I like the idea that these beasts are still 'on the planet' we as humans just haven't found them yet. Their biomes haven't been explored so for now they are 'Schrodinger's species'
@@jamesbruce5849 i think he means that nobody knows if these creatures are real or not in the subnautica universe, for all we know they are alive in some undiscovered biome deep within 4546B
Thankfully most of them would not be able to stand up to the immense might of flip-flops and/or you would have to go multi-millionaire expedition levels out of your way to encounter them.
Humans are to most terrified creatures on earth it scare me way more than the reaper leithiviath in subnautica it put chills in my back hearing the words Humans
The Rotnest is an interesting idea but I feel like it's nasty enough that it should probably be the main subject of its own game, rather than being a secondary threat. That kind of virulent zombie parasite plague would be a big deal.
Fun fact that has to do with the vent spider: yeti crabs are a sea creature that live around vents and have hairs covered in chemosynthetic bacteria, which they eat!
The ascender worm would have kind of been a funny one because one of my biggest issues with both games in terms of realism was the fact that not only could you ascend incredibly fast with no consequences, the air bladder was almost designed for that exact purpose! The idea of a creature doing pretty much exactly what the air bladder did would have been kind of funny and it would sort of force the developers to implement a decompression sickness mechanic. Although thinking about it a little bit more, with this game set so far in the future with phasegates, virtually infinite air supply for submersibles, and massive undersea bases, it's not so crazy to think that such an advanced civilization could possibly invent super efficient countermeasures for decompression sickness. Not to mention with constantly having to swim away from predators while performing complex tasks, especially before having a submersible, it would probably be rather annoying to not be able to get to the surface as fast as you can from any depth.
I mean it is quite popular to think that the reason o2 drains when you go deeper is because your suit uses more oxygen to keep the water out, letting you go basically as far down as your tank can allow. I would reckon nitrogen wouldn't be a huge problem
Tho on the other hand, itd be interesting to have players get hurt by a deep sea predator, and then they frantically look for a nearby squid in order to emergency-evac back up to the surface (or at least, away from the assailant). The poor squiddy would probably be thinking “Wait, you _want_ to rapidly rise to the upper levels?!?” xD
My day is not being that good, a lot of problems are happening for me nowadays, but seeing that a video of yours have just come out makes my heart more happy
I honestly feel like instead of using the Void Chelicerate they should have gone with the Ice Dragon. You would only encounter it at the edge of the map where it's open water so the size of the Ice Dragon wouldn't be hampered by glaciers or other environmental objects.
I don’t know why they didn’t make a void shadow leviathan, that was the most obvious choice to put in the void for me and I’m a little upset they didn’t, but ah well, cie la vie
I feel like the Ice Dragon could've been implemented into the ecological dead zone instead of a variant of the Chelicerate. One of the problems with the Sea Dragon Leviathan is that it's in an underground cave and can easily clip into the walls and ceiling. The Ice Dragon wouldn't have that problem because the ecological dead zone is just open ocean.
But then you run into yje lore problem of figuring out what it'd eat in a lifeless area I haven't actually played the game though so there might be fish there that i don't know about
@@indegomontoya244 The PDA says that the Ecological Dead Zone can only support 2 kinds of life, microorganisms and leviathan class creatures. I'm thinking the leviathans are either cannibals, or they hang by the edge to eat whatever comes too close.
@@jacobcox4565They can’t be cannibals because if they’re as big as they are and they’re like the normal sea dragon leviathans in reproduction rate that would easily cause them to go extinct.
I also feel like it would be the natural prey to another cut creature, the Electrogami. Remember, the Crabsquid got it’s EMP ability to defend itself from the Ampeel, it would only make sense of the Pygmy Crabsquid had a similar foe.
Holy cow! I did not know there were so many cut creatures! Quick question, have you ever considered doing your own speculative biology project? With the way you cover others', I think seeing a biosphere of your design would be really cool!
