@@Chekmate-em3mc Idk, I liked it. But, I watch a video for the full effect, not to gather the info I want. I'm also really high, so I zone in big time 🤣😂
@@natlocst yeah a few minutes in I saw that comment and for a second I considered clicking away or skipping ahead, but then I realized, I don't actually care about subnautica, I'm here for the big picture point about gaming in general, and it delivered
Something that really helps Subnautica direct the player isn't just it's depth meter. The depth meter simply hints at the possibilities the game might have. What truly guides the player are all the environments. The Kelp Forest, the Grassy Plateau, The Underwater Islands, (especially) the Crash Zone, The Bulb Zone, the Grand Reef, the Lost River, the Lava Zone... they all have something stand out about that that makes player want to explore them. Usually, that something is colour. The screen and water take on a different hue as you get closer to each biome, and each biome usually has some stand out feature that matches that colour. Others simply drag you in with awe. The Aurora jutting out leading you to the crash zone. The dry land of either the mountains or the floating island. The underwater islands (feature) floating in the... well... underwater islands (biome). Furthermore, the vast amount of space there is while exploring helps to make you want to travel around in the first place, usually due to the fear of open water leading you to a flight response. What more is that, due to all this, each person might not even experience all of the game by the time they finish it because they were attracted to a particular direction in which they found all they need. For instance, I found my way towards the west side of the world, being led into the Sparse Reef, Sea Treader path, and Grand Reef. Since I could find all the blueprints I needed to progress further, I never had a reason to go into the Underwater Islands, Blood Kelp zone, Mushroom Forest, or Bulb zone outside of sheer curiosity. As a player, I could then discover even more upon a second playthrough of the game and be amazed at how big the world actually is. My only complaint is that the Inactive Lava Zone and Active Lava Zone felt too small and that they provided too little to explore. The brownness of the Inactive Lava zone made the topography feel boring and the Sea Dragons following their set paths never made them feel like a threat as I easily skirted around them in the seaglide. To put it bluntly, they felt too final. There's no reason to want to stay because either you can see everything the active lava zone has to offer to easily, or you don't feel interested enough with the nothing that you can see in the inactive lava zone. So feeling like there was no reason to stay only made finally leaving the planet not feel as grand to me. Like no reason to feel bad about leaving a place I spent so much time in. No need to hesitate. That's all done. Time to move on and find something else.
I managed to complete my blind playthrough of Subnautica without a single death. I came close…. I was on the last hurdle, I could see the Sea Emperor’s containment facility… and the sea emperor started speaking in my head, making me deaf to my environment as a result, and letting the sea dragon sneak up on me and point blank me with a lava volley. My prawn suit broke. The sea dragon wasn’t satisfied. I grabbed my seaglide and dashed for the facility. I had a purple tablet with me, not the blue one. I was on the last 20% of thirst. My nearest base was up near the broken containment facility in the lost river. And I only had a seaglide and the determination to not die. I managed to make it through, thankfully
Hey, thanks for that end message. I've been personally struggling with motivation a lot recently, and I think it gave me a spark of it at the very least.
@thetallpancake I know, I know. Tried it out with some other friends a while back (certainly quite a lot of... interesting bugs). But, I think it'll still be an enjoyable experience nonetheless
I actually had a similar discussion with a friend yesterday, and I think the best part of how subnautica did progression was the radio. Leading you to lifepods serves to both bring you to new areas as well as near new equipment (best example i can think of is lifepod 17 taking you near the jelly shroom caves as well as to the seamoth bay), and the way the game implements it should be the gold standard for open world games like it. Another thing you failed to mention, but that i feel is equally important to the success of game, was not only the games use of depth, but its use of fear to restrict areas. As people who, I imagine, have been playing the game for years and years, its easy to write off the scary parts of the game due to how desensitized we are to it. However, for the first time player, the sheer terror of areas like the crash zone, the blood kelp, and the lost river serve to slow down and limit exploration, letting the player fully explore the areas they know while incentivizing them to upgrade and develop the equipment they have. The lifepods and the implementation of fear lead to a great internal battle of "wanting to know but being afraid to find out" that makes the game so much more rewarding to play. (Anyways, loved the video and was surprised to see how underappreciated it is. You have great quality in your videos, you make entertaining content, and you have great voice and diction. Keep it up!)
