Travis Tate

"The lesson will be taught in due time, Aloy. Until then, we wait." This article contains heavy spoilers. Read ahead with caution.

Travis Tate
Culture	Old Ones
Gender	Male
Eye color	Brown
Hair color	Blond
Affiliation(s)	Project Zero Dawn
Position	Alpha of HADES Head of Zero Dawn digital security
Profession	Hacker
Family	Unnamed mother
Portrayed by	Eric Loren (voice)

Travis Tate was a member of Project Zero Dawn, serving as the Alpha in charge of the HADES subordinate function. He was also the head of Zero Dawn's digital security.

History

Early life

Tate was born to a devout Pentecostal mother who frequently lectured him on the Biblical End Times. Though Tate inherited his mother's tendency for Biblical analogies, he rebelled strongly against her warnings about living sinfully; Tate seemed to relish in activities that most would consider improper or immoral.

At some point, Tate had some connection with Elisabet Sobeck. Though the exact circumstances of their relationship are unknown, Tate believed that she was attracted to him. Tate also had an unspecified connection to the FBI, through a project known as MOCKINGBIRD; in a private log, Tate fondly recalled his habit of antagonizing FBI agents involved with the project.

Tate was responsible for an unspecified incident affecting the Sterling-Malkeet corporation, for which a bounty was placed on his head. Tate subsequently spent eighteen months as a fugitive, pursued by bounty hunters.

Project Zero Dawn

Travis Tate as seen in Horizon Zero Dawn.

During the early stages of the Faro Plague, Tate was apprehended by government agents to be recruited as part of the Project Zero Dawn team, having been personally selected by Elisabet to be an Alpha candidate. Tate was highly skeptical of Zero Dawn, considering it an unnatural and ridiculous endeavor, but he accepted the position for the prospect of a life of hedonistic luxury in Elysium once his work was completed.

Tate oversaw the development of HADES, which was responsible for wiping the Earth clean of life in the event that GAIA's terraforming efforts led to an ecological "dead end" and needed to be restarted from scratch. Tate was a prominent presence in the Zero Dawn Project Facility, to the irritation of other Zero Dawn staff. His actions ranged from the relatively harmless, like organizing a horror film marathon and dressing up as Elisabet Sobeck to trick-or-treat through the facility on Halloween, to the significantly disruptive; he was reprimanded by Samina Ebadji for submitting several hundred perverse and obscene files for inclusion in the APOLLO archive (Ebadji eventually banned Tate from submitting entries as a result), and received multiple noise complaints for his habit of playing loud death metal music throughout the HADES lab. The HADES testing took place in LATOPOLIS, where multiple backups of HADES and GAIA were used to ensure that HADES could do its job without damaging GAIA. Despite the disruptions he caused, Tate did yield impressive results from his work, and was personally responsible for the breakthrough idea of allowing HADES to temporarily suspend GAIA's functionality and unseat her from power while reversing the terraforming process.

Barren Promise, the logic bomb that Tate and Elisabet sent to Far Zenith.

At some point, Tate discovered that one of his Betas and personal friends, Hank Shaw, was planning to steal a copy of GAIA and her subordinate functions for Far Zenith in exchange for a place on the Odyssey. After torturing Shaw into giving a confession and the transmit code, Tate and Elisabet created a logic bomb disguised as a copy of GAIA and her sub-functions to send to Far Zenith in retaliation, with Tate adding a message within the logic bomb, taunting Far Zenith.

As the Faro Plague overran humanity's remaining strongholds before the subordinate functions were complete, Tate and the rest of the Alphas were evacuated to GAIA Prime, where they would spend the rest of their lives perfecting their respective subordinate functions. Though he retained his typical flippant attitude, Tate was frustrated that he lost out on Elysium, referring to GAIA Prime as "frozen Hell" and lamenting his loss of a large collection of antique pornographic comics due to the early evacuation. When it was discovered that one of GAIA Prime's access port seals malfunctioned, risking the facility's exposure to the Faro Plague, Tate immediately refused to fix it himself, as it would lock the person doing it outside permanently. As Elisabet appeared via hologram, having sacrificed herself for them and Zero Dawn, Tate wished her well on her travels. He later wrote a posthumous message to Elisabet, where he dropped all of his usual humor and gave her a somber eulogy, hoping she would successfully made it home.

Travis and the rest of the Alpha being killed by Ted Faro.

Some time later, Tate and the other Alphas were gathered into a meeting by Ted Faro. They were shocked to learn that Ted had not only locked them out of all the systems, but had purged all copies of the APOLLO database, believing it to be a disease that he wanted to keep from the new humans Zero Dawn would create. Ted then vented the room's atmosphere, killing Tate, along with the other Alphas.

Legacy

Tate's work on HADES proved to be essential for the restoration of a suitable biosphere, activating three times during the terraforming process to abort non-viable biospheres, before GAIA successfully created an environment suitable for sustaining life.

However, through no fault of his own, Tate's subordinate function also proved later to be an existential threat to life on Earth in the 31st century. The Extinction Signal caused HADES to gain sentience and tried to reset the biosphere again, launching a virus to free itself and the other subordinate functions to escape from GAIA Prime before GAIA self-destructed to destroy HADES and prevent the reset. HADES went on to create the cult of the Eclipse in an attempt to reactivate the Faro Plague to again destroy life on Earth, a plot which was only narrowly stopped by the efforts of the Nora huntress Aloy. HADES was finally purged after being interrogated by Sylens, informing him about Nemesis.

Personality

Tate was a talented but eccentric programmer, with a notable penchant for deliberately unnerving others. He had a love of porn, horror films, death metal, and torture flicks, much to the exasperation of his fellow Alphas. His demeanor may have been a form of rebellion against his highly religious mother.

Despite his rather flippant and disagreeable attitude, Tate was capable of compassion and tact: his eulogy to Elisabet displayed his gratitude, hoping that she could rest in peace for everything she had done.

Associated Quests

Horizon Zero Dawn

• Deep Secrets of the Earth (holograms and datapoints only)
• The Mountain That Fell (holograms and datapoints only)

Horizon Forbidden West

• Reach For The Stars (holograms and datapoints only)
• Death's Door (holograms and datapoints only)
• The Eye of the Earth (mentioned in datapoint only)

Associated Datapoints

Horizon Zero Dawn

Audio Datapoints #35 Interview: Travis Tate #46 Log: Travis Tate (1) #50 GAIA Prime Arrival Log #57 Log: Travis Tate (2)

Hologram Datapoints #21 Elisabet Sobeck Memorial #22 Emergency Recording

Text Datapoints - Quests #27 "Noise Complaints" #28 HADES Protocol #29 Archive Abuse (intended recipient) #47 Sobeck Journal, 10-31-65 R (mentioned only) #48 Sobeck Journal, 1-15-66 R (mentioned only)

Horizon Forbidden West

Audio Datapoints #2 Travis Schools Ted #4 Travis Got No Truck with Traitors

Hologram Datapoints #4 Project Anzu (image only) #5 Surprise! #7 Travis and Elisabet

Text Datapoints - Quests #2 Intel Update (mentioned only) #6 Arrivals (mentioned only) #7 Let's Ride! #8 Bad Urges #10 The Subordinate Functions (mentioned only)

Trivia

• Travis Tate's character was loosely inspired by science fiction author Bruce Sterling.

Gallery

Far Zenith's profile on Travis