The very first cutscene in the game. A young Aloy watches a group of children picking berries and receiving praise and affection from a woman. Aloy gathers and presents a large amount of berries to the woman, only to be called an outcast and ignored. While it does act as her motivation to become strong and succeed in the Proving, having to accept that "this is the way things are" at such a young age is terribly cruel. And Rost doesn't help too much in this regard either, as though his stoic acceptance of living as a shunned outsider should also apply to a six year old girl who doesn't fully comprehend why she's being rejected by the only other people she knows and sees everyday.
When the Focus shows young Aloy the first hologram, she immediately replays it and begins joyfully replying to the person in the hologram as if he were really there. This seems odd... until one remembers that she's an outcast and her own tribe's laws forbid that she speak or be spoken to by anyone except her guardian. The player was witnessing the first time in that child's entire life that she could even pretend that anyone other than Rost was talking to her.
That first hologram becomes even more of a tearjerker when you understand the circumstances behind it. The scientist was trapped in that bunker, with the Swarm devastating the world outside. Isaac, if he was lucky, was in the bunker with all the other Project Zero Dawn dependents, and would likely never be able to see his father face to face again. It's no wonder the scientist's happy tone was rather strained. If Isaac wasn't lucky, then he probably met the same fate as those in his father's bunker—and it was all done right around or right after his birthday. That just amplifies how desperate and heartbroken the world has turned out for these last humans on Earth.
In that first bunker, young Aloy finds a number of bodies and the messages they left behind. Pretty much all of them are deeply sad. These people were among the last on Earth, and it seems the strain and tragedy of that was so great that their end, making the individual decisions to flee and be eaten, to take medical euthanasia, or to end it some other way was a kind of relief, though they still felt keen regret and anger. Most of them laid themselves down all in one room so they could die comfortably and close to one another.
"I saw them lining up in the community room... like cattle in a slaughterhouse, but smiling at each other... Chana handing out meds like being alive is just some kind of... pain to be eased."
The crushing irony of it all is, the fact that those bodies are still there means that for whatever reason, the swarm never reached them. They could have lived out the rest of their lives unharmed. Although, in a later bunker bodies are found which were absolutely reached by the swarm. Ultimately there's no knowing.
While doing fetch quests for an old outcast who only talks to the All-Mother - get her food and she'll thank the All-Mother for providing - Aloy gripes to herself that she doesn't know what's worse, that Odd Grata ignores her, or that she's never lonely because she's always talking to All-Mother.
Early in the game, Aloy looks forward to the Proving - to get answers, to not being an outcast anymore - but also knows it means acting like Rost didn't raise her. If you've meandered around and done side quests before then, you'll see that some people away from the settlements, usually ones who need something, will talk to her, but Rost is much stricter on tribal law than they are. Aloy can share her plan - to sneak away in secret and find him from time to time, and even though he won't talk to her, she'll talk to him and he can listen. The lawbreaking will be hers. Poor kid.
Listen to Rost's line after she explains all this. On the surface, it sounds like him accepting her plan, but the emotion behind it suggests her plan affirms his belief that he needs to leave.
Aloy: It'll be my crime, not yours. So it's handled.
Rost: So it is.
Rost's reaction if the confrontational dialogue option is chosen after he tells Aloy he will go into hiding from Aloy after the Proving, hoping to prevent her from having any ties to her life as an outcast. For the first time, he looks genuinely heartbroken. He acknowledges that he's disappointed Aloy and walks away hoping that one day she can forgive him. Made even worse when Rost is killed, since that turns out to be the last conversation they would ever have.
Rost's Big Damn Heroes moment when he saves Aloy's life at the Proving. Even though he had gone into hiding so that Aloy would never have any attachments to her life with him as an outcast, he was still watching over her in secret. Not even the fact that tribal law forbade him to be at the Proving or that he was likely walking to his death prevented him from making sure the girl he had raised as his daughter was safe. Made even worse if Rost and Aloy's last conversation before this was confrontational, since Rost then suffers a Mentor Occupational Hazard.
While it might be a bit fridge, at this point, Aloy has become a Brave and part of the tribe, and Rost is strict about following the Outcast law of not talking to members of the tribe. Rost's final act is to break his strict code to say a final word to his daughter.
Rost's grave site. You can send Aloy to visit and talk to him - she doesn't say it's like her plans to talk to him knowing he wouldn't speak to her, but it's much the same. If you chose the confrontational dialogue option earlier, Aloy shows so much guilt over it.
