While the game is very bleak, we won't deny the awesome moments when they come.
- Despite the lead up to what happens, it's pretty cool seeing Joel and Tommy still kicking ass at their age when they save Abby from a pack of infected. During a snowstorm no less.
- Abby shoots Joel in the leg, has him pinned against the wall, then tells him to guess who she is. His response? "Why don't you say whatever speech you've got rehearsed and get this over with." Even in the face of death, Joel remains as fearless as ever.
- Dina coming to Ellie's rescue when she gets captured by a few WLF members who were just seconds away from blowing Ellie's brains out and then Ellie freeing herself and stabbing the guy attacking Dina.
- She also comes to Ellie's rescue again by attacking Abby with a knife when she sees Ellie being brutally beaten by her, in spite of being impeded by the early stages of her pregnancy.
- Yara and Lev saving Abby from the Seraphites and Abby in turn saving them.
- Abby and her group are fighting off a massive group of Scars at a gas station and just when it looks like it's over a group of WLF come in guns blazing to kill them all.
- Abby going through hell and back to get the supplies to save Yara after she gets Compartment Syndrome in her arm (due to the Seraphites smashing it with a hammer), she's nothing if not dedicated.
- In a flashback chapter, Joel and Ellie are making their way through an abandoned resort and end up confronted by a Bloater. Despite pumping it full of lead and fire, the thing manages grab a hold of Ellie and set to do its face ripping kill. Only for Joel to rush in and hack it down with a machete, and keeps going till it isn't moving. Papa Wolf indeed.
- Abby's boss fight with the Rat King in the basement of the hospital, truly terrifying and epic at the same time.
- Ellie and Jesse escaping from the WLF and a horde of infected via a jeep.
- Ellie finds out where Abby and her remaining friends are holed up, in a warehouse off the coast of Seattle. However the area to get there is flooded by ocean water and a storm rolls in as she makes her way to the building via motorboat. Halfway there, the motor conks out and she knocked overboard by a wave. For a normal person, this would spell instant death. For Ellie, she manages to swim the rest of the way. She's that determined to settle the score.
- Abby and Lev speeding to the docks of the Seraphite's island on horseback with a massive full-scale war between the Seraphites and WLF going on, in a jaw-droppingly gorgeous and intricate sequence that pushes the PS4 to its limits.
- Although it is painful and uncomfortable to see Abby fight Ellie, our favorite character, it is still awesome and exhilarating to see them beat and stab the hell of each other to see who will emerge victorious.
- Ellie taking out the two Rattlers trying to capture her after she ends up snared. She was wounded during all this due to the snare trap swinging her into a spike on a tree, and still managed to kill the two assholes by feeding one of them to a snared Clicker after said asshole tried to do the same to her and then knee capping the other with a silenced SMG and extracting information on Abby's location before shooting him dead.
- Ellie killing a good chunk of the Rattlers while storming their stronghold and letting the prisoners escape to get their revenge for being held captive for months. She may be revenge-driven, but she's not too far gone to not note how messed up that is.
- The prisoners escaping the stronghold are pretty awesome. During a fight with a guard Ellie gains the upper hand by poking her in the eye and then kicking her against the cage which stuns her long enough for the prisoners to grab her bat and pin her throat against the cage and kill her by crushing her windpipe. After that they get out, grab guns from the nearby armory and tell Ellie about Abby's current location before going off to raise hell on their captors.
- Ellie sending Nora into a cloud of spores and then repeatedly beating her with a pipe until she gives up Abby's location was satisfying for some who didn't like that Nora mocked Joel's death right to Ellie's face after Ellie was willing to let her live.
- Tommy killing Manny by sniping him in the head. Makes it even more awesome considering that Manny spat on his brother's corpse.
- Tommy fighting Abby and gaining the upper hand. If it weren't for Yara stabbing him, Tommy would've probably killed her right then and there.
- It's notable that most of the game's main characters are nontraditional women and never characterized negatively for it: Ellie is a lesbian, Dina is bisexual, and Abby has a nontraditional body type. There's also Lev, a transman who resists the female gender roles pushed on him.
- The final leg of the Rattler farm invasion is set to The Black Angels' iconic single "Young Men Dead," providing a dark and haunting soundscape coupled with a driving beat to give Ellie's rampage the appropriate weight and resonance.
