I think they added the mist to conceal the islands on purpose. So that new players don't immediantly flock over to them, and instead they explore rather than see the island and go over to it for safety.
I also think that. Also, it's even a bad thing for you to find the Mountain Island early, as the purple tablet is easy to find, and the alien base inside doesn't try to hide that it's a gun (talking about PDA entries in there). That ruins the moment when you see the Sunbeam, hope for your rescue, and end up seeing the explosion.
@@eroth1008 I loved the false hope, even when I knew game logic wouldn’t allow it to happen, it was the small bit of “Well, maybe” and not knowing the events that lead up to it
i think this, too. had i seen the island right away, i can promise you i wouldve just head straight to it, not even knowing there was meant to be a story behind it.
Yeah, this was a really dumb point. You're supposed to find the floating island by following instructions from one of the lifepod wrecks, and you're supposed to find the mountain island by going the Sunbeam's extraction point. You're not supposed to find them early, so they hid them behind clouds. It's that simple.
Finding out that there was an Island in a game that I just assumed took place 100% under water was one of the coolest moments I had in this game. I didn't even realize the teleporter was a teleporter right away because I didn't know there was second island. I'm glad they obfuscated the view of the islands. I feel like the beacons provide you with an easy enough way of navigating, along with using the different biomes as reference points.
Once you've played enough, you learn to navigate by biomes and lifepod 5. Blood Kelp Trench is to the SW, the best Lost River entrance is N/NE and so on
@@Zealolicious same. I some how did it to the lava place, but it toke me so fucking long it's incredible. I was lucky enough to get only 1 reaper with my first and only map. And he was at the defense tower thing. And I almost quitted at the place where ghost leviathan come before you go to lava
A bit late, but: The ships (Degasi, Aurora, and Sunbeam) all coming in range of the cannon does make sense, even aside from the fact that any orbiting ships likely comes into range eventually because of how orbital mechanics work. The Degasi just happened to be shot down because it got too close. The Aurora had a side mission to track the Degasi’s fate according to its logs, so it makes sense that it flew close to the crash site. The Sunbeam was on a rescue operation tracking the location of the player, so this ship was directly heading for the proximity of the crash site.
About the aliens warning intruders: Probably an issue of technological gap. You can’t ward of a group of neanderthals by sending them a radio message or even by putting up a sign. The technology gap would be so large the more primitive species would not even realize there is a warning being given.
@@thomasdiehlen77 "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" When you introduce advanced technology to a primitive species it would be impossible for them to tell
The issue is that the gun has infinite range around the planet. It could have shot down the aurora on the other side of the planet. And the aurora clearly must have exceptional scanners, so there's no need to go right on top of the degassi crash site, just passing the planet should be more than good enough, so going right over the 2km square crater with the only gun that can shoot you down from literally any point in orbit? Not buying it. I'll buy the sunbeam though, they literally come in on your co-ordinates attempting pickup, that's explained. But a construction mothership in spitting distance of a crash site? Not happening. What were they planning to do, look out the windows?
@@Winasaurus The Degasi ship likely decided to land near the largest power signature which happens to be where all the alien structures are such as the ion cube power plant. It's totally reasonable for them to land where they did and subsequently all the ships that came after.
It's also both stated and shown that this part of the planet is a particularly rich mineral deposit, and that both the Degasi and Aurora were monetarily-motivated, so of course they'd try to land at the part that their radar said was full of precious metals. This was also why the Degasi survivors, with some hesitation, built the mushroom cave base, but that differs from Joseph Anderson's claims so directly that I have to wonder if the devs changed it at some point post-release. It's also reasonable that the prior aliens would choose to inhabit/build a research base at that location on the planet. (In this case, I also assumed the infection _started_ on 4546b and never left, which fixes some other issues, but it's possible I missed some audio logs saying otherwise or that it was another change).
Hmmm Possibly Some people (like me) think it was a joke. When in the prawn suit, I don't feel invincible, I feel powerless from my lack of mobility. Just because maybe the damage numbers against the suit are shit, doesn't mean I don't feel really lacking when in it.
@@RasputinReview Nah he was just sick of making FPS games (they spent years and years on NS2 before Subnautica) and he knew that guns would be useless against gigantic seamonsters
Blale Cheesebogger eh, that’s debatable. We can’t know if the game would be better with or without since it’s not in the game. One could argue that the pulpolsion gun and status gun are weapons. The monsters shouldn’t be killable if it was never an intention to have them be killed.
Blale Cheesebogger I’m not saying have a bazooka, but after the first few run ins with the bigger, deadlier leviathan. It’s clear there a janky mess that are simply an annoyance to pad time.
This review was a year ago, so I'm giving it some leeway, mainly with the game mechanics. My issue is the "plot holes", such as the landings. The Degasi arrived to this crater because they detected the excessive minerals on the volcano, which probably has something to do with the Precursors, and the Aurora comes to the same land mass because they were searching for the Degasi. The Kharaa got out through a Sea Dragon attack, did you read any of the info in the lost river base? Enzyme 42 isn't specific to that Emperor, it is heavily implied that is the only emperor around. The enzyme the Peepers are carrying is weakened by the Emperor's age, which is why the planet is barely limping buy, and why there are still fish that have pustules, while others don't. That nullifies a lot of points you complained about, because nothing is cured, and the Precursors had the disease before they arrived. And as for you arriving on a planet that could cure it first, did you read the Doomsday device PDA? The planet was supposed to blow up if they failed, but it malfunctioned, and we can assume the others didn't. The whole thing about why isn't there a warning, there is. It's just indecipherable for a while, until your PDA can read their language. Even if there wasn't, the gun blows up ships entering to ensure no chance of the Kharaa getting off planet. Say the gun let someone land, and then it did the very slow turning and aiming thing as they tried to leave. The ship would leave before the gun could even get into position. Ignoring that, why go through the trouble of letting someone land on the planet with the disease that'll kill them anyway? They might as well just kill them ahead of time and spare themselves the later killing. The Degasi's base has obviously been destroyed, and there's no way the crushed base happened in 10 years without weather interference. Did you consider the storm they're talking about is a temporary weather event, like a hurricane that dissipated or moved elsewhere on the planet in the *10 years* between the Degasi base and the game. Say I went to Florida and said any number of hurricanes there hadn't happened because there wasn't rain that year. The Degasi were going deeper to find the gun power, as they said. And they knew they were infected. As for getting rid of the Precursors, that would just be removing a perfectly fine plot point because some people won't read the PDA, and filling the gaps with an even more nonsensical story. The part about not getting anything from Precursors is meant to show how your character can barely interact with their tech, because they're so much more advanced. And with your rocket building things, those would just be more scavenger hunts that you need to do, but with you needing to give up resources as well. The entire rocket building thing is meant to be your victory lap, going around and getting the last resources after you've saved the planet, and letting you say goodbye. Most of your plot holes were resolved by reading the PDA and having some critical thinking, instead of seeking out holes to poke.
Completely agree with most of the points here. What made me seek out this comment is the Degasi part. It is very obviously fleshed out that the woman wanted to go deep, the old man wanted to stay above ground. While the storm was a factor, the main driving force behind them building bases deeper and deeper was to find a cure for the CORONAVIRUS
The speed with which this game goes from "ahh, blissful swimming through the alien reefs" to "oh wow this is triggering most of my phobias at once" is truly shocking lol
Every single time i play subnautica, i make and upgrade the cyclops, only to realize immediately that it’s way too scary to drive it anywhere deep cause you’re just completely surrounded by the black void and I caaaant
@@SwogFrog one of the greatest horror games ever made, i've never gotten much further either. if you like the whole exploration aspect though but want a bit less abject terror, check out the game outer wilds. its a masterpiece.
I find it easier to use the seamoth and prawn suit and build bases along the way. For some reason, the cyclops just makes me feel more vulnerable, probably because you can't react as fast as you can in the prawn or moth.
@@rpemulis-- And I must disagree with you here. Outer Wilds has both a much lower bar for death and a much higher value of light. Where Subnautica threatens but rarely pushes for death, Outer Wilds forces your death anyway and so is much more willing to use death as a lesson or a hard barrier. Where Subnautica has every biome replete with bioluminescence and glowing rivers, Outer Wilds has almost an entire planet full of pitch-dark caves, and another planet where no amount of light will save you, not to mention a DLC half-filled with light-based stealth puzzles. I might just be biased because I love water, but Subnautica never made me sweat like being hunted for your only source of any vision whatsoever.
@@SwogFrog every time I bring my cyclops through bulb zone or blood kelp to go to various lost river entrances, I have to hype myself up on the edge of the biome for like two minutes. "You've done this before, you know exactly where you are going, nothing can stop you in your giant submarine" and then I panick the whole way down
@53:05 The reason the game suddenly dips into a huge, never-ending hole on all the barriers of the play area is explained. The place where the player crash lands, all of that play area, is actually sitting on top of an extremely large volcano. All those deep areas the player is exploring is actually the hollow center of the volcano and is also why it gets extremely hot the deeper you go, and why the lost river is very acidic. So what happens is when you reach the edge of the map(or play area) you are at the edge of the lip of the volcano, a very, very big volcano, so the dip is ridiculously deep. There is also life outside this volcano, as the player finds out if you roam outside the play area, giant ghost leviathans will come and kill you. But the volcano is warm and has lots of chemicals, it transfers lots of heat and minerals, which is why the play area is so abundant with life. So yeah, the planet is actually insanely deep, which would make sense considering how deep earths oceans are. Didn't you find it odd that the apparent deepest point of the play area is only like 1500 meters? That's because that's just the depth of the volcano, any deeper is all magma.
