#all 135 pieces of armor were found and upgraded

[lulu2992]

But... What am I supposed to do with my life now?

[etherian-affairs]

Horde Clones are slaves and were designed for that role

(SUBMISSION, META)

Do you know what Hordak is? Hordak is a clone of the Emperor of the known universe, Horde Prime. 

He was grown in a vat, had no childhood whatsoever and was treated as a drone. He was allowed no name. Hordak never had thoughts to himself because Horde Prime can enter a clone’s mind and read them. A clone of Horde Prime has no privacy of thought because their minds can literally be read telepathically and by touch, if Horde Prime can’t do it remotely. 

This clone, and millions of others like him, aren’t allowed to have a will of their own. 

They were made for the purpose of warfare and if they show any kind of weakness or defect, they are either reconditioned until functionality is restored or sent to die on the battlefield. The drones/clones are conditioned and created for the soul purpose of war and conquest and live to only be an extension of Horde Prime’s will and nothing more. 

 Rae Geiger: … one of the concepts behind Prime is that he upgrades himself with his clones. They’re stock to him. He wants them all to be uniform by his standard, but he wants a little “extra” for himself to establish his superiority, his interesting-ness above them. So if he wants some extra eyes purely for the aesthetic, some clone(s) are going to give up a piece.

These clones, including Hordak, are nothing more than stock to him. clone-chattel.

Slaves. 

 They have no choice but to follow him and are conditioned during the start of their lives to be loyal to their master and do his bidding until they die.

That’s their life. They don’t choose this, they don’t have the option of doing what they want to do in their lives. They don’t even have the concept of self and a will of their own. They aren’t given the ability to learn about thinking independently of Horde Prime’s will. Horde Prime makes them in his image and if he see’s that they have become an “abomination” he will have them reborn. And that entails them getting violated by Horde Prime via hair-tendril, have that needled cable jabbed into the base of their neck/USB Port and have their entire life up until that point be deleted. Then they’re reset to factory settings and then get sent to be reconditioned.

Horde Prime is their God and he is a wrathful and merciless one. *************************

 "Hordak" became faulty after years of service due to a defect he had no control over and was thrown away by the only person he was ever supposed to love and serve. The only person the clone cared about(because he was conditioned to be a servant to Horde Prime and was made for that only purpose) sent him to die. And he was supposed to die, until an errant portal threw him into Etheria. 

Hordak knew it was his fault that he was thrown away, that he was a failure and imperfect. And he hated himself for that. He hated being an imperfect failure and that his own faults caused his misfortune.

Hordak still loved Horde Prime, because that’s what he was manufactured for, and wanted to conquer Etheria and open a portal to the outside universe to prove himself and Horde Prime wrong and that he wasn’t worthless and to go back to Horde Prime’s side. Hordak only wanted to go back to the way things used to be, and only wanted to serve his master once again. Hordak is a designer slave, purposefully constructed to love Horde Prime and be an extension of his will.

He did cause the deaths of possibly hundreds of thousands in the name of Horde Prime, I’m not going to deny or sugarcoat it. But, for Hordak, that was all he knew. The only thing he was ever taught in life was how to wage war and conquer in the name of his brother. He created the Etherian Horde, for Horde Prime. He wanted Etheria to become a gift for his brother and to show HP that he was still useful. 

Horde Prime is an abusive family member and Hordak is the abused person who still tries to prove his worth to his abuser. And for the longest time, he had no one but Horde Prime to look up to and respect.(Because, again, he was manufactured for Horde Prime use)

Until he met Entrapta. 

She was the one who came into his life. She was the one who demanded Hordak tell her everything he was doing AFTER she broke into his lab. And you know what, Hordak told her exactly what he was going to do. He never lied to her. He told her he was building a portal that was to be used for Etherian conquest. She still helped him build the portal machine though. 

But you know what else she did, she helped him with his chronic condition and validated him as a person(something he never got in the Horde and under Horde Prime). She made him armor to help his mobility and told Hordak his imperfections are beautiful. She looked at his body and wasn’t disgusted by it, or called him a worthless defect. She seen the real him and decided that he was great just the way he was. 

They also became equals, Hordak listened to her suggestions, theories and infodumps. Gave her credit where credit was due and treated her with respect. He even saved her from the exploding portal machine and did so when he knew his old armor was failing him. 

