Overall I think that this game is going to make me feel like a badass in a seriously dangerous world (after I pass the phase of utter terror at certain things). There are some seriously freaky things planned in here. Not in a horror sense (of grossness), but just a matter of things in the dark and things that are surprising. "WTF is that a raptor, aaaaugh I die!" as you explore the jungle one of the early times. "Holy f there are spiders the size of my head swarming the walls" in another place. "Well, it's night and I'll just hunker down... dear me what is that huge thing with all the lights and oh f there's soldiers everywhere and f is that a tripod and trees are bursting and aaaah!"
Eventually you feel like the master of this sort of thing and it's not scary anymore. That sort of power I absolutely love. Dying Light really mastered that. The nights were terrifying at first. DO NOT GO OUT AT NIGHT. Later on it was like "I'll go out at night if I feel like it, b. F yeah!" So there's a real transformation in the player's feelings about the environment.
For me, the first game where I had anything like this relationship with the world was -- sort of -- Silent Hill 2. I always thought of the phrase "taking power in the world of horror." Things that were utterly terrifying to me at first became mundane, and new things were then terrifying. Here that's not really the case that things stay terrifying forever. In some respects the level of badassery that you can get up to is slightly more like Prototype 2, although not that extreme. But just[redacted] is something that still feels GOOD to me here, just fun for the heck of it. Not like some little [redacted] from most [redacted] games. It's freaking powerful feeling. [redacted]? Even better. [redacted] left and right, no problem.
Tripod comes? F the [redacted], man. It's badass, so are you, but that thing is like 18 feet tall. The fact that you normally feel like a badass I think makes those sort of enemies even scarier.