Heartwarming / Horizon Zero Dawn

All spoilers on this page are unmarked, per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!

---

The Game

"And so her name is blessed."

• The relationship between Aloy and Rost, which makes the latter's death more gut-wrenching: To Aloy it's like she lost her father.
  • When Rost first sees Aloy wearing an Old World device, he immediately tries to get Aloy to get rid of it. When she refuses to, Rost reluctantly decides to let Aloy hang on to it, but decides that she must learn to survive in the wilds soon, in case she gets into trouble again.
  • Following Rost's death, the player has the option to visit Rost's grave and have Aloy speak with him, keeping him informed of everything she's been doing.
  • It's well-established that Rost would be breaking the law if he spoke to anyone in good standing with the tribe, and that tribal law is so important to him that he's prepared to abandon Aloy — who is, for all intents and purposes, his daughter — when she completes the Proving and thus joins the Nora. So, given that Aloy does become a member of the tribe, when Rost dies defending her, he breaks the law at the very end when he tells her to survive. Tribal law meant everything to Rost, but his love for his daughter Aloy meant that much more.
• Though it becomes very sad with the full context of where she finds it and later revelations in the game, it's rather touching to see a young Aloy react so positively to the first hologram she ever sees from her newly-acquired Focus, of a man sending a birthday message to his son. After being shunned by everyone but Rost for her whole life, which will continue for years to come, it's nice to see her so happy at basically the only friendly face she's ever seen up to that point, even if it's just a recording. She even replays the recording so that she can say "Hi!" back to it and she's very adorable doing it.
• The relationship between Aloy and Rost takes on a new level of meaning when you finally learn why Rost was outcast: long ago, in Mother's Vigil, Rost lived with a wife and a six-year-old daughter as a Nora Brave. Then a small band of fighters invaded Nora lands, slaughtered some Nora (including Rost's wife) kidnapped a bunch of Nora civilians (including Rost's daughter), and held them hostage. They killed a hostage any time Nora Braves got close, so they couldn't just overwhelm them outright. Then, they just left, executing the remaining hostages—including Rost's daughter—in front of the Braves pursuing them, one of whom was Rost. Overcome with grief, he opted to become a Death-Seeker, setting out on a mission of vengeance from which he was not supposed to return. He did return, though, having successfully killed all of them, but being badly wounded in the process. He wasn't supposed to be allowed back into the tribe, and Rost didn't really want to rejoin anyway; he merely wanted to die as close to his home as possible, but another Nora dragged his nearly-dead body back in from just outside the border to the Sacred Lands. Matriarch Teersa offered a compromise: Rost would live in the Sacred Lands as an outcast of his own choosing, which he was grateful for, and he treated every day as a gift. When Aloy was found, the Matriarchs decided on another compromise—since enough Matriarchs forbade Aloy from being raised as a member of the tribe, they offered the task of raising Aloy to Rost. Teersa tells Aloy that Rost treated the chance to raise Aloy as a gift. On the whole, while his past is undoubtedly tragic, this makes Rost's fate far less tragic: he died doing what he desperately wished he could have done all those years ago—die saving his daughter's life from invading killers, having successfully raised his daughter to adulthood.
• When Aloy comes in first place during the Proving, Bast attempts to accuse her of cheating in order to get her disqualified. Just as when it looks like the Proctor is agreeing with Bast...she announces that Aloy is no outcast but a true Brave, finally earning Aloy a place in the tribe and thus the world.
  • Related: when the Eclipse attacks the Proving, when Vala asks Bast if he's willing to help her and Aloy with making sure the survivors escape, Bast immediately affirms that he's with them. It's also Bast who, in a small moment, yanks Aloy from the Eclipse's machine gun fire before he himself falls to it. He may have been a Jerkass to Aloy, but he was still looking out for his fellow Nora, and still honored Aloy becoming one of the Nora despite any personal misgivings.
• The Nora as whole. Although they completely shun the outcasts like Aloy, they are shown to be genuinely good people living together in a close family-like bond. Some of them even defend Aloy when meaner characters like Bast or Resh say bad things to her, if you play Aloy as a kind and caring person.
  • The tribes in general. You would expect some Fantastic Racism going on between them, but there was little.
• High Matriarch Teersa is a Cool Old Lady who helps Aloy since her birth as an outcast. At the night before the Proving, she has a lamp prepared for Aloy even though Aloy had no mother to pray for. But the most touching moment had to be this exchange:
  Aloy: Just so you know, Teersa, the reason I'm here [at the Proving] is to get answers. Real ones. And when I win the Proving, I will demand them.