Before Aloy enters Mother's Heart, she and Rost discuss the fact that Aloy won't be able to see him after she competes in the Proving. Rost tells her that she'll better off with the tribe and that she's "lived in isolation long enough." If her response doesn't bring tears to your eyes, you might want to check that you still have a pulse:
Aloy: Not until now, I didn't.
At several points in the story, Aloy gets reminded of Rost, and always goes uncharacteristically silent. Her answers to questions about who raised her are short and unprompted by the player, showing that she clearly doesn't like talking about her dead father.
Mournful Namman in Meridian is a sun priest who lost his brother to the mad Sun-King because he dared speak out against the Red Raids. When Aloy runs into him, he asks her to help out three pilgrims that have come to pay their respects for dead kin, and each one she helps out gives a glimpse into their terrible grief over their losses:
The first is an Oseram named Brageld whose lover was enslaved and forced to build monuments for the Sun-King, before being sacrificed in the Sun Ring. He wants into a shrine where his lover built a statue of Jiran, but is kept out by a bigoted priest. Once Aloy scares away the priest, she finds that the statue has been defaced, and Brageld expresses anger that the Carja are destroying the work of slaves who died for them.
The second is an Utaru named Rea who escaped slavery, but her companion was killed in the escape. She is clearly traumatized by the events, speaking incoherently before telling Aloy that she feels truly alone for the first time.
Kimik, a Banuk pilgrim, is the least tragic of the three, but still carries a tone of melancholy; He's come to paint a Banuk holy symbol in remembrance of the shamans that died under Jiran. He tells Aloy that, in Banuk faith, the spirits of machines are reincarnated into new bodies after death, but human souls pass on, never to be seen again.
In one of the missions, Aloy goes with Erend to find the truth behind Ersa's disappearance. It ends with them finding Ersa having been extensively tortured to the point of exhibiting signs of serious internal injuries, and she dies as Erend holds her, her last words being to tell him he needs to step up to the job. What makes this worse is that it came after a Hope Spot that Ersa was still alive, only for her to die moments after Erend and Aloy reach her.
One Carja noble is trying to find his daughter Elida, who has been showing signs of depression. When Aloy finds her at a nearby island and investigates, Elida confesses that she was here to meet Atral, a childhood friend who is now a soldier for the Shadow Carja; them meeting could break the cease-fire and start the war all over again. Aloy reaches Atral in a nearby stronghold, but he's already dying from being tortured under suspicion of betrayal. Atral asks Aloy to pass on a keepsake, and the words "it's worth it", before he succumbs to his wounds. Returning to Elida reveals that she already figured out that Atral has died, and to Aloy's horror, implies that she will join him in death. This is partly because Aloy miscommunicated Atral's last words (saying "it was worth it" instead of "it is worth it"), which she amends before Elida can do anything drastic, saying that Atral wants Elida to live on. Elida shakily agrees, and talks about it with her father once Aloy directs him to her.
During the Grave-Hoard quest, Aloy immediately comes across the bodies and data files left by soldiers killed by the Horus invading the bunker. They didn't really believe they'd survive but made and laughed at dark jokes just before the fighting started. One log is nothing but gunfire, horrible metallic sounds, one of the soldiers shouting another's name, and a scream. Aloy is bothered by this and, finding the long-abandoned sleeping quarters, relates it to the lodge she and the other braves-to-be slept in before the Proving, identifying with them. This is like the datapoints she heard in the first bunker she stumbled into as a child, the last words of people about to die, but now Aloy understands, if not everything, then the horror of how they died. Sylens is utterly dismissive. She can't talk about it to anyone.
Datapoints taken during the last months of the existence of the Old Ones get deeply tragic. Many of them are part of the main story and easy to find, but there are some scattered about in the overworld that help bring home how relentlessly difficult the situation was for everyone involved.
There's one by a soldier writing to his mother about news of an enemy breakthrough that he realizes mid-message will have already killed her.
"I should've stayed home so you didn't have to die alone."
Another who barely survived a terrible mission that killed two thirds of their brigade, who saw allied forces who couldn't retreat firing on them, sees this mission called a "qualified success" because it bought a little time, and is about to get a new mission.
When watching the various hologram recordings from Project Zero Dawn meetings, many times when someone is questioning Zero Dawn's possibility or morality, Elisabet can be observed hanging her head or leaning on something as though exhausted, saddened, or both. The future of all organic life on the entire planet rests mainly on her shoulders and her body language is saying that she's certainly feeling the weight.