They both validated the other and respected each other as equals. Hordak found someone who looked at all his defects and found him still worthy as a person. Entrapta found someone who listened to her and didn’t find her mannerisms annoying. You have to remember, she’s been alive for 20something+ years, and no one’s ever listened to her theories until recently. 

She found someone who became her friend too.

***************

“There was even a time you wished I would not come for you, is that so?” Horde Prime

Hordak found himself back in Horde Prime’s court and when his Lord tried to mind-meld with him remotely, Horde Prime found out he couldn’t do it. So he had to physically touch Hordak to read his thoughts. He then discovered that one of his clones, one of his slaves, actually had the thought of hoping his master would not come looking for him. Hordak broke his conditioning (after 135 days of hanging out with Entrapta and them both working as equals) and was in the process of leaving Horde Prime and going with what he wanted to do, for once in his life. 

Hordak was ready to break away from his toxic environment/Horde Prime and stay in a place that said he was perfect the way he was and that failures aren’t something to be destroyed and are a natural part of science that creates further understanding and growth. 

Entrapta caused a clone slave, a person who was genetically designed to love/be loyal to Horde Prime only, to actually desire leaving his master. She validated him as a person and he was willing to grow away from his environment, away from Horde Prime. Entrapta didn’t redeem him, but she gave him something important. A healthy environment for which Hordak could grow away from the toxic thoughts Horde Prime saddled him with since his “birth”.

****************************** 

You don’t become a good person alone. You don’t magically start out as a good person with holy morals from birth. You learn good and bad things from your environment and if you live in a bad environment you become toxic. Having a way out of a toxic place, is key to helping someone unlearn bad behavior and become a better person. 

You also have to have people that care about you too, you can’t just do it on your own and do it alone. You have to have a support base, someone to help you. You have to have a friend. 

The person needing to change has to make the conscious decision to get themselves out of a toxic environment, but having a friend who validates them as a person and treats them as a worthy individual makes the transition a whole lot easier. 

Entrapta is  a person who was wanting to help a friend and validated him as a person. Something Hordak never had in his life. And that validation of personhood caused a clone slave to actually break his programming and Hordak desired to be left alone by his master. 

Hordak wished that Horde Prime would never bother with him. HE wanted Horde Prime to stay away from him now. HE didn’t want Horde Prime anymore. 

There was a hand holding out for him to take, and instead of ignoring it, Hordak was ready to take it. Hordak was ready to crawl out of the muck Horde Prime covered him with since the start of his “birth”. 

Hordak was finally at a crossroad, one road was still the path Horde Prime designed for him to walk on and one his body and mind were made for. But now, there was a different road, something newly created that said “You’re more than what your Creator made you to be.” And Hordak, with “LUVD” in his chest and someone willing and eager to walk with him on this new path, was ready to go in this new direction. 

Until Catra quite literally electrocuted Entrapta in the back after the latter told the former the portal would cause the end of the world and wanted the experiment stopped and then sent her to Beast Island to die, just so Entrapta wouldn’t tell the truth about how dangerous the portal really was and convince Hordak not to open it. 

Catra then lied to Hordak about Entrapta betraying him for the princesses and then started taunting him about how bad it would be if his “Big Brother” seen how badly Hordak was failing and how pleased Big Brother would be when he conquered Etheria.     

[moonlight-fox]

I rarely finish Zelda games - and there’s no real correlation between how likely I am to finish a Zelda title and how much I’m enjoying it, my favourite prior Zelda title (A Link Between Worlds) and one of my least favourite prior Zelda titles (Phantom Hourglass) are the ones I’ve finished - and the only reason I didn’t expect Breath of the Wild to fall into that ‘unfinished bundle’ is that usually I'm happily playing, get my fill, and just... Stop, with Breath of the Wild’s ‘can get to final boss from as soon as you’ve finished tutorial’ thing I expected to be able to just stop when I got my fill, but via the final boss. Which I did, 130-135 (Hate. That way of reporting how long you’ve played a game for. If I didn’t know it did it in five hour increments I’d just know 130+) hours in, 107 shrines completed (plus 1 that I wasn’t able to figure out though I had managed to brute force the second treasure chest, plus a shrine quest that I’d long since given up on, and that shrine that the orb to get to is fiercely guarded by Impa known about but unsure how to get her to give me the orb), something like 170 Koroks found, and basically just... Got my fill of navigating the world doing side quests and gathering materials to upgrade gear (Though I wound up doing just that for about 10-20 hours, which... That’s not usually an activity I enjoy in games)

So... A couple of thoughts.