The radio is such a fantastic part of Subnautica, that many players don't even realize it's the game's hint system. It's the tutorial. It's the hand-holdy part of the game. Not only is the radio required only once (you need it to get the code to the captain's cabin), but it's very good about taking players by the nose and leading them around to the different biomes. Isn't it funny how one of the last lifepods you'll be directed to just happens to sit a short way from an entrance to the Lost River, the next section of the game? Or when you've completed the building tool, the next message on the radio points to the lifepod in the grassy plateaus (a good location for a first base). Or after you put together a mobile vehicle bay, the next radio message points you to a lifepod deep enough you'll probably need the seamoth to get to it? Funny how that works out, ain't it? Like putting pills in a piece of cheese so your dog will eat them, Subnautica disguises its linearity in a wrapping of story. And it does it really well.
There is an element of randomness to the radio, in that, you may or may not notice the nearby wrecks or landmarks if you just follow the waypoint the radio gives you. The UI doesn't do much to highlight wrecks, fragments or interactable objects. You have to notice them for yourself. I actually can't remember how I figured out that the fish were collectable, and not just like particle effects. You could easily miss stuff , even important stuff like Cyclops fragments, if you don't wander a little and encounter the right wrecks. When I found the Torgals' last base, I didn't notice the cave went deeper because I just wanted to get in and get out of that scary place. It's a brave move by the developer to make stuff this missable, and create opportunities for the player to get stuck, but I think it makes the game a little more immersive.
even tho subnautica is one of my all time favourite games and i think this more linear progression through its open world was great as a first time player, i think having much more things to explore and reasons to do so after “finishing” the game is a great way to get the best out of the spectrum of linearity. i really hope subnautica 2 gives that with either a very large world or some random generation (post game)
I don’t entirely disagree with any of the things you said about Minecraft but it feels odd to me that it’s included in this list. The differences between it and other games don’t make it bad, and in fact, are the best things about it. Minecraft is more like a format than a “stand alone” game in my opinion. It’s not meant to have a story, and all that open space, both literally and narratively, is there intentionally for the player to use as a creative space.
Just from a balence perspective tho, u can get full diamond without going underground, which just doesn’t make sense. In addition, as time went on the game only added features to make it easier without any to make it harder. (Besides the warden, but you can also just puller up to far for the boom to not reach you, and most people don’t go to ancient cities much anyways)
@@Cookieboi658 to me this is a very “…..so?” Comment. You’re trying to balance only for your gameplay style when there are hundreds more out there. Yes you don’t need to go underground if you only want SOME diamonds but if you want lots, you gotta go digging. Yes, it’s getting easier to “beat the game” if by that you mean fight the dragon, but the majority of the players don’t even do that in their worlds. The question I recommend asking when you come across balance issues in Minecraft is “balance for who?” because Mojang has to account for miles more play versatility than you do.
@@SunflowerMead0w dude, it doesn’t make sense that you can get the best gear in the game by only engaging in one part of it. By using villagers you don’t need to mine, or enchant, which defeats the point of MINEcraft. If you just want to build, use creative. Also, sleeping negates almost all danger in the overworld.
@@Cookieboi658 again, that only matters if your goal is to get good gear and fight mobs. It only doesn’t make sense TO YOU. Maybe consider the millions of other players ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also it’s not the best gear in the game, for that you need to go to the nether
@@SunflowerMead0w netherite literally provides no defensive bonus, I am making the point that Minecraft has a poor progression curve when you can get everything you need while staying in one place, I’m not talking about playstyle lol
One thing to note on subnautica, is how they were initially gonna have it be randomly generated like Minecraft. But they then went the other direction, and built everything in the map by hand. Also yeah, it has some performance issues. But it used to be a lot worse. Trust me, it used to be a lot, lot worse.
@@Just_a_Piano_my ps5 version on the new 3 month old ps5 was lagging spikes time to time when looking at particles and i pulled up the menu to change the fps which unknowingly locking trophies
The coolest part about SM64 is that for a lot of us, it bore the brunt not only of bringing Nintendo into the present (some would say gaming, though it wasn't the first, it did it better than many) at that time - but also teaching us HOW TO PLAY a 3D game. I can't tell you what it was like to go from 16-bit graphics to... this. There was no gold standard yet. I didn't have years and years of muscle memory and other games to go by. No basic knowledge that "3D games work this way" working its usual magic under the hood of my subconscious. Every direction I went, every new move, every new puzzle, was a whole new mini-skill. It was like learning a new language. The language that I went on to use in almost all of my gaming life. It extends to many things that aren't even gaming these days. The things SM64 did, the WAY it did them, were brilliant and intuitive. It paved the way forward and still somehow made learning it all fun, not frustrating. Wait apparently this was a Subnautica movie? I also love Subnautica. Good stuff.