Finding out the truth behind Project Zero Dawn in general, as well. When Aloy first finds out about PZD, she assumed that it somehow stopped the robot apocalypse and saved humanity. That's also how it was sold on Earth back when the swarm was active. However, the truth was that there was no stopping the plague in time to save humanity. Project Zero Dawn was a way to re-vitalize the earth with artificially gestated humans and biosphere clean up methods after the machines had eaten everything and the AI created within PZD figured out the override codes to stop the swarm altogether (which would take over 50 years). You can see through text logs that a lot of people brought in for PZD are devastated at this revelation and crying about it. There's even a casual option to opt for humane execution by injection for those who feel there's no point to living.
Also counts as Nightmare Fuel if you work in education: The "Welcome to the Lyceum" audio log in the depths of the cradle facility that spawned the Nora. The entirety of human history, reduced to three words: "Malfunction. APOLLO offline." This is the cause of the Future Primitive setting; none of the humans birthed in the cradle facilities received an education above kindergarten level.
Samina Ebadji’s cheerful recorded greeting to the intended students of the Lyceum. Just… all of it.
Samina: Hello, child. My name is Samina. Today is a big day. Your first day of school. There's so much for you to learn. So much promise and possibility. You'll find that from this point on, your world just keeps on getting bigger and bigger. Starting today, you'll be living in a bigger room- one large enough to fit your growing body. And before long, you'll start meeting other children - children who grew up in other Broods like yours, in separate areas, here on the inside. But the biggest world is the one you will all share: the world of knowledge. Of everything that the people who came before you thought, and felt, and dreamed. It was a beautiful world, but as you'll discover, it was a troubled one, too. Our dearest hope is that you will do better. Now, it's time for you to meet two very important people: a man named Aristotle, and a woman named Aspasia. They will be your guides to the world of knowledge. I wish you fulfillment and enlightenment in your journeys ahead.
Synthetic voice: ALERT. MALFUNCTION. APOLLO OFFLINE.
From the same area, the hologram of the progenitors of the Nora being released from the cradle is heartbreaking for several reasons. Some of them have been so miserable and bored that they simply run out with barely a thought while others ask childishly naive questions about what they'll do if they get cold, but the real clincher is the "mother" persona of the serving robots being asked what she will do when they leave. Her response is, "I will stay here. And sleep. And remember all of you." In contrast to the other recordings, which show what poor substitutes for human parents the programming's set responses are, this last conversation suggests that "mother" developed into something more.
As Sylens noted, the inhabitants could see that there was more to their home, but they were never allowed to go further. The servitors would only say that they would be given access in due time. Thanks to Faro, that time never came.
Aloy:[seeing a door covered in angry graffiti] They didn't like this door. Sylens:[uncharacteristically somber] It was a door that wouldn't open for them. Of course they hated it.
The above Nightmare Fuel is storyboarded by the "Emergency Recording" hologram and the buildup to it. As Aloy explores GAIA Prime, she finds records of its final days; after Elisabet sacrificed herself to repair a malfunctioning seal, Ted Faro, whom she had kept a careful watch on, began planning something unthinkable. At the very heart of the facility is a meeting room full of corpses - Zero Dawn's Alpha leads. And Faro killed them all. Worse than that, he erased every trace of humanity's collective wisdom from history, which is why the world was repopulated with kindergarteners. The Alphas react with disbelief and horror; sixteen months of nonstop work racing against time to save something of the world from the result of this very man's egotistical greed, and he up and outdoes himself by damning the new human race to a new Dark Age. And then he outdoes himself again by murdering them all so they couldn't attempt to undo what he did. The utter disbelief in their voices at realizing Faro has murdered history... The horror in their cries as he depressurizes the room and watches these heroes die in agony... His stuttering mad declaration that he's "saving" those "blameless men and women" from the "disease" of knowledge - knowledge that he abused to murder the world! Ronson says it all:
Charles Ronson: A sacrifice? It's not a sacrifice, it's cultural obliteration, you crazy bastard! Millennia of culture!
There's also the sight of Samina Ebadji breaking down into silent tears as Ted declares what he's done. She was the APOLLO Alpha and she's just been told everything she worked so hard for has been deleted.
Also Ted, why’d you have to tell someone you destroyed their life’s work moments before you murder them? Way to twist the knife.