A volcano that huge and wide would not have a sudden, cliff-like drop off on all sides. No volcanoes have that on all sides. They're generally very climbable, gradual changes.
@@headphonic8 A never ending gradual slope isn't exactly easy to implement. Eventually the terrain would have to end or the game would probably freak out.
@@headphonic8 at a certain point game logic has to happen. You’re right, but it would be too much of a pain for a computer to render absolutely everything in the huge slow drop off. So the explanation is that it’s the lip of a volcano crater is given and the actual details are hand waved away for the sake of not rendering the whole thing.
I like your analysis, but the actual truth is that this is just a video game, and its impossible to simulate planet sized worlds. There has to be an edge to the world at some point, and from a game design perspective, an endless void makes complete sense. Its literally the edge of the map bro
I think the critique around 27:00 about the invisible islands misses what I think was a key design choice - have the player think there is no land available. If, at the beginning of the game, you look out of the escape pod and see two islands, your immediate intention would be to travel to those islands instead of exploring the ocean. While there were some visual bugs in hiding the islands (I noticed at the beginning that some clouds looked like they were 'in front' of the ocean and found out later that they were the land masses) stumbling on them makes a whole lot more sense based on the intention of the games to be, you know, about being stuck in an ocean.
I don't know how he missed that or didn't think about it. To be fair I only watched Appsro play through the game on Neebs channel, but I noticed the weird clouds/fog and thought it was some kind of weird graphical thing. As soon as I found out it was masking the Island it was clear that they were trying to hide it so it wouldn't be the players first point of interest to beeline to. Their only other solution is to have it literally just pop in, or make them so far away they'd look unreachable and would thus be a huge pain in the ass to get to.
@@JZStudiosonline One of the info-logs left by the crew of the Sunbeam that lived on the bigger island mentioned that they had to move their base to the ocean since excessive rain on the island was too difficult to deal with. I think the island should be foggy and rainy and not clear like when we players get to visit it.
I swear thats actually explained in a Data Cube somewhere though. I could have sworn the Landmasses being hard to find was due to shrouding technology thus explaining the light misty clouds that can be seen from a distance. Maybe Im misremembering or something but I swear thats a thing.
Hmmm... I could be wrong since I'm still watching the video, but it seems like you missed the point that the Aurora and the Degassi getting shot down at the exact same coordinates was NOT a coincidence. The Aurora was specifically hunting for the Degassi crew members who went missing and they were performing the EXACT SAME slingshot maneuver that the Degassi was doing when they went dark. So the Aurora was just following the in the exact same footsteps as the Degassi in order to try to locate them. This would be the reason why both ships "coincidentally" landed at the same spot and were shot down from the same location. Also for the broadcasted message: There is one. The massive noise that happens when the Sunbeam approaches the planet is their warning message being broadcast. We were unable to translate it. We were barely even able to translate the alien messages in general. Really your critique should have been that we never actually acquired the means to translate this technology. The PDA advises you earlier that there is an alien language being broadcast that it is attempting to translate but isn't have much luck. So really there should have been a data download in the gun facility that would allow your PDA to understand the alien language to get the confirmation that the Sunbeam WAS given a warning before being shot down.
You also periodically hear the "message" broadcast throughout the game. It comes over the radio once and you usually hear it whenever you go past a vent or cache in your seamoth.
The people on the Sunbeam even acknowledge the warning, you can hear them over the radio ask what the sound is, but obviously they didn't know that it WAS a warning so they just kept going.
It’s implied in the PCF that the precursors visited Earth early in its history and influenced the development of specific cultures, so it stands to reason they could have influenced our language too. This could explain why the PDA was partially able to decipher precursor text. Still, you’re right in saying that there should have been more shedding light on the translation in general.
@@KongKurs i think it was mentioned in an audio log that the other rescue ships that attempted to scan for the degasi survivors were unable to do that and so they wanted the aurora's better technology to scan for them
The fact that we don't see the islands from the start is great imo. I was just going into a random cave (and I was really scared..) then I came out from inside the cave, and stumble onto this island. I was in awe cause I did not expect it at all!
Never will I forget the heart attack I had when I was going straight in one direction on the surface with my Seamoth and got launched into the stratosphere by a Ghost Leviathan from below me.
believe it or not, i got attacked underwater, i heard something and thought: what was that? and then i got smack by it. i hardly saw it, and then suddenly halve of my seamoth's health was gone.
18:00 Absolutely correct. The devs themselves confirmed that they did not envision the game as a combat experience, so they came up with some intentional tricks to dissuade the player from fighting - like enemies not having loot, lacking health bars and no feedback/emotional gratification when killing aggressive monsters. The game never makes the monsters unkillable, merely shows you that this way of playing is generally not enjoyable and can be avoided. Subjectively, I think it was the right decision. I hate artificial limitations in games, so killing this one leviathan who tried to eat me for the last 10 minutes was kinda rewarding (sweet revenge) but, while enjoyable, it was a sidestep. The game explained it, I viewed it as such and never considered it part of the main loop. Just a quick (or not) thing you can do from time to time when you feel compelled to.
@@painfullremains2193 I honestly don't think that would have been the right option. Making them Invincible makes them look like monster while their supposed to be normal creatures
And if you scan the Sea Dragon leviathan it says it may be one of its last of its species, just to make you feel guilty. If you scanned it without killing it that is.
I wish they had done this better. It would have been much better if they didn’t make the bigger beasts so boring. It would be great if they had a better attack AI, did more damage, and were just... scarier. They become scenery as the game goes on. I want the big sea creatures to be scary not goofy.
@@123TeeMee that would makes sense anyway, as a creature of that size probably wouldn't be too comfortable with their ability to corner quickly and would be hurt very badly by their bodies contacting something at the speeds they swim
@@isdrakon9802 lol it certainly doesn't add to the horror as a reaper dips into the ground it's so laughable and breaks immersion that it makes the reaper less scary
I dunno if it’s ever said but wouldn’t it make sense if most precursor planets were exploded by the massively powerful bombs they are shown to have because of the kharaa and this one was put under quarantine BECAUSE of the presence of the cure? I mean why else would they put one in their base besides display, then disable it when they realized how precious this planet is
Yup, it tried to trigger but failed. But, it probably failed because of Precursor intervention, that disabled it before it could explode, and then put it on display.
@@totallynotjevii574 I keep seeing people talk about the planet exploding, where does it say that. The best I can remember is a pda entry at the primary research facility in the lost river. It said that the subjects were terminated except one, which is how kharra escaped initially. After that it was straight to long term storage for the precursors
FWIW, Charlie explains their logic for not letting the player have more freedom when it comes to combat which frankly I think Subnautica hits the perfect balance. Animals that you SHOULD be able to kill you can but bigger fights will be more taxing. It 'discourages' players from being reckless. For the most part survival in Subnautica is very much soo evocative of the old sentiment "Haste makes waste". ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6S6bgQnlP1w.html
when it comes to the ships all landing in the same area, which is a volcanic mountain (hence the large dropoff at the edge): -the degassi ship was making a gravity slingshot maneuver around the planet when it went too low and got shot down. it was hit but not totally destroyed, and they were able to steer it to crash-land in the area. (and then they lived for presumably several months) -the aurora's secondary mission was to look for the degassi, so it entered orbit around the planet and prepared to send down landing craft. (equipped with prawn suits, at least one cyclops sub, and seamoths). at some point, it got shot down, and the captain sacrificed himself and stayed on the ship to manually guide it towards the shallow equatorial crater (identified via scans from orbit). half the lifepods deployed (half were destroyed before launch as they were on the side hit) late into the crash, so were scattered near the crash site. within 8 hours of the crash, everyone but you are dead. most of them from simply landing near large predators or too deep, although two survived to make it to the floating island and then were later killed. this is the luckiest part of the game for you, but it's not like it's that contrived that only one person would survive, and they wouldn't make a game from the perspective of a guy who's fabricator malfunctioned and then he ran out of air.
Or the guy who lit a flare inside the lifepod that had a gas leak and the audio recording shows someone telling him not to do that as there’s an explosion
I’m quite late to this video and this has likely been mentioned before, but the lack of combat is also explained within the game, with a PDA entry stating that fabricators do not come with weapon schematics due to a massacre that happened at some point, which adds an extra bit of in game reasoning for why you don’t receive any weaponry
The irl reason was that 1:the game was intended to have a decent bit of horror. And two: following the sandy hook shooting the devs at unknown worlds really didn’t want to promote guns so they scrapped any concepts involving them in their next game. Just little bit of dev history for ya.
@sovietbanana4589 I actually like how the banning the guns in this game proves that banning the guns does nothing in regards of safety or ceasing violence.
@@legolegs87 most people in real life don't have to deal with wild animals trying to maul them 100 meters from their home tho... They're also generally less likely to take risks irl, where they can get hurt/permanently scarred or die, than in video games they can always turn off :p
"i can't imagine how poorly the game must run with only the recommended hardware, nevermind what's listed in the minimum" *me sitting here with below minimum wondering why im being dissed*
A9DM the point is that that’s generally not a quality accepted by people, the minimum specs are really the MINIMUM you can possibly run the game at, when normally minimum is considered something around 30fps at lowest settings and 1080p. Or at least thats what I think it is.
