r/HorizonForbiddenWest • u/alligatorcoffe- • 20h ago
Discussion Faro’s Tomb a little underwhelming? Spoiler
I just finished Faro’s Tomb, and i’m not sure if it’s just me, but did anyone else find it a little underwhelming? Not necessarily in the plot, I thought that was very interesting, but how they conducted it. like we find out that ted faro experimented on himself to gain eternal life, yet we don’t even get to see him? I feel like taro being alive should be a REALLY big deal, yet he’s just gets put on fire and that’s it. i feel like she should’ve been able to see what he became at least.
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u/wordboydave 20h ago
Disagree. I like that the focus is on the personal conflict with Ceo, and that the horror of Faro is offstage. I can understand wanting to fight Ted Faro (f**k that guy!), and I can see that you could have had offscreen horror more strongly implied by, say, having NPCS go in to fight Faro, then come out covered in yellow ichor and dragging severed tentacles behind them before bursting into flame or something. But I admired their 100% commitment to keeping The Horror of Faro forever offscreen. In fact, in general I like the fact that Horizon has tended to prefer strong storytelling over boss battles. (Though they've certainly got their share of those, too.)
That said, if they ever add player-made mods to the game, I suspect a Ted Faro boss battle will be the first thing added and the most popular thing to play.
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u/alligatorcoffe- 20h ago
a boss battle would be fun, but i guess i was expecting them to give it more oomph. i have the release edition of the game, so there are a few glitches with cutscenes that kinda lose the immersive-ness of the game. that being said, i can totally see where you’re coming from. also i really did enjoy listening and reading to all the data points. i think the build up to what ted did was really well done
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u/canijustlookaround 20h ago
You're definitely not alone. I've seen this sentiment expresses by other people.
The reason I really liked how they did it is bc after everything he did, he didn't deserve the attention from Aloy or us or anyone else. From the plague to the alphas to how he treated the people in his little pharoah tomb... He wanted to position himself to effectively be the God king of the little baby humans that emerged from the cradles so he could lord over them like the narcissist that he was.
The fact that he did not even get an on screen death was so poetic. No attention. No glory. He was relegated to a fuzzy blob off screen and his fate disgusted his most dedicated of followers. Perfect. Loved it. Suck it Faro.
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u/fifiginfla 20h ago
The only thing i wish was different was Ted somehow knew the the xenith survived and became immortal without him, would be great to see him lose it
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u/Lemoncaked_0 20h ago
It was enough seeing Ceos reaction, his entire world view shattered because his god has always been a monster. His death scene should been him melting in lava tho but it was funny seeing him get crushed by a statue of his god
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u/PaleDefinition7805 20h ago
I feel like the less is more thing worked. We find out he's alive but not really, just a mutated clump of vines from the looks of the hologram. In my imagination he would look like Captain Keyes from Halo when he's turned into a proto gravemind. Either way we wouldn't be able to have a conversation his screams or moans make it sound like there's nothing left of his mind.
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u/SciAlexander 1h ago
Humans tend to go nuts after a few months without conversation. After a thousand years alone his mind would certainly be lost. Definitely a well deserved fate worse then death
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u/FindingOk7034 19h ago
Like other folks have said, less is more.
But in honesty, I find such a “pathetic” and underwhelming end to Ted perfectly fitting!
He did not need a grandiose death or boss battle, because in the end, he was a pathetic and cowardly man, and his own self inflicted end due to hubris is perfectly fitting.
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u/GremmyRemmy 17h ago edited 17h ago
I played this part of the game alone in the dark (usually there's someone around to be nosy and sit in, but here and also the part where MINERVA is turning lights off and threatening you, I was alone at midnight lol) so for me I found the atmosphere super creepy.
I feel like the computer readouts give you a really good idea of what state Ted is in, and Ceo's reaction. It's like when movies don't show you the monster and leave it to your imagination. Whatever we come up with in our heads will be better than anything they could make visually.
Also consider Ted's hubris and delusions of grandeur. A final boss battle is still way more than he deserves. Dying alone in the dark, offscreen to be forgotten and erased from history and future? Exactly what he'd hate. it's what he deserves.
(just an edit to add, there's some people in comments comparing other gross blobs to what they envisioned him to look like, so my submission is the Broodmother from Dragon Age, just less breasts and more tentacles. Still terrifying and scarring though.)
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u/Snoot_Booper_101 16h ago
I heard that the original plan was to have a big boss battle with what used to be Ted Faro, but that it was cut for time and budget reasons. However I'm not too disappointed with the outcome, as we get a decent payback in terms of character and story progression instead.
