Aloy

Aloy is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the video game series Horizon. In the games' post-apocalyptic tribal setting, she is born in 3021, raised as an outcast, and trains as a warrior in order to win a ritual competition to discover her mother's identity. After narrowly evading an assassination attempt, she embarks on a journey to stop a cult that worships an artificial intelligence bent on the world's destruction, while also hunting zoomorphic robots that have grown hostile to humans. She has been critically praised for her design and characterization. She is voiced by American voice actress Ashly Burch and modeled after Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra.

The character's origins date back to around 2010, when Guerrilla Games art director Jan-Bart van Beek pitched an early concept for a game featuring Aloy as the protagonist in a post-apocalyptic world reclaimed by nature and robotic dinosaurs.^[2] Original designs had the character using a rifle, but this was changed to tribal weaponry because high-tech gunfire clashed with the game's natural setting.^[3] The studio always envisioned the game as starring a strong female character, with game director Mathijs de Jonge citing Sarah Connor from Terminator, Ellen Ripley from Alien, and Ygritte from Game of Thrones (2011–2019) as initial influences.^[4] Sony decided to conduct rigorous market testing, believing that adding a female lead might be a "risk", but ultimately approved her for the role.^[5] De Jonge noted that centering the game's heroism around femininity was a deliberate choice, serving as a creative shift for the studio to distance themselves from the heavily masculine tone of their previous Killzone franchise.^[6]

Aloy was designed to provide many tactical options in battle. She was written with deeply ingrained survival instincts, possessing a gritty personality that rejects luxury and views machines with strict practicality. She is characterised by her fiercely direct and occasionally aggressive approach to resolving issues.^[7] De Jonge explained that Aloy was conceived as the first of the game's three core design pillars, needing to contrast against the other two; the lush natural environments and the machines, which necessitated her highly agile and fluid combat mechanics.^[8] While Sony's initial market testing proved players were excited about a female lead, the tests also revealed that Aloy's early design felt too young and possessed a "Disney princess, miss-perfect quality" that players found unbelievable for a machine hunter. In response, the team spent two years iterating on her concept art, bringing in freelance artists to help redesign her to look "older, tougher, [and] louder".^[9] Studio co-founder Hermen Hulst noted that her clothing and physical appearance were deliberately grounded in practicality, aiming to avoid industry trends of overly sexualising female characters, which they felt would detract from the game's core themes.^[10] The developers spent considerable time refining her hairstyle so she would remain instantly recognisable regardless of the armour she wore. They retained her signature fiery red hair and tribal braids while avoiding impractical fashionable flourishes, using complex hair physics to make her movements appear more dynamic during combat.^[11] Aloy's facial likeness was based on the Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra,^[12] and she is voiced by American actress Ashly Burch.^[13] Narrative director John Gonzalez noted that Burch was cast because she perfectly balanced the three essential qualities required for the character: incredible toughness, articulate wit, and an underlying vulnerability stemming from her outcast childhood.^[8] While Burch provided the voice and facial motion capture, Aloy's parkour, combat, and traversal stunts were performed by physical motion-capture actresses, including Peggy Vrijens.^[14] To complement the physical performance, Guerrilla's audio team recorded extensive, dynamic foley for her movements. Senior sound designer Lucas van Tol explained that Aloy's footsteps were designed to dynamically change in weight and texture depending on the specific type of armour the player equips. Because the prologue features a young Aloy walking barefoot, the team had to record a completely separate set of audio rhythms to match the distinct pacing of the child motion-capture actress.^[15]

When Gonzalez joined the team for Horizon Zero Dawn (2017), he helped flesh out Aloy's story and psychology, intertwining her emotional development with the lore of the world so that she transcended her starting references.^[16] Burch's vocal performance heavily influenced Gonzalez's writing, with the two collaborating closely on her line delivery and future dialogue.^[3] While the team focused on making Aloy a fundamentally human and complex personality, they also implemented a "Flashpoint" dialogue system that allows the player to shape the nuances of her personality during key narrative moments by choosing whether she reacts with compassion, insight, or confrontation.^[8] The development team aimed for her to organically grow from a figure of lowest social standing into the world's most vital saviour.^[17] Her behaviour and worldview were heavily influenced by her status as a motherless outcast at birth. Gonzalez explained that this early trauma fostered a deep compassion for others facing adversity. This cultivated both a strong curiosity about her origins and a natural drive to help those in need, which the developers used as the narrative justification for her willingness to assist non-player characterss (NPC) during side quests.^[7] Gonzalez also successfully pushed for Aloy to discover her augmented reality Focus device as a child rather than as an adult, allowing the game to intertwine her early emotional growth with the story of the ancient world.^[16]

