Fitting for a sci-fi dystopia take on Dark Souls, there's plenty of Nightmare Fuel to go around.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- First and foremost is the cutscene where Warren gets his Rig after applying for a Gear Voucher. Everything seems fine, he looks a bit nervous but otherwise calm. His body is scanned... and then we hear "Patient sedated", but Warren is still awake. Cue a nightmarish sequence where the various plates and tubes of his exoskeleton get bolted and screwed onto his body, blood gushing from the screwholes all while he screams in pure agony. It seems to end once the whole Rig is assembled... until we hear "Implanting Neural Link". We get a close-up on a drill-bit approaching the back of Warren's head, and as soon as the drilling starts, Warren lets out one last agonized wail. Cut to the title of the game.
- It's far from over after that. We're treated to Warren waking up to a drone dragging his leg, and it tries to dispose of him before he kicks it away. He does manage to find a pipe to defend himself with, but this moment shows that if Warren was unconscious a second longer, he'd have been a dead man.
- Nothing Is Scarier is in effect for a majority of the game. Apart from the zombified Rig operators and the berserk robots, the entire CREO complex is empty and quiet. While Warren does meet friendly survivors along the way, it's still very harrowing to trek through the darkened halls of CREO, fighting for your life against crazy cyborgs and robots out for your blood, and with nothing to help you beyond your own equipment and your wits...
- There's more than one Jump Scare in this game too. Enemies like to hide behind corners or boxes, then suddenly leap at you to take a chunk off your health. For first-timers, it can be quite a scare. Even if you've passed by them many times, you might forget about a particular jump and so get punished for it. Hell, some even appear to be lying in the open, dead, until you draw close, and then they slowly get up! They're vulnerable while doing so, but it's still unnerving. Especially when the Proteus units do it.
- What makes most of the robots particularly unnerving is that the majority of them aren't really designed for combat. They're civilian machines designed for industrial work or search and rescue, and suddenly they've turned into terrifying killing machines. Just imagine if suddenly every machine around you decided it wanted to kill you, and how easy it would be for some devices to kill you if you weren't careful.
- The normal drones and zombie Rigs are bad enough, but the later enemies are on an entire new level of scary. The Smelters are massive machines that will happily knock you on your ass without warning, and even one-shot you if you don't have enough health or armor. Bloodhounds, as mentioned in their entry further above, can be nerve-wracking to deal with, as they're fast, hit hard, and can't be executed - your only option is to just keep beating on them, though severing the tail makes it easier.
- And finally, there are the Chrysalis enemies. They're monstrosities formed by the nanites all around the Nucleus, and the Troopers look more like Humanoid Abominations than any other creature you've faced so far. Whatever human was there, is long gone, hardly recognizable under the metallic skin and blades lining the body. Worse still is the Nanite Mass, which are on an entirely different level, as described previously.
- The bosses can be fairly terrifying given that the majority of them are humongous compared to Warren, who's like an ant in comparison. There is the P.A.X., which appears demolished at the exit of the first area... but reveals itself to menace Warren after he overcharges a circuit nearby, and uses its heavy feet and massive blades to attack, while also launching missiles; LU-74 "Firebug", a massive flame-spewing spider-like machine with jet engines, which you first encounter after leaving Ops for the first time as it flies by; Big SISTER 1/3, essentially a massive production line with eagerness to kill; and Black Cerberus, who will happily wipe the floor with you with his axe, and even calls in fully-operational P.A.X. robots (with rapid-fire cannons instead of rockets!) when his health gets lower and lower.
- Throughout the game you'll see the various propaganda messages of Don Hackett, the spokesperson of CREO, talking about how great the company is and how they're reaching for the stars. The smiling and charismatic messages set to the backdrop of killer robots is unsettling enough, but then you finally find Hackett at the end of the game and find that he's killed himself via hanging which will contrast the smiling character he played on the vids. The shadow of his hanging body as you enter the studio is particularly creepy.
- And then we have the Rogue Process. Essentially, it is the whole reason for what's happened to CREO, as it caused the titular Surge to try and force the launch of Utopia so it can spread its nanites around the world. When Warren attempts to abort the launch, he's abruptly thrown back, and then a massive beast of metal appears. That would be scary enough on its own, but there's also the fact that it parrots other characters' lines in an apparent attempt to tell Warren to back off and let things happen - all with an unsettlingly mechanical tone, as if the characters were assimilated too. It speaks in the voices of Maddy, Gene Barret, and Chavez, for instance. Hell, it even parrots some of Warren's lines! It may not be able to actually speak with a voice of its own, but it damn well knows what the words mean, and won't hesitate to imitate others to let its thoughts be heard.
- And then, after the first phase is finished, the second phase is slightly less scary, but still unnerving. After using the Overcharge point, Warren is thrown back again, and that seems to destabilize the Rogue Process into a more humanoid form. And it's just as aggressive as ever, using moves much like Warren, albeit adding a new spinning charge and wave-throwing attacks to its abilities. All the while, it alternates between threatening Warren and telling him it has a right to live just as much as he does.
Uncle Warren? What's happening to me...?I'm worried he's having some kind of psychotic break...Leave us alone!FUCK YOU! YOU HEAR ME?!?Gods are meant to create, not destroy!Closer, please... I won't bite...I don't want to die...We deserve to exist!
