Not sure if this is what I want, but it does confirm that this game is exactly what I thought it was.
While it's hard for me to tell how satisfying it will be moment-to-moment, I like how just about everything you do feeds back into the traversal. Because of the game's insane dedication to modeling carried gear, choices about how much you bring and the tools you have will impact what you can do in the world and how you can approach encounters. For example, the raider camp in the demo seemed loaded with special resources, but your ability to claim those resources is limited by your ability to carry them off. Similarly, your ability to deal with BTs depends a lot on your equipment. There's lots of room for people to make different choices about their gear, and to have those choices push them towards different routes and methods of traversal. Additionally, the more an area gets mapped and built up by other players, the easier it will be for people to travel with light gear, allowing them to more easily pick up sidequests or attack caches of supplies.
Where I'm more uncertain comes down to how engaging the traversal actually feels (though there are certainly lots of points of interaction) and how the game's long-term progression works. It's one thing to explore through uncharted territory, but quite another to retread your steps through well-worn ground to build things up and farm likes. I'm also curious how destructively players will be allowed to behave regarding the creations of others, considering this demo already showed that players could pick up ladders placed by others, preventing them from being shared.