For Overworld exploration, this is exactly what I want from a modern Zelda game - Wide open space filled with things to do and ‘...what’s that over there...?’ distractions from whatever I was planning on doing, with mysteries that you find way before you figure out what you’re meant to do with them (More of that, please.) things you can stumble across via the map and spotting something that looks weird on it, things you can stumble across by seeing something shiny through your scope, etc.

Koroks were... Fine. A couple felt like anti-climaxes, and after you’ve got the Master Sword, Hyrule Shield and about 6 Royal Bows plus some Lynal bows there’s little point in expanding the inventory, but definitely the most interesting version of the now standard Gold Skulletta side-quest I think they’ve done.

Shrines were more motivating for exploration, but dear lord that radar can be misleading at times.

Even 130 hours in, during what I knew was likely to be my final session, but while I thought I might finish upgrading what I suspected was going to be the armour for final boss (I was right, it was, but I just went with one fully enhanced and two *** pieces of gear with it) that world managed to surprise me with content - the golf course. I was not expecting a golf course. Are there others? Maybe, it specified the location of the course, so...

As much as I moan about every hill having a Korok on it, there’s enough novelty in there among the Koroks and the Shrines that I could easily enjoy another game with the same design ethos but with a different world, be it Yet Another Dark Reflection Of Hyrule (c.f. Twilight Realm, Termina, Dark World, and Lorule), another continent, or whatever.

...But I think I’d rather play a nice, intimate, Zelda game between them - Something like a Majora’s Mask follow up as a palette clenser before going into another open world exploration title - Maybe a few towns in an area about the size of 1-2 of the regions, on a full week schedule that cycles but not in a literal time loop so it can change as you make a difference.

Speaking of Making A Difference, the Terray Town quest line felt really satisfying, even if none of the constituent parts of it were that interesting in their own right, because you could actively see an impact your actions were having on the game world.

Dungeons were... I still don’t know how I feel about them, even after doing all four main dungeons plus Hyrule Castle which felt far too integrated into the world to be a Zelda Dungeon. I enjoyed them, don’t get me wrong, and they’re some of the best ‘solve the dungeon by understanding the dungeon as a space’ I’ve seen in a Zelda title... But... I do miss Dungeons that it feels like you’re exploring rather than puzzling out, even with so open and exploration driven an overworld.

Great Fairies were always exciting to have discovered, though realizing their role in the game was... Something of a let down. Honestly I’m always disappointed when Great Fairies aren’t giving you cool new abilities or at least expanding your magic meter (...Not that Link has had a Magic meter since, what, Windwaker?)

Speaking of our Magical Tailors, the clothing system... Was probably the weakest major part of the mechanics for me. A bit too clumpy, and considering how perfect the system for dispalying current temperature and comfortable temperature ranges they had, seeing only a couple of types of clothing able to impact that and in very broad chunks felt like a missed opportunity. Essentially you had five temperatures in the regular climate system (Plus Death Mountain’s stuff), ‘very cold’ ‘cold’ ‘‘fine’ ‘hot’ ‘very hot’, and clothing to help you there just extended your range from fine down, up, or... Really weirdly if you combined some items, both. Combined with some gear being strictly better than others (once you got /any/ gear to the same level as regular hylian clothing, that was redundant, with even your good armor being rendered pointless by the ancient gear, since there were ‘equally defensive, but has special abilities too’ for those), which is a shame because most of the gear was quite effective at being incomparables, and once you started to get some sets to ** the game really strongly encouraged you to not mix and match unless you were just going all out defense (At which point, for me, for the final 50 hours or so of gameplay it was Ancient Curiass, Amber Earrings, and one of my 20 defense leg wear options, usually the ones that also gave me warm because once I got those to 20 defense what was the point in the Hylian trousers?

Overall I think this is my new favorite Zelda title, but it might settle equal second with Windwaker and Majora’s Mask rather than above Link Between Worlds, or between Windwaker and Majora’s Mask, and Link Between Worlds. It’s either a new favorite, or second favorite, though, but if it’s second favourite there is a possibility that it will be in a three way tie for second favorite, and the overall experience was ultimately incredibly satisfying.

Now I can start watching that 10 or so hours of BotW videos I have queued up on my watch later on Youtube, which doesn’t include any LP content, whee. And the timing of my finishing the game ties in nicely with the recent release of Persona 5, too.