@@Frigorito3975 You right, tbh I feel like the devs would have been better off if they just enlarged EVERYTHING including the map by just like 10%... The Squid Sharks and chilli shrimp would have been alot more scary if they where a just smidge bigger, and if they did more damage to the truck. Both of those are easy changes, its painful the dev's didnt just do that and left them feeling weak, their awesome designs.
@@AlexHonger-fj3nx i do agree although; i do think that the shrimp is a really well made creature and should stay as it is. however its being the only real leviathan you see aside from the shadow leviathan, so its pretty much overused. The squidshark could have been fitted for the lilypad isles as maybe an overgrown version as the "leader of the pack", but now im just theorizing ':D
Headcannon: There are leviathan sized squidsharks out there, the big ones just go out in the void and the they use Sector 0 as a breeding ground. Kinda like how ghost leviathans use the crater to lay eggs. Hol-Lee-Chit! I think this may be the most likes I've ever gotten. Thanks!
@@MinoriGamingThe issue is, I swear the PDA, or some other in game source mentions there being far larger creatures in the void, my best guess is that those creatures are too far away for any sensors. So the ghost leviathans. Or ghost chalicerates are just a gameplay thing, to prevent the player from escaping.
Yeah, it checks out. They're like some aquatic mix of stoat and badger when it comes to just ruining anything's day and hitting way out of their weight class.
While some of the more spicy creatures like the Boneshark might challenge that definition, I like it. With Humanity having a presence on who-knows-how-many planets in the galaxy, having a universal definition of "these things will fuck your seatruck/land truck up" could be useful. The Squidshark ekes it's way in with it's proven ability to crack seatruck screens and EMP your ride.
They don't even grab onto the prawn, so I would say this makes more sense They do a little too much damage though seeing how the prawn suit is supposed to be like capable of withstanding massive creatures, I feel like it would have made more sense to focus of the electrocution part
Another example of leviathans getting preyed on is sea treaders. If they had no predators then they wouldn’t bother kicking the player if they got too close, and they have thick armour to protect them.
These might be the features that make them no longer good prey for whatever would otherwise try to hunt them. Kind of like turtles or porcupines, their defense mechanisms eliminate a large group of potential predators, but just because they aren't hunted by them right now doesn't mean they can get rid of said defensive features since obviously that would make them prey again.
It can be for creatures like sandshark. On earth we have cookie cutter sharks as example. For a creature as slow as sea treader, shell seems to be a necessity since any predator could get a bite of their flesh and run for it.
Unless Evolution works in a completely different way in the alien planet, armor is developed before size. The Sea treader might have just evolved from a smaller organism that needed a shell to survive
@@raffaelegiacomaniello3415 that's just normal evolution. Also the mechanism of evolution is so universal that it applies to any information that can be reproduced, modified and selected, alien organisms evolve in the same way even if they use a completely different kind of genetics.
I kinda like the idea of it just being one of those animals that simultaneously fits in multiple categories and denies all categories, or ends up needing one all to itself, like a platypus. I imagine in-universe that the idea of a squidshark being a leviathan is heavily debated and controversial, just like the 'is pluto a planet' thing
Maybe there’s disagreement on what constitutes a Leviathan, like how there’s still some disagreement on what constitutes life. It could be like viruses where depending on your definition it may be alive, dead or like ‘eh sorta kinda both…?’
Fun fact: Pluto was declassified as a planet out of sheer laziness of not wanting a bunch of planets. So they changed the definition of planet to exclude the mass of extra planets. Gotta love humans
@@Skullhawk13 no there is an actual metric. A planet needs orbit a star, be spherical, and have enough gravity to clear its orbit of similarly sized objects. Pluto runs into a lot of stuff because it isn't big enough to clear them out, not a planet.
That’s an after the fact definition that only came after they found a lot of Pluto-like planets. It’s a statement of opinion that they declassified Pluto rather than have so many planets out of laziness. But it is actually true Pluto was considered a planet. This isn’t a “Tomato is a vegetable too” situation. Literally they’d never said it had to clear its orbit of other objects of similar size prior to the discovery that led to Pluto’s declassification.
