A world deserted. A world reborn.

But not by humans, nor by the thriving beauty of organic life. This rebirth belongs to machines—machines that think they are alive.

The world has been reclaimed.

Towering above the silent terrain, a Tallneck surveys its domain. Like a sentinel of old, it scans the vast expanse, transmitting data to its mechanical kin about intrusions and anomalies. It means no harm—so long as nothing disturbs the rhythm of its ancient, preprogrammed surveillance loops. Knowledge is its currency. Action? Unnecessary. Despite its massive presence, it simply walks… and informs.

Winding its way from forest edge to beachfront and back, the Tallneck charts its familiar route. Along the way, it relays updates to the rest of the machine ecosystem: a Snapmaw, lazily sprawled across the sun-drenched beachhead; a few Grazers, rustling around a long-abandoned warehouse; and of course, the ever-alert Watchers, lurking in the shadows, their glowing eyes scanning for anything that doesn't belong.

The cycle continues—organic matter, when found, is harvested and refined into fuel. Not for conquest. Not for growth. But to power these beings in their endless, half-remembered mission: to restore a vision of Earth’s lost beauty. Yet theirs is a cold beauty—devoid of wild creatures, populated only by hulking relics of steel and code.

Into this strange harmony steps Aloy. Silent. Focused. She slips through the back entrance of the crumbling warehouse, intent on reaching the Tallneck’s data core. It holds knowledge, and knowledge is power.

But danger is never far. A lone Watcher circles the Grazers. It halts—senses something. A whisper of motion. A crack beneath Aloy’s foot? It turns. It sees. Her cover blown, she bolts. Boots pounding across a rusted bridge, she races toward the Tallneck’s trail—only to be cut off by the stirring beast at the shoreline.

The Snapmaw—its photovoltaic panels gleaming like razor-sharp fins—rises from its basking slumber, angered. With a mechanical screech and the crunch of sand beneath steel limbs, it lunges. The pursuit begins.

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Inspired by the video game Horizon: Zero Dawn, this build focuses on capturing the massive creature from the series known as the Tallneck.

The Tallneck is a peaceful, roaming satellite that collects information from the world around it and feeds that knowledge back to the smaller machines so they can better understand their environment. Being the size of a skyscraper, I knew it needed to be built at an accurate minifigure scale to reflect its true size.

The first step in the build process was determining the proportions based on its height relative to a LEGO minifigure. According to the game’s lore, the Tallneck stands at 61 feet tall, while Aloy—the game’s red-haired protagonist—is 5 feet 6 inches. That makes the Tallneck just over 11 Aloy minifigures tall when stacked on top of each other. Since all minifigures with standard legs share the same height (with minor variation in hair), I stacked eleven minifigures and added a few plates to finalize the target height for the build.

From there, I began working out the creature’s overall proportions to make it as accurate as possible. This process took multiple attempts for each section, eventually resulting in a near-complete rework of the build—only the technique used in the toes remained unchanged.

The prior version of the Tallneck can be seen in the Beyond the Brick interview from BrickFair Virginia 2022. Unfortunately, that version did not survive the trip home, leading to the full recreation pictured here. The new version is far more accurate to the game than the earlier iteration.

As for the landscape, this MOC was designed to reflect a smooth transition of environments, starting with water, moving through a beach and meadow, into a cracked street, and finally into an abandoned building. To create the illusion of depth in the water, I used a gradient of bricks beneath the surface—black at the deepest, followed by dark blue, blue, dark turquoise, and finishing with medium azure at the shallowest depth. Transparent dark blue cheese slopes were layered on top, allowing the underlying color to show through and create a sense of varying water depth.

A similar approach was used for the terrain: transitioning from wet sand in medium nougat to dark tan, then to dry tan sand, followed by mud/dirt in medium nougat again. This gave way to grass in sand green, which grew more lush with added foliage as it approached the decaying rubble of the sidewalks and streets. I wanted the landscape to feel coherent yet vibrant in color, even through the decay.