As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
In General
- The fact that Aloy takes on entire Rebel Camps and Outposts on her own, technically routing most Rebel forces. Sure, she is sometimes accompanied by prisoners she rescues and the occasional ally, but for the most part, she does it all alone. This isn't like taking out Bandit Camps in the last game, the Rebels are organised and are much smarter/better trained than your average bandit. Just imagine Aloy sneaking past them, eliminating upwards of twenty rebels in a camp, all without raising an alarm. Terrifying, but incredibly badass. It's really no wonder the Tenakth respect her purely on her strength and prowess alone, previously seen when she fights and defeats Regalla's champion in single combat during the Embassy attack.
- Bonus points for outposts where she only needs to kill the Rebel Leader to clear it. There's something incredibly cathartic about slipping silently into a rebel base, killing the leader with a single Silent Strike, and slipping out before the other rebels even realize that he's dead (especially if you make a dramatic escape by gliding off the side of a cliff). It makes you feel like a professional assassin!
- Slaughterspines and Tremortusks are two incredible powerhouse machines. Tremortusks are basically walking armories, loading with all sorts of different canons and weapons on its tusks and back. Slaughterspines are much the same, based on a Spinosaurus, but with each spine being a heavy duty plasma cannon. Apex variants of these machines are are even more powerful than the two previous powerhouses (the Stormbird and Thunderjaw).
- And of course, being able to override these machines too.
- The music that plays when fighting these machines is worth mentioning. Each machine has its own combat music which gets more impressive the bigger and more fearsome it is. The Slaughterspine theme
in particular includes a tremendously dramatic build in tension and intensity that synchronizes with the machine charging its plasma features.
Story
Prologue- The opening setpiece reminds us how much of a badass Aloy has become. Scaling a shuttle launch site to bring the craft down on the heads of a trio of Slitherfangs, Aloy falls with the debris and manages to land unscathed, only for one of the massive cobras to apparently have survived and have one final scrap with her. It fully gets the player back in the swing of things, and reinforces how dangerous the machines are.
- An understated one for Varl occurred during the six month Time Skip Aloy spent running from ruin to ruin searching for a GAIA backup. While Aloy's ability to tame machines is well-known, and the player will have long since gotten used to using them to get around, not many people have figured out how to properly replicate the feat In-Universe, especially not the xenophobic and isolated Nora tribe. Varl had to push himself to follow Aloy's trail on foot for those months catching up to her, pushing himself so far that he hasn't even shaved by the time he does find Aloy, out of no reason than obligation to help her and lessen her burden a little. The Nora were so superstitious that they thought entering the ruins of the Old Ones would curse them, and whilst he's more flexible and open-minded than some of his fellows, Varl still does believe in their tribal superstitions. Despite that, he still followed Aloy's trail through multiple ruins alone, just to help her. It's no wonder that Aloy was so touched by the gesture that she gave him a focus, even though he technically didn't need to see the secrets of the Old Ones to aid her through the ruins.
- Though the Embassy debacle still ended with a lot of good people dead at the hands of the Tribal Enemy Faction' dynamic debut, Aloy has since shaped herself into sterner stuff since the Proving attack by Eclipse in the first game, and is still standing in fighting form when they withdraw and even took the life of Regalla's champion as a Curb Stomp Cushion for the whole sordid affair.
- One of the Audio Logs proves just how loyal and terrifying Travis Tate was. When he confronts the Far Zenith spy, he takes none of the traitor’s shit and promptly tortures him with sound into compliance. Tate may be a death-metal-loving pervert with a taste for the obscene and the accent of a hillbilly, but there’s a reason other than his programming skill why he was made the Alpha of the HADES sub-function. He also appears to be personally loyal to Elisabet herself, which is not true of all Zero Dawn personnel given the circumstances surrounding their recruitment. In both games, Elisabet appears somewhat amused by his antics, something that had to be a bright spot given all the pressure she was under.
- Aloy's winning of the honorable duel with Regalla's champion gains her the respect of the Tenakth and the use of the glider.