  Teersa: I know, Aloy. I would expect nothing less.
  • The lamp raising sequence itself is a nice moment, as it gives options for what Aloy chooses to light her lamp for; one of those options? A thanks to Rost.
  • Also Aloy's reaction to Teersa making the lamp, a look of genuine heartfelt gratitude for possibly the first act of kindness anyone other than Rost has shown her.
  • After exiting the All-Mother/the ELEUTHIA facility, Aloy can speak to Teersa and find out Rosts's backstory. After giving her what Aloy's been desperate to know, Aloy will actually hug Teersa. It's the most outward show of affection Aloy gives in the entire game.
• During her childhood, Aloy saves a young man named Teb from being killed by machines and he breaks the tribe's rule about speaking to outcasts to thank her and for the All Mother to bless her. Years later at the Proving, Aloy is told an "old friend" wants to see her and it's revealed to be Teb, who never forgot how she saved him and gives her a new outfit to wear for the event, calling it a real and long overdue thank you.
• Choosing to spare Olin even after all he's done, and telling him to make it up to his family after you save them from Eclipse.
  Olin: You're sparing me? After all I've done?
  Aloy: Yes. Forge a new life, one of better make. Go to the place your family is being held and wait for me. We'll make their lives the first ones you save.
  Olin: I didn't earn this mercy, but I will die to make myself worthy of it. I'll be waiting for you.
  • After doing his side quest and saving his family, he may show up as a wandering reinforcement. He wasn't kidding about that Heel–Face Turn.
• When Aloy listens to GAIA's last message. At the end of it, GAIA identifies that the Alpha Registry is corrupted, and her entire plan for Aloy/Elisabet will fail. She then declares her absolute faith in Aloy:
  GAIA: Then I have failed... and life will end. No. No, Elisabet, I know you too well. Somehow, you will find a way. In you, all things are possible.
  • This goes a bit further, since Elisabet also sacrificed herself to protect Project Zero Dawn and the other Alphas from the oncoming Swarm. Elisabet created GAIA and, specifically, created her to care deeply about all the lifeforms she was charged with. GAIA learned everything from Elisabet, so her sacrifice is her emulating her creator, thinking more of others and their survival than her own. Elisabet taught an AI self-sacrifice. Damn.
    • There is also the very simple fact that GAIA's response to a potentially mission-ending malfunction is to turn to the woman who created it. Even when you are a world-spanning artificial intelligence, sometimes you need mom to fix your boo-boos. It's quite touching to see just how human GAIA actually really was.
• The Emergency Recording in GAIA Prime has a moment. Hearing that Ted has destroyed her life's work—APOLLO, the repository of human knowledge to be inherited by the people of the future—Samina Ebadji covers her face, possibly bursting into tears. Immediately two of her fellow Alphas, Margo Shĕn and Patrick Brochard-Klein, rush to her side to try to comfort her. Despite the soul-destroying conditions they're in and the terrible news that they're still processing now, they still have it in them to care about her distress.
• Aloy finding Elisabet's final resting place, located in where the latter's childhood home once stood. A recording between Elisabet and GAIA plays in the background, where GAIA asks the doctor why she never had children. She claims she "never had the time", and GAIA asks her creator what she would have liked her child to have been like. Dr. Sobeck describes her dream daughter as curious, willful, even unstoppable, but still compassionate enough to "heal the world... just a little bit." Sounds a lot like Aloy, doesn't it? Aloy at least gets a moment to mourn the closest thing she will ever have to a mother.
  • In that scene, the camera flies away to show a triangle of purple flowers around Elisabet's body, the same kind of triangle that you can find surrounding the Metal Flower collectibles that GAIA used to re-green the Earth.
• At one point, you can find a datapoint wherein GAIA says she finds the mass extinction of megafauna to be incredibly sad, and asks if this means she's malfunctioning. Elisabet immediately tells her it doesn't, and that it's a good thing.
  • This may have possibly influenced the creation of the massive machines in the post-Zero Dawn world, like Thunderjaws, Stormbirds, Behemoths, Snapmaws and the like.
