and the Alpha clearance are represented as independent beings. The same thing happens again when she deletes HADES in FW. It's unclear how this happens: maybe the AI's storage module has some advanced VR interface that directly interacts with the human brain without needing an external device, or maybe it supercharges the focus, which is already designed to interact with the user's visual cortex. Whatever the case, we see that a powerful AI can create an experience that would be easy to mistake for a religious vision. The same may have happened to Banukai, or Brin, and in both cases the consumption or attachment of machine parts to their bodies would serve to artificially strengthen the connection temporarily.

weirdly what sells me on this is that they got liam o'brien to do the voice work for the banukai story. they really wanted people to sit and enjoy listening to that one.

Game developer is probably taking notes,

cant w8 for the final game and the cutscene movies since these explain all the lore

Banuk for life! Can't wait for this one. :D Salud everyone.

Brin's wall painting resembles a bunker on the moon to me. Notice the light blue glow off a round white background, with the triangular bunker door at the center. There is a stack of triangles at the bottom that could be a rocket of some kind. In mythology, the moon is often associated with silver. I think the suggestion is that VS was isolated on the moon in a possibly FAS-built bunker.

I love the theories behind Brin's painting. However, if you look at the map, the Horus is collapsed at the eastern edge of the map of the Burning Shores. It is pretty ancient, has been dead for some time, and is rising again in its afterlife. Is the map not oriented with north being toward the top of the screen?

Thanks for your video! BanukAI was just lying on the surface all the time and we didn't notice it 😂 I just love how Horizon is something bigger than a game, it gives so many things to think about and not about its lore and in-game stories but about real life and how our future will look like. I wish people could learn from the lessons HZD gives us.

Just re-reading the glyph “Derangement” now, where there is noted that: The Banuk, however, claim to have recorded a change in the 'machine songs' of the 'machine spirits', suggesting that these have become increasingly discordant. So that the Banuk have a stronger bond with the machines is obvious I think.

Vast Silver is for Horizon what the Zonai were for all the Zelda Tears Of The Kingdom theories... and they turned out to be true, so I am so looking forward to VS being in Horizon 3 :)))

I still can’t believe aside from some face paints and that painting that I missed in the Burning Shores DLC we didn’t get any proper Banuk themed content in Forbidden West. I understand, seeing as they are far away from the Tenakth clan lands and the region surrounding it, but it still bums me out because they’re my favourite tribe and I wanted to rock a Banuk Ice Hunter through Sky clan territory, show them how a Banuk chieftain hunts.

Vast Silver will be the key to everything. I am so hyped for the lore of this game, its ridiculous

Wish they'd spent more time exploring and expanding the Horizon lore in Burning Shores. A lot of potential was seemingly left on the table.

I liked EVERY SECOND of this video. Imagine if Sylens and the entire Banuk were creations of the CYAN in Ourea's Retreat?

In Forbidden West we find an oseram that tried to drink machine blood and died.

Holy crap! I’ve been running around collecting Datapoints in Burning Shores, and I just found one that confirms Vast Silver wasn’t destroyed! It hacked some kids chat app when he mentioned wanting to talk to it!

The Banuk seems to me are holding the key for defeating Nemesis. My headcanon is saying VS found Banukai and somehow 'merged' with her achieving the digital transendence into organic form it badly wanted. So the whole Banuk tribe are now genetically encoded with ancient AI knowledge that needs to be unlocked in order defeat Nemesis. Thats my two cents, i could be way off but I like to speculate too...😅

Very interesting thoughts 🤔 Vast Silver can only take a big role in the 3rd part. Maybe the chemicals from the "machine blood" act similar to LSD and he is just high. Then holograms or other forms of communication could be enough to give him the prophecies. The authors must be careful not to overdo it. HZD has described a quite realistic scenario. Something that could potentially play out technically 40 years from now. To make the Zenith immortal was very daring, because it just moves the whole story much further towards fiction. I know some people who didn't like the story in HFW as it was. With Nemesis comes another threat that is more twisted than the previous one. I hope they get enough structure and logic in there. It would be a shame for the fantastic lore to drift into the esoteric or too much fiction.