Okay, grandma, take your pills Jokes aside, it really was a pioneer in the 3D space. Also, it's good to see you on 2 vids! (Sorry there's not much more quality stuff here yet)
@@thetallpancakeIt was such a cool part of gaming in general to be around for. But I think I was at a cool age for it as well. It felt like an interactive cartoon. It still holds up better than a lot of old N64 games (the later ones tended to have a much better handle on the whole 3D thing) I’m 36 so I was like 8 by the time I got an N64. Perfect year to capture that magic. ANYWAY I did love this video, you have a really solid start to your channel and an interesting approach. Obviously Subnautica essays have been done to death, so it takes genuinely good and/or unique content to stand out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go regale some small children with tales of dialup internet.
What's particularly interesting about Subnautica is how it also have failsafes in case the player misses a nudge towards a key area. If the player didn't already want to go to the Aurora after it blew up, lifepod 4 will also nudge the player to explore around the Aurora, and when the player finds the lifepod, (Which I believe is within a small swim of the breach) it gives them the tools required to evade the reaper at the entrance in the form of creature decoys. Plus, lifepod 4's log alludes to there being a way to enter the Aurora. And, if, after ALL that, the player still doesn't go into thw Aurora, the radio will end up telling you that there's something there by requiring the player to head in there for the blueprints to the rocket. There's typically always at least 2 ways for players to reach key locations in the game. Just as the Precursor base will lead you to the floating island, so will lifepod 19. Just as the Degasi crew logs will lead you to the mushroom caves, so will lifepod 17. Just as the Precursor base will lead you to a blood kelp biome and a lost river entrance, so will Lifepod 2 and the Degasi crew's third base. Subnautica is very much like Hollow Knight in how it tends to offer a multitude of methods of discovering the same key locations.
As well, one of the things that also makes Subnautica so special to me as an open world game is that you can move in all directions at all times. Since you are underwater, you aren't limited to the 2d plane (with the exception of the land segments but even those are always memorable) The important part of that is the sense of freedom that it gives as well as the sense of scale. It makes the world feel much more free, bigger, and fun to explore. And it isn't just vast oceans for no reason. In the deeper sections on the surface like the dunes, mountains, grand reef, they put leviathans as a threat for you to watch out for. And to constantly give you a sense of fear any time you explore a new biome since you are probably wondering "what if there is a leviathan here?" It's the main reason that the sequel Below Zero falls a bit flat to me. Even though I enjoyed it, the less open world and heavier land sections made it less fun to explore overall and hampered the experience.
I think one thing that makes Subnautica great is despite the fact that it's linear, and even though the story isn't actually that present, It's still fun time, and time again. I go back and play Subnautica every few months, each time trying to beat it as fast as I can while still keeping it a casual playthrough. Most recently, I completed the game in 5 and a half hours, and despite the fact that I completed the game, I didn't even experience too much of the story. Hell, I didn't even see the sunbeam blow up on my most recent playthrough, and despite that, it's still SO FUN.
My first minecraft experience years ago was "i created new world. I run into the water. I drowned bc i didnt know how to swim. I rage quit." I had less problems with terraria. Also about golden standard of open worlds. You should try gothic 1, 2, risen and elex 1 and 2. Piranha bytes create legacy not trough "vibe" but trough world building.
I think having a small relatively safe tutorial area helps in open world games, something where the player can experiment and figure out the basic functions of the game. Sure it gets a little annoying on the second playthrough where you already know what you’re doing and there’s definitely a sweet spot between not enough tutorial and way too much that a lot of games just do not nail. One of the problems with Minecraft is you have one day to figure out the crafting system and make a shelter before the mobs come out at night, you basically have to know what you’re doing when you start the game or it punishes you. With Subnautica you’re dropped into the Safe Shallows, an area where the only things that will kill you are your woefully short breath capacity and the crashfish. The fabricator is simple and straightforward, in stark contrast to Minecraft’s build mechanics, and the game provides you some starting food and water in case it takes you a while to figure out catching fish. The game gives you a simple objective at the start: craft a repair tool to fix up your lifepod. The game gives you some slight handholding in having an indicator next to your first limestone telling you to break this, showing you that breaking rocks is how you get raw materials. Once you repair the radio you get lead to your first lifepod, which forces you to leave the safe shallows for the slightly more dangerous kelp forest and grassy plateau areas. After this your second lifepod forces you to go a bit deeper, and also happens to be near a wreck for you to explore. By exploring wrecks you can find useful tech to scan and also possibly find a data pad that will point you towards the floating island.