Aloy's design and game mechanics evolved to reflect her growth and experience in Horizon Forbidden West (2022). Lead character artist Bastien Ramisse explained that to take advantage of the advanced hardware of the PlayStation 5, the team heavily increased the polygon density and skeletal joints of her character model. This allowed for unprecedented facial capture accuracy and realistic surface details, right down to the highly publicised vellus hair ("peach fuzz") visible on her skin.^[6][18] Lead combat designer Dennis Zopfi stated that her mechanics were built around traits like being smart, fast, agile, precise, and resourceful. To emphasise that she does not rely on brute force, the team blended melee and ranged combat and updated her animations to show she is more comfortable traversing the environment. New tools, such as a Pullcaster grappling hook and a Shieldwing glider, were introduced to increase her vertical mobility.^[19] Writer Benjamin McCaw noted that the immense pressure Aloy faced to live up to Elisabet Sobeck's legacy was a significant part of her character arc. Her unique upbringing initially caused her to push her friends away, feeling she had to accomplish her tasks alone. Over the course of the game, her narrative focused on learning to integrate into society, accept help, and realise that the people in the world were worth saving, rather than saving the world in the abstract.^[20] Aloy's evolving relationship with her clone sister Beta was described by the development team as the emotional core of the game's story, and was considered the most difficult aspect to write.^[20][21] The writers created Beta to serve as a "dark reflection" of Aloy, embodying her internal conflicts about wanting to connect with others while still feeling isolated.^[20] Beta was originally envisioned as an optimistic character before being rewritten as sullen and withdrawn to better fit the emotional tone of the story.^[22] In Burning Shores (2023), McCaw explained that the team wanted to push Aloy beyond the trauma of her outcast childhood and explore her capacity for vulnerability and love. This narrative arc culminated in her meeting the Quen warrior Seyka, a character specifically designed to be Aloy's physical and emotional equal who could uniquely understand her perspective.^[23]

Aloy's journey is represented by "Aloy's Theme," a recurring motif featuring the lyricless vocals of singer Julie Elven.^[24] When crafting the theme, composer Joris de Man was instructed by the developers to avoid traditional sci-fi tropes; they specifically requested an "anti-blockbuster" sound for the protagonist that was intimate and organic. The theme was initially intended as a placeholder for the game's E3 2015 trailer; however, overwhelming audience response led the team to adopt it as the main menu theme. The instrumentation was deliberately kept minimalistic, using sparse arrangements of analog synthesizers, cellos, and contrabass flutes to reflect Aloy's isolated upbringing as an outcast and her underlying loneliness.^[25] Elven was originally recommended to the team by composer Ian Livingstone; de Man asked to "tack on" to their recording session to have Elven sing a short, minute-and-a-half phrase he had written. This anti-blockbuster approach relied heavily on soloistic performances and improvisations.^[26] Elven's vocalisation acts as Aloy's "musical voice," communicating the vulnerability the guarded character refuses to say out loud.^[27] Throughout Zero Dawn, the composition team dynamically wove variations of this central motif into cutscenes, triggering specific permutations of the theme to underscore key emotional shifts in Aloy's personal journey and the unfolding revelations about her origin.^[25]

For Forbidden West, the musical focus shifted to reflect Aloy's growth from a frustrated outcast to a character with clear purpose.^[26] Composers sought to further evolve her musical presence, with Niels van der Leest ensuring the world's score was written "through the eyes of Aloy" to reflect the burden of her new mission.^[28] The score introduced vocal duets between Elven and Melissa R. Kaplan to represent Aloy's interactions with a new significant character; in these duets, Elven's voice was used to signify Aloy's strength and persistence, contrasting with the vulnerability of her companion.^[26] Additionally, the vocal track "In the Flood," co-produced by Lovisa Bergdahl and Oleksa Lozowchuk and sung by Ariana Gillis, was chosen for the game's opening title sequence because developers felt it perfectly captured Aloy's journey as she gallops into the West.^[29]