I honestly love the Squidsharks! They are silly little guys and I am happy you can find eggs for it and have them in a tank! Just a lovely addition for Below Zero in my book.
What is prove it isn't really a leviathan. Because we can't collect eggs of leviathan creators, because the devs what the leviathans to be speciale and not something you can just put in a aquarium.
They actually fill the same niche as the crabsquid and even have the same disabling electrical attack (not to mention having "squid" in the name). Although I think the Squidshark is a bit bigger.
Maybe the squidsharks we see are juveniles? The sea emperor juveniles are pretty small, possibly our size when they hatch. It could stand to reason then that the squidsharks need some time to grow. We might not see the full sized ones since they're out in the void, dead or alive who's to say.
That would explain there Appearance in the deep twisty bridges and the places like the Lili pad zone that has a lot of cracks they could potentially be the super predator of the micro biomes
Great theory, but I reckon the pda would point that out tbh. I mean, if it's good enough to discover how old (approximately ofc) a fossil is, (yes Im assuming it'd still be using carbon dating as we do irl, but in labs instead) from just a little scan of it, surely it could detect whether a creature is juvenile or not
@@iAletho how? by waiting 300 years in a completly decimated planet, then when @Fulgrim2 finnaly shows up throw a bomb at him, and proceed to trash talk him so hard that his ego never recovers?
I have a theory that this PDA was written before the Squid Sharks design was finalized, maybe the Squid Shark was originally gonna be bigger than it is now.
It was, the original squid shark was going to be around 20-30 Meters and was like that in the beta build. I think when they finished designing the biomes, that they didn’t think the squid shark would makes sense with those smaller areas and decided to shrink it. I am pretty sure though that they forgot to change the entry and that’s why it still says levitation class predator. Sorry for the long explanation
BZ was supposed to be a short campaign dlc, it got made into seperate game because of hubris, and had to scale things up... IF it was going to be bigger then, like make BZ a separate game, the BZ Des in charge of the final project f*cked it up...
0:53 my personal belief is that a leviathan is defined as dwarfing the vast majority of other creatures within the region they inhabit aka it’s not how big it is fullstop it’s how big it is in comparison to the other creatures in their chosen habitat
It might be a case of the squid sharks WE see don't classify as leviathan, that the species overall size range dips a bit into the smaller end of leviathan scale but it's not classified as one for us because none we would see are in that range. Think of the dramatic size difference between the standard and void Chelicerates
The sea treaders are not noted as being on the smaller end of the leviathan scale, and given the context of the squidshark we can probably assume that they fit comfortably in the leviathan scale and the squidshark is at the bottom end of it.
Honestly, I'd refer to organisms like the Squidshark as a "Pseudo-Leviathan", a creature that shows *some* leviathan-class traits, but not enough to be a leviathan-class creature. Like the Titan Holefish for example, its essentially a supersized holefish, and could be on the same level of "pseudo-leviathan" as the Glow Whale and Reefback in the leviathan class, a harmless gentle giant...to us. As for the frozen/extinct leviathans, maybe Royal or Kaiju-class Leviathans? Or something simple like Super Leviathans lol
"pseudo-leviathans" does sound like a term scientists would use, and it makes sense. Gonna start referring to squidsharks and some others (like sea snakes, for example) as that now.
I myself would love these creatures in a future documentary: Cuddlefish Peeper Architects The peeper leviathan (just kidding) Traivelle (Maybe) gryptosuchus Lavalizard Scrapped sand leviathan And (titan) holefish I love your videos and I hope you see this!
The definition of leviathans reminds me a lot of the irl definition of megafauna. Both are semi-scientific classifications. The latter's lower end varies between 2 and 1000 kg. While you would get quite a few odd looks by saying your cat is an example for megafauna, you wouldn't be completely wrong. It would be interesting to compare squidsharks to the largest creature not considered a leviathan.
There's clearly an in-universe biological classification called "leviathan", and squidshark is just one of its smaller members; there seems to be a specific size range as the PDA mentions that it had to be adjusted upwards for the emperor Leviathan. It may not technically fit the gameplay role of a leviathan, but we're talking about what scientists would classify it as.