Subnautica is without a doubt one of the best games I’ve played getting all the achievements during those few weeks in 2020 it is a creative and horror dream
As a huge subnautica fan, I would have liked more talk about the environment of Subnautica, but you still did a great job with this more specific-view of the game. I hope your channel grows, because I’m sure you worked hard on this and deserve more.
Creeping to the back of the Aurora with my hands sweaty on the controller from fear of the roaring, then seeing the Reaper emerge from the murky water is a gaming memory that is permanently burned into my brain.
Outer wilds is also another open world game that is really slept on. What I really like about this game, is every game mechanic is available to you from the moment you fire up the game. In theory you could get outrageously lucky and immediately solve the big mystery of the game on the 1st cycle. Instead of just getting a lore dump, mixed into the lore is crucial gameplay knowledge that actively helps you solve the game, but often you don't realize how important that lore was until you've gone to the next area and realize "wait a moment, I swear the place I was two hours ago mentioned something about this" Will never forget the feeling as I was sitting there at the end of the game, having finally discovered all the puzzle pieces but yet to figure out how they fit together or how to beat the game at all. I remembered 10 hours earlier messing around with a seemingly useless interactable structure that I completely brushed off from my memory previously. It turned out to be the key to solving the entire game and my mind was completely blown when that singular seemingly random clue from 10 hours ago caused the entire web of mysteries to finally fall into place, and it became absolutely clear what I had to do to win.
I loved when Breath Of The Wild released on the 3DS in 2017, then later re-released on the more popular New 3DS as it came out around the same time. The c-stick made everything a lot better, but I wish Nintendo didn't make the bottom screen of the New 3DS version redundant just because of the ZL and ZR buttons.
2:18 i totaly agree i remember just droping to playing minecraft as a kid knowing nothing about video games and it took me many years to beat the dragon and i wouldnt do it without youtube videos about minecraft
I’m bless to be one of the 1.2k people to watch this, i would watch a two hour version of these, please keep making yt videos with this quality you have to make it
Subnautica is very good, but it did make some mistakes in game progression with the lack of real depth gates when swimming outside of a vehicle. Sure, O2 goes down faster but it's still easy to cheese the game with a seaglide and a bunch of bladderfish and get really deep, and with the rebreather it's possible to complete the game without a sub at all. The lack of any kind of real meaningful map without mods was also a huge miss by the devs and makes navigating the world way more frustrating than it needs to be. Early game it's fine, late game it's just an annoying artificial limit. That said, I do really appreciate the open ended story where you can pursue it at your own pace with hints on where to go next but you're not forced to do anything.
the minecraft section of this video reminded me of my first experience playing minecraft as a 10 year old my friend was the one who introduced it to me, so i played with him for a while. we played on creative, making a big combined house for the two of us to hang out in. as i was building, i would see blocks that clearly had some sort of function (things like furnaces, crafting tables, etc) and i would ask 'what is this block for', to which my friend would explain that it was for survival mode this awoke some curiosity in me and i wanted to see what the survival mode had to offer, so on my own time i made my own single player world, and was IMMEDIATELY confused that clicking on blocks didnt break them. clicking on grass and flowers and stuff broke them, so i figured that clearly meant i needed to find tools to break other blocks like wood and dirt-- that HAD to be what the tools i saw in the creative menu were for, right? in my head it was just a progression thing i hadnt unlocked. you need pokeballs to catch pokemon, you need hammers to break things in mario & luigi, you need an axe to break wood in minecraft! anyway tl;dr: i dropped survival mode after about an hour or so of "not being able to do anything", not realizing that all i needed to do was HOLD the break button instead of just clicking once like i did in creative. eventually i saw a youtube video that showed standard survival gameplay and i went 'ohhhhhh' and now i love minecraft
I think the best shrines in BOTW was those where you have a challenge to unlock the shrines, like having a quest with an NPC or helping a dragon on a mountain. The puzzles shrines are a lot of fun, but I feel like they are boring visually, one of the coolest things about classic Zelda games, is the variation between dungeons, in one moment you find a castle in another moment you find an abandoned mansion, or an old prison. It would be cool if the Shriners were actually structures, the puzzle could be the same, but just changing the design would already improved the game a lot.