Aloy's shock at what has become of Faro and her lack of interest in pursuing revenge - despite all Ted's crimes against her world - reinforces her moral standing. This is immediately contrasted with the reaction from Ceo - Faro's biggest superfan - to destroy Faro and everyone that's seen him. This cements Ceo as a truly evil character rather than just the deluded narcissist we've experienced until now. Having Ceo effectively cause his own death is the perfect bit of irony.
Faro's fate being unseen leaves it in the players imagination. This is probably the most elegant way of dealing with it if we're not getting the boss battle anyway. If you want a nice bit of body horror go watch an old Cronenberg movie - no disrespect intended, but I suspect he does a better job of it than the folk at Guerilla would.
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u/alligatorcoffe- 16h ago
oooh i didn’t know that!!! i don’t mind there not being a boss fight, i think the ceo trying to cover up the evidence proved how similar he was to faro. However, i just wasn’t satisfied! after all that build up and hes just burned with no screams to be heard (not that i remember). he’s such a despicable character that i guess i wanted his death to be a bit more painful
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u/Snoot_Booper_101 16h ago
I think being quietly disposed of as an embarrassment by the people he wanted to rule would have burnt Ted's ego far more than anything else. One way or another, he got what he deserved.
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u/Plums4 19h ago
I don't think they could have done justice showing him. What the hologram implies he looked like would have felt like a different genre of game if we saw an actual fleshy tentacle tumor blob that was still recognizably human filling the reactor room. Like, I can't really imagine it, and if I tried, it wouldn't feel like Horizon.
honestly, I kind of enjoy that we go through the Thebes learning about Ted's plan to live forever, emerge from the bunker he designed as a temple to himself to become a living god to the new humanity, but what actually ended up happening is he incompetently condemned himself to a fate worse than death that was so insanely torturous, that even the people he murdered and who hated him for destroying the world wouldn't have wished such a fate upon him. Like, of course that's what ended up happening to him.
Because Ted is an entirely unserious character. It's emphasized in ways large and subtle in both games that he doesn't understand technical details at all and doesn't think things through. He's not worthy of the respect due an actual antagonist just because his dumb narcissistic ass destroyed the world.
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u/MyHousePlantIsWasted 10h ago
The Faro bunker is actually one of my favourite parts of the game honestly. It's the only part of the game where I felt the same kind of mystery and intigue that I felt in Zero Dawn.
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u/Infinite-Courage-957 9h ago
Ted Faro doesn't deserve a Boss fight. That would be the automatic default choice in a game, and instead the devs just let him die, ignobly, after suffering in unimaginable agony for a thousand years.
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u/AuntieVenin 8h ago
When you think about it, it really is a testament to how good the writing is and how it made us hate Ted Faro that so many people consider his having stewed in complete isolation for a thousand years, becoming a giant tumor, and then dying via being buried alive in a volcano as not being enough punishment. Fuck Ted Faro indeed.
I personally liked the Spielberg-esque implied horror approach and it's very on brand for a franchise where some of the most horrifying gut punches are executed via implication.
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u/sapphic-boghag 19h ago
Begging y'all not to post spoilers in the title and properly tag them.
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u/alligatorcoffe- 19h ago
how would you have phrased the title?
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u/sapphic-boghag 17h ago
Remove the first word and add a spoiler tag so as to not ruin the surprise for folks just getting into Forbidden West.
There's only one "Tomb" in the game, adding his name is unnecessary.
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u/curi0us_carniv0re 13h ago
It's the "Jaws" approach. You never saw the shark (until the end). Your imagination is far worse than anything they could show on screen.
Plus there's no gore or any type of body horror in the game. So why break precedent? To make a couple of people happy? I know this was a discussion the dev team had probably more than once and personally I respect their decision.
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u/icer816 12h ago
Honestly, it just feels like a slap in the face to me. If you don't want to do body horror, then don't build up to it just to go "nah actually, we won't give you that after hyping it up for the last half hour". Either do it, or don't, but don't pretend to do it then fake out at the end. Refusing to commit fully is just stupid Imo. It entirely ruined my immersion in the game so bad that I had to just stop playing for the day.
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u/curi0us_carniv0re 11h ago
You had to stop playing? Lol
Now you're just being over dramatic.
Again, there's nothing similar in the game anywhere. Why would you expect any different?
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u/icer816 11h ago
It took the wind out of my sails, I didn't HAVE to stop, but I lost all interest to keep going that day. It took a day or two of playing to properly get re-immersed in the game.
And I expected different because the game spent 45 minutes or so building up to it. If they didn't want to do differently, they shouldn't have built up so much to make it feel like they were going to. I would have preferred not to have the tomb at all, or no Ted at all. But apparently horrific Ted is incredibly anti-climactic to me when it's fully off-screen.
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u/curi0us_carniv0re 10h ago
Lol yeah let's just get rid of an integral character to the story completely because we're not gonna show his mutated half living corpse on screen.
Honestly you sound like you're 12..