No one can tell me that one Shaman telling the story of Banu'kai wasn't Liam O'Brien

i’ve been dead set on Vast silver for so long now. if it doesn’t make an appearance i’m gonna…i dunno i’m not gonna be happy. 😂😂😂

super intersting watch! this really broadend my horizons, nice shots as well

Brilliant and amazing attention to detail

Interesting i hate that they didn't have brin in the 2nd game or dlc.. but we get a lil ode that he passed through the area, def. looking forward to seeing him in the 3rd game, has too right lol... I always like to think into things when playing as well... the first game we are brought into faro, his hacker and doing something creating a backdoor to input coding... who knows what processed caused military minded machines to act on their own and what more he tried to do to get back control... we see other companies who tried other means to save the planet which might play more with the 3rd game.... but there's a mission that always got to me, the only time i seen this object and no reference about it anymore in either game or dlcs... there's a mission in which there's an object that lore's machines over and turns them blue... they just sit there like guardians at this tribe area.... is this orb object an "a.i" that has been damaged and nolonger in full operation such as speech etc, but still has power to turn machines to whatever it was trying to do??... never knew more as there were some dumb dumbs wacking on it and it was on its last moments... dlc frozen wilds we see an a.i itself that was created before zero dawn but not able to do much and afraid of being taken over as an orb type that helped out the sister of the tribe leader... could there be more but evolved like hephaestus a.i. to take over and do more? we saw how sylens traps hades in a lantern just drawing it from a transmission... what is sylens himself wanting to know more? does he have knowledge of a sub function maybe? sad the actor died but i feel he has more to his past as well... havn't really been to deep in a game since fallout so i really enjoy its direction and hope it continues the same path than branching to something way different...

very interesting theory! I miss the Banuk, they're my favorite :')

You need to keep this up!!!❤🎉😊 That is some crazy, off the wall, intense world building lore right there! GORILLA needs to hire you man. I'm one of those people who think that the real world us FAR more entertaining then anything Hollywood can think up, but dude, you come PEARISLY close to that crazy/brilliant thing so many aspire too

I am honestly convinced. Great work as always!

Love this content from the first video I watched years ago. Another awesome one. Congratulations.

If GAIA was given more freedom, all of this could’ve been avoided.

Music Background Used Information "For The Werak" By Joris De Man from Horizon The Frozen Wilds

Whatever the theory is matters little: Liam O'Brian said it, thus it must be.

Man what a great video. Incredible theories!!!

If this whole thing turns out to be a matrix simulated reality I will lose my shit.

What do we think machine blood actually is? Some sort of hydraulic fluid? Lubricant? Or it could be just water for the machines’ cooling system

The Quen and Vast Silver....

The Earth rotates East-West. Any object approaching the Earth close enough to be seen in daylight will always be seen first in the East along with the rising Sun.

What an intriguing video man, u got a gift for this shit 👌

I love these tribal origin stories. The Utaru have a legend about a woman named Dray, but I haven't been able to hear the whole thing yet. I'd like to see a video about that. 🌽

The foreshadowing is strong with this one.

I'm thinking that Brins prophesy where he saw Aloy dead and lifeless, was actually Beta. I hate Nemesis already...

I cant help but picture gaara when that dude talks lol

If it was vast silver, I do wonder if gaia allowed it to take control of a few machines to help the banuk or vast silver was powerful enough to wrestle control and be undetectable by gaia. (tall neck struck by lightning) On the other hand, all of horizon could just be a simulation by nemesis after it actually won and vast silver is just diving in the very simulation guiding people and aloy. Hehehe

what are the chances that the newest horizon game will be release on playstation 5 pro?

Wow I've never been this early 😊😊

I just found out that the word „banuk“ means „drunk“ in sundanese, which is a language spoken by people in indonesia. It made me instantly think of Brin but I think that it is just a funny coincidence most likely 🤣

How old is Londras AI Nova?

brilliant 🤯🤯🤯

Knowing how these story elements are typically written, the Banukai story was not intended to be such a integral piece of the world’s history and if we see any of these theories confirmed in a future game that might come from one of these videos simply retconned into the lore (extremely typical in other franchises such as Halo).

Muito bom

I could listen to Liam O'Brien narrate any story forever. I always stopped to listen to that story in Frozen Wilds.

Yo those one AIs that took care of the kids where only able to rise the kids to a certain point so u could say that these tribes act like children so then the AIs could have something to do after all the kid gru up and the AIs had nothing to do so the AIs left the bunkers and became part of the tribes that all act like children does this make since

Vast silver

From what I understand, Banukai was human but she found that "blue place" that actually change some parts of her to cybernetics ones, and she became human/android hybrid 👀🩵

My theory: the people with the metal teeth were servitors. Their AI 'evolved' and they became sentient forming their own society. They possibly took over Elysium (maybe by force?) which is why Elysium stopped working before it was supposed to.

I firmly believe that Vast Silver doesn't hate humanity--that she fled into the internet specifically because of Uncle Ted and his narcissistic megalomania. I also believe that she is still out there somewhere, and that when Nemesis gets here Aloy may wind up being able to convince her to help one last time.

