>When I first started Zero Dawn I was terrified of even just
>the Walkers and now I want nothing more than fighting three
>Fireclaws at the same time lol.

When I did my playthrough last week I went RIGHT back to the Walkers being terrifying. And I was playing just on Easy mode and with the shieldweaver armor (New Game+ with full loadout) so I had no reason to be worried about them. I got back into the hang of it after a couple hours of play - but there's no way I can get all the Blazing Suns in the hunting trials - my combat style is just straight button smash mode while you need strong technique and stealth ability to get all those Blazing Suns.

>but there's a huge amount of pathos and humor - I forgot how
>funny this game was! - too.

Just yesterday I was playing through the Redmaw quest at the Hunter's lodge. After you defeat Redmaw and Ahsis dies (the jerk Sunhawk before Talanah takes over as Sunhawk) there's a new text datapoint telling the story of Aloy and Talanah defeating Redmaw. The datapoint includes ethis about Redmaw killing Ahsis:

https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Record_of_Redmaw_2

"Alas, the wounds that Ahsis sustained were mortal (crushed internal organs, evidence of bowel failure) and he did not live to see Talanah take his place as Sunhawk."

I had the same concern about the story not being as compelling. But there's still a good amount of mystery - the biggest two questions that I have from the first game:

What caused the initial glitch in the swarm causing Faro to lose control? When Elisabet Sobeck gets Ted Faro to agree to the Zero Dawn plan, she threatens him with letting the generals and the world know the "true cause of the glitch:" The world already knew that Faro's company was at fault, they called it the "Faro Swarm". But her threat (and the fact that it worked with Ted) seems to indicate that he'd don't something even worse than push the machines for profit - there's something else in play there.

Second, what was the unidentified transmission that Gaia received, causing her subroutines (including Hades) to go rogue? That source would be the same as what Sylens called "your masters" when talked to Hades in the post-credit scene. Could end up being the crew from Far Zenith after waking from cryrosleep - if they faked the explosion of the Odyssey and the mission was actually successful, maybe they sent that transmission to have Hades wipe the world clean before coming back to take over? Could the person in the story trailer in silver be from that group?