Nightmare Fuel in the Metro is a time-honored series tradition. And Exodus does not disappoint.
All spoilers below are unmarked. You have been warned.
- The game starts with a close up of watchmen piling on you, during Artyom's struggle he stabs one under the jaw that jerk his head away so fast he takes the knife with him, leaving Artyom defenseless for the next assault.
- Hanza. Previously the closest faction in the Metro to the good guys. They are not genocidal fascists like Reich or dictatorial paranoids like the Reds. Sure they may base their society on who has the most money gets the most resources but they seem like otherwise the best choice of the major factions in the Metro. Until you are captured by them and then watch as they shoot an old woman, her grandson, and then you and toss you in a mass grave of hundreds of bodies. The bodies of outsiders coming into Moscow and Muscovites who have found out that there is life outside of Moscow. Some of the bodies are still quite fresh, but the decomposition at others shows Hanza and behind them the Invisible Watchers, have been doing this for years. It just goes to show in the Crapsack World of the Metro there are no good guys. Only survivors.
- The anomalies you encounter in Volga are...well, they're basically the same things as in 2033 and Last Light, except instead of scripted story encounters where you are basically safe, these ones seem to actively hunt you. The results of when one runs into a mutant pack, which can sometimes result in the anomalies launching lurker, watchmen, or humanimal corpses off into the distance like someone kicking a football is less comical and more 'look at what this force of nature will do to you if you get too close.' The ultimate Nightmare Fuel experience with anomalies comes when you encounter a group of Paladins trying to fight one of these 'demons of electricity'. You'll almost certainly have to duck into their circle to survive the lightning and it's a harrowing experience as the anomaly acts almost like it's trying to break into the makeshift Faraday cage...
- There's subtle hints that something is off about the Yamantau base that Miller claims is their salvation... and the game starts outright saying it when both Krest and Nastya start begging to leave. It doesn't help that as the railcar travels through towards it, you're surrounded by wreckage and the mountains have been basically leveled by huge blast craters. Then, when you're brought in, you find the horrible truth; there is no central Russian government there. The Yamantau complex was never finished, the Russian government never arrived there (having likely perished in Moscow by the biological attack on the Kremlin) and the entire place is populated with workers, soldiers, and other personnel that were trapped there. Even worse, these people have become cannibals in the twenty years since the war, losing their minds to prion disease and charging at you, ready to eat you. Pretty much all the rooms you go through are filled with genuinely sickening amounts of mutilated body parts, pickled heads, hanging torsos, and flayed skin. Even more disturbing is the fact that compared to a lot of the horror of the average Metro game, this is surprisingly grounded in reality.
- The Reveal itself is chilling as well. As you enter the bunker, everyone is rightly on edge about the whole situation, save for Miller, who seems blind by desperate optimism. After exiting the elevator into the main complex, the "government officials" are observing you through a set of clear glass windows. The control room they're in is too dark to make anything out properly, then the lights come on, but they're so bright it's blinding. The mysterious figures within are STILL impossible to make out. They say nothing. Miller then tries to brief them on the situation, all the while the music gets more and more intense, making it all the more apparent things are not what they seem, and something terrible is about to happen.Miller: Comrade Minister! Commander of the Joint Special Operations Forces Squadron of the City of Moscow, Colonel Miller reporting! I would like to request that our people are provided with temporary quarters and supplies, as there are women and children among us. Still, our fighters are in top shape and ready for action!Commander, stepping foward into the light: Women and children? Haha! Good! Haven't had those in a while!Miller: Who... are you?
- After this you are immediately jumped by a group of madmen clad in old, filthy clothing belonging to soldiers, workers, and other staff, wielding torches and shouting in bloodthirsty glee about the "meat" that just arrived as they overwhelm and capture your team.
- Also pause for a moment. When Miller mentioned having "women and children" along with the crew, one of the ringleaders gleefully admits how it's been a while since they "had some". Anything goes for these lot, it seems.
- It's a good thing you don't lose moral points for killing the cannibals, allowing you to REALLY cut loose and sling as much lead as you please. And it gets capped off with Miller brutally executing all the officers responsible.
- The Reveal itself is chilling as well. As you enter the bunker, everyone is rightly on edge about the whole situation, save for Miller, who seems blind by desperate optimism. After exiting the elevator into the main complex, the "government officials" are observing you through a set of clear glass windows. The control room they're in is too dark to make anything out properly, then the lights come on, but they're so bright it's blinding. The mysterious figures within are STILL impossible to make out. They say nothing. Miller then tries to brief them on the situation, all the while the music gets more and more intense, making it all the more apparent things are not what they seem, and something terrible is about to happen.
- The bear. You're in a cage hearing an (admittedly funny) exchange between the pirates and pioneers when this massive ass bear sneaks up on you and attacks the group. One swipe is enough to kill a pirate on contact. Thank god it's just a cutscene or you'd be dead. But this thing prowls the level still, and it takes ridiculous amounts of punishment, up to and including explosive bolts and shotgun shells to the face. Creepy as fuck.