@@lapis3345 minimum requirements are the proposed equipments to run the game in BARE MINIMUM NEEDS, such as lack of most of visual features, worse sound effects, less field of view. It basically looks ugliest compared to other specs.
There's an easy enough way to explain why a galaxies spanning human race could've not found any other signs of the precursor race, and you even scanned it. The _malfunctioning_ Doomsday Device. Their other worlds just happened to have devices that worked properly.
Mmm, IDK about that. It seems to be in a display like a museum would display something. It seems more like a novel thing. At least to me, thought I could be completely wrong about that.
I remember when I first played this game. I remember that almost every creature I encounter is either trying to kill me, eat me or destroy my equipment. Sometimes all three at the same time though not in that order particularly. I remember being scared shitless when first encountering the Reaper Leviathan. I remember being awed when I saw the Aurora's explosion. It was thrilling when I first saw the gun. And you can bet it was terrifying when I got that first Warper massage. But in the last Arc the meeting with the Sea Emperor has changed my view. To me at first it seemed like a hostile environment. After talking with the Emperor my view changed. 4546B is a world that was doomed by Precursors because of their inability to understand. It is stated that Precursors were telepath in nature. Yet they failed to understand the Sea Emperor. Because as the Emperor said they played against the current. It wasn't just a figure of speech. The Precursors never worked with the nature. They took eggs from mother Sea Dragon. And captured one of the most beautiful creature for over 1000 years. It was a miracle that planet even survived the outbreak. But in the end I was reluctant to leave. Then I changed my mind when I hear Reaper Leviathan's roar.
It was actually the Sea Emperor who was telepathic by nature. The Precursors were unable to understand her because of their bio-cybernetic makeup. Riley, and quite possibly Bart Torgal as well, could hear her because he is human and has an organic makeup. When she mentioned those who swim against the current, it's exactly like you said. The Precursors worked against nature or, in the words of Paul Torgal, tried to shackle it to their will, which led to their downfall. That could mean she was referring to both the Precursors and the Degasi survivors, as they both met their ends due to their failure to respect the environment and the creatures within.
28:00 I disagree, i think this was done intentionally to make the player think there is no land at all when first starting only to discover later on that there is land although a miniscule amount. Also it hides the alien facility and unless the player is bold enough to travel that far then will wait until sunbeam contacts them and tells them to go there.
I looked at, but never played this game. I have a real fear of deep water, and I think I would pretty much be paralyzed just watching the screen. If I did manage to give the game a try, I think I would have been one of the players who would try for the islands. Not out of boldness, but out of terror from being stuck in the ocean.
Yes. Also would it have been better to see just two chunks of rock to the side of your lifepod? (Btw I’m not talking to you, I’m just expanding your point so yes, I heavily agree with you). It would just make the whole point of the game of discovering everything yourself pointless.
@@Ritsu362 EXACTLY! Theres no need to show the islands, because people should be able to recognize the presence of animals native to land (birds and the stupid crab things on the Aurora) means there is land elsewhere on the island. One of the first things you see in the game is birds on your escape pod. If you're bright enough to notice it, you'll know this means there is land on the planet.
I remember looking for some wrecks, and my PDA began to tell me; ‘multiple leviathans in the area, are you sure whatever you are doing is a good idea?’ (At least, that’s how I remember it warning me). I pushed it aside as just some warning to scare players, and carried on. I only had a survival knife, scanner, laser cutter and a seaglide on my person. My first thought was ‘huh, what’s that sound?’ So, stupid, idiotic me went towards said noise. Imagine how much I shat myself when I figured out what was making that noise. I haven’t been back there since.
While many of your points are very true, so many "flaws" about the story are just flat out wrong (please correct me if im wrong about anything). The degasi survivors discovered more and more as they went deeper and they debated about going deeper out of curiosity. They had the cuddlefish eggs in their lab and other data bank entries pointed to the fact that they had been to an alien facility, and were in search for something to keep them alive. It's why they had all that non-functonal lab equipment. They didnt just go deeper cuz of weather. The fog is also there as to not spoil the story and the surprise about aliens. It also creates mystery and thought about just barely missing the other aurora survivors, as you get a log leading to the floating island, and you see evidence of people having been there. It helps make the world feel more responsive, and not set in stone. Without the fog, the game wouldve been a good bit worse. I'm using a ryzen 3600 and a gtx 1060. I havent experienced ANY lag except for pop-in grass only. The sea emperor's babies didnt release the enzyme. The sea emperor did, she was able to make it the whole time, but wanted her babies to be freed first. The aliens exist as data, not biological bodies, so she couldnt talk to them, and therefor wouldnt hand over the enzyme considering that her babies would still be trapped. In nature, the sea emperor never wouldve released the enzyme, she just knew how to. You said that there are very few things that are just straight up upgrades, however a key part you missed were oxygen tanks and although you mentioned it, depth upgrades. These STRONGLY impact the game, and I think it's good that subnautica isn't only straight up upgrades, but these types of upgrades are necessary for most games. The aurora was following the degasi people, who happened to crash around the area, and are never found (so its safe to assume they crashed in the void) and the only elevated ground in the area is an obvious choice for the aurora to land, as they were trying to see what happened to the degasi people, making it clear that the chances aren't nearly as low as you say (however its still unlikely that degasi crashed in that general part of the planet leading aurora to it) .There are other things I've missed, but these things that you've gotten wrong really bugged me.
While the adult sea emperor leviathan was able to produce enzyme 42, it is not enough to cure the illness, only weaken it temporarily because it the adult emperor is way too old.
Great points, but I don't remember seeing anything in the game about the aliens not existing as biological bodies, only that one of the infected ones uploaded their mind to some sort of terminal (which I believe you can find). Why do you believe that the Degasi crashed in the void? While we don't find the wreck I very much doubt they would have been able to survive and get to the crater to set up bases. Also I don't mean to be that guy but please write in paragraphs lol
Yeah, in regards to his critique of the story, I think he's overthinking what are perfectly plausible ambiguities rather than plot holes, even without the context of Below Zero. Having some ambiguity in a story always makes the story feel more immersive for me personally. In reality, if you're living through a complex historical event, you're not going to have a grasp on ALL the details of the event, AND events that feel uncanny occur more often than you feel they should sometimes (That's a bias that's common to humans, pareidolia. We tend to have a bad sense of probability and misunderstand that randomness isn't devoid of clumps of order. That often makes us mistake order, that occurred due to random chance, as having some substantial, traceable cause). I feel like a lot of critics do this when critiquing stories and it always bothers me. They over analyze the causality of plot events and assume that any ambiguity or coincidence is a flaw of the story rather than a potential part of it. In the case of Subnautica's story there's too much ambiguity (which I believe is largely intentional) to say for sure whether what he's addressing are really causality errors or contrived coincidences. For example, regarding how this event was supposedly humanity's first encounter with these aliens: We really only see a small minutia of what the precursor alien race left behind. As far as I recall, the game doesn't give any concrete timeline to the spread of the bacteria anywhere besides the planet itself. In the realm of science-fiction the sky's the limit for reasons why this is the first time humans have encounter remnants of this civilization. That's part of the mystery and leaving it ambiguous is a perfectly valid way to handle it because it's a problem (The Fermi Paradox) that we don't even know the answer to in reality, so the chance of anyone coming up with a perfect solution in a plot like this is pretty slim without the use of some sci-fi plot magic. Leaving it ambiguous leaves you with the exact same interesting questions that plague us about the Fermi Paradox and your imagination can run wild at that point. Also, who's to say humans haven't encountered remnants of the aliens already? All we have to go on in the game is our AI's analysis of things and the observations of people who are also stuck on the planet. Neither of those entities are necessarily connected to the whole of the galaxy spanning humanities knowledge in the circumstances of the game. Additionally, whose to say how well persevered other instances of these Alien's remnants are, or how much information they left intact to actually connect ruins that humanity has already found to ones on the planet in Subnautica. Again, there's just to much plausible ambiguity to say for sure.
Not to detract from your performance of the game, but this review was made 4 years ago. Around that time this is how the game ran on the current hardware. It has since recently been fixed and patches and obviously we have much much better hardware nowadays than we did 4 years ago.
@@ThrowAway-gu2lw you can actually find a piece of the Degasi somewhere, your PDA will say something like "this doesn't match other parts from the Aurora" so we can be sure they actually landed in the crater.
The islands are supposed to be unseen. The whole point is that it feels like there's nothing but water. What feels out of place is the fact that the islands exist ti begin with.
@@lapis3345 I was just casually looting around the Aurora. Heard a weird sound and turned around 180 degrees. Massive roaring reaper that fills my entire view. Almost a year later and I still remember that moment.
@Aaron Smith yeah but who tf uses that feature also you know the slow as zombies are much slower than you but in subnatica it feels like they are going wayyy faster cuz of sound design
if memory serves, the islands are covered by the fog so that you can't just immediately go there at the start of the game. it also strengthens the feeling of the whole planet being oceanic, and the only ways to go are into the unfamiliar biomes deeper down, rather than land which would be a lot less scarier for players considering obv we're used to that. although i don't know whether that was how it was intended, or just suspension of disbelief from players to excuse the visual problems it causes
The Aroura was doing a gravity slingshot maneuver around 4546b because they were scanning for the degasi, so obviously they would be over the volcanic crater where the degasi is. The degasi itself was there looking for minerals, also explaining why they would be on the crater. The degasi crew also didn’t die because of the fact they moved to a deeper and more hostile area, they died because maida brought a mostly dead reaper down there and another one followed. The same would have happened if they hadn’t moved to the deep grand reef, since presumably the crash zone always had reapers, as the mesa area which likely represents what the biome was before the ship crashed has reapers too, and that area is as close to the entrance to the mushroom caves as the dunes are to the deep grand reef.
