okay hold up I have an Elisabet analysis for everyone :3
first of all, we should have gotten more Elisabet POVS and content in HFW, that’s my personal gripe because she is such an important character and she’s constantly referenced literally everywhere (coughs tilda) and where’s her pov on everything? Are there really no datapoints written by her in any ruin (yes, LATOPOLIS or the Hades Proving Lab has holos of her and Travis Tate and an audio point of her and Tilda, but really?? It’s not enough ouuu)
hfw was more about branching off from Elisabet imo, Aloy seems to have been slightly losing herself ingame and acting more and more like Elisabet and less like herself because she was convinced that saving the world is “Elisabet’s dream” and what “Rlisabet would have wanted”, not Aloy’s. (So basically it does make sense she had less content).
okay anyways, about Elisabet.
she is an extreme genius who never could persue human relationships quite right. Now, alot of people argue and bash Tilda inwards for saying that Elisabet would have never had any romantic attraction towards her, but I honestly think it’s not the case. I think there was SOMETHING there, even if it was small. Elisabet was absolutely capable of forming relationships, especially with her own Mother who’s death really took a huge toll on Elisabet’s life. And GRIEF DOES CRAZY THINGS TO PEOPLE! After Elisabet’s mother died, she probably didn’t have a shoulder to cry on, anybody to rely on or talk to like she would to her mother, and this is literally where Tilda is placed to fill that void. Of course, things were never the same after Lis’s mom died, and Tilda wasn’t a replacement for her mother, but rather another figure that Lis had a chance of growing to love.
As their relationship went on Elisabet probably fell out of love, and though timeline shit isn’t specified literally ANYWHERE (again, why I want more elisabet povs) I like to assume that Elisabet and Tilda started growing apart as soon as Tilda got involved in Far Zenith more, and as Elisabet started working on project zero dawn (Tilda half-used her to get a copy of APOLLO, because honestly idk if Elisabet would have given the copy if Erik Visser was asking for it). She LOST TRUST for tilda, she couldn’t handle the thought of being with someone who stabbed her in the back. (After far zenith tried to steal GAIA)
Anyways, Elisabet being Elisabet, she cannot let her burdens overwhelm anyone else. She has an incredibly independent complex and never seems to want to share any slight or majour problem with literally anyone unless absolutely necessary (hence, zero dawn). So that “part of herself locked away” was probably that, along with other parts of infatuation and love that she’s tied down because of how much loss absolutely destroys her.
she was probably wrecked after her mother passed, and building more human connections probably scared her into being more alone (though I do think she would have still been primarily solitary even if her mother wouldn’t have died).
half of this prolly doesn’t make sense idk im tired but my main points are:
They didn’t completely destroy her character, HFW was about Aloy finding herself
she should have gotten more screentime through datapoints OF HER WRITING
Her and Tilda’s relationship wasn’t strong by any means, and Tilda was mainly there to comfort her as a means of replacing the hole left in Elisabet’s heart after her mother died (oh btw, Lis did not do this maliciously ofc)
Elisabet IS capable of loving, but due to fear of loss and how it affects her, she doesn’t persue anything to the fullest/doesn’t have an interest in the event that it would shut her down like her mother’s death did.
Elisabet never wanted to put her burdens on anyone else.
I didn’t include anything here abt Travis and Ted because I’m lowkey tired asf I’ll rant more abt this later because Travis is pretty important actually LMAO