Most powerful moment?

For me the most powerful moment is a pretty quiet one. Sam asks her whey she isn't afraid and she says that she is. He asks what and after hesitating says, "Scorpions are pretty creepy." Before giving a more serious answer: "I'm afraid of ending up alone."

And that has relevance to the end of the game. I think a lot of the controversy of the end of the game can be summed up in the question: Was either Marlene or Joel a moral monster? I don't think Ellie intended to be a martyr. Just a few facts:

1. She seemed to believe Joel when he said that he thought that all they would need would be a blood sample from her, a prospect that she already found a bit scary. She told him that she didn't like getting shots at the military academy.

2. She told Joel that there was no half-way on going to the Fireflies' researchers, but when they were finished at the hospital they would go wherever he wanted.

3. After Joel kills all the Infected in the underpass, he warns her of the deep water, and she, with some enthusiasm, says, "Hey, that's something we can do when we finish. You can teach me how to swim."

4. She is sad arriving at the Salt Lake City train station, but it is, I think, in large part due to two things. First, the natural trepidation of an immense cross country journey coming to an end. Second, the scene in Salt Lake City starts off with her unstated thinking about David and what she experienced there. The "Spring" chapter opens with her staring at the bas relief of a deer so intensely that Joel had to almost screen at her to snap her out of it.

I don't seen any indications that she thought she was going to the hospital to die.

I think the reason that Joel lies to her about the Fireflies is that he doesn't want to tell her about Marlene's being willing to have her head cut off. In Marlene's journal she writes that she declined the advice of the other Fireflies to kill "the Smuggler" because she thought that Joel was the only other person who would understand how deep the sacrifice was.

I mention all this because in the final scene Ellie essentially tells Joel she knows he is lying to her. My interpretation of the last few seconds is this: Joel persists in his lie, and Ellie persists in believing that he is lying. She doesn't know what he isn't telling her, but she knows it is something (it is that Marlene wanted to cut her head off, IMO). She things for a second, then says, "OK," which I interpret to mean that while she knows he is lying to her, she is going to bracket that and just set it aside for now, because she has the main thing she really wanted in her life: someone she can count on to be there for her.

It also all comes out in that great scene in house in Jackson Hole, where she tells Joel that everyone she had ever known had either died or left her (or, later, would try to cut her head off), except for him. I love the horse ride back to Tommy's, where Joel decides not to leave Ellie. Before they ride off Joel asks, "You good?" And with an enormously satisfied but very subtle smile she says, "I'm good." I think that is the moment she knew that Joel had more or less adopted her as his daughter. I few minutes earlier he had said to her, "You're right. You're not my daughter. And I sure as h-ll ain't your Dad." But during the right back to Tommy's he realized that none of that was true. She had filled the void left in his life by the death of Sarah, and he filled the void in her life of not having anyone at all.

As far as the whole issue about Joel condemning the human race by denying them a vaccine, why was that such a loss. From Boston through Bill's Town through Pittsburgh and its suburbs and Colorado with David's cannibals and the Fireflies,who turned out to be pretty thuggish, where were all the great human beings who deserved saving? Should Joel value the hunters in Pittsburgh over Ellie? Or the remnants of David's crew? Or the Fireflies? If I were Joel I would think that that since the death of Tess, the only living people he could care about were Tommy and Maria's people. And something tells me that they would find the idea of cutting Ellie's head off to be intolerable.

In most, though not all, of these emotional moments within the game, one of the key elements is Santaolalla's amazing musical score.

I often pause in the game with Joel & Ellie leaning on the wall watching the giraffes and enjoying the scenery to sit back and listen.

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Gotta Go
Paul

When Ellie lies down next to an injured Joel and puts a hand over his heart as she goes to sleep.

Joel torturing the two men during his interrogation. That scene was so raw; the way you truly get a glipse at what sort of person Joel is and the things he's done prior to meeting Ellie.

"Baby girl" after Ellie butchers David and the intro.

And lastly, Ike's notes in the sewers and when you see the nursery with all those tiny corpses covered up with only their feet visible. That was the one of the most powerful and saddest parts in the game for me.