• The poetry in the Metal Flowers is not only beautiful, it also shows that GAIA thought it significant enough to keep it separate from APOLLO, where you would assume that sort of cultural data would be kept. As also shown by it being prefixed and suffixed with "function: true", it emphasizes just how far Elisabet succeeded in teaching an AI to have a genuine, emotional love for the living world. To be more specific, the Metal Flowers are a production of DEMETER, the GAIA sub-function responsible for restoring the Earth's flora. DEMETER's lead programmer/Alpha, Naoto, was an unabashed poetry fanatic who enjoyed sharing his favorites with other people, much to Elisabet's amusement and chagrin.
• Aloy's personal journey in and of itself counts as well. At the start, Rost is literally the only thing she has in the world, one of two people who ever even talk to her. She's justifiably bitter, asocial and is suspicious of everyone since she'd been shunned by most people she'd ever seen before the Proving. At the end, she finds friends and allies who value her for herself alone, be it Varl, Petra, Erend, Olin, Avad or even Nil, and the difference in attitude is easy to spot.
  Aloy: There's a whole world beyond your borders. Whole tribes of people just as good as you!
• Through most of the game Aloy is unhappy about Nora restrictions and certain customs and frustrated by people calling her a Nora. Despite that, she's still irritated when someone insists on calling the Sacred Lands the "Savage Lands", is still willing to show kindness and respect to devout Nora who aren't assholes to her, seems put off meeting ex-Nora outcast mercenaries who gleefully say they'll kill their countrymen for free, and there's the above line, that there are outsiders who are "just as good as you". Rost was unable to instill in her the same respect for Nora culture that he had, but Aloy has a big heart and can see past her deserved bitterness.
• One of the early sidequests has Aloy hunt rabbits and retrieve a set of lost prayer beads for a devout outcast named Grata. Being a devout outcast, Grata adheres to tribal rules and doesn't talk to Aloy, only speaking to pray to All-Mother. Based on Aloy's reactions, Grata has never spoken to her in all the times she does this, but after Aloy informs Grata that she won't be coming back for a while because she's running in The Proving, Grata still doesn't respond, but she does pray to All-Mother to bless Aloy (if not by name) in the Proving. Aloy immediately understands what Grata is saying, and thanks her.
• Of all the sun priests in Meridian, Mournful Namman is the most dedicated to reconciliation with other tribes, maybe even moreso than Avad himself. He gives Aloy a quest to clear the way for three pilgrims that have come to mourn their friends and family who died in the Red Raids. Once you have done so, having listened to the pilgrims' stories, you find Namman attending a ceremony, having gained more respect thanks to Aloy's actions. Before she leaves, he tells her that she would've been a great sun priest, and that their ranks are poorer for not allowing women in.
• In the DLC, the last conversation between CYAN and one of her creators, Dr. Chau, is both this and deeply sad. CYAN doesn't understand what's going on, but she definitely knows something is wrong.
  CYAN: Dr. Chau, I’m afraid. I don’t want to be alone.
  Chau: What you’re feeling...the fear...it’s a sign of your capabilities. And it means you’re strong enough to overcome it. Remember that. You’re strong. I know you can do this. Go to sleep. Wake up. And protect whoever’s left. Will you try?
  CYAN: I understand, Dr. Chau. And I’ll carry out your instructions to the best of my abilities.
  CYAN: May I make a small request of you, Dr. Chau? Will you stay with me while I initiate the hibernation process?
  Chau: Of course I will, CYAN. As long as you need.
• The Hunters Three. They were Banuk warriors who had to leave their werak because its leader was becoming tyrannical and their dearest friend, the only one who had the courage to call the leader out, was murdered. They eventually got indebted to an Oseram trader who tasked them with harvesting specific machine parts to pay off their debt, which they are unable to do cleanly until Aloy came along. As Aloy hunts alongside them and develops a friendship with them, once they get all they need to pay their debt off, they give her the chance to name their group, since they couldn't agree on any of the ideas they came up with themselves. Depending on what Aloy says, they find the inspiration to name themselves in honor of their fallen friend.
• The story behind the music of Concrete Beach Party. As the last two human caretakers of a massive dam, about to be replaced by robotic servitors, they were left with not much else to do to pass the time as their duties were already being overridden. So, with a guitar and huge, reverberating pipes for percussions, they waited out the inevitable by recording a song, "Last Girls on Earth." Sadly, one of them had to leave early, and it's in these recordings that you get to see how close they really were, with both of them promising to stay in touch.
  • And let's not forget how you find out about all this. Hundreds of years later, this part of the dam is known as "Deep Din," a sacred source of music played by the Banuuk. They couldn't access the audio logs, but they ended up carrying on the legacy anyway.