- He may be an arrogant and untrustworthy bastard, but Sylens has made significant progress in the six months between games. Contrary to what some fans feared, he only salvaged the processing core of the Titan to trap HADES inside so he could interrogate it thoroughly. By the time Aloy's caught onto his deception and furiously makes contact with him, Sylens knows where to find a backup of GAIA and leaves HADES out to be finished for real this time. And as the game progresses...Sylens: I've been having problems of my own these past six months, Aloy. The difference is, I've made progress.
- It's actually even better than that: he figures out the game's final plot twist way before Aloy even travels to the Forbidden West. As he revealed in the ending, he actually knew about NEMESIS's existence all along from his interrogations of HADES, including knowledge about the Far Zeniths and how to take down their invulnerable shields. With these knowledges, he planned everything to make sure he has the means to take out the Zeniths' threat and recover APOLLO for his own while also making sure that Aloy - whom he correctly predicts would never have agreed to his plan - stays out of the picture once she played her part while also out of harm's way. Sure, he couldn't have predicted Beta's existence or that the Zeniths are ruthless enough to kill Aloy on sight, or that Aloy would be so determined enough to come up with her own plan that also worked out without sacrificing a lot of lives in the process, but props have to be given to Sylens for making as far as he did all by himself.
Act II
- When Aloy (and by extension, the audience) is introduced to Hekarro, leader of the Tenakth, he looks every bit as tough and fearsome as one would expect. He tries to enlist Aloy's services so Regalla and her rebels can be stopped, and when Aloy mentions that she needs something, he has a very good idea of what she's talking about, thereby giving him something to bargain with: entry to the underground chamber, located under his very throne. Aloy isn't interested in being anyone's weapon, so one might expect the Tenakth chieftain to rage and try to force her. Instead, Hekarro calmly demonstrates how, after literal decades of warring, he managed to peacefully unite the three Clans of the Tenakth.Aloy: I don't have a price. I am not a hired killer. I'm here to save lives, more than you can count.
Hekarro: I count the corpses of Marshals slain. I count hundreds more Tenakth whose lives hang in the balance. I will fight for them. I will kill anyone who threatens the peace, and you will too if you want me to open the door to the chamber below.
Aloy: Okay. So, by that logic, what's stopping me from killing you right now and taking what I need to save everyone?
Hekarro: You could try. You might even succeed. Either way, you must fight. My way might hold off Regalla and the slaughter she craves.
Aloy: ...Fine. What do you need?- Given that this is when Aloy is in total "save the world, ignore everything else" mode at this time, storyline wise, it's even more impressive that Hekarro manages to convince her to do anything but attempt to plow through him to get to AETHER.
- The fact that a group of Rebel Tenakth killed a Zenith. Though it was a Pyrrhic Victory and all of them died, just the fact that a group of primitive tribals even by the new worlds standard took down an enemy with a so far impenetrable shield and her support, thanks to a well-executed ambush, an experimental prototype weapon, and the Zenith's sheer arrogance blinding her to the impending danger as one of them charged her down with a hastily-retrieved machete. The look on the Zenith's face when her shield collapsed was a bit cathartic.
- Stanley Chen's unbelievable luck, twice- first, in betting all his remaining fortune on a single roulette spin... and winning. Second, an even more out-there bet, with bigger stakes and longer odds- instead of shutting Vegas down, he put it on standby, leaving the city he loved running in the hopes that, impossibly, someone, somehow, would come to revive the city, despite having no knowledge of Zero Dawn's real purpose or that any life, anywhere, would persist. But Stanley Chen must be Born Lucky, because it works; thanks to his actions, Morlund and Aloy make his bet pay off, and Vegas becomes the first city of the Old World to be truly resurrected- just as the city once saved him, he saved his city!
- Beta's escape from the Zeniths. Emboldened by Aloy's example, she took advantage of the ELEUTHIA recovery mission to steal the other GAIA root kernel with a lie that it would help capture the sub-function, distracted Verbana long enough to hide herself in one of the facility's ectogenic chambers, rewrote the records to hide which chamber she was in, and sent a cryptic distress call to GAIA and Aloy to await rescue.