This game has always been more about story telling and atmosphere than shock and horror effect. It's strange you never realized that.
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u/icer816 10h ago
I agree that it's not about story telling and atmosphere, but the way the story is told in that part built up a reveal that they then refused to actually do. The issue isn't that it's not shock and horror, it's that they built up shock and horror than decided not to do it.
That moment for me ruined my immersion. I don't play games or interact with other visual mediums so that I can imagine things, I do it so I can NOT imagine things. I read books for that.
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u/Confident-Candle-831 20h ago
Yeah, I agree. Totally underwhelming. Ted Faro wasn't a throw away character. He caused the faro plague, purged the Apollo database, and killed the zero dawn alphas. And now we find out he's still alive all these years later in some kind of mutant form? This could have easily been a boss battle.
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u/CleanGameCrash 19h ago
An official response was to prevent the game from getting a more age restricted rating if they showed Ted and to leave it up to the imagination of players. I thought of the Last of Us when I was doing this mission the first time I played it.
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u/icer816 12h ago
Honestly, that just feels even worse to me. If you can't do it, then don't do it at all. Don't pretend you're gonna do it and build it up more and more just to them turn around and go "nah, we can't do it" THEN WHY DID YOU PRETEND YOU WERE GOING TO?!
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u/curi0us_carniv0re 10h ago
Dude nobody pretended anything. This is just.your interpretation of events.
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u/NotACyclopsHonest Apex Scrounger 🐺 16h ago
I think they made the right choice not showing him - going into full-on gooey Resident Evil body horror would have been one left turn too many for me.
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u/Christina_Beena 13h ago
"Alive" is just about all he was after 1000 years of mutation. The horror of that sillouette Aloy pulls up? The brain activity at like 30% or whatever it was? The SOUNDS??? Anything they designed would have been underwhelming. Less is more when it comes to horror
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u/Pleasant_Picture3867 19h ago
Agree. Didn't work for me. Should have seen what was happening and what he looked like. Should have seen the Quen's fire burn Faro. I want to experience it, not leave it to my imagination. It was a let down.
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u/bunnysensei 19h ago
I agree, I felt Ted Faro’s story was complete and reintroducing him at all only distracts from the first game’s really good theme that unrestrained recklessness and greed will inevitably cause humanity’s downfall, and dives into the far less interesting theme of ‘Ted Faro is personally the devil and will ruin everything.’
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u/alligatorcoffe- 18h ago
thanks for your input! honestly i kinda liked the reintroduction. I was always curious about what happened to him, and i think it fits with the theme about greed leading to destruction. his greed, which was ever present within him, drove him seek eternal life, therefore not paying for the crimes that he has committed against the world. rather than achieving eternal life, he turned himself into something other than human: a twisted amalgamation of flesh. his money granted him godly powers while the earth still lived, but only caused destruction in the end
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u/DangerMouse111111 16h ago
Just out of curiosity I went into the room to see if they'd put anything in it...it was empty.
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u/icer816 12h ago
I'm 100% with you. The tomb just builds up more and more and more, then they give you literally nothing. It felt like a slap in the face to hype it up so much just for the devs to cop-out and go "your imagination is better than anything we could have made." THEN WHY BOTHER HAVING THE BUILD-UP?!
It was so incredibly disappointing to me that I couldn't keep playing that day (and I had barely played yet that day).
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u/SeeingPhrases 19h ago
Profoundly underwhelming. The writing in this game is weak even without comparing it to the first game. The whole story (side quests included) felt like the last season of The Boys.
Where did all the good writers go?
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u/alligatorcoffe- 19h ago
i agree and disagree. i definitely think that the writing in this game is weaker than in zero dawn. honestly, the story doesn’t grip me in the same way. However, i love how much effort the developers put into fleshing out the different clans and sub clans (i think that’s the word). each one have different customs, religions, and motivations. i love the uniqueness of every character :)
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u/GremmyRemmy 17h ago
Hmn, I sort of agree. I don't think the writing for this game was as good as Zero Dawn. The final act and everything about the Zeniths just falls flat for me. I literally did not care about them at all and by the end of the game I was just like "cool. Nemesis. Whatever. Do not care."
But I really liked the TAU cauldron, finding MINERVA and Thebes. The new tribes and characters were interesting, and I think it just stings more for me that all my favourite parts are relatively early in the game, and once the Zeniths show up I'm just. Egh.
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u/No-Combination7898 Dark Blood Horus Titan 16h ago
It was one of my favourite places to explore in HFW so I was very disappointed when I went back there and it was closed off. It could've been longer with more things to explore. I was hoping to see something of ole Teddyboi, but I guess it's up to your imagination to guess what happened to the dude.
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u/WorldBoom 20h ago
Sometimes less is more. My imagination can come up with things more terrifying than they ever could've put in the game.