- Even worse, unlike the mutated bear in Last Light which is only defending herself and her young, (and who you can ultimately leave on "good" terms with by saving her from the watchmen that are tearing into her after the boss fight is actually finished) this one is all but actively malicious and seems to be deliberately hunting you through the level, given that you escape it around the area of the church and then it still shows up again to attack you at the end for the climax of Taiga.
- Novosibirsk, the final segment of the game. All of it. Were you missing the supernatural horror and phenomenally disturbing mutants of Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light? The Evil Is Visceral Meat Moss of the Biomass, the dark, claustrophobic feeling of Regina? The mounting horror of a mutant-infested dead station? The constant pressure of having to scrounge for ammo, filters, and medkits in an exceedingly hostile environment? The supernatural anomalies, the ghosts, the feeling of sanity slowly slipping away? Here. Have it all at once.
- What makes all of it even worse is that it wasn't just caused by the war. The city itself is largely physically intact compared to Moscow, but has insane amounts of radiation due to being hit by what's implied to be an experimental dirty/salted/neutron bomb. Then a civil war happened among the survivors due to infighting about radiation protection drugs, which ended up killing everyone left except for one young boy.
- The Putrid Tunnel, one of the highlights of Novosibirsk. Full stop. A flooded Metro tunnel that becomes steadily more overgrown with disgusting Meat Moss, and mutant leeches the size of a man's head spit acid at you. And, in the spirit of the Regina level from Last Light, you have to paddle through. Much like Regina, there's a room you can explore to find a new shotgun. However, once you go into the room, you see some giant thing slither by. Then, when you reach an open space, you find out what they are - giant leeches. All surrounded by the Meat Moss. If you weren't afraid of leeches before, this level may change that.
- And guess what caps off the final few areas? We meet the Librarians' cousins known as "Blind Ones". And even better, the Novosibirsk Librarians are enormous blind gorilla-like monstrosities that make the 2033 ones look like kittens. These guys have psychic abilities like the Dark One and are apparently the source of your hallucinations throughout the city. In fact, whenever you encounter one, you can hear their thoughts in your mind saying "I will find you" and "I smell you". Good luck trying to kill them, especially on the higher difficulties.
- You get another, closer, even scarier look at them in the Two Colonels DLC mission, where Col. Khlebnikov has to contend with a Blind One in the depths of a radioactive bunker armed only with his ramshackle improvised flamethrower. It suddenly bursts in through the ceiling while the Colonel is dealing with a horde of Nosalises, picking one up by its ankle and swinging it back and forth like a ragdoll with force enough to probably liquify its skeleton... And then it comes for you, utterly unbothered by you spewing flames in its face and requiring a point blank explosion to finally kill.
- Pretty much all of the environments to an extent. Like the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games that it faithfully succeeds, the dread simply seeps off the walls, even in the "nicer" areas of the game. This is especially true with the Volga, which uncannily resembles several areas in Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat (right down to the anomalies!). It says a lot about the atmosphere when 4A was able to make even gorgeous taiga forests and open desert feel creepy.
- A great example of environmental Nothing Is Scarier; the Tsar-fish in the Terminal. You only get small glimpses of it elsewhere in the river areas beforehand (some of them random), but as you slowly enter the flooded terminal floor, you hear something moving underneath your boat...
- This one also works as a Tear Jerker: the Downer Ending of the Taiga mission, right before the final fight with the Bear. You've trekked up the valley, having lost the considerable arsenal that gave you such confidence at the start, faced rabid wolves, unfriendly locals, Bear-zilla, and a tunnel full of spiderbugs, all to find a safe place for the Aurora crew to settle down. You finally escape the tunnel, meet Alyosha, and get a good look at the dam...and the water behind it is glowing. That glow is the Cherenkov Effect, the lake beyond the dam is full of irradiated sediment, the water level is way over the dam's designed capacity, and the dam is going to fail soon, releasing all that lethal contamination on the valley below.
- The Humanimals. Essentially Metro's answer to Feral Ghouls, they make surprisingly creepy gurgling noises and several areas have hordes of these things around every corner that love to ambush you if you make too much noise. And yes, incendiary weapons certainly work nicely, but then you get to enjoy/endure their long, drawn-out, disturbingly human death cries as they slowly burn.
- Similarly, try hitting a bandit with a molotov. Whether they probably deserved it or not, watching them flail and scream on the ground as they are torched to a black crisp is realistically horrifying.
- Early in the game you can tune your radio and listen to a distress call from a kid trapped in a basement somewhere. He begs for help as all the adults had already been killed and the barricades that had been set up are failing. His requests for assistance quickly turn to desperate begging for rescue, the sound of mutant growls and cracking wood in the background. Lastly there are only horrified screaming for for help, the sounds of the mutants breaking in, the beasts tearing into the child, and a triumphant snarl of a mutant...and there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about it...
- The multiple warnings in the Taiga made by the Pirates. Some even have signs on them saying they were rapists, bandits or simply drifters. You can overhear an argument between two Pirates about whether it's actually excessive to kill someone just for showing up.
