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Considering the type of people SWAT may have to deal with, the missions in Ready Or Not can be downright traumatizing. In fact, many players claim the game is more akin to a horror game than a tactical shooter.
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General
- The massive amounts of Paranoia Fuel in every level is rampant, as you'll have to quickly register if that person is an armed gunman or just a civilian caught in the crossfire or worry if you'll turn a corner and come face-to-face with a shower of bullets. If that's not enough, you're usually heavily outnumbered in these situations and have to rely on your squad to ensure survival and even then you're likely to get shot in the back if you neglect having someone watching behind.
- The violence that is repeatedly on display throughout every mission is always a heart-stopping sight to see, whether that be the violence that's already been inflicted before your squad arrived, violence that suspects inflict on you and your squad, or the violence that your squad inflicts on suspects.
- Usually, shooting someone anywhere that isn't the head doesn't immediately kill them. Instead, it sends them to the floor, where they either choke on their own blood for an agonizingly long time, with nauseating gurgles and coughs the entire time, or they scream in pain. A lot. It doesn't matter how deserving you may think a suspect may or may not be, hearing them screaming in agony upon being shot is always incredibly difficult to listen to.
- As of the 1.0 update, weapons now have the capability of shooting off limbs and exploding peoples' heads. It can be quite the horrifying sight to shoot someone in just the wrong way and see that a shot you intended to merely incapacitate someone has accidentally blown apart their skull, or seeing that one of your squadmates has shot off a suspect's arm.
Level-Specific
- "Thank You, Come Again", the very first mission, already sets the tone. Your squad responds to a mass shooting and robbery perpetrated by drug addicts. It's not pretty, as you see the store manager (who has a surviving daughter) with his head blown apart slumped against a wall, and you see that a veteran and his pet dog count among the victims, lying down in a pool of blood. Also counts as a Tearjerker.
- "23 Megabytes A Second", the second mission, has the squad respond to an apparent crazed gunman situation, which is revealed to be a mere "swatting" prank. And, just like in real life, the results are horrific and potentially bloody. The streamer, his friends, and their neighbours have their weapons at the ready, and they will fire upon you and your squad. Try to be just a little bit trigger-happy, and you might just kill the streamer himself, whose mother is actually alive and one of the innocent civilians that you extract as you proceed.
- "Twisted Nerve" involves searching a filthy drug den at 213 Park Homes that probably has more used needles than a hospital. One bedroom is painted pink and has a non-responsive girl twitching on her bed, coughing up blood and blankly staring up at the ceiling. There isn't much information given regarding who she is, how she got there, or whatever left her catatonic though there is the implication that the caretakers somehow managed to protect her from the drugs... almost. Some players claim that there was a used condom in the room, which implies someone shot her up with meth to cover up their crime. Possibly to kill her with an OD.
- "A Lethal Obsession" has you raiding a remote cabin in the woods to bring in unhinged gunman Gerard Scott.
- Inside, you quickly find all kinds of unhinged writing on the walls, ranging from satanic runes to warnings of outlandish conspiracy theories. Even worse, the entire basement is a homegrown bioweapons lab, as Scott was attempting to manufacture ricin. This one also gets bonus creep points for being based on the real life Unabomber.
- This mission will be your first introduction to door traps, and once you experience it, you'll begin to dread it as onwards, there will be door traps per mission.
- Scott also directly addresses the player character Officer Judge in some of his rants, indicating that they have a history in some way. Obtaining an S rank on the mission will unlock a photo of D-Platoon with Judge's face encircled, suggesting that he had indeed been stalking you the entire time.
- "Ends of the Earth" might seem like a routine SWAT operation at first, the map is just one house where three individuals suspected of illegally modifying weapons for criminal clients have shut themselves in. But you aren't raiding some clandestine terror cell, but a trio of brothers forced into a life of crime to pay for their sick and dying mother's cancer treatment, that they are merely shooting at you out of desperation to keep you at bay and leave them alone, and the sudden realization hits that your duty as a SWAT officer meant that a suffering immigrant family's peaceful life is no more. The combination of Fridge Horror and Tear Jerker throughout this mission has earned it universal acclaim among fans of the game.
- "Valley of the Dolls" involves you raiding a hillside mansion to break up a child pornography ring. The premise itself is horrific, but it gets crazier...
- While the mansion itself seems normal enough, the real horror comes when you enter the basement, where you find that it's effectively a prison for the ring's underage victims, and where they produce most of their content. You not only find beds, toys, and children's drawings down there, but also filming equipment and darkrooms for developing photographs and ominous shrines dedicated to various children. The kicker is when you come across a hole in the floor filled with barrels the ring members were hastily trying to bury in cement. Barrels that are just large enough to fit a child inside. Mercifully, there's no outright mass child grave like SWAT 4, but the fact you're skulking around a place of genuine, actual, real world evil is horrifically unsettling.
- The sheer contrast of the level’s surface appearance compared to what lies in the basement. Seeing the mission’s briefing, you are made aware that you’re dealing with some seriously dark subject matter…and the bright, golden California sunset on a mansion full of colorful party decorations just feels so wrong.