I don't think it's a biological classification necessarily but more of a practical one. Similar to the race category as used today, it often coincides with broad biological traits but its usefulness breaks down when you get into the details.
The PDA doesn't sort it as a leviathan, it doesn't even have leviathan in the name. Below zero has many PDA entries that are lackluster or rushed, I'd assume that they just threw down the term and left it. Not a leviathan, just a bad PDA entry.
In this sense there’s probably some weird biological reasoning for it being classed that way. Like how bananas are technically berries but you don’t see the reason why unless you dive in DEEP. But, I feel like having that sort of reasoning in a game like this is kind of a cop out answer and hope it’s not the case
blueblue the banana reference is a bad analogy. Wild bananas make it very obvious how and why bananas are berries: they have seeds lined up all throughout the fruit flesh with a tough rind on the outside to protect them, just as we see with fruits like watermelon. Modern bananas obfuscate this anatomy by genetically removing the bananas ability to create seeds within its flesh.
personally, i would classify squidshark as somewhere between a standard carnivore, and a leviathan, due to the PDA saying its a leviathan, but its a little over half the length of the smallest leviathan: the Sea Treader a "sub-leviathan" if you will also, here is a random thing: the crabsnake is i think over 20 meters in length (20 meters is the leviathan threshold, i think) yet its not classed as a leviathan.
The squid shark may not technically be a leviathan in a physical sense, it’s still a leviathan to me, in my heart❤️ (I like squid sharks I think their design is so cool)
I mean, it does say "A leviathan class PREDATOR" Not just a leviathan, being able to prove this point further with it being in the "CARNIVORE" category and not in the "LEVIATHAN" category. Which would mean it can hunt like a leviathan, it just simply isn't classified as one. Another theory could be that it can't defend itself from other leviathan attacks well enough and could easily be killed by another leviathan, I say defend as some leviathans such as reefbacks don't attack other things and are not threatening but can still defend well against other leviathan attacks as they have defensive measure like their shell or reef on their back.
Leviathans original dictionary meaning means "great" or " big tail" so even if the squid sharks is smaller then its relatives its still a leviathan. Bonus fact the first ever recorded word of leviathan is a Hebrew mythology about the first ever dragon.
Don't quote me but i an 90% sure that when they were released in the beta they were oveg 2x their current size and were called the squidshark leviathan but when they were made smaller the leviathan was removed from their name but i am pretty sure the pda entry is still the same
4:05 That thing (ice worm) doesn’t actually live in water, contrary to box art. A more appropriate category for this creature is “Behemoth” class, for it’s a land (or glacier) dwelling organism. As that stands, the only reason it’s classified as “leviathan” is because the PDA in Below Zero is meant to help the player survive in 4546b’s arctic waters. Therefore, it’s most likely a technical classification bug on the PDA not accounting for a giant land-dweller and shoving it into “Leviathan” for less systematic confusion.
I believe that the squid shark being called a Leviathan-class predator but not a leviathan, might as well mean that its power and strenght is comparable to that of a leviathan, without it being one.
My thought is: the PDA says they are levaithan class predators, not levaithans themselves meaning they eat like or as much as a levaithan but not clasified as a levaithan species
I'm pretty sure the definition means that the creature is almost unkillable by other creatures within it's habitat along with this it should also be an extremely massive organism
personally id give the squid shark an honorary leviathan tag, because it scared me a whole lot more than the chelicerate, the shoe in reaper for sub zero. the chelly just didnt impress. i know it had big shoes to fill, but i feel they did so horribly. i found myself shrugging it off, while i was much more concerned about the squid shark. but thats just me
I think that the chelicerate ai is just too wonky. It takes forever to aggro, and it loses interest after one hit. Not to mention it doesn't really sound intimidating
@@xxjoebamaxx7782 Reaper's also lose interest after a hit and take a bit too aggro. I literally just got finished exploring the wholes dunes and crash zones and I managed to slip by a majority with ease. Hell, just dodging the reaper for like 10 seconds causes it to lose aggro. Reapers AI can be pretty wonky too, especially when they start phasing through the ground lmao. Reapers aren't that scary IMO, but chelicerates still freak me out a bit. Passing through the purple vents STILL makes me nervous, especially since the Cryptosuchuses make so many red herring sounds that make it hard to tell which roar is the Cheli. Everyone's got different experiences. I especially found reaper's less scary because by the time you go anywhere they are, you should already have gear that makes them a complete joke. They are practically harmless against the prawn suit, the cyclops may as well be invisible to them, and seamoth can make them a joke too with the right equipment. I have to go to areas with the chelicerate before I have super powerful equipment, which makes them actually scary for me.
