Yeah survival makes it so much higher stakes, and it also makes you feel like you're really in the world, because you have to navigate it intelligently and pay attention to everything, even down to traps on the ground.

Kind of like how Breath of the Wild makes you actually know the landscape and get observe all the little details, in two ways: first the physical traversal of the landscape, and second, korok seeds. Many koroks are completely obscure until you notice how rocks or trees are aligned to each other, and some koroks are like, under a rock at the highest or lowest point in an area, etc.