Hey folks - this is a reupload from my other channel Ceronesthes, so if you feel like you've seen this video before under a different name, you have! Sorry for any confusion, thanks for bearing with me as I move stuff around.
I've watched this video two times allready and saved it so i was confused when i couldn't find it. I think you perfectly explained why below zero was so lacking compared to subnautica 1. Especially in terms of how not immersive below zero is because of the dialogue, leviathans and bioms. Let alone the shitty story.
I like how Subnautica 1 really enforced the illusion that you weren't supposed to survive. The only difference between Riley and the other passengers was where their life pods landed. It felt like you were beating the odds with every breath
man I really remember every time I went deeper and deeper in I would think "I'm not supposed to be here, am I ?". and actually discovering a new biome felt like a huge accomplishment because I never felt like I "conquered" the sea, more like I'm slowly learning how to adapt to it.
@@Jonouchigambler Exactly! I remember this too. A combination of laziness and fear made it so that it took me years to actually finish the game lol. Every biome I ventured through felt like a whole new adventure to defeat. New threats, new resources, new story, new visuals! BZ was just so mediocre in comparison (Although I will confess it had several pretty, unique looking zones)
@@Bollibompa I really do question if going for mass appeal often helps or is a detriment. Seems like the only true success for taking away horror elements for mass appeal was Resident Evil. Could also argue that it only worked because I think it didn't have as much competition, so they were able to transition away from it to become more action packed. Which I guess then helped it break into the movies. Other horror games like Dead Space are not really talked about anymore.
@@ZombieManF I'm not entirely sure, but if it was the early access with the big shield around the planet, my guess is that it would be kind of a retcon, since in the previous game the reason why nothing can get on or off the planet is from the big G.U.N on the island, so if there was another defense like a shield, then the Sunbeam or the player would be unable to arrive/leave.
Agreed. I think the original story direction and the original voice for Robin, are much better. I don't know why they decided to completely overhaul the story. The original story had more tension and interest. It is really just disappointing for those of us who played the early access and were excited for what they were initially building.
@@Teslabluewolf Thats what I'm saying. The og story was so much more interesting with the rogue agent and Alan needing to hide from alterra. Everything about that story is just better.
@@FlareFritz I'm glad its not just me who feels this way. I remember playing it back in beta and being excited for what they were building. It was a real bummer when they scrapped it.
Reposting the spoiler of all dialog between Robin and Al-an: Al-an: You humans do a thing. We don't do that. It's stupid. Robin: It is in fact very, very good that humans do that thing! Al-an: I do not understand. Robin: Then maybe you are wrong for not doing that thing you don't do. or: Al-an: That thing that just happened. I will re-state that it happened. Robin: Yes.
I always thought that those interactions and the PDA about a colony of sentient microorganisms were so neat-- exploring the differences alien life could have from our own while still being somewhat relatable. AL-AN finding bits of information about human behavior that he finds odd or intriguing, and bringing this seemingly normal thing to attention as something unique or at least done differently than how he expects. And as for why Al-An wants to have a body despite not explicitly needing one, Robin actually asks this question. Al-An explains it such: "When stored as data, it is true our consciousness remains intact, but nuances in personality caused by interplay with the storage medium are... lost. It is like a factory reset." I believe that is roughly how he words it... and that implies that despite being very helpful, transferring their mind as data is *not* a lossless process.
@@yogurtofthemultiverse2200 But he already is stored as data, so that process has occurred, it's not like he can un-lose these "nuances," whatever they're supposed to be, or for that matter that if it's truly like a "factory reset" he wouldn't even be able to remember them happening in the first place. He also can't ever decide if he's an individual or a collective.
@@CruelestChris Bruh, you obviously didn't hear him. Alan's an INDIVIDUAL COLLECTIVE, duh. Jk. Honestly though, I was trying so hard to enjoy this game because of how great the first one was, that I didn't even notice how stupid a lot of this stuff was at first. Then the game forces you into so much tedium, that it was only a matter of time before I was treated to enough time devoid of gameplay to really take in Robin lecturing Alan like a freshman in Philosophy 101 might spout off to their mom to sound smart. Funny thing about actually erudite people, is that they tend to be pretty humble when interacting with other experts. But here goes Robin, someone who's probably spent about 80% of their life in school, likely having at most a couple of years of experience in Xenobiology, giving what amounts to a colleague - 1000+ years her senior - a good old-fashioned man(kind)splaining. Like damn, I know that the Dunning-Kruger effect is in the process of being debunked, but as written, our girl Robin really lends credence to the theory.
@@meneither3834dude,most astrobiologists are like "ooh we found hydrocarbons in mars for the 29384828338th time!!! We will first say it may be life but then that it is not because we'll volcanoes !!!!"
A perfect way of forcing the player to complete sam's story would just be for Alan to say "I must see my people again, but I cannot show my face again before I fix the mistake I made" and then force the player to cure the frozen leviathan, completing Sam's story, proving that the antidote works, then make the antidote again (which should have had a peeper in the recipe) and bring it with you to end of the game. It really wasn't that difficult.
Maybe they just didn't want to do it like that? "It really wasn't that difficult." It's probably not that it was hard, it was just the writers wanted to take the game a different route.
