Unmarked spoilers below!
- The introduction is an ominous vision of both the past and the Drifter's own struggles, with the ancient civilization being wiped out in a massive explosion and the Titans rampaging across the world in the aftermath. During this, the Drifter stands in a river of blood and corpses before they start hacking up blood, which grows darker before Judgement forms and starts hunting the Drifter, who can only run. They seem to escape and ascend a staircase, but three of the Titans appear, letting out this awful roar before they begin to outright decay in front of them.
- Judgement. A shadowy, nigh-unstoppable thing that hounds the Drifter in their dreams and is seemingly the source of their illness. Whenever enough Modules are collected, the Drifter suddenly collapses as they have a vision of Judgement killing them in increasingly brutal ways, with no way of stopping it. It's full power is on display in the Final Battle as the monster is a terrifying Lightning Bruiser that is just as unrelenting as it was in the dreams. Even then, it's implied that not only are multiple people aware of it, it appears differently to each one. The worst part? It might not even be real, only a mental manifestation of the Immortal Cell's corruption. As the text unlocked after activating the 16 monoliths said "HARNESSING A GREAT WELLSPRING, A PERFECT, IMMORTAL CELL WAS CRAFTED TO BE IMBUED WITHIN ALL SENTIENT LIFE. A NOBLE GOAL, THOUGH SUCH A POWER TERRIFIED OTHERS, AND BROUGHT RUIN AS ITS PURPOSE WAS TRANSMOGRIFIED. THE ABHORRENT CELL STILL FESTERS, DEEP IN THE CHAMBERS OF THIS WORLD".
- The eastern area. At first glance it's a beautiful city on the water, and easily the most brightly lit local in the game. Then you find the native otter people have been completely slaughtered by invading frogs. First we see them throwing a fresh corpse on a pile, right next to several of their pelts that have been strung up. The three only survivors are all horribly injured, with the only conscious one explaining how he escaped just as the frogs started to flay the otters. Bodies litter the water in some parts, and the area outside the boss room even has freshly skinned bodies on display. And then the boss's intro is biting an otter in half...
- The Western area is a dense neon forest covered in strange crystal growths, that quickly grow back if you hack them apart, sometimes rapidly enough to entirely encase the Drifter. As you head further in, you begin finding the bodies of those who suffered a similar fate with growing frequency, culminating in an entire battlefield frozen in time where every combatant was encased in solid crystals as they fought and died. Closer inspection reveals that some victims were encased even while fleeing in terror, indicating just how blindingly fast the initial spread must have been, and how lucky you were not to have been there at the time.
- There is another dose of Fridge Horror on the frozen battlefield; it evidently took place during the same catastrophe where the Titans wrecked the world, and one faction was apparently aiding the apocalyptic, world-ending monstrosity. And every last one of them is the same species as the drifter.
- While the northern area is beautiful and majestic, the further you range into the avians' territory the more apparent their psychopathy becomes. Crude, stained altars choke the nooks and crannies, bodies are nailed to walls in deliberate and symbolic ways, and according to the one non-hostile native you encounter, they burned their own eggs in ritual sacrifice before you arrived.
- The southern area may seem tame compared to the others, being a large open desert with barely any threats or landmarks across the surface and almost everything of note being below the ground. Yet the hidden monoliths claim that this was once the most advanced, populated, and vibrant region throughout the world; note Then you learn that this was the region where all four Titans began their rampage. The most densely populated area on the planet was so thoroughly annihilated that nothing above the ground survived.
- And the forces responsible for that atrocity aren't even finished. As you traverse the depths, you stumble across a massive, beating heart a dozen times larger than you are... and deep in the chasm below is its owner; the fourth and final Titan, in the process of being repaired.
- Whenever the Drifter starts coughing up blood at random. One second, they're simply walking through one of the game's areas, and suddenly they're walking at a slow pace, leaving blood puddles behind while the screen is covered in glitches.