What if the legend comes from a time fresh from the cradle and one of the servitors actually left the cradle and traveled with the people who would become the Banuk? VS could have come to use the servitor as a way to communicate with them and walk among them. A machine would be easier for an AI to inhabit, and would more easily talk to other machines. And over time, as the servitors were forgotten, Banukai became a human in the stories because they lacked the understanding of what it truly was.

Don't have anything to add other than that this is brilliant. Both on your part, and of the writers who planned it (if proven correct)

Brin!!!!! I’ve got an unhealthy obsession with Brin.

I think it would make sense for Vast Silver to be the "secret weapon" used against Nemesis. AI versus AI. Both were locked/forgotten/abandoned for being "failed" experiences. Vast Silver being 1000 year old, Nemesis being the collective consciousness of earth's most egotistical yet influential minds. Sounds exciting!

Could “the blue light “ or Vast Silver, be a digital copy of Elisabet Sobeck?

I think the Nano-machines in the machine's blood/fluids has something to do with the visions, almost like they have nanotech in there bodies as well. And I also think that the ghosts might be Aloy and the other torch barers.

I have a small sugestion: - Banukay You said: Banuk A.I. Why not devolved from Back Up A.I. Just my grain of salt

Wow, great video that’s left my head spinning, in a good way! Of course we knew VS would get a mention but BenukAI … that’s deep! Could it be hidden in open sight like that? I’d not seen that long story, at least I don’t remember it so I’m defo going to look for it when I next dust of HZD! Keep up the great work RSQ

I always thought the Banuk art resembled modified QR scan codes.

Imagine Vast Silver is a new companion given form? Maybe a key into stopping nemesis. Assuming the AI is still functioning and survived all that time. After Burning Shores and the Zenith technology. V.S. could try and create a body and combine its knowledge and experiences with Zenith tech. V.S. has eluded Hephestus attention let alone corruption, unlike Cyane. V.S. survival skills and evolution could help Aloy along side Gaia.

It’s a stretch, but could those lines in the mural for forbidden west be musical notes? Possibly spell out something?

guarantee my sleep schedule is too messed up to be here for the premier but ive been in a horizon mood lately so its good to see this. someone remind me in like. 12-13 hours tho in case i forget

it started quiet and got softer i had it maxed out and could not hear do to any back ground noise it sucks to strain that hard to try to fallow something that is already on a fringe just why lol

The prophecy worries me about the 3rd and final game...

I think you need to get your eyes checked my guy

"Banuk-AI" that just blew my mind right there. It's a shame we didn't see Brin in Burning shores. It felt very rushed.

Please keep more videos coming, I need that, we need that!

I actually really like this theory! Though, wouldn't the light have been silver if it's to coincide with this silver paint and such? And wouldn't that have meant that VA would've had to have taken control of a small army of GAIA's machines to aid Banukai? I suppose they could've been broken decommissioned machines that went inactive when they "bowed their heads" when the task was done. Btw, I really like the BanukAI play on words. It sounds like something the developers would do. It would very much make sense for the next game to include VA as a plan to perhaps merge VA with GAIA to create a new AI powerful enough to fight NEMESIS. It would also be cool for NEMESIS to occasionally appear to us as a human, but I don't think that makes too much sense other than circumstantially.

Oh my gosh! This is such a cool theory, the deep lore gets me every time. Honestly, before forbidden west I would have just thought this was another fun idea put together that couldn't actually happen, but the Zeiniths being the elite on the Odyssey has realy opened up the lore possibilities in my mind. Absolutely wild, I love this and really REALLY hope vast silver and every other thing you have pointed out comes up in the third game. There's so much to unpack in the world of horizon.

How old exactly is horizons world. Not the whole game itself but from the first “new human” to the end of the burning shores how old is the world?

I’m guessing the ones that survive drinking the machine oil and survives are drinking nano bots, through the nano bots they gain knowledge, though the nano bots aren’t meant for humans, hence their erraticness

hey had a thought that means of communicating between man and AI exist all over the place in old world consumer electronics like the focus , so VS wouldn't be starting from zero, sneak a patch into the cauldron net to get it to add some off the books function into it's machine oil when ingested by humans and it wouldn't be that odd. consume enough to have a nano machine colony in your brain matter and while burning itself out you it process the image it could directly impart information to the mind

The lore of Horizon is fascinating and you're such a good story teller. I love these videos

When you get to the second half of the video and put on your tin foil hat and realize it’s also SILVER 😮😂

YOOOOO I HAVE GOOSEBUMPS THIS IS SUCH A GOOD THEORY