@@lsswappedcessna I personally like the fact that the PDA doesn't have personality, although I can see why others would think differently, but I'd like to explain why. In the later parts of Subnautica, the game drives in the point that you're alone very frequently, E.g. The types of music you hear (like 'Crash Site'), the PDA mentioning how people become insane and depressed when recommending an inanimate object to help with loneliness and when you realise there is no one left on this planet besides from you. A blank faced 'Siri' telling you how to survive is just the icing on the cake and drives the point further.
I think you totally missed an element of the story that explains a lot of your gripes very clearly. The big theme and lesson of subnautica is this idea of respecting nature. The mother leviathian talks about this, and the whole exploration and beauty all builds on this idea of nature as a thing to be respected and not harnessed. the ability to kill things REALLY adds to this in my opinion. you go out into the world thinking one day you will be king over all, controller of your world but in the end you come to appreciate the world instead and understand that even though theses creatures suck ass and smash apart all your sea moths, they are things that need to be respected. The first time you kill something large there is no reward. what you did was not something to be praised, you soiled the beauty of the world. all thats left is an ugly twitching body and the game forces you to look at yourself and think about if you deserved to survive any more than it did. a lot of these gameplay elements come together and really hammer home the message in a way nothing other than a video game could do.
i. jpg and this is emphasized by the degrasi survivors. When the son talks about making enameled glass, he mentions how the last goes head to head woth stalkers. Then he says something like “what’s the point of exploring this world, if we need to destroy it to learn more about it”
Exactly. You are a member of a space-faring megacorp, and here you are, humbled by the alien ecosystem you struggle to understand. By the time you are leaving, you don't want to be the master of this. You want to marvel at this.
This is also further supported by one of the coincidences that were mentioned. The Aliens would have succeeded had they not used such invasive and aggressive means to study the Emperor Leviathan. The player character survives by cooperating with Nature.
i. jpg Right? The first time I killed a Stalker (I just wanted to see if you could kill things), I was just dumbfounded at its twitching body. It never died, and never laid still, just sunk. It was right next to my lifepod too so every time I went back to it, I could see its body just laying there, twitching and dying. I felt bad because there was no point in killing it. It couldn’t harm me, but I could harm it. Seemed cruel. So I left my lifepod and never went back.
I think that this was a well thought out critique of this game, and you definitely put a lot of effort into it, but things like assuming both ships crashed close to each other was a coincidence when the story gives an explanation kinda throw this video off for me. But I think this is still a great video about what you think of this game.
He didn't pay attention to the story at all🤣 degasi came to the crater cuz there was hella ore, Aurora was looking for degasi, Sunbeam was looking for survivor. He Didn't understand the degasi story at all. This is Honestly it's like he barely read the PDA at all, and with him claiming he didn't like the menus I'm not surprised
@@unsoundmusic8348 It feels like he excels at gameplay critiques but story critiques are really hit or miss. The degasi feel really stupid now though since we know Marguerite survived and there is no explanation for her living that isn't complete off the walls stupid. To be fair to him thinking the Aurora coming to the crater was a coincidence the only real indication that this was there objective are in some easy to miss spots
@@plugshirt1762 I havent played below zero, so I only know the degasi story up until the end of Subnautica. Didn't know any members of their crew survived
@@unsoundmusic8348 ah sorry for spoiling it. For reference though none of them should have survived and by hearing their story in the original there is no real scenario where they would. From what I hear they already had a model of her after changing the story so they were left with it and just kind of inserted her into it without it actually making sense so all their work wouldn't be wasted
the rocket was good because you could paint it to look like a banana. also you could build it at any point in the game. the captains quarters are available around the mid-game.
Personally, I always saw that combat with the leviathans was meant to be possible, but unnatural. I felt bad after killing one of them in the Lost River because it just kept floating, dead. Idk I just got the feeling that I was a part of the ocean until I tried to bend it to my will, and then I became separate from it
What's worse is that there is a set number of leviathans within the game's borders. When you kill all of them...that's it. The world feels a bit empty.
Yeah, that was the intended narrative, Mama Emporer talks about it in one of her dialogue segments. Trying to fight back against nature would land you in the same boat as the precursors or the degassi crewmen. Actively trying to conquer nature would end with you dying of the Karar, with the quarantine enforcement platform still online. But actively respecting the laws of nature, and doing your part to repair it, you guaranteed both your freedom, and the survival of the planet you called home for all of the games story.
@@swaawsman Except for that one lady in Below Zero that has been on this planet longer than Riley. She gets to slay leviathans and keep going on with her day lol
Joseph asking _"Why didn't the aliens install a warning sign in English on 4546b ?"_ has the same energy as a German Tourist expecting to see a Sign in Deutsch on his trip to Bali
@@kabershshkabersh4272 This isnet true lol in real life a problem many governments face is how to show that nuclear waste is dangerous for people hundreds of thousands of years in the future. This is because if something horribly where it happen people wouldnet know what a nuclear symbol is
This very same game has an instance of an alien message being broadcast, that your in game PDA translates for you. Its the message about the Vaccine Development Program being canceled. So yes, the Precursor race(later called Architects in Below Zero) do communicate in a method under stable by human methods in the story.
I enjoyed this review, even though I have major objections to it. The first is about killing creatures. I find the fixation on killing the lifeforms on the planet off-putting. I like that the game takes a non-violent approach. The game designers discussed at length their choice to exclude guns and offensive weapons from the game to a significant degree. Dangerous animals can be evaded and part of the beauty of the game is learning behaviours and patterns of the lifeforms to keep yourself safe. I'm very pleased that Subnautica didn't borrow from games like Far Cry and reduce all living things to a simple resource. However, I Think you raise a good point about gathering more value from other species, i.e. Sea Treader droppings, or Stalker teeth. The islands are shrouded because it focuses the player's attention on the marine environment. If you show a human land they will beeline for the islands and operate from there. By obscuring them the player is compelled to press deeper and grow comfortable in the water. I think your criticisms about the game's performance and graphics are justified. My version had atrocious frame rate issues, which was heartbreaking given how much I loved the visuals and discovery in the game. Again, I don't see eye-to-eye with all your points, but I'm glad I watched.
The way you defeat, or more accurately, overcome the leviathans is that you avoid them. In my 50-hour playthrough of Subnautica I never was attacked by a Reaper. Avoiding encounters with them is an entirely plausible approach.
@L I...could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure the leviathans *do* attack smaller creatures. Which doesn't invalidate the rest of your post, just thought I'd point that out.
If they didn't want the player to be able to kill or fight leviathans they shouldn't have made them killable and or should have limited how powerful the player is as the stasis rifle and prawn are both way more powerful than they should be
My friend is afraid of the ocean so we sent him to the craters edge where the ghost leviathans are and turned off the lights and closed the curtains. Lets just say that was entertaining
I always felt like beyond the crater there was life but it would be scarce and large. First time I saw the giant void I thought Holy shit who knows what could be out there
We get some hints. The Ghost Leviathans are scarily big but they pale in comparison to the Lost River remains. The Gargantuan Leviathan alone is estimated to be 5+ kilometers in length and its likely it snacked on smaller leviathans as its primary food source. The colloquially named Biter Leviathan is also larger than anything living, and it's not a stretch to say evolved versions of these apex predators exist in the Void. I wouldn't be surprised if Reefbacks were out there in the void, but due to not being constrained to the volcano mount, they'd be larger. I'd expect very few small creatures, and almost exclusively Larger or Leviathan-class monstrosities would be out there. Phytoplankton would be extremely common especially towards the surface where creatures like Reefbacks and maybe even Whale Leviathans would exist. This would entice the more colossal Leviathans to come to the surface and feed before slipping back into the seemingly endless depths. Towards the bottom of the Void geothermal vents would likely exist, creating small ecosystems of blind and stationary small creatures that feed off the vents. Perhaps in the murkiest depths there may lie something even more dominant than the Gargantuan Leviathan...
It’s crazy how you thought about killing the leviathans, I never did, instead I saw them as an obstacle to be avoided, I don’t think I killed a single one
54:50 I’m pretty sure one of the reasons Margaret had about why they should go deeper is discovered in the second degasi base, where Bart torgal discovers the alien bacterium, and Margaret says that they should go deeper in order to discover how they should cure it, as well as saying, “whatever shot us down is going to do it again, and again, until it’s shut off.” and uses this as another reason to explore deeper.
@FinalHunter Fair, though you would likely find Reefbacks first. They skirt the edge of the safe shallows, and depending on where your life pod lands you might even be able to see one from it.
Fortunately, the Reefbacks are *generally* not hostile. I did have one game where a reefback kept pushing my life pod around, picking it up out of the water, all kinds of annoying behavior. I think that was one of the earlier bugs though. Since then, I've had numerous games where the reefbacks would habitually crash into the first ("near shallows") bases I'd built, often slowly damaging the structure. I'd occasionally come back to base and find myself knee deep in water. Reefbacks seem to be attracted to base buildings.