Honestly, this! Maybe in the future, when CA is even more familiar with how speculative creatures are designed, they could make a small series of videos about the process of creating these wonderful possible lifeforms. Kind of like how Mark Brown from GMTK, a mostly game design analysis channel, is currently making his own game from the stuff he learned from analyzing others' work and what makes those what they are. He then makes videos talking about the design process, with all the ideas that go through his head and the struggles that come with them. It's a good way to see game design from another perspective, that of someone's first time making a game. I'd honestly love to see this kind of content in the future!
@@gribberoni My friend, have I got a surprise for you. Check his channel again. He even covered another one of Alex Ries' works on a sentient race known as the Birrin. You should definitely check it out!
There's a mod that brings these scrapped concepts to life in game though only some, but I believe the devs of the mod will update it soon. But there's also a mod out there with a creature that can reach..., Gargantuan proportions
@@pacrat6271 I thought it was clear and or black are you talking about a leviathan I haven't heard of? I'm talking about the one with the tentacles on it's head
@@pacrat6271 and you're sort of correct only this guy or the adult is clear but I liked the black colored design and think the clear one should be the juvenile. Ya get me?
@@Masterplanfoiler found it, the one in thinking of is called the gargantuan leviathan, I don’t remember if it’s fan made but I saw it in a video, rlly cool looking It may have been black looking back on it, I think I may have saw art of it that was red or had red lighting 😅 so it’s making me think it’s red
The Rotnest is the most terrifying, the Icebreaker and Bulldog trapjaw are the ones that I think would fit in the best, the Grabsquid is the cutest, and the Shardrunner is my favorite.
I was feeling very sick last night and needed something distracting, but something I could fall asleep to, so I put on the Speculative Biology Playlist and it got me through the night. Your voice is very soft and calming without necessarily being lulling. I love all of these, keep up the good work!
the design for the Architect alien are pretty cool in terms of being like a highly intelligent oceanic-like creature which sort of fit in with the subnautica theme. although we didn't get the answer to why it was change in the final game. was it probably because it didn't fit the part of those Architects were from a different planet as well, who came to do research on the planet.
@@tjarkschweizer I mean, there's the fact that the centaur design isn't actually their "true" appearance, just like how robot bodiess irl don't look exactly 1-1 with our human forms. Al-An actually confirms this when he mentions how his species' true form was actually discarded since it wasn't as useful as the biomechanical bodies they could make (meaning the centaur body is just their equivalent of a car, AKA an artificial vessel used to move around better than their true organic bodies).
@@tjarkschweizer I think honestly the point wasn't to be just creative, the point was for them to make something they deemed was appropriate for what they wanted to achieve with their idea of what the Architects wanted to achieve in their design, literally the whole point of Architect is to have no nonesense wasteful bullshit fantasies or creativeness, it's efficiency and functionality first. It having 4 legs and a corporeal body shouldn't bother anyone or make them think it's just a centaur, hell it's far from it when looked at properly. The real bodies are likely what you would wanna see, but that's not important for now.
@@raionshishi8290 "no nonsense bullshit fantasies" but that is literally all Allan's body is! It's just flashy nonsense. It is neither functional nor efficient.
The Leaf Sheep is even weirder than a symbiotic relationship with algae, which is common. In contrast to for example corals, they don't use the Algae, they eat the algae, digest it except for the chloroplasts, and then incorporate the chloroplasts into their own cells. That way they can directly preform photosynthesis, and are likely the only animal capable of that.
Something that made me sad in BZ was that the Ice Worm took up one of the leviathan "slots". As cool as it was, I would have liked to see one more species of carnivorous sea-dwelling leviathan to make Sector Zero's waters a bit more diverse on the leviathan front.
The iceworm is such a cool creature in concept and theory. It's genuinely so badass. But the way it was implemented was really lackluster. It's honestly downright silly at times. The way you constantly get booted out of the hoverboard, the way it just sometimes stands there and does nothing, etc. I know this might not seem ideal, but I honestly wish that the iceworm would have been implemented as a highly scripted encounter, with actually polished cinematics and interactions, and way better animations. I know that the whole point of subnautica is that the creatures are living breathing parts of the environment and ecosystems rather than just set pieces and decorations, but I feel like the iceworm is unique enough that it could fill that slot. Maybe make the iceworm the "giant ghost leviathan" for the ice biome i.e., if you go too far into the plains, the iceworm spawns and starts violently chasing you. But like actually properly chasing you, it doesn't do that weird swan neck thing. And the longer you stay in that environment the more iceworms spawn. Imagine speeding across the glaciar wastes and having like 5 iceworms chasing you until you eventually die. It would make for a really compelling encounter, rather than just walling it all off.