- The latter half of Cauldron Iota. The facility was damaged by an earthquake, and the core room has a headless Tallneck stuck in a giant armature, with its wrecked head crashed on the floor nearby. When the lift won't budge because the headless Tallneck landed feet-first on it, Aloy repairs the assembly line breakages holding back the replacement Tallneck head from storage, overrides it while it is still inside the Cauldron, momentarily blitzing out the entire Cauldron with the EMP blast, and then rides the Tallneck out the vertical hatch to the open air while a Triumphant Reprise of "Promise of The West" plays.
- What does HEPHAESTUS try to stop Aloy with? A freakin Spinosaurus inspired machine! The Slaughterspine is a thrilling fight in the depths of a Cauldron.
Act III
- After months of speculation, it's confirmed: Aloy can override and ride flying machines! Late in the story, she gains the ability to override a Sunwing and take flight. And what is the first task she does with this new power of flight? Drop an EMP device produced by a derelict Horus onto an invading army. She also realizes that she once again invoked a feat of tribal superstition, this time with the Tenakth, "riding upon the Wings of the Ten" in the process. She consigns herself to not winning that insistence against revering her.
- Aloy almost single handedly puts down Regalla's rebellion, first by flying into the battle (a feat aspired to but never previously achieved in Tenakth culture) rallying the troops. Then her mount drops an EMP disabling the opposing machines. And to top it off, she challenges Regalla to a duel, ending the war once and for all.
- Although the entire situation is tragic, Dr. Narong Somptow committing suicide before he could stop bad mutations in Ted's immortality treatments led to Ted getting a punishment he 100% deserved: being an unmoving mutated flesh mass for centuries. Reading between the lines, given Somptow told Ted he could use the energy in the reactor to help stabilise his deteriorating condition, it's entirely possible that Somptow intentionally caused this outcome for Ted, simply by giving him bad advice and counting on him not to have the foresight to think that walking into a geothermal reactor was a bad idea. After all, if Ted couldn't think far enough ahead to save humanity, why would he do that for himself?
- Aloy's plot to counter the Far Zenith onslaught of machines is to override their machine printing technology with HEPHAESTUS. Watching Slaughterspines and Thunderjaws demolish Specters (and Dreadwings claim the lives of some Far Zenith) is extremely satisfying.
- Sylens proves to be a skilled engineer when he's able to counter the Far Zenith shields, bringing them down and letting the team win.
- If spared, Regalla gets the warrior's death she craves by holding off a small army of Specters. She's then given a warrior's funeral by Hekarro. She actually manages to single-handedly kill a Specter just with her greatsword. It took Aloy a harsh fight just to kill one, and Regalla slew it with only three sword swings.Regalla: This is the death I was promised. GO!
- Zo delivering the killing blow to Erik, who earlier had killed Varl, using Varl's spear to run him through, while taunting him with the same words he taunted Varl with.
Sidequests
- The sidequest A Twilight Path has Aloy sizing up to an Oseram bully named Tolland to protect a group of former Shadow Carja refugees. The compassionate and insightful responses have Aloy tell him to cut his losses / invoke salvage rights, but the confrontational option has Aloy pull an 'You know who I am?". Tolland tries to retaliate that he and his three goonies can take her on, but all his henchmen immediately back off. By this point, Aloy has multiple feats underneath her belt (taking on entire bandit camps on her own, fighting huge killer machines, and facing off the Shadow Carja army), an Oseram bully is nothing for her.
Burning Shores
- It has a heavy dose of Nightmare Fuel too, but Londra manages to reactivate a Horus to serve as the DLC's Final Boss, and the ensuing fight shows just how menacing and overwhelming a threat the Horuses must have been as the leaders of the Faro Plague.
- In a feat for the ages, Aloy is the first person in a thousand years to take down a Horus (albeit one suffering from centuries of exposure damage and piloted by a human instead of an AI) in combat, and she manages this with just an arsenal of Schizo Tech.
- Crossing over with Heartwarming, but it's great to see the once-lonely Aloy find love with Seyka, potentially sealed with a kiss.