I think the islands being hidden is good at first so that people don’t go in over their head, but I think after exploring the island the game should make the islands visible from a distance
And after the attack, the bacterium was released because they were researching the sea emperor’s ability to suppress the disease. The aliens brought the bacteria to 4546B, but never intended to let it out into nature. It was only after the disease was released was it then that an outbreak occurred, as evidenced in data files, and the aliens died. The Kharaa bacterium isn’t indigenous to the planet, further explaining why even the most evolutionarily advanced animals can be affected and why they created new creatures to further destroy the outliers.
@@arcticguy3455 No, it was not. The precursors brought it onto 4546B for research purposes, because the disease had already wiped out other worlds under their control. They had it isolated, but when they experimented with the fauna then things got out of hand and another world nearly died
@@gaminggeckos4388 For some reason I didn't consider that the food from the planet was included in the 1 trillion... But still, most of the food on 4546B isn't described as especially nutritious or flavorful, so it probably wouldn't be worth too much if Alterra chose to exploit it. The cost of the chips and the coffee, on the other hand, also includes the marketing budget, so it might still work out to be more expensive.
A few things in 44:00 onward. Spoiler warning for Subnautica AND Below Zero. The crater only has kharaa BECAUSE of the sea emperor leviathan, without her it would have gone naturally extinct presumably, alongside everything else on the planet dying. This is confirmed in the sequel, although I know Joseph had no way to know that upon creation of this video. This is important because it means if other precursor worlds WERE found, they would be unlikely to host any live kharaa that could infect new hosts, due to the bacterium being too deadly for its own good, which is pretty common in the real world too. It becomes even more obvious in the sequel why kharaa wouldn't be a significant concern this long after extinction, specifically because the precursors went fully digital in an attempt to 'wait out' the bacterium. The precursors were determined to keep this contained, so I really doubt they didn't take similar methods on their other planets. Although it is still worth noting that the precursors may in-fact have had many planets colonized, the galaxy is so vast that it would not be even remotely unlikely that we never find one until now, especially since the setting seems to be in its colonization fever stage. Regarding a warning, there is one, it's just not meant for US. The precursors were already informed of the quarantine, making any beacon pointless. Because when the precursors died, we weren't even conceptualizing space travel. It would be very odd of them to make a universal beacon just on the off-chance we evolved to such an advanced stage of space travel, it also likely wouldn't have worked anyways. The precursors would already know ahead of time not to land here, so there would be no valid reason for a ship to be here, and thus, it would make sense to shoot down anyone who attempted it. It's notable we never see crashed precursor ships in this game, because it clearly wasn't a problem for them. Regarding how unlikely it is to land in the crater. It isn't. Because they meant to land there. That's where the Degasi beacons were, so they were already nearby. If the ship's going down, it only makes sense to aim near human signals. There wasn't much reason to suspect an alien death cannon, so while Alterra is negligent, it doesn't come off as stupid here.
From what I know of Unknown world's other games, isn't the Kharaa bacterium more of a flood-like sentient plague? Assembling constructs and potentially even getting off-planet by itself.
@@lynallott3404 As far as I can tell, Subnautica and NS2 are set in the same universe, and Kharaa is in it, although it doesn't behave in any ways that are similar - Kharaa in subnautica is pretty much corona on ultra-steroids, while in NS2, it is literally the Scrin from C&C
A bit of a late comment, but the Aurora was never planning on landing. They were **scanning** to see if the Degassi was where it was last heard from. Even if they'd found hints of the Degassi, they would have continued the slingshot and just left to finish their main mission and report what they found to Altera.
@@DatCameraMON True, but after the Aurora was shot and a crash was immanent (or necessary), the next question would have been where to crash. I imagine "near the faintly detectable signs of human activity" would be the first and most natural answer to that question.
I love that there's no map I remember looking at the map briefly online to get a feel but ended up relying on memory and the aurora. Like how the dunes/blood kelp is roughly straight away from the side of the ship and crag/grand reef is behind the thrusters and bulbs are in front
The first half of this critique is perfect, but once you start getting in to the story and the so called coincidences it really makes me wonder if you even played the game. Practically every coincidence is explained in detail, to the point where I was cringing every time you brought up a coincidence. From, the Aurora was going to save the survivors of the Deghasi, to Peepers literally being trained to spread the enzyme, to even the smallest details like why the Deghasi crew kept going down. To be fair, your critiques of the story as far as writing were fair, I just happen to disagree, but your critique of the story in terms of plot holes and coincidences is frankly ignorant.
@@sjplive967 yes it does because it wasn't a coincidence? All the ships landed on at the same spot for a reason, the degrassi crashed there, the aurora was looking for survivors from the degrassi so they went to the same coordinates the degrassi did, the sunbeam was looking for survivors of the aurora, they all went to the same place for a reason
I liked not knowing that there were two islands before actually gowing to them. Though I do think it might've been better if you could see them from far away after discovering them.
I find Subnautica's story to be perfectly serviceable for the experience they wanted to make. Sure, it doesn't really stand to scrutiny, but it's there so the game can happen, and to provide context and direction, so I'm ok with it. The technical issues are a much bigger problem IMO. Both my Seamoth and Prawn managed to sink into the scenery multiple times, requiring me to use the console and dev commands to bring them out. Also, at one point in the game I got completely stuck, only to figure out I've literally been exploring 50m from the path forward, but the giant landmark that would have clued me in simply didn't pop into existence yet, making me think I'm just passing yet another cave wall. I LOVE the idea of having to play without a map and having to use clever ways to orient myself and learn about my environment, but not being able to trust my vision beyond my immediate surroundings (and without actual thematic reason why this is so, like fog in Silent Hill for example) basically sabotages this pretty efficiently. I still adored my time with the game though, flaws'n'all. It's unique, atmospheric, mesmerising and absolutely worth playing, as long as one can agree to accept the glaring issues and focus on the good stuff. :)
I agree with mostly everything, but there's one thing you said that kinda left me confused. I went to the captain's room and started building the space ship right after fixing the radiation problems of the Aurora. I built two parts of the Neptune before i stumbled with materials i didn't know how to get, because i hadn't even reached the river yet. So for me, the Neptune had a huge built up, and i couldn't have been more excited when i finally found the kyanite and the blueprints for the ion power cell. The final parts of the Neptune, after releasing the hatched babies, took me about an hour to finish and then i was done. Maybe it was because you didn't visit that part of the Aurora early enough, but the Neptune is something i was looking forward for almost half my playthrough, and the hype i felt when i was finally able to finish that was huge.
Yeah I started on the neptune I think before I even went to the Lost River, and I gathered most of the resources for it during my excursions to the Lost River and Lava Zones, so to me it was never a tedious hunt at the very end, but instead a secondary objective to keep in mind during the entire last phase.
Is there a real penalty for being too cold tho? So far the only thing I noticed was my hunger and thirst increasing faster while being cold and the sprint speed is reduced. Other than that I haven't found anything else (and I accidently left my pc running while being in glacial basin, I starved - but it wasn't the cold that killed me)
@@redzeppelin6 I am very much aware of that and have already played below zero - I didn't notice any real penalty for being in the cold for long periods of time, that's why I'm asking
20:43 what?! When I got the prawn suit I was afraid of everything. That thing was like my baby because it almost never left my base. I was to afraid of it being destroyed so I just killed everything with a knife. I only used it to explore the lava zone where my cyclops and seamoth couldn't. And I nearly had a heart attack getting it past the giant lizard.
It takes actual effort to get your prawn destroyed. You can literally fight leviathans with it if you have a grapple and drill arm and never face a real threat as it has so much health
I personally like not being able to see the islands, maybe once you go to them for the first time they appear but the surprise was that there WAS land. Which I didn't believe until I saw it myself
"The game stutters more than my youngest son when he's trying to learn new words and has more pop up than his favourite books." I can't stop laughing. Good one Joseph.
The pop up does kinda suck from an exploration perspective. If you are already squinting to see what ahead in the dark/depths its bad when things just start materializing 20 feet ahead of you
Actually there is a short term fix for the stutter on pc. Ive used it and it works, which is to erase the contents of cellscache (?) folder. I don't remember exactly because it seems the game fills this cache to keep track of all the changes you are making in the environment... I guess. Either way erasing the folder will erase everything outside of your bases. So all my air tubes vanished and the forcefields reappear, and all the gravity ball things went away etc. So its short term because as soon as you start doing stuff then soon the stutters will be back
its interesting because the aurora was originally inaccessible but so many people tried to get to it in the beta they decided to include it as explorable, could be why its so janky
@@nataliealphonse4634 no it's a good idea. It stays a mystery until it blows up and you make the suit etc. But the entrance... I entered Aurora twice by accident by just trying to look for the intended entrance. But I was in the walls, able to see the actual rooms and interior. The whole time I was thinking let me done with this place so that I can get back to the Subnautica.
I know that this is 3 yrs late, but I really enjoy this review and think it holds up in a lot of key aspects. But when you critique the end game story, I think a lot of it comes with how non-linear it is, and so a lot of the elements that make the ending connect for other players doesn't seem to connect for you. The Neptune rocket can be built a bit earlier than you did it, and if you did that you'd know that disabling the quarantine gun is necessary to leave the planet. Or, like me, you could simply infer this and read the alien data logs and such confirming this. You say that the gun only shoots down ships entering and not leaving, but that's just not the case. On the Degasi coincidence, it's noted on the Aurora (I think in its "black box" log) that part of the mission in coming to planet 4546B was to investigate the disappearance of the Degasi. The Degasi crew are noted in the game by your ai sidekick to have Alterra "signatures" and they have identical technology to you. You paint the picture that "oh the Degasi also landed in the same place" but it's more like you landed in the same place as the Degasi because the Aurora was going after it. Quite a few years too late, because part of the narrative is how Alterra sucks balls, but nonetheless they're snooping around where they lost the Degasi. When it comes to videogames, ass pulling coincidence is a norm, and to rectify that developers (sometimes) make in-game logic consistent so that the player can also draw consistent conclusions. You meet the game "more than halfway" on the technical parts, but you don't go halfway on the coincidences/story. Likely because you missed relevant in-game data. This is, in itself, an avenue of criticism for the game you could have taken up, had you been aware. That I can even comment this is a testament to the fact that you got deep into the "philosophy" underlying the game, as showcased also with your approach to the question of killing leviathans, so that's worth mentioning too. Very nice.