Aloy's design has also been adapted to suit the different tones of the franchise's spin-offs. In the virtual reality title Horizon Call of the Mountain (2023), she appears as an NPC encountered by the protagonist, Ryas. McCaw explained that because the game was built specifically for virtual reality, the team felt they needed a new protagonist, a master climber, whose skill set offered the perfect viewpoint to experience the towering vertical scale of the world, rather than reusing Aloy.^[30][31] Conversely, the 2024 spin-off Lego Horizon Adventures reimagines her for a younger, family-friendly audience. Frédéric Andre, Creative Lead at The Lego Group, noted that Aloy's in-game model and physical minifigure feature a more expressive face to capture the lighthearted, playful tone of the adaptation, contrasting with her typically serious demeanour.^[32]

In Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy is introduced as an outcast of the Nora tribe, raised in the wilderness by her surrogate father, Rost. Shunned from birth for lacking a mother, a young Aloy discovers an ancient augmented reality "Focus" device that grants her insight into the ruined Old World. Hoping to uncover her origins, a teenage Aloy wins the tribe's Proving ritual, but the ceremony is attacked by the Eclipse cult. Their leader, Helis, specifically targets Aloy due to her physical resemblance to a 21st-century scientist named Dr. Elisabet Sobeck; Rost sacrifices himself to save her. Declared a Seeker by the Nora elders, Aloy forms a reluctant alliance with a mysterious researcher named Sylens. Her journey reveals she is not a natural-born human, but a genetic clone of Sobeck created by GAIA, the artificial intelligence governing "Project Zero Dawn", an autonomous terraforming system that restored life to Earth after its eradication by self-replicating military machines. GAIA cloned Sobeck so Aloy could use her genetic signature to access restricted facilities and reboot the system after a rogue sub-function named HADES attempted to cause a second extinction. While in the city of Meridian, Aloy also assists Talanah Khane Padish, a noble hunter, by providing trophies from various machines to prove her worth to the Carja Hunters Lodge. The pair later collaborate to defeat the legendary Thunderjaw "Redmaw", allowing Talanah to supplant the bigoted leadership of the Lodge and be named its first female Sunhawk. Returning to her primary mission, Aloy successfully defends Meridian from the Eclipse and uses a master override to purge HADES, securing the region.^[33]

In Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds (2017), Aloy temporarily detours north into the Cut, a snowy region corresponding to the ruins of Yellowstone National Park, to assist the Banuk tribe. She investigates rumors of a "Daemon" corrupting local machines and causing a volcano named Thunder's Drum to violently smoke. She teams up with the local chieftain Aratak and his sister, the shaman Ourea, to stop the Daemon, which is revealed to be HEPHAESTUS, another rogue GAIA sub-function. HEPHAESTUS has taken over an ancient facility and enslaved a benevolent AI named CYAN, originally designed by the Old Ones to prevent the Yellowstone Caldera from erupting. The trio infiltrates the facility's core, where Ourea sacrifices herself to complete an override. This allows Aloy to free CYAN and halt HEPHAESTUS's immediate threat, though the rogue sub-function manages to escape into the global network.^[34]

Set six months later, Horizon Forbidden West follows Aloy as she travels to the uncharted western coast of the United States to find a working backup of GAIA, hoping to reverse a toxic red blight and catastrophic supercell storms degrading the biosphere. Burdened by Sobeck's legacy, Aloy initially attempts to shoulder the mission alone. However, she soon becomes entangled in a tribal civil war between the Tenakth Chief Hekarro and the rebel leader Regalla, and clashes with Far Zenith, who are a group of immortal billionaires who fled Earth during the apocalypse and have returned to claim GAIA for themselves using impenetrable energy shields. Realising she cannot defeat them alone, Aloy establishes a covert base of operations and forms a coalition of allies from various tribes, including her friends Varl and Erend, the Utaru gravesinger Zo, the Tenakth warrior Kotallo, and the Quen diviner Alva. She also reunites with Talanah to track a missing hunter named Amadis. Aloy's coalition eventually rescues Beta, a younger, traumatised clone of Sobeck created by the Zeniths, whom Aloy accepts as a sister. After Varl is murdered by the Zeniths' enforcer Erik Visser, a grief-stricken Aloy leads her allies in a final assault on the Zenith base. Forced to reluctantly collaborate with her adversarial ally, Sylens, she unleashes HEPHAESTUS into their machine-printing matrix to bypass their shields. They defeat the Zeniths, only to discover the billionaires were not planning to save Earth, but were actually fleeing a vengeful, highly advanced gestalt consciousness named Nemesis, which is now en route to destroy the planet. Aloy chooses to remain on Earth, working with her assembled allies to prepare for Nemesis's arrival.^[35]

In Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores (2023), Aloy prepares for the arrival of Nemesis by tracking Walter Londra, the final surviving Zenith, to the volcanic archipelago of the ruined Los Angeles. She partners with Seyka, a Quen marine searching for her missing people, to dismantle Londra's cult and stop his planned escape from Earth, which would irradiate the region. Together, they stop Londra from fleeing the planet by destroying his reactivated Horus "Metal Devil" war machine. Following their victory, the player is presented with a "Flashpoint" choice to determine the outcome of their relationship; selecting the "Heart" option allows Aloy to reciprocate Seyka's feelings and the two share a kiss.^[23][36]

Outside of the mainline series, Aloy appears as a non-playable character in Call of the Mountain and as the primary playable character in the comedic retelling of Zero Dawn, Lego Horizon Adventures.^[30][37] Beyond the Horizon franchise,Aloy has also made cameo appearances in other games. She was first added as a playable character in the PlayStation 4 version of Monster Hunter: World (2018)^[38] and makes an appearance in Astro's Playroom (2020)^[39] and in Astro Bot (2024), with a full level based on the Horizon universe in the latter.^[40] Aloy was added to Fortnite Battle Royale (2017) on 15 April 2021, for the Chapter 2, Season 6 "Primal" event.^[41] That September, Aloy was given out as a free character for PS4 and PS5 players of Genshin Impact (2020), while players on other platforms received her for free in October.^[42] In December, Aloy was added to Fall Guys (2020) as an unlockable costume during a limited-time event.^[43]

Aloy's narrative is further expanded in the Horizon Zero Dawn comic book series published by Titan Comics. In the first volume, The Sunhawk (2020), set after the events of the game, Aloy makes a supporting appearance. After she disappears from Meridian to continue her mission, Talanah ventures into the wilderness to find her, ultimately meeting Amadis and battling a new machine known as a Clawstrider.^[44] Aloy returns to a co-starring role in the second volume, Liberation (2021—2022), which takes place during the events of the game. The story follows Aloy as she assists Erend in tracking Korl, an accomplice in the murder of Erend's sister, Ersa. While they fend off machines, Erend recounts the previously untold history of the "Liberation of Meridian", detailing how Ersa and the Oseram vanguard helped overthrow the tyrannical Mad Sun-King Jiran.^[45]

Peter Tieryas of Kotaku praised the character of Aloy, finding the scene where Aloy talks to her father's grave moving in part due to how "real" their relationship felt and how it shows how things have changed for Aloy since her childhood.^[46] Malindy Hetfield of Polygon praised Aloy as "inspiring and captivating", but also called her "not particularly relatable" compared to the game's other female characters due to her "flawlessness".^[47] Aloy's story about her origins resonated with Sam Loveridge of GamesRadar+ and inspired her to seek out her own birth parents.^[48] Lucas Sullivan of the same site called her "one of gaming's greatest female leads".^[49] She was ranked as one of the best video game characters of the 2010s by Polygon staff with Colin Campbell praising the character by stating that "She's pragmatic but compassionate, iron-willed but open-minded. In a 31st-century world with its own norms and taboos, particularly around gender, Aloy refuses to let anyone else tell her how to live."^[50] Paste magazine writer Holly Green included Aloy as the best new game characters of 2017.^[51] TheGamer also included Aloy on their "Iconic Video Game Characters", stating that "Aloy is one of the best protagonists of the last decade, of which there are many to choose from, mostly because of her strong-willed nature and ability to act strong in difficult situations."^[52]

Ashly Burch, the voice actress for Aloy, won an award for "best gaming performance" at the 35th Golden Joystick Awards. She thanked the developers, saying that playing the character made her a "braver and stronger woman", and that she hoped Aloy would be inspiring to other women.^[53] The writing, design, and vocal/motion-capture performance of Aloy has been nominated for "Outstanding Achievement in Character" twice at the D.I.C.E. Awards, one each for Zero Dawn in 2018 and Forbidden West in 2023.^[54][55]

• Aloy on Genshin Impact Wiki