Dude, if it’s bigger than me, and it makes me have a constant fear of paranoia, it’s a leviathan. If not, you best believe I am getting that thermoblade!
The most common definition for leviathan is "a very large aquatic creature, especially a whale" and "a thing that is very large or powerful, especially a ship," so needless to say, being very BIG is one of the main requirements.
one thing to think about is that leviathans typically are long and worm/snakelike or have tentacles. not all of them do but thats something to think of. also typically in real life and subnautica, the deeper you go the bigger the things get, the squid shark seems to stay closer to the surface than most other leviathans.
In the biomes crabsquids live there seem to be no actual foodchain to put them at the top of Crabsquid is not an apex predator because it lacks anything that would be under it other than small fish
Maybe there could be a new categorization of creatures known as "Pseudo-Leviathans" where they are top of their food chains, but dont necessarily meet the requirements for a true leviathan.
Theta is 21 metres long so on a pure length basis that makes it similar in size to the Sea Treader. On that basis I would be inclinded to say yes, but weight / mass could also play an important factor!
Reapers are down in the caves because before the aurora there was another entrance to the lava zone there. The Sea Dragons would swim up and drag the reapers into the lava zone and kill them there.
Ampeels are 20 meters long, making them more of a leviathan in terms of length than a Squidshark. However, they are not necessary at the top of the food chain, as Reefback Leviathans can spawn in the bulb zone, and Ghost Leviathans can be found in the blood kelp areas.
I think you're videos are really awesome and really underrated. Your commentary is chill, your delivery is cool and your comedic timing is on point. Really well done, you deserve way more.
It's actually huge it's just that subnautica struggles with them making feel big for some od reason even though it would probably be able to swallow the player whole.
1:17 that fossil in the undersea river kind of reminds me of the ice monster from one of the early Fortnite live events in CH1, think it was CH1S7 when it fought the megazord style mech/robot and ripped off the bots arm
the Squidshark is the cougar of Subnautica, mainly because the people who called them panthers didn’t have forensics, and therefore didn’t know that it’s more related to a housecat than a lion.
The main thing I noticed was that the squid shark is called a "Leviathan Class Predator," whereas the Reaper is called a "Leviathan Class Species."" These are similar terms but not interchangable. Think of it like humans and Lions. Lions are an apex predator, but humans are the apex species.
I love how barely anyone understands the sheer size of the Garg, it is said that it cannot stop growing (i’ve seen some people say that, i’m not 100% sure)
There’s one forgetting something!!!!,if the fins are electric charged then - … - ,what if that’s holding its weight wile making it seem light in waight
Its possible ’large size and weight’ may be defined by the other creatures within its environment. So, a creature like stalkers have similarly sized creatures like a gasopod in close proximity (since the kelp forest and safe shallows are very close to each other). Which makes them not a leviathan, because they are not abnormally sized for their general location/environment Also note that ive played all of about 5-10 hours of subnautica so I’m definitely no expert and may be completely wrong with some of my evidence 😅
I read somewhere that leviathan-class was anything bigger than 30 meters in some dimension, and thought that was the standard. Now I'm second-guessing wherever I got that information from.
Month ago I finished my 2th Subnautica playtrought and somehow I didn't see any reaper leviathans. I don't know what happened, but probably I was just lucky😅 (Or maby they were scared away by my ugly pink little seamoth)
I really hope the next game will have something like the gargantuan leviathan. Just imagine swimming in the deep, open ocean. And suddenly you see a dark shape on the edge of your vision, almost incomprehensibly massive. It really gives than otherworldly horror feel.