I'm inclined to believe that you, as well as many, many other people, have dramatically missed the point, the metanarrative, of Subnautica, which is why it felt so... undeveloped in ways that you expected it to be developed in. For example. When you said that the endgame should have been about "conquering" the environment, I cringed. The Aurora, and the Alterra Corporation behind it, exemplify that "exploit the natural world for profit". It's driven home in some of the more humorous lines, about how much you owe them for your survival, but it's also thrown in through things like Paul Torgal's focus on using the natural lithium deposits for profit, and claiming the moon for mining operations, and in some of the Aurora personnel logs, like the one that has supposedly-loving relationships being explicitly commodified. In the end, the Sea Emperor tells you *explicitly* that she gives you the cure because you came willing to treat her like an actual sentient entity, whereas the Precursors sought only to take from her, violently, as they had tried versus the entire rest of her species. Cooperate with the environment, and you will be rewarded. That's the Stalker tooth thing, and it keeps showing up thematically throughout the story. The Degassi logs do everything but say this outright. More importantly, though, is the fact that you, the character, do not belong in that environment. The predators are scary, and will eat you, but they're easily avoidable. If you understand the ecosystem, how the different predators track their food, you can avoid them, distract them, live with them. That's what the game practically tells you to do, but this is in direct opposition to the way many people play games: with the knowledge that everything is exploitable, and that you are meant to exploit it. This is not how the game wants you to play it, and is not even how the game conditions you to play it. It is, however, how *other* similar games have conditioned you to play it. I have a friend who enjoyed Subnautica like you did. He had a lot of questions for me about the world that he should have found answers to in the scan data and voice logs on the moon. In other survival games, it's just flavor text. Background information that doesn't have an impact on gameplay or understanding of the story. It's easy to gloss over. But in Subnautica, every bit of it is important for contextualizing the core themes of the game itself. Every single thing that you thought was confusing or went unexplained about the plot is very clearly explained in the same way. I hope you revisit the game with this in mind. In fact, I implore you. Revisit it with this new context. It pains me when people say the themes of Subnautica, or even of Below Zero, came from nowhere.
Murdock Grewar The Sea Emperor says that the Precursors locked her up („they build these walls“) and that’s the reason she didn’t want to help them since she wanted her babies free and not locked up in that facility, but. Plus she looks rather exhausted after they are free so idk if she‘s near death and sees the player as her last chance to get her kids hatched, that is just a speculation from my side. Just wanted to clear that up in case you missed that
@Murdock Grewar You missed the point as well. Precursors were one step away from creating a cure. They built teleports to all the biomes to collect resources, they have correctly deduced that the Sea Emperor can be the cure. All the required pieces of the puzzle were in heir hands (if they had hands). The only thing they failed to do was to talk the the Sea Emperor herself. She mentions how she tried to talk to them, to explain what they needed to do in exchange for her freedom but "they never listened". Instead they tried to bruteforce the formula and ran out of time. Whether they were physically unable to hear her, or ignored her, never considering her a sentient being, remains unclear. But there's good ol' irony under all of this. "the buggy twitches from the ragdolls" - these were added by the devs intentionally. A clever decision, actually.
Y'all missed the point of this being HIS critique, he is a RU-vid critic and these are his videos of which you may or may not enjoy, it is simply his opinion on the game.
@@inandout3432 His freedom is in expressing his opinion. Our freedom is in pointing out where he is wrong. Claiming that something is "simply his opinion" is not an impervious armor against critique.
this man spent ten minutes talking about combat, even though the game dialogue expressly tells you that it doesn't want you to fight. it's not a fucking combat sim.
That's why he makes the point "Why make the creatures killable at all if you're not meant to do combat?" His whole point is the game reluctantly allowed for combat and maybe it would've been better off with none at all
@@PutitinDaramen i think his point about the big creatures. Those shouldn't die from a knife or a drill on the basis of their size. It is not unconcievable to think so since its an alien planet.
that doesn't change the fact that their politics around violence made the game worse. they should have discouraged combat in different, more engaging ways. look at rain world, combat is a thing there (as it should be in every scenario involving pure survival) but if you kill too many creatures you invite much worse things to fill the niche you just opened up.
i remember reading somewhere that the Sea Emperor we meet in the game was kept on some kinda life support and lived well beyond its normal life expectancy. and that when you hatch the younger Sea Emperors, the mother dies because she spends the last of her energy to play with her young for a few seconds. not sure if this is true or not, but it's still kinda sad
Good video as always. It's interesting, some of the things you pointed out as wasted gameplay potential actually helped the immersion (no pun intended) for me. I *liked* that there were biomes and animals that weren't strictly necessary. It made me feel like just another part of the ecosystem, instead of some sort of planet-conquerer. I also weirdly didn't have nearly the scale of technical issues that you did. Not sure if there was a recent patch or just different hardware reacts differently. Regardless! You continue to prove that quality content is worth waiting for.
In the early access versions, there was a file that had to be deleted manually because it interfered with several of the game's newer patch files which in turn created tons of performance issues and lag spikes. Removing that one, single file made the game MUCH smoother in nearly all aspects. Idk if Joseph's version was a complimentary file that updated and replaced his early-access file with the complete game, or if he downloaded the complete game separately, but it seems to have been the prior and he was uninformed of the file performance detail.
I agree about the performance issues. I have heard a lot of complaints about pop in and clipping and what not, but experienced very little of it myself. I have a good computer but not some badass gaming machine and I was able to run it on the highest settings with few problems. I would give the game 8/10 personally.
Jacob Geller I also like it in games when they have stuff that doesn't link to the main plot or game play, things that are just there for world building. Only adding creatures and items strictly necessary for the core gameplay usually makes the whole thing feel artificial.
the biomes and animals that weren't necessary were really cool and felt immersive but at the same time with how many interactions the stalker has with being a hostile creature, bringing tons of metal scrap to it's nest, being able to use those same scrap to get teeth, and being able to feed it fish to make it tame. It just feels like it would have been cool if more creatures had more interactions with the player to make the game more complex. I feel like the lost river and lava zones could have used this especially as some of the hostile creatures there feel especially bland and could have had a bit more going on like the lava lizard and river prowler which feel really basic compared to the stalker and sand shark
"Your submarine and mech suit shouldve been able to carry far more" you can literally deck the cyclops in so many lockers you'll never be able to fill them all. Which is what I did, and proceeded to never worry about inventory space (or build a permanent base for that matter) ever again
@@DrORRB-qm7fl i mean i would appreciate if items in your lockers were automatically consumed by any crafting stations in that ship/base. Many games already implement systems like that and I don't see a reason not to have one in Subnautica. The amount of time I spent trying to organize my inventories and running around the bases trying to remember where i left that ONE piece of iron last time...
Good point. I focused on the “put stuff in” part instead of the “sort it” part and assumed that he didn’t even want to interact with the inventory. A sorting option would actually be really nice.
actually, we hear in a PDA log that the captain did a controlled landing to try and avoid crashing too far from land. I think it's in the trailer too. he also scans the floating island to be the rendezvous point for the crew, and since the secondary mission was the find the Degasi crew they might've scanned the planet enough to know that this crater exists (the handheld scanner is pretty damn fast after all and that gives detailed information - only makes sense that ship scanners could at least find land about that fast too) now as for the Degasi they could've done something similar, but yes it is kind of coincidental. I think also the QEP (giant cannon) sends a transmission, but it also kills you so fast you can't translate it. the precursors could also have just not left any evidence that they visited, and alterra's primary mission wasn't even related to the planet - the aurora was sent to build a phasegate.
It's so interesting hearing people talk about their subnautica experience. So many people talk about different feelings at different points. Personally I hated the prawn suit, i found it really hard to pilot and I felt very exposed in it. And I never built the Cyclops until I needed a bit of it for the Neptune.
I love cyclop because of this things: Its moving base, not only there's plenty of storage mounted, you can place yourself too. You can harvest food there. It is comfortable being inside, if its shutdown, while reaper is near, because you know itll never sense you even if it accidentaly strucks the cyclop. It is the best vehicle to travel far deep and being sure you wont starve, or have some missing ingridients, because you can even put the fabricator inside. Its power is enough to travel huge distances. But here are some downsides: It is slow Its extremely huge and hard to fit in some caves Its long to recharge The fire or flooding can happen (but its definitely upside of game mechanic, I love it in some way)
@@ceaselessdischarge1026 I have played the game, but I didn't understand why this "so apt" description had to be lauded. I thought the comment was stupid, that's all.
I generally agree with the theme of this video, in that Subnautica has a lot of varied problems that keep it from becoming a legendary game. However Joseph is misinformed about a lot of things in the game's world, mostly because he did a sloppy job at reading and understanding the data logs throughout the game. You can see a lot of people in the comments leaving good remarks about the gaps in his information. I love Subnautica, so I hope the developers can browse this place and find the best ideas for improving the next Subnautica game!
