Thinking about aloy and sylens' relationship again and both how funny it is and what a good representation of the whole series it is.
Both of them are these weird hermits who view most social interaction as transactional, and are quite brash as a result; the main difference being one of them is doing it on purpose and the other is doing it because she hasn't quite figured out the whole social cues thing yet.
Aloy can be genuinely asshole-ish at times; more so at the very beginning, and it comes with a lot of extra confusion about how organised society works, having really only seen it from the outside, as well as a general distaste for pleasantries; she simply won't do or say something if she thinks it's stupid, and has no interest in softening any blows she might be dishing out. Sylens, on the other hand, has had much longer to learn how to act and has simply chosen the path of significant resistance. He knows exactly how he wants to live his life and has no interest in sharing it with others outside of what he can use them for.
And then they both spend the entire time yelling at each other over how they act and how stupid they're both being, as if they're not employing essentially identical social interaction methods with varying levels of success. Aloy's calling sylens out for being a prick and he's just standing there wondering if she's hearing herself speak or not.
It's the two ends of the spectrum of being isolated from community, sylens not giving a shit and aloy wanting to but not knowing how, one of them convinced that working with or even being around other people is a complete waste of time, and the other visibly stumbling at almost every hurdle whilst simultaneously refusing to give any grace to anyone else also struggling.
Aloy has such a strong moral compass and internal focus despite her general lack of experience with the rest of the world. She is almost never embarrassed, only ever uncomfortable, and something about other people not having the same drive and commitment she does clearly annoys her a lot. She doesn't like giving people the benefit of the doubt and often refuses to allow nuisance in any of her relationships, which makes a lot of sense for a hunter, someone who has spent their whole life in the wilderness where there is no place for second guessing or mixed signals. She tries to apply the mindset of machines to people; binary actions, clear signals and nothing hidden under the surface, and it trips her up when she's forced to put more thought into her interactions than she perhaps wants to.
Forbidden West takes a really interesting approach by actually making aloy more like sylens for the most part, and having that be her arc. Zero Dawn focuses on the big picture; aloy caring about people on principle and the objective 'good of humanity' angle, but Forbidden West sits down and says 'ok so in order to care about people you actually have to. You know. Care about them'. It makes it personal. You can designate yourself 'saviour of the world' and deal with the baggage and emotional toil that comes with that, and you can feel beholden to the past and the people in it, which aloy spends a lot of time doing in Forbidden West, but you do still have to be an active part of the community you're trying to save. Aloy spends so much time on people in the abstract and basically none on people in the real world unless actively forced and Forbidden West is full of people and plot points designed specifically to change that.
She is time and time again confronted by people whose narrative purpose is to show her that you can work alone, but you don't have to, and so much of the game involves that idea just refusing to stick. These people continuously give her a level of patience and grace that she rarely returns, some of them even confronting her about it (erend in particular doesn't put up with her shit as much as the others) but doing so in a way that shows her that they aren't going anywhere, because that is what having a supportive community is about. Having people around you who want to be there and want to help, not because they want things from you but because they care about you as a person. Its a feeling aloy still doesn't quite understand, because so much of who she is involves shouldering these huge burdens by herself and being the one people go to for help.
I think sylens could be a very interesting side character in the third game (assuming they bring him back), beyond elaborating on his decision to stay on earth rather than leave it. Seeing what the culmination of his and aloy's back and forth would be, how they differ from each other, and seeing where they grow beyond or stay the same in their respective stances on community would be such a good through line for the series. I think it would be very interesting and make a lot more sense for aloy's character for them to remain clearly similar in some respects, to continue sharing the same flaws. Despite their hostility towards each other, they are far more similar than I think they both realise, and the version of events where sylens represents what aloy could have become is a fascinating one to me.
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