- The implications of Amos Voll possibly targeting his own daughter or having repressed lust for her. How celebratory he is of it being her 18th birthday (not that that would stop a scumbag like him), the fact that he has a picture of him and his daughter framed above a bed where pornographic scenes are shot, the note his daughter wrote telling him to keep his “dogs” out of her room and mentioning how she caught one of them lurking in her room with a camera, and worst of all, the room in the basement with writings on the wall about “daddy’s good little princess”. Amos even refers to his daughter as his “princess” in one of his voicelines, which combined with the writings on the wall in that room, has some very stomach-churning implications.
- Speaking of horrifying implications, sometimes the party guests (teenage friends of Amos’s daughter) spawn in the basement. Yes, Amos was abducting his own daughter’s friends at her birthday party to use in his disgusting and predatory videos. You can also find notes for a “selfeet” contest organized at the party by Amos where guests submit their feet pics for a prize, and a note where Amos basically says he doesn’t mind if his daughter and her friends (who are most likely all under legal drinking age) consume alcohol at the party.
- "Elephant" is a rather infamous level in a game that's full of them, and for good reason.
- This level has your squad trying to stop a mass school shooting. Not only is there more than one shooter that you have to track down, but said shooters have also planted bombs. This level in particular also doesn't shy away from truly horrific environmental storytelling, like seeing an auditorium littered with bullet holes and dead students.
- Before the mission you can listen to some 911 calls that were made, with one of the callers being a student hiding in a cabinet. You hear the sheer terror in her voice as she begs for help, but the slow creak of a door is heard followed by the student hyperventilating and saying a prayer. The cabinet door is heard opening followed by screaming and a gunshot.
- "Rust Belt" has you and your squad raid a tunnel near the Mexican border that is being used by the Los Locos cartel to smuggle people through. As you delve deeper, you discover that the tunnel system is a maze of prehistoric catacombs where cartel members can ambush you from odd directions, made even more fear-inducing by how they can shoot you through the thin wooden doors blocking some passages, which may or may not be booby-trapped. Reaching the end, the map then opens up to an enormous, pitch-black cavern with a subterranean river, approaching the boat moored by the river's banks will occasionally reveal a pair of eyes staring at you from the darkness; someone - or if evidence is to be believed, something - is lurking in the cold, dark depths, stalking you from afar.
- "Sins of the Father" takes place in a dimly-lit luxury hotel that rumors allege to be haunted; clearing the map is an absolute nightmare as the suspects have disguised themselves as staff, meaning that you are just as likely to fire upon an unarmed staff member if you aren't extra careful. The hotel's hallways are decorated with war paintings, bloodstained American flags, and portraits of historical figures who appear to be watching you, as an ominous One-Woman Wail rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner echoes throughout the hotel.
- The sheer number of doors in this mission is Paranoia Fuel in its own right, suspects will be waiting for you behind them, and to top things off, the explosive traps feature here too.
- "Neon Tomb" immediately sets the stage for you when you respond to a terrorist attack on a nightclub, and the very first things you see are dozens of bodies dead civilians piled up outside the front door. It's not much better on the inside, either, as you find the entire building littered with more bodies showing the indiscriminate rampage the terrorists went on.
- "Relapse" takes place immediately after "Neon Tomb", with the same terrorist group attacking a nearby hospital treating survivors from the club shooting in an effort to rescue their leader. Just like in "Neon Tomb", by the time you arrive, the hospital is already a charnel house with both patients and medical staff lying slaughtered in the hallways. Even worse, one of the floors you have to clear is Pediatrics.
- "Carriers of the Vine" has you infiltrating a winery that has been taken over by some sort of Cult whose heavily armed members don ghastly white robes, wear eerie porcelain masks over their heads, and have an uncanny ability to attack you from out of nowhere with impeccable aim. As you delve deeper you find evidence of the cult's conspiracy-fueled beliefs and plans to commit acts of domestic terrorism, with motivations as convincing as militant cults in Real Life often do.
- Worse still, you also learn that the prime suspect is an ex-intelligence agent, suggesting that clandestine mind-control techniques have been used on the cult members without their knowledge or consent.
- At the very end of the winery complex is a small, two-storey chapel where a massive tree stands tall, covered in vines and carved with an eerily realistic sculpture of a naked deity that the cult worships. The normally soft background music suddenly gives way to "Psycho" Strings upon reaching the tree and coming face-to-face with the sculpture carved upon it. Worse still is the carving's uncanny similarities to the statue of Lady Justice at the LSPD HQ, implying a warped and twisted version of justice that the cult members adhere to.
- The scariest part of the mission is that all of the cult's members are women, specifically victims and survivors of the inhumane suffering they've experienced under the pornography rings mentioned prior. Their collective trauma has been warped and weaponized into sheer misandry, and they will stop at nothing to take revenge on the patriarchy that has wronged them all. You playing as a male SWAT officer does not help dispel their hatred and fear.
- "Port Hokan" has you raiding a warehouse in the docks as part of a larger federal sting operation, though you're not immediately told what exactly you're raiding the area for or what exactly is in the containers you're instructed to inspect. However, as you press deeper into the warehouse, it becomes increasingly evident that you're busting a human trafficking ring. Those containers you were told to check? They're filled with emaciated trafficking victims wallowing in their own filth, trapped in the darkness for who knows how long. It doesn't get much better the farther you go, as you soon find makeshift prison cells, and a dressed up stage area where the traffickers presumably showed off their "merchandise" to sell.