This is so cool! I didn't think there would be any more Subnautica content, but we get not only that, but CUT ALIENS and ALEX RIES as well??? Thank you both for doing this, the games are breathtaking and I can't get enough extra content for them!
I always love these Subnautica videos! Its interesting how many creatures have in depth descriptions and have so many interesting factors that could apply to in earth creatures. Love the effort you put into this!
Some of these creatures especially the first one are actually in the original subnautica thanks to the team behind the De-extinction project and you can indeed interact with them
The below zero map is 1/6th the size of the original Subnautica’s map, and far more shallow. I’d imagine all of these could fit in a full-sized below zero map!
the problem with that is that lorewise there is no real ecosystem, like if you read the notes it literally talks about how the ecosystem shouldn't be viable so as much as i'd like to see that i don't know if itd fit the channel
I’d say my personal favorites are the Kitewings, the Grabsquids, the Bulldog Trapjaws, the Ascender Worms, and the Ice Dragons. Also, I would’ve liked it if the Shadow Leviathan looked like THIS. 15:31
This title is really enticing since there's only.. Maybe 10 creatures to encounter in the original Subnautica? It's very very cool to see other designs from someone who actually worked on the game
Probably not counting all the random prey species and plants and stuff; if you have trouble remembering all the less in your face animals/plants, a Randomizer run of Subnautica gets you to remember them real fast.
I'm honestly choosing to imagine these creatures are being alive in sector zero, but just not modeled in the game. Alex has such amazing design ideas and it was great to discover all of his creations in the game ♥
@@hakimdiwan5101 I don't care what's it's like being dead I just want to have a way to look back at earth while I'm dead I would so totally chil around fir years watching science discovery stuff lmao well once I die in the many many coming years I'll figure out if I can really see anything still xD
I'd be curious if you'd be somehow able to do a speculative video on the horizon zero dawn games. Though they're not entirely evolution based, a lot of the machines are made to fill specific niches within ingame lore where past fauna has gone extinct. They also help terraform the planet by filling those niches so that it can be more habitable. Ex: Grazers dig through dirt and soil, possibly taking out weeds and making room for new seeds to be planted and grown. Water machines like Widemaws work to filter water, probably so stuff like algae can't grow uncontrollably. Some machines are even built to help each other or prevent pollution. Watchers and burrowers keep a lookout for herds so that they don't fall into danger. Scrappers and glinthawks collect scrap that they bring back to cauldrons to be reused to make new machines. In some cases, more aggressive machines like thunderjaws and fireclaws are made to fend off potential threats like humans trying to take down machines for parts.
Personally i want the next subnautica game to lean into some more massive creatures and stranger designs, the beauty of subnautica was always that sense of strange biology and weird fish. I really want to see some more gigantism above all else
I am genuinely bummed we didn’t get the grabsquid. I have such a love hate relationship with it’s bigger deep sea cousin, since it was the first creature to really scare me in game. It’s actually size when you look at it from inside the degasi base shook me to my core. But the grabsquid’s so adorable!!! And a fascinating take on how environments affect the evolution of species
The video title made me wonder something, but you went a different direction with the video topic than I thought you would. My question is, what did the full form of the creatures who left behind skeletons for us to marvel at when they extinct on 4546_b look like when they were alive? Did the dev team ever have concept art for the skeletal forms we can see in Subnautica? The leviathan (databank entry: "Gargantuan Fossil") in the lost river zone with the juvenile ghost leviathan comes to mind first, of course, but also the skeleton outside the Lost River Laboratory Architect Cache (databank entry: "Ancient Skeleton") , and any others that are in the game.