There's a sense of slowly building despair and dread all the way through GAIA Prime that culminates in the above. One early example is a log by Charles Ronson reflecting on his grief about the death of Tom Paech, one of the ARTEMIS scientists and Ronson's romantic partner, who chose the Mercy Kill option after the project's completion. Ronson had promised to be with him when the time came, but, under pressure to save as much as he could, chose to try and preserve another species. Ronson bitterly records that Paech died alone, and that he didn't even manage to save the genetic record of the animals he chose over Paech.
Ronson: If I hadn't been an Alpha, if things had gone differently, I could've been there. Instead I'm spending the rest of my unnatural life in here, with people I don't even like...and without the one I would have gladly spent life with.
Anyone with just a slight interest in history and science will be in tears over this part. Faro didn't just doom the next generations to ignorance, he destroyed everything. All of humanity's cumulated knowledge was contained in APOLLO, and he destroyed it all out of selfish madness. The brilliant philosophers, artists and strategies of the classical world? Deleted. The magnificense of Ancient Egypt, which lasted for thousands of years before our time? Lost. China and its countless dynasties? India with its melting pot of cultures and religion? The native cultures of the Americas, carefully preserved through hardships and suppression? Gone. GONE. GONE! Even if Aloy shares the truth about GAIA with the world, no one will ever know the context of why the AI is named like that because the myths that have fascinated generations are lost forever.
It was not only humanity’s collected knowledge, history, and culture that was doomed to the ash heap. The ARTEMIS and DEMETER subordinate functions, intended to repopulate Earth’s animal and plant species respectively, only introduced Stage 1 “pioneer organisms” into the reborn biosphere. Humans, educated by APOLLO and instilled with a keen understanding of the need for conservation in light of the fate of the Old World, were intended to manage the process going forward from there, taking control of the terraforming system from regional control centers and coordinating with ARTEMIS and DEMETER to introduce organisms from Stage 2 and beyond. It is for this reason why there are no domesticated animals or large predators in this new world—there was no one who knew how to operate the terraforming system (or who even understood that the machines populating their world were a part of one), so most of the species Zero Dawn worked frantically to preserve were never reborn—their stored embryos and seeds sealed away and forgotten.
This, in turn, would see a rebirth of slavery in the new world—with no draft animals and no knowledge of advanced manufacturing, the Carja, for instance, would capture members of other tribes for forced labor, planting their fields and building their cities.
One that has more impact on a second playthrough: once you know that all of humanity's culture has been erased, the fact that the metal flowers you can find have encoded poems by Wordsworth and other greats you'll find yourself crying at the thought that something, somehow, survived.
The vantage point time capsules. The final one sums it all up;
Bashar Mati: ...It wasn't just me who failed to write a story across the stars, you see. It was all of us. Our entire species. All our innovation, all our tech, all our striving... and it came to zero. I've been looking up the stars a lot, Ma. And the only story I see written across them is that we are small and insignificant and will soon disappear with hardly a trace left behind. It's a hard story, and I don't much like it. So I guess maybe what I've been trying to do these past twelve days is tell a different story. Not a big story, written across the stars, but a tiny one, written across the humble earth of the only world we ever got to know. I have no reason to think that anyone or anything will survive to ever read it. But whether that happens or not, the truth of the story remains: That once upon a time, on a planet called Earth, there lived a boy named Bashar who loved his mother very, very much. Goodbye, Ma. I love you. Bashar Mati Son of Aamaal and Bayhas Mati Stepson of Wyatt Mahante 24 November 2064
The death of Elisabet Sobeck. After orchestrating a nigh-impossible plan to preserve life on Earth, she sacrifices herself to seal GAIA Prime and save the rest of her friends. With that, protected by her armor but without any means to reentering GAIA prime, she goes to her childhood home and dies there, either because her armor's protection failed, or she just died of hunger or thirst. For the savior of the world, the heart and soul to a ragtag group of volatile geniuses who came together to secure the future of the world, a woman who sacrificed her soul and the souls of billions to ensure the survival of life itself, it's heartbreaking for her to die alone in such a way.
Her final message implies she may be a Death Seeker, eager to finally lay down her burdens.
The final scene: Aloy finally finds the woman who was the closest thing she had to a mother. For Aloy to find Elisabet's body, still sitting in front of her home after nearly a thousand years, is the closest she'll get to closure, but it's more than enough.
In the conversation that plays during this scene, GAIA mentions that Elisabet speaks a lot about her mother, but never had any children of her own. Elisabet simply replies "I never had the time", but her tone suggests this was a great regret of hers. For a person who loved the world so much and can be considered a great mother of this new world, it adds another layer of tragedy to her character.
