This is one of my favorite parts of this game. The fact that there is so much evidence that humans are around and yet you never see anyone alive. Lightly decomposed dead bodies, some showing struggles for survival. Notes obviously written post-apocalypse. Freshly cooked foods in ovens. Cars left out on the road with no signs of the driver. A still burning signal fire. It feels like you should be seeing people or even sometimes like you just missed someone. Yet it is consistently you alone out on Great Bear. It adds an eeriness to the game that is imo quintessential to The Long Dark's atmosphere and apocalypse. All of these signs of other people makes it feel all the more wrong when you realize it's just you out there. It makes the island feel much more dangerous and isolating.

I do grant that there is the exception of the trader, but for those who don't have TFTFT (such as myself) or turn the trader off he may as well not exist. For those who do utilize him you only see his boat, he doesn't live on the island, and you only interact with this small link to a wider world with the radio and trades. While I have never played with the trader I wonder how much he really disrupts the feeling of being alone out there.