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 Necro-posting - while I do agree with a lot of his critiques and nitpicks, you are right on the money on how he misses things that are right in front of the player's face a lot of the time. I constantly see him miss a connection that is implicitly spelled out multiple times in game narratives.
Im pretty sure the reason why the islands are hidden is because they would instantly catch the attention players. The aurora's different, since it has its own barrier being the radiation that cant be entered until enough time has passed, and the mountain island will most likely still be one of the 1st areas you'll enter after the safe shallows, creepvine area, and the red grass place. Also, the rocket isnt some sort of "end game" task you suddenly get hit with. When I first played the game, I got the rocket platform blueprint before I even built the seamoth. By the time you are finally able to cure yourself, you'll probably have at least a couple different bases and a decent stockpile of resources, and you'll be finished in under 30 minutes
this critique would've been way more deep and engaging if you'd paid more attention to the story while playing. all the supposed plot-holes are explained. such a shame :(
Not defending it but he probably meant that it was more detailed and involved than just grabbing a plant and leaving. He described personally needing to interact with the creatures and figuring out each biome's little ticks that make it unique.
I think his main point there wasn't necessarily "going to every biome is bad actually" and more "the way the game sends you to these biomes is uninspired"; more "these areas were underutilized", less "I don't want to be here" Take this with a grain of salt, as I'm not him, but from what I gathered, he wanted to move the marker telling you to go to the biomes (in doing so, changing the objective)-taking it from a footnote at the end game to being a game-wide quest. Remember, in his version, the launch pad is something constructed early on, but the rocket ship itself is an epic creation. Taking it to its logical extreme, there would be context clues in the recipe for each piece nudging you to a given biome, setting a goal for you to conquer so you can mark it as "complete", instead of one magic fish telling you "glad you're here, here's the specific item I need from each of these places." (Of course, that has its own drawbacks, but I digress)
It's pretty clear he didn't pay all that much attention to the story itself. He seems to think that all the fish are cured of the disease, meanwhile the game states that the disease is absolutely everywhere in the ocean, just that the couple of square kilometers the game takes place in is being kept alive by the enzymes, as it suppresses the bacterium. Same when he asked if putting an enzyme-rich peeper into the alien blood tester, the fish is still infected, it's just suppressed. It's the same reason the player doesn't die from the disease. The reason the aliens didn't get the cure is because the leviathan's embryos cannot hatch alive without the hatching enzyme, which I assume would naturally occur or the leviathan would produce by eating the flora required to make it. In confinement, the leviathan cannot or refuses to do so, as all she wants is for her children to swim freely in the ocean. It refuses and, in fact, cannot give the cure to the aliens because it cannot communicate with them. As for why the aliens just shoot down ships instead of warning them? They don't care, plain and simple. Any aliens would know it's a quarantine planet and would know to avoid it.
I was surprised about the criticism of shooting down ships. Like, it's one thing to disagree with a fictional alien race moral value, it's another to say it's a plot hole. It's perfectly reasonable to shoot everything that comes into orbit, the laser is aiming at space, so if it shot things only when they were trying to leave, most likely a ship could land, not notice the quarantine and then try to leave, get shot a bit too late and have some debris full of the disease and maybe even an emergency ship fly off into space. It's just must safe to shoot everything trying to go in and out, than waiting for them to get out.
You're first point on that the Sea Emperor enzyme only suppresses the bacterium is addressed starting at 47:56 Why is it that the enzyme that is suppressing the bacterium in all the other life in the game couldn't sustain the Precursors? If it's capable of keeping everything in the game alive, why wasn't it capable of keeping them alive long enough finish their research? It's not a permanent fix, but given how it's sustained everything else for thousands of years is there any reason why this isn't a viable option? Your second point about the Precursor research was also addressed at 49:34 Even if communication was an issue between the aliens and the Sea Emperor, were these incredibly advanced aliens really incapable of creating a proper hatching enzyme just as you can in game? Even if they weren't, why weren't they able to use the Sea Emperor enzyme to sustain themselves long enough to develop a hatching enzyme? Why even have it in captivity if it would just do all this naturally? Did the aliens seriously doom themselves out of stupidity? As for the laser, the idea that these aliens didn't care about anyone that may fly by the planet contradicts what else we already know about them. I agree that they should have an aggressive defensive measure in place, even if it means shooting literally any ship that comes within range regardless of whether it's landing or leaving. But there's no reason why they couldn't also design something that contacts and prompts the ship well before they come within range of the cannon in hopes of deterring them from coming to the planet and getting shot down by extension. Given what we know about them it seems more out of character that they wouldn't do that. You're telling me that these aliens care so much about the tiny insignificant specks of life on this planet that they would go to the trouble to design a series of tubes connecting the biomes via an underground network forming an immensely complicated filtration system, just so that they could spread the enzymes from the Sea Emperor so that life on the planet could thrive, but also thought that any dumb schmuck in a space ship unlucky enough to fly too close to the planet can go fuck themselves?
@@robotspgc >Why couldn't the enzyme protect the precursors? This is not directly addressed as far as I'm aware, but it could have something to do with how vastly different the precursors were from 'normal' animals. The bacterium is stated as changing the genetic code or creatures, and the aliens (from what brief looks we get into their physiology) are said to be grown from seeds and can apparently 'download' data directly into and out of themselves. Matter of fact, the game suggests most of the aliens on the planet didn't die of the bacterium, but instead transferred themselves onto databases known as sanctuaries, while their diseased bodies were disposed of. So clearly, the base enzyme had either very little to no effect on the aliens. edit: The alien logs specifically state that the enzyme has shown to inhibit symptoms of the bacterium in indigenous life forms. So in its base form, the enzyme did nothing to the aliens. > were these incredibly advanced aliens really incapable of creating a proper hatching enzyme just as you can in game? Yes. They did not get far along in their research before the infection spread to all of them. The player is only capable of making the hatching enzyme because she tells you how to make it. The aliens were incapable to receiving the emperor's communications, and all she wanted was for her children to roam free instead of being test subjects. It's also stated that when the planet was placed under official quarantine and all warp gates were shut down, their research pace plummeted. >You're telling me that these aliens care so much about the tiny insignificant specks of life on this planet that they would go to the trouble to design a series of tubes connecting the biomes via an underground network forming an immensely complicated filtration system, just so that they could spread the enzymes from the Sea Emperor so that life on the planet could thrive No, I'd assume they do not care about whether or not life dies on this planet if it means they can save their species. The reason they built the system to spread the enzyme is so they can research it and its effects in a living ecosystem. If they let all life die on the planet, it would likely mean their research would fail due to lack of data.
Yeah, but description of Haraa and what devastating loss it may lead to can asure 99,9% of all universe population to stay far away from the planet. But seems that precursors was been an actual aliens no wonder why they didnt did that, since their language was unknown to anyone. They might tho, who knows if they inserted all the information on their language into that warning sound that makes the gun, or been sending those messages but simply left non-understood.
The PRAWN suit was a game changer for me while playing SubNautica. The game warns that untrained usage could result in feelings of invincibility. I confirmed this immediately upon entering the suit for the the first time. When i saw my new max depth was 900m, i literally yelled "oh snap!! No stopping me now!" Haha
I disagree about what you said about the islands. Being able to see them from the start would drastically change the beginning of the game. You wouldn't start exploring underwater, because it's not intuitive. You would instead start trying to reach one of the islands, before doing anything else. Having access to what is there that fast is also an issue : fruits and vegetables makes surviving exceedingly easy, and having access to all that immediatly would make the game feel... tame and boring. On the other hand, I think you're right when you say that seeing the island from under the water is an issue. I also think that the mist hiding the islands is a cool concept : it kinda makes people believe the planet has a will of its own. It's a bit sad that it's done so poorly, though.
They should have at least left a note or something to explain why the islands are shrouded over a distance and either removed or figured out an explanation about why the Degassi survivors encountered rain (PC encounters no rain or tides on a water planet with two moons which is weird) as a seasonal thing like Anderson said. I'm not asking for much, a few notepads would have sufficed.
It's also not completely unreasonable to not be able to see the islands immediately - this is a very common occurrence in real life (not being able to see things in the distance). I think the problem is the actual distance between your Lifepod and the islands, and how big they are, and that you can always see the Aurora
You made a good point here, and I'd like to add that it also would be nice to have a possibility to at least somehow remove this island invisibility after you have discovered them, for example turn off some sort of cloaking device that hides the island, etc.
This is one of a few games in recent memory, that didn't have a battle pass, that actually had me sit down and play it daily. I even looked FORWARD to playing it. Just building a base in each biome was enough for me to suddenly realize I'd been playing for 4 hours straight. Then when I figured out I could decorate my submarine I was hooked irreparably. I'm looking forward to Below Zero!
I always make my Cyclops have some cool stuff onboard! A planter with marblemelons, a fish tank full of bladderfish, some furniture (including a bed) and other stuff. Also I like gathering Sea Treader crap for my bioreactor, I have several lockers just for it.
@@lsswappedcessna I did something tragic on my first playthrough. In the island where you can find the melons I thought they were useless and ate them all. Then in my second playthrough I read the stats and regretted eating them bc then i could've had food in my cyclops
When you brought up the three stages of survival and how Subnautica doesn't have the third stage it reminded me that Minecraft doesn't either. Nobody talks about how insanely grindy Minecraft is and I think it has to be talked about because the things it does right don't make up for it.