I've never heard of this game before and got recommended this video for some reason, but I really enjoyed it. Both the used and unused creature designs are incredible!
The Ascender Worm that causes decompression sickness is cool💖 Also, the Rotnest biology looks similar to that of Surinam Toads giving birth. Trypophobia trigger indeed!
I’ve heard of decompression sickness as well as nitrogen narcosis which wasn’t mentioned in the video, but it makes the idea of diving way more terrifying. Go up to fast and you’re insides bubble like soda and pass out. Go down to far and you start hallucinating, next thing you know you drown because you took off your mask and tried to breathe the water. From a gameplay perspective it might be annoying for some players but it could also be as a way to prevent players from going straight up to avoid danger or diving to deeper waters without proper equipment to lock off certain areas of the game. Subnautica somewhat already has that with the rebreather and the depth modules though, and the decompression sickness would be annoying as it would be harder to go up to the surface for oxygen.
Honestly just shows the potential of subnautica games and what a let down below zero realy was, not to say it’s necessarily a bad game, it just could have been a lot cooler.
16:17 You know what would've been cool? If this leviathan is so big it's eyes might've been a problem, then why not only have its head sticking out? Here's the pitch: An Ice Dragon Leviathan got stuck inside an iceberg or something, and now only its head and part of its neck are sticking out. We can place it near an important story area that is relatively easy to get to, so it makes that area more intimidating. It will still freeze any vehicles that try to pass by it, and any players that get hit by its ice directly are instantly killed. So how do you get past? Well, the creature has to sleep, right? So you just go to that area at night! Yeah, it might be a bit ambitious or annoying after you complete the story in that area, but I think it would be a neat little puzzle.
Sorry to burst the bubble, but that could cause many problems. Also, that wouldn't explain how it got "stuck" in an iceberg. it would be best to have a skeleton and a pic of what it was, to give a better sense of "show, don't tell" while letting the imagination run wild.
@@razzberysmoothie2838 yeah, and mine is called is a opinion (like the idea) mixed with a tone of something called "critism" dude. Chill. I didn't say having an idea was wrong, just that this one has holes in it.
@@razzberysmoothie2838 and I want to say I wasn't trying to be hostile, just I talk and think very critical of things causing MANY online and many irl to think I LIKE (I don't) arguing or being hostile to people.
All of these concepts are awesome, and I would've loved to see these creatures in-game. For some reason I really love the Rotnest, maybe it's because I'm a fan of fictional parasitic organisms.
I hope you do something like this again, I know John Dunlop the realistic pokemon and prehistorica guy through a friend, he's a huge fan of speculative biology fan and would probably be up for a guest video.
This is a pretty nice mix, like many "never added" things in a good game, most don't really work. They'd be too different or too similar to the base game/out of environment. ... But some of these, they could go nicely. I think the failure of Subnautica is its game story system, it's aimless. But the art and biology is incredible. That Shadow Leviathan though.
You failed horribly as soon as you mentioned Subnautica story to be aimless, literally the game is highly praised for it's overall incredibly unsuspecting story build and also because of how it's implemented in a way that doesn't rush or force your or hinders your pace and gameplay yet still somehow follows and makes sense no matter what path you take or if you miss something or skip it or get all the info and even in a different order.
Re: The Rotnest, if anyone ends up seeing this, they should know that CA's description of the ophiocordyceps fungi is slightly inaccurate or misleading. Specifically: the fungus takes control over the ants' ganglia (its brain-equivalent) but the idea of that turning it into a "zombie" is incorrect. The ant isn't dead when it's infected. Ophiocordyceps only controls movement. The ant is aware of what's happening the entire time.
I think the ascender worm is actually a really cool idea! I do scuba diving in real life I'm very passionate about the ocean so to see this reference in subnautica is beyond cool! Although I can see why it was dropped because subnautica does rely on you getting air by popping to the surface which because of the air bladder tool and also the fact that most people don't know about decompression sickness would I think mess up the gameplay.
This is my new favorite channel. As an amateur artist who loves character and creature design these documentary style videos of creatures from games are MY SHIT