I honestly mistook the 1.37k subs for 137k subs and didn’t notice any quality issues and thought it was better than most. Good job man you earned a sub
Look idk who you are but I hope you see this. Quality content, genuine thought and some solid jokes. Keep up the great content! Oh, and I would recommend a play through of subnautica on hardcore, it’s a wonderful experience.
What a fantastic video from such a small channel! Keep this stuff up man, you've got a hella bright RU-vid future ahead of you with this kind of quality.
I definitely think Subnautica has A LOT going for it that, can actually be potentially replicated by sequels and just other upcoming games if they do it right. A big part that I think made Subnautica 1 so good and Subnautica Below Zero subpar, was that, Subnautica 1 you didn't even necessarily realize you were part of a story. At all times you felt alone with only the comfort of the PDA voice occasionally that acted as a almost a in-universe unintentional guide. Abandoned on a Alien Planet where nowhere really makes you feel safe aside from the Safe Shallows, nobody is coming for you, and vague remnants of a previous survivor group of a similar faith, and every other lifepod, giving you some early hope only to turn to ashes in your mouth when you discover it's fate. It's progression isn't awfully complex which I think is a good thing. Below Zero lost the sense of being alone. Your character speaks, there's a lot of surface stuff which I think hurts the experience as well, PDA voice is different and I wish they had just give the customization to change it, that would have been epic. The nostalgia of the OG PDA voice was greatly missed more than what you might even initially realize. You're not alone or really abandoned on the planet... it doesn't feel like a fight for survival more than just a exploration field mission which totally strips what made Sub1 SO Good. The water feels colonized by humans which it is, in places. At least in the first game the Alien bases left a sense of mystery & fear, that these guys packed up and left. I think Sub Below Zero would have been a better with some big changes and I hope they learned from it for Subnautica 3 coming hopefully to EA 2025. I am praying they bring back the old PDA and all the things that made Sub 1 great, with some positives of Below Zero.
Also i wanna add to one of your subnautica points. It is likear in what biomes you can and can't access, but still feels free because the biomes are so open (other than the lost river and lava zones)
Just started play NMS, and it hasn't managed to grab me, yet. Finding out why some random aliens are spamming me with the number 16 isn't quite the hook the writer thought it would be, for me. Building a huge fancy base seems like a waste of time, when the point is to leave, to see the infinite number of worlds and creatures. I think I will concentrate on upgrading the spaceship and see where it takes me.
Man I didn't look at any statistics before watching this video, but now im sad you're such a "small" channel.. This video is so well made and your points were so understandable even if I may not agree with some of them. Idk what to say in this comment, I just can say from the bottom of heart, keep going mate, your videos are fire and you just earned another sub
"there is a minecraft mmo" shows hsb and not wynncraft, which literally has a guiness world record for being the biggest minecraft mmo (good video im just very opinionated on this)
Eeeeh I would say that Subnautica sits in the middle between BotW and the far end of Linear at worst. Like it only gets linear at the Active Lava Zone. At the literal end of the game. Before that point, the ALZ has 2 entrances, the ILZ has 2 entrances, the Lost River has 4 entrances. Sure you need to find specific blueprints in order to progress deeper, but where you find those varies a lot. In some ways its even less linear than BotW. You need to fight those guardians? Well you need to go to specific areas to do that (I have only watched BotW, I havent played it. Correct me if wrong.) Meanwhile Subnautica has blueprint fragments scattered all over the place in such an amount that I can double the fragment requirements of every blueprint and still find enough.
Getting my steam deck tomorrow and subnauticas one of the games I picked up to play on it. Never played it before but I heard it not only runs well and looks great. But the battery life when playing it is quite good! I plan to also play gta5, rdr2 and no man's sky. So it'll be good to have a game that I can play for long hours. I love survival games and story games, I'm sure I'll love it!
This happened to me a lot with the sea dragons. Except instead of phasing into the ground, it emerged OUT OF THE FLOOR, spitting FIREBALLS right underneath me. It was terrifying.
