Lore of Horizon Forbidden West: The Utaru 

I can't believe Aloy is willing to tamper all this.

When you arrive at Plainsong while they're singing is just beautiful

Another Utaru enjoyer

Glad you enjoyed it 😁

She's not a wreaking ball. She's just Sobeck

I honestly think that she secretly enjoys hunting and killing but isnt willing to admit it. Thats why she despised Nil so much, cos he wasnt afraid to admit that he enjoyed the "thrill of the kill."

The Utaru chorus is fairly "old school human". I don't see the Utaru being much different from us than the other tribes. Also, one of the reasons they are able to be peaceful is that they live inna resource rich and defensible area.

Huh... That's really interesting, I don't know there were different options. Thanks for sharing 😁

@@RandomSideQuest this was in new game plus. I don’t know if that why the alternate version or if it’s based on how you reply to bree at the end of that quest. 🤷‍♀️

It depends on what option you choose. The compassionate and analytical options show Fane tossing the pouches in the river. Only the ruthless option has him burning them

And here I thought after playing this game five times that I'd seen all the alternative contextual dialogues there were... guess I'll have to play again.

Well, as long as you stay away from some Utaru like Kel.

@@emmanuelprudhomme9529 or that xenophobic bigot from Stones Echo

They are not, while they had their crops plagued they were hunting animals in the old growth, it's clearly stated when you're doing the side quest which has you tracking the apex clawstrider

@@o0TraceuR0o Well they are vegans, but the NPC that gives you the errand says that out of necessity they have decided to resort to hunting animals, which they've never done before, and she also implies that there are some Utarus who will rather die to follow the natural cycle than eat meat.

@@4zun14n so they ate meat right? I'm pretty sure that makes them not vegan, your comment should've been it's cool that the utaru WERE vegan.

A Lot of them are 🌱✨

A bunch of people. A bunch of utarus are vegan 🥑

Unfortunately my microphone broke on me this week (thankfully after I recorded this voice over) so I don't expect I'll be about to this next weekend but working to get everything back in working order asap 👍

With Ullia, they actually did a good job of acknowledging her design by having some Lowlanders with similar designs (why they’d be so far east is another story).

This is what happens when you stare at a script too long 😅 good eye, pinned a correction in the comments 👍

@@RandomSideQuest I'm pretty sure Zo mentions eight festivals, so it might have been a mistake of the lore itself

He can pronounce it in whatever way he wants to.

Not me wearing the Carja attire anytime I’m near Barren light, and the quest with Tallana

Or a grass snake! Yes!

It's got to be autumn by the trees in chainscrape. I don't think the land gods got the derangement at least until the events of the early forbidden West story. Now i need to know what month it is.

Somewhere in the autumn or winter, given the color of Chainscrape's trees and the weather in the Sky Clan's territory (there's no way it's snowy there year-round).

Autumn does seem a good shout - if So's festival was in the autumn, Fa being the land-god immediately preceding it might put the start of that particular issue around or just before then. Not sure if we can rely on the climate of the Sky Clan territory, given the year-round changes to the climate in the Cut, but yeah, the trees at Chainscrape are hard to deny. However the thing that has me confused is this: how does that fit into the "six months later" narrative after HZD (when we also know, for example, that Redmaw was taken down during the summer)? If it wasn't for the trees in Chainscrape, I'd have thought Aloy would probably be reaching the Daunt sometime in early spring.

@@maxgrieve The simplest answer is that the events of HZD took place over a longer stretch of time than one might expect. My estimates would place almost a year between the Proving and the Battle of the Alight, based on the information provided by the lore.

​@@NoxaClimaxX Yeah, I'd figured that'd need factoring in - does feel like from the lore there's an indication of time passing. I'd gone for an approximation of hours for a completionist playthrough, multiplied by the ~43min day/night cycle, plus narrative jumps (e.g. Aloy unconscious inside All-Mother mountain after the Proving etc). So quite a mechanical approach. Even at the most generous though, I was topping out at about four months or so for HZD (even including Aloy's time in the Cut). Thus my theory was the Proving happens in early spring and the Battle of the Alight took place in late summer. So I dunno, maybe that was the wrong approach. But I'm not sure how otherwise Aloy can say she was an outcast for 18yrs by the Proving, then late in the game Sylens can describe GAIA's destruction as being 19yrs earlier (the start of Aloy's gestation, thus additional time pre-birth). I dunno - not sure whether there's enough time for it to be quite that long. This is probably top of my wishlist if Guerrilla's narrative team ever do an AMA!

We’ve heard nothing to indicate there are tribes in those areas.

I don't think it is ever mentioned so maybe no one or maybe the landscape is just very difficult to traverse. It is likely there were other incubation hubs in America I imagine but I would think they would likely be quite a distance away.

Thats the plan, was waiting for the DLC before tackling that one.

@@RandomSideQuest Very good! 😁

I couldn’t get through to you in the last comment. Hopefully, this message reaches you.

@@addisonwelsh Found it.

@@alyseleem2692 Good. No idea what was going on. No matter what I tried I couldn’t contact you.

@@addisonwelsh How odd 🤔. Let's hope it doesn't happen again.

@@alyseleem2692 Here's hoping. Do you want me to continue my previous story, or move on to something else?

I believe Guerrilla stated that both the Utaru and Tenakth are descendants of Cradle-9 in a lore exploration video.

I never saw them as out of place. It is worth remembering that much of the fear associated with the Forbidden West, and the main reason it got its name, was due to the Tenakth. The lands aren't really any more dangerous than anywhere else apart from the Tenakth. If you go by the way they are talked about in the first game by people, they are basically demons in human flesh, resorting to canabalism and slaughter. The Tenakth were and are very territorial. Ally got that dagger which gave her permission to travel through those lands Do remember they are very willing to kill any they see as trespassers. However they aren't nearly as monsterous as portrayed and they have a long relationship with the Utaru. The Utaru had nothing to fear.

I think you’re right; but it does make sense that the humans that came across singing plowhorns tending to the earth would end up like the Utaru did, tradition and lifestyle wise. I loved the hippie vegan commune they have, was a great contrast to the rest of the forbidden west

That's the whole point to contrast the difference between the carja's silly stories about the west, even the tenanakth, we're just made up. People always find it's way where ever they ended up living.

I explored every single dialogue option that was available, and from what I have discovered, I have to disagree with u. The existence of the Tenakth alone warranted the fear for the Forbidden West. As cool and patriotic as Kotallo or Hekarro were, we also learned that the Tenakth's ruthless reputation was no joke - in a side quest, we learned that the punishment for being disabled was trial by combat against machines. In another case, we also learned that any Tenakth deemed mentally unwell would be sentenced to death too. The Utaru also stated that the Tenakth initially wanted to get rid of them, until a treaty was established and as long as the Utaru supplied them with sustenance, the Tenakth would let them live. Not to mention that the Tenakth consisted of three different clans, while the Utaru only had one. I think it makes sense that two juxtaposing tribes could exist in the same region, though the more ruthless one naturally dominated over the other, hence the overall reputation of the region. We see cases like this happen irl too.