The triangle of mechanical flowers around Elisabet implies that GAIA had been safeguarding her body for centuries.
At the end of the game, when Aloy learns the truth behind the 'metal worlds', she's going to have a hell of a time breaking it to Nora. She might be an outcast all over again.
One of the side quests, Honor the Fallen, is about helping a Carja priest trying to allow three people to grieve for those they lost to the Red Raids in the places they want to. One is a woman who fled with a friend "just behind" her; her friend was killed when they ran into a group of machines, and since that moment, she feels her friend is still "just behind", haunting her always. One is a Banuk man who wants to paint the stories of those he lost so that they'll be kept alive in more than just failing human memory. One is an Oseram man whose lover crafted statues of the Mad Sun-King, before being executed by that same king; his work has since for obvious reasons been defiled and defaced, but it's the last thing the man he loved has left of him. Even the priest is struggling with the death of his brother and carrying his legacy.
The DLC, The Frozen Wilds, takes place in Yellowstone National Park. Datapoints Aloy can recover paint an unhappy, involved story. A reporter clearly enamored of the park reports on its revival during the "Claw-Back" apparently became employed by the park some time after that and loved it, and when it was bought out by Project Firebreak and shut down as a park broke her heart. To add insult to injury, the ever-unlikable Blevins flags her file so she won't be employed elsewhere. Poor Marni.
The end of the main quest in The Frozen Wilds, specifically Ourea's Heroic Sacrifice. Determined to reactivate CYAN and save the AI from HEPHASESTUS, she jams Aloy's spear into the Cauldron's core, withstanding the electric shock that blew even Aloy back, but at the cost of her life. Her death hits both CYAN and Aratak hard. The AI is forced to once again feel grief from losing a human friend, the former chieftain struggles to maintain his composure for the remainder of the DLC.
One side-quest in The Frozen Wilds has Aloy helping Gildun, a cheerful and slightly hapless Cloud Cuckoo Lander, Adventure Archaeologist who is very excited to uncover an artifact similar to one his mother showed him as a child. Once they get into the room where the object is, it turns out to be just scrap and what he saw was distorted through the window. After being so cheerful and fun the whole way through the quest, he's absolutely crushed, though he quickly tries to play it off, and it's very upsetting. You find yourself wishing Aloy could give him a hug.
CYAN's lot in life, as an intelligent and caring AI surviving since the time of the Old Ones. The concern of one of her creators, realizing how much his frightened 'child' will have to do alone, the loneliness she clearly felt and how that led to connecting with Ourea, yes, but also unwittingly letting in the Daemon. Even at the end, poor CYAN is still upset thinking about HEPAESTUS, out free and hungry and willing to do anything to advance its goals.
Kenny Chau: How do you tell the emotional equivalent of a child that it... I mean, she... will need to go into a coma, maybe for years?
And what exactly is she going to wake up to?
The southernmost Tallneck (Spearshafts) circles a rock formation taller than it. If you ride the Tallneck long enough, you'll come across a little hollow atop the cliff where two skeletons and the remains of supplies and a fire can be found. The thing is, the skeletons are shown lying side-by-side, hand-in-hand and looking at one another. It's hidden away and there's nothing useful to you to be found there. It makes one wonder what could have led to those two people dying there, and in that position.
Ted Faro, while he ends up jumping off of the slippery slope towards the end, has some tragedy built into his story. There was a time when he was hailed as the man who saved the world and had actually earned that title. While half that credit goes to Elisabet Sobeck, he certainly was a part of that accomplishment. Then, after Elisabet left the company, his latest creation for the military goes out of control, no one can stop it, and it is getting ready to destroy all life on Earth... and the plan to give life another chance at survival was going to know he was responsible for it. Heck, all of humanity during his time knew it, to the point that the calamity was called the Faro Plague. Watching as his single greatest mistake easily, effortlessly eclipsed a lifetime of accomplishments, to the point that even in the distant future that they were planning to create, his name would be synonymous with catastrophic failure... well, who wouldn't be driven mad by that?
The Compassionate dialogue option after defeating Helis near the end of the game has Aloy show sadness and pity at Helis' demise, that for all the suffering he caused he ultimately dies never understanding how much of a pawn he was. She actually squeezes her eyes closed for a moment afterwards.
by a soldier writing to his mother about news of an enemy breakthrough that he realizes mid-message will have already killed her.