I get the feeling that when they made the squidshark, they had this plan to make it fill sort of the same role that bonesharks had in OG subnautica. HOWEVER... I think they took a good look back at how bonesharks and other creatures of their size functioned in game and in particular how players tended to interact with them and regard them as hazards... I think at that point they might have noticed that a lot of people don't really fear those types of hostile creatures at all, even thinking of them more as just minor nuisances to be rammed with a seamoth or punched with a prawn suit until they either F off or die, or just ignored entirely (because they're really just not that threatening when you're well equipped) All of this considered, I think it can be a solid explanation to why the Squidshark is in the spot that it is... I believe it can also somewhat explain the Cryptosuchus, too. That thing is massive compared to all the things in original subnut that fulfilled it's same role, and it makes some much bigger of a show at being scary... Although as we are all aware, it is still an early game enemy in an early game biome, and as such, is a coward. All in all I think the squidshark and the cryptosuchus were just two sides of an experirmental spectrum of approach they took to try to make people care about the non-leviathan predators.
I feel like the sharks in the kelp forest arnt leviants, because reaper leviathan can go there. It's never really common in-game. But that just game design as it's an entry biome. But at not point it's specified that reapers don't go in shallow waters. That the issue that come with analising games. Is that when it's not specified lore wise, its can easly lead to game mechanics being miss understood.
The SquidShark is by far one of my favorite creatures from subnuatica. Smooth animation, cool design, and takes the player by shock! I’m really sad that most of this video was mostly just talking about its classifications unlike other videos from Aletho where he talks about the creature’s origins and lore.
Somebody probably already said it but the gargantuan leviathan skely in the green water zone is only a juvenile. (I think it says it in the pda but I'm not sure) Making it way more terrifying when you think about how big the adult probably is.
i think it's any aquatic animal larger than 30m, backed up by the first line in the reefback's pda entry: "This vast lifeform is in excess of 30m long and has been designated leviathan class." Also the iceworm is amphibious, it spends most of it's time under the ice sheet undoubtedly underwater.
My theory about them being "leviathan" is because devs intended us to scan them first before any of the Leviathans. They aren't leviathans in the map, but they would be the largest carnivore on the map to be scanned before chelicerate or shadow, which are harder to scan and needs a lot of vehicle upgrades to get there.
I think that Fear, or at least some sort of awe is a characteristic in leviathans. For example, the sea emperor is friendly but it still scared me a he first 10 times I saw it, simply just because of how big it is. But the reaper, which is significantly smaller scared me just as much because of its appearance and personality. The squid shark, like you said in the beginning of the video, is scary. It’s a predator, and is at the top of the food chain. And comparing it to the majority of creatures in subnautica, it’s massive. So I personally would still consider it a leviathan, because of the fear (or awe) factor that all leviathans have
I never even knew it was classified as a leviathan, ironically that might be why I was never afraid of it, it was just like a slightly bigger stalker to me
I honestly think that the squidshark is the type of organism that *could* be a leviathan but its juuuust not there yet. Like its the Pluto of leviathan organisms, or maybe its one of the rare organisms that arent leviathans but can put up a decent fight against one.
The top of their food chain means their hunting methods. Reapers stalk ghost leviathans go straight in and so on, they all have different methods and are the best at it
What if the Squidshark is a Juvenile form of the Chelicerate? Where they undergo a metamorphosis and become a Chelicerate, so they are just carnivores as squidsharks, and leviathans as Chelicerate. I doubt this is the case, because the scanner would probably recognize them as one turning into the other, but I like to think it is possible, because of their similar mouth shape.
I always thought the Squid Shark was kinda a type of leviathan that had to be small, given it lives in fairy small caves it dwells in. I feel like if Unknown Worlds used that idea, it would work, but given that they exist in the Lily Pad Islands its either A: my idea gets thrown out. Or B: they maybe just come out and up into the Lily Pad Islands for food, possibly.