I had no performance issues playing this game on PS4 so I can't speak to those. What I can speak to is things you call contrivances and unlikely coincidences. Most of them are not. In the data and voice recordings of the Degasi bases you find clear reasons for their actions. They too were working for Alterra and came to the planet for resources (Alterra wants money and mining makes money/provides resources for phasegates that they wouldn't have to pay money for). They landed in the area because it's the crater of a giant volcano and those are always mineral rich areas. I don't know if they new that there was life there but there was definitely resources that they wanted. The Aurora wasn't *just* sent to install a phasegate, they were also looking for the missing Degasi crew. That's why they landed near the same place. And the Sunbeam was tracking the Aurora's location so of course they'd land where we did. As for a warning that the planet is in quarantine, there is a transmission coming from the alien facility that your AI companion tells you, they can't translate. The aliens being so much more advanced, sent out a signal we can't read. It's like sending radio waves to cave men, they can't pick them up. That is confirmed later when you receive transmissions from the warpers but can't understand all of it, just the most important bits. That last part is a little convenient but I can suspend my disbelief enough to let that slide :) Most of these things are explained/heavily implied in scanner data or audio logs that can be easily missed (especially in areas that you don't need to visit often) so I don't blame anyone for missing these details. Most of your other observations are subjective so I cannot criticize them. A shame that the ending didn't work for you because for me it was a very emotional goodbye to a world I came to love. A world I feared, explored, conquered and most importantly saved. I tend to suspend my disbelief pretty far with games though, so your mileage may vary. (Also the end credit song slaps super hard, that's just objective fact)
For all its flaws, Subnautica when it's working properly absolutely nails atmosphere. The Lost River is one of the most memorable locations in gaming to me, right up there with Satorl Marsh at night. You have the ominous giant skeleton, toxic brine pools that look impossible but do indeed happen on Earth and that massive membrane tree. It's scary and beautiful at the same time! Perfect to keep someone interested even if they're terrified to take another step forward. It's enough to make you scared but not too scared to be curious about what's just around the corner.
@@woffsmart8657 but the thing is that he is just saying that the game could've been better with a combat system now obviously I dont agree on that point
Man I will never be as scared playing a video game was the first time I looked over my shoulder with my oculus and watched a giant pair of jaws eat me. 11/10 would trigger my water fears again.
Will you be more comfortable, if they wouldnt be killable? To me its just common sense: its a living creature, meaning its killable at some point. I believe you can kill the Reef Glider or whatever this huge pacifist thing, but itll take you so much hits with knife youll get old enough or its just impossible with the knife due to tiny knife damage in comparison of immense rock shield regeneration of the creature. Its the same as common spider - its tiny claws can do close to no damage to your skin so itll take far more time to kill you beside dying from the old age.
17:41 I disagree with the fighting enemies part. It wouldn't fit the overall game style if every enemy comes with a health bar and rewards for killing it. Its not a fighting game, its a survival game and a very realistic one who would lose some of the realistic feel to it if it had that.
its a survival game. so players should be allowed to waste food water and time, killing pointlessly. wasting resources is a survival mistake.. but this game does cleverly play on our brain chemistry.. some people just have to kill leviathans.
Bizz493 no combat? All we have is a dinky little survival knife and a drill on the prawn suit that is meant for drilling. That tells me that this game has very little combat..... like very little. I think it’s ok to be able to kill all the creatures with the little combat we have because these creatures aren’t immortal, they will eventually die, even to a dinky little knife. I think it makes the game more realistic.
I don't know what sort of survival you have experienced, but basics of survival does include ability to hunt things for stuff. Such as hunting larger animal for their skin, if needed. I don't believe for a second that a Reaper would not have ANY useful materials in its body we could use.
@@hydropump8731 Well you can make 2 types of torpedoes. Can be used on the Seamoth and the Mech Suit. Not bothered to build those yet.. So do not know how well they work.
I never found the entrance to the Aurora until I had to look up some hints online. Hence, I only ended up building the entire rocket at the end of the game as well. I was stuck with the paradigm that the entire game has to be played underwater despite finding islands which stopped me from looking for entrances to the Aurora on the surface, and just stuck to looking underwater for answers. It wasn't a pleasant experience looking for prawn suit parts all over the sea bed when it turns out, all of them are in the Aurora.
@@DNESE312 the game even tells you to go inside the aurora at one point, and before then it heavily implies it too when *spoilers* it blows up, that happens so early in a game that it's inconcievable that a new player will have gone much deeper than normal before this happens!
Well it happened to me. I kept coming back to the aurora failing to find an entrance underwater up until the end of the game. Then I checked for hints online and surprise, surprise, you were supposed to climb up to the surface and go in from there.
Except that the radio call which gives you the passcode to access the blueprints for the rocket is on a timer. It's pretty easy to be far in the late-game stage by the time that call decides to show up if it's not your first time playing the game. Which I think was what most people who've played the early access versions experienced, me included. I already had all of the submersibles with all of the available upgrades in place and was halfway of building a large aquarium zoo just for the kicks when I first got it. The only reason I hadn't also cured the Kharaa by that point was that I wanted to build said aquarium zoo first before doing the fetch quest for the hatching enzyme, and gathering the materials for 10 two-story aquariums takes a lot of time
Ok for the story: The degasi searched for minerals, so they probably approached the part of the planet with the most stuff going on, even if not, lets travel in the seamoth for 4 hours, that will spice up the game. You get coordinates to get to their island, would building a solar jetski for cross-planetary travel be so much better than swimming over like 2km? The aurora SPECIFICALLY approached the degasi crash site to scan for distress signals The Sea Emperor was pissy about being captured and obstructed the Precursors by not telling them how to hatch the eggs, but after 1000 years of solitary confinement it changed its attitude. Even early on it learned how to use its stomach enzymes to protect the ecosystem (enough for it to evolve at least), by mindcontrolling peepers. I assume it got this time by the containment facility having automated life support, while all the other sea emperors didn't die to kharaa due to being immune to it, but because their food died. The enzyme 42 spread by the peepers is just natural stomach enzymes and only suppresses the symptoms, the children are the one with the stronger enzyme (i assume genetic engineering by either the sea emp or the precursors) so no, the peepers are still infected, the kharaa is just dormant. The quarantine gun has no reason to let people land and potentially gain access to it and destroy it, when shooting anything big thats in orbit is just the safer choice. Potentially there were space beacons broadcasting warnings that got destroyed since. ALSO the last precursors should have activated the doomsday device and ended the entire solar system. Is it the most elegant story? no. Are there glaring huge plotholes like you described them? no. Are there plotholes? probably, like why the babies enzymes are so much stronger. But that may also be because im not deep into the lore
My favourite part is when I saw it I was like OK I’ve played it a lot I know I think I’ve seen everything this game has to offer and then you see a crack in the seafloor it goes deeper and deeper and deeper and then into the lava zone in the in active when I was on the active lava zone My favourite part of the game was definitely just finding that one cracked I just change the whole experience is everything fine yeah reaper and few ghost leviathans here and there but man I wish I could experience that for the first time again This game is definitely one of the best games I’ve ever played nothings ever going to talk but I experience with subnautica
You mention the hole in the plot of all of the ships all entering the atmosphere in the same spot on the planet but you seem to ignore the fact that your ship was following the coordinates of the previous ship crashing and the rescue ship was following yours. And most important of all aside from the fact that the gun could warp space-time and shoot around the planet without the first ship having run into the gun and being shot down we might never have had a story and hence a game. This is the same crux of most stories. So I fail to see how this was a problem.
Also, do we know for certain that there's only one gun? For all we know the one that shoots down the Aurora, Degrassi, and Sunbeam could be one of potentially thousands scattered across the planet, ready to fire at all angles.
@@projectbelmont7177 I doubt there's thousands, but definitely multiple ones. There are precursor bases in Below Zero which takes place on a completely different part of the planet, so this doesn't seem too unlikely.
@@billcipher147 I'm fairly certain that there is only 1 gun based on the fact that an alien terminal tells you that the laser bends around the planet's gravity to hit targets in orbit as well as the fact with the PDA entry that mentions the alien facilities on the planet doesn't mention any other gun
You clearly haven't listened to the story, found and read the psa entries, etc. Multiple of the "plot holes" you mentioned have explanations if you pay attention to the pda entries.
Yea and when he said the aruroa(idk how to spell it) just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be shot from the gun, he fails to mention the pda that explains they were launching a ground team to look for any degasi remains AND the fact that the gun can use the gravitational pull of the planet to shoot something on the other side.
One of my biggest regrets to this day was not going into Subnatica blind. I had always liked the game, but never got around to playing it. After watching a youtube series, i finally got it. Unfortunately, watching that series gave me more information then I wanted. I knew where all of the leviathans were, how to avoid them, and that i needed certain things for certain adventures. Then I double-downed, I searched things up. I searched up how to get to the Aurora safely, not to go to far, maps, and all that. It made my playthrough faster, but looking back I don’t know if I wanted that. If I could go back one or two years and tell my past self to go into it blind and not search up anything, I would do it. Now I realize the developers purposely left me blind, covered my eyes, and by cutting that cover, I made the already amazing game worse to me.
Yeah the game was still amazing to play after being spoiled but a lot of the magic is lost. I've really regretted over the years watching lets plays of games years ago as it has spoiled quite a few games that would have been amazing to experience blind