  • CYAN, on the other hand, could access the recordings and found them a great comfort in her centuries alone.
• General Aaron Herres.
  • At first, it seems odd he'd be on this list. Had there been anyone left to remember his actions, he would have been condemned as the worst war criminal in history for Operation: Enduring Victory. The amount of blood on his hands would make Joseph Stalin look like an angry child. Herres had the chance to let his sins be forgotten, but he instead chose to let them be. In stark contrast to Faro, who desperately and misguidedly wanted to be cleared of guilt, Herres decided to let the people of the future judge him and his actions for themselves.
  Herres: It is my hope that there will be no need for men like me in the world to come. If you are one of the people of that future world, listening to this message, please know that I am sorry, and that I wish you well. Sincerely, Aaron Herres.
  • Note that while he identifies as a General at the beginning, when he signs off he does it without titles—just his first and last names. He signs off as just a man, stripped of all he was, as vulnerable as he can make himself, opening himself up to criticism as such.
  • In the same facility, there's also the recordings of the reactivated soldiers tasked with guarding the main facility that became the Grave-Hoard. One, probably before the final operation, is the unit's commander telling her people to only use the facility's computers for "approved" actions, before telling them to enjoy their gaming. The second, recorded just before the very end, has one soldier mentioning it's been an honor to serve. With the unit's tanks. Even in the face of oblivion, they still had the heart to joke with each other.
• In the Zero Dawn staging facility, Aloy can find two interview logs from Brad Andac, a former Faro designer who worked on the Chariot line's self-replication abilities. In the first, he is completely broken, declaring it his greatest failure. In the second, found after Aloy learns about the true goal of Zero Dawn, he is positively ecstatic over the chance to atone for what he has done.
• After delving into the dam with Gildun, who has been a semi-annoying chatterbox the entire time, and even admits to causing the entire place to flood because he pressed the wrong button a little too excitedly, breaking it, Aloy, after going through a perilous adventure to gather the parts and close floodgates, give him the honor of pressing the newly-repaired button to fix everything.
  • The reason Gildun was messing about the dam? He saw through a storage room window an ancient "looking glass", which was identical to something he remembered his mother bringing home once. Gildun was blindly mucking about the dam controls trying to find a way to open that storage room. Not for something with monetary value, but because it reminded him of his mother. Aloy eventually helps him get in there, but alas, the item was not what he had thought from a distance. After that disappointment, it seems Aloy tried to cheer him up by letting him press the Button That Undoes The Flood Mess He Made.
• Aloy's developing friendship with Erend: When they first met, he thought of himself as a bigshot Oseram flirting with a backwater Nora savage, but as he grew to know Aloy, he came to appreciate how unique she was and recognized that he had been lucky to get even a minute of her time. When he tells her this, she responds that she'll always have two minutes for him.
• Sun-King Avad ordered Meridian's Sun-Ring converted from a bloodsport arena to a memorial site for all those who perished because of the Red Raids. Four shrines surround the center; each for the four tribes who were beseiged: Oseram, Utaru, Nora, and even Carja. The Oseram and Carja shrines have flocks of people around them, but even if the Utaru are too far away and the Nora too isolationist to attend their respective shrines, their losses are still held in memorial.
• After doing Ikrie's sidequest, Aloy can find her at the Banuk hunting grounds, offering Aloy a new trial. Unlike every other trial, this one is done alongside Ikrie, fighting back-to-back. Aloy has found a Smash Sister.
  • After the trial. Ikrie asks who trained Aloy. Even without knowing him or that he has passed, Ikrie sounds revering when she comments that Rost sounds like a proper Nora man, imagining what he may look like.
• The game ends on a rather somber note, with the knowledge that APOLLO is gone forever and that there is nothing Aloy can do to recover all of humanity's cumulated knowledge. Then you get to the Yellowstone Visitor's Lodge, where there is a projector showing recordings of now-extinct animals that used to inhabit Yellowstone. Humanity's history may mostly be gone, but at least some of our knowledge endures in the form of these (and presumably other) recordings. Not all is lost.
  • The shaman at the lodge, Enjuk, is excitedly watching the recordings and making educated guesses about the behaviors of the extinct animals. His guesses are mostly wrong, but he is acting much like a modern day paleonthologist, determined to rediscover the lost past. Even his wish to earn the name "Enjuk Recreations" is based on a sincere belief that Montana Recreations was a great scholar, and a desire to carry on his legacy.

---