Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
What's that?
- The entire Crapsack World of the game. It's After the End due to the Nanophage and a nuclear war where it's implied Poland is one of the last few civilized places left on Earth. However, Poland is a corporate-controlled dystopia with massive poverty as well as police corruption. It's also ruled by a MegaCorp that's implied to take elements from Nineteen Eighty-Four - right down to the novel being present in the first room you investigate.
- The depths of this society is underscored in room 114, in which a computer terminal displays the page for "The Dove Lover's Club", opened up to the "Auction" page. Every entry lists an age, from 16 down to 9, discusses the "plumage" their offers display. One user's post was largely redacted because they went into far too much detail regarding just how well-trained their "dove" was, and were chastised by the mods for not using doublespeak.
- The "Stacks" you visit are a Apartment Complex of Horrors with the public left to rot in filth, living completely apart from one another, and able to be trapped by the government at will in their apartments. The basic way to describe it is if you were living in Silent Hill's Otherworld except that was your normal reality. At least there's no monsters. Oh Wait.
- One of the apartments you visit has a boy asking about whether or not his mother is going to be alright. If you go into the room, you find he's sitting down by a hanging corpse. It gets worse when not only do you realize the boy doesn't exist but he's your son talking about your wife.
- A combination of this and Tearjerker is when Daniel comes to meet with his son after a long separation only to find out he might have been murdered in a horrific way. It actually gives Daniel an in-game heart attack you have to take a sedative to survive.
- The act of Observing is portrayed as pure Nightmare Fuel, especially when a subject is dying. You are put through a series of horrific visions which are usually the deepest regrets and worst experiences of someone's life. The Trauma Conga Line which follows is shown in a disjointed hallucinatory style, however, that forces the Observer to relive them with the subject. It often has a quality of a Self-Inflicted Hell as well.
- Amir's vision, the first you encounter in the game, is a mixture of his drug addiction, time in prison, and meeting his wife. The latter is beautiful but only goes to set up their Awful Wedded Life.
- The Hell Is That Noise element of the game is in full effect as there's a constant barrage of creepy noises and weird sounds that leave you wondering if something is about to jump out and get you. Usually, it doesn't.
- System Redux adds a few new horrors:
- One new sidequest has Dan enter the mind of a Nanophage survivor who blames himself for the death of his wife because he thinks she caught it from him. His mental world is a creepy hospital filled with Nanophage victims.
- The Sex Bot chop shop in the basement, first you enter to see what looks like a person sitting in a chair looking at a screen only to turn out to be a SkeleBot 9000 when the lights go on, then you find another crammed in a locker, then all the robots briefly turn on and swarm you before turning off.