Maybe the recipe had a misspelling this whole time. Perhaps it was a peeper but writer accidentally typed pepper and the programmer simply followed orders lol
The recipe would need a peeper from the equatorial region of the planet though. So it would probably only be found barely alive in an aquarium in some base somewhere. 🙂
I will always consider Below Zero as the Arctic DLC. It just makes sense. Also, I think Riley and Al-An would have a MUCH more interesting dynamic: The one who failed to cure the bacterium and the one who succeeded. A lowly technician and a high xeno-biologist.
AL-An: Fascinating! How did you managed to make the Empress cooperate in synthes- Riley: *My brother in Christ you’re the reason my entire bloodline is going to be in eternal crippling dept, don’t talk*
It would have been super satisfying to hear this "high and mighty, superior than you" punk get told that his attitude is the only reason for his race becoming unalive. "You just had to ask." I bet he'd get really angry at first and rant about how his personal views on science above all could totally have fixed everything given more time. Only to eventually break down and sadly admit that his hubris cost him and everyone he knew their lives and now he wants you to build him a body so he can go home and look for survivors of his shattered civilisation.
That's simply what the whole game looked like to me. Seemed like a self-insert fan-fiction story with childish and illogical characters. Dodged a bullet by not buying.
I am astounded to hear that the developers were INTENTIONALLY trying to move away from the horror element. That was probably the most important ingredient to the first game's success! Baffling decision.
complete disagree. subnautica isnt really a horror game, its mostly an exploration game, with horror elements. below zero is not that much diferent. the problem is, the first game was hands off, when it came to the story, while B0 was all in your face, which feels guided.
@@SammysCreations i dont think many people consider it to be bad. mostly mediocre. which means, middle of the road. its still one of the best first person survival games on the market. its just that, it doesnt feel like a worthy sequel to the original game(which, i still defend is far from perfect as well).
Subnautica was NEVER intended to be a horror game! The devs didn't want it to scare people. They were trying to maintain their vision. Personally I think the horror elements make Subnautica not as enjoyable to play. I enjoyed Below Zero much more than Subnautica purely because it didn't have the horror elements.
Honestly, I feel like this game was lacking any events. Like when the Aurora explodes or the Sunbeam is shot down. Big stuff like that stuck with me and made me feel small and alone within the world of subnautica
For sure I remember the early access event impacted me a lot, the game started very calm and then suddenly it kicks to a very high pace, with you trying to survive
That's exactly it, in subnautica 1 you felt like part of the bigger world, In below zero you feel like the whole world revolves around you. It's not immersive at all
The first game was not angry. It was not aggressive and it did not hate you. The first game was indifferent, and that's scarier still. It gives a sense of scale, because you're tiny and not meant to be there; the whole game leaves you with the feeling that you're not welcome in a way that even a map full of enemies, placed there especially for you, just can't. The second game is story driven, and the devs want you to get through it. There may be hazards around, but the game itself is far more... welcoming. In Subnautica _you're_ out of place. In Below Zero, you're on a ride.
Well said. Subnautica's like being in one of those dreams where you know you're not supposed to be, and filled with this feeling of anxious dread. Not because something's specifically out to get you, but the laws of nature just keep moving, indifferent to your presence.
True. I have no problem with narrative driven games, I actually enjoy them a lot, but what adding a narrative does is introduce another barrier to success, because they can work against you as well as for you. Bad games are rarely rescued by a strong narrative, but good games are frequently diminished by a bad one. So it's risky to add such a heavy handed one to a genre game where it isn't required, and to top it off they chose to center it around an active, extant, fully voiced hyper advanced alien. Advanced aliens are such a trap as plot devices. They're like time travel: great writers can pull them off but anyone less than great is going to be tripping over their shoelaces trying to write them and so would be better served by not even bothering. BZ spends a lot of time tripping.
@Jacob-df5hr What's even weirder is that Subnautica was already a pretty narrative heavy story for its genre, But it was executed with a subtle hand and it was perfect to nudge the players in the right direction But never force them
Only thing I'd point out is that the Ghost Leviathans are apparently filter feeders, but are highly highly territorial, so no they wouldn't have tried to eat the dead reaper, but if Margeruit tried going into the water they would've tried to maul her
but there arent judt ghodt leviathans out there. the void near the below zero sector is full of giant chelicerate which definitely aren't filter feeders. and could definitely nibble and nip at the corpse, and beside there was a vast amount of space between the 2 maps and there is nothing but plankton and the most massive of all leviathan out in the void.
I was thinking the same thing, but for that to work we need to assume only Ghosts are out there, and there are at least Chelicerate, and this is to assume that the Gargantuan Leviathan is actually extinct and not just living in the deep void
I mean I had the idea she just sort of floated through using the corpse of the reaper like a canoe. I would think the ghosts wouldn't attack a corpse, and if she if hidden was from view by virtue of being in the top of the reaper, they should have no issues with her
I think there's a decent chance that we were supposed to question her reliability as a narrator. She spends a lot of effort to be intimidating, so perhaps the tales of her exploits are made up. I don't think there were any witnesses, but it's been forever since I played this heap of half-baked mediocrity, so I can't remember. Just another example of an idea that could have been kind of cool if resources had been allocated correctly. It's just so apparent that the vision for this story changed completely with the new writer, and that the game never had a strong direction anyway. Years later, I'm still in shock that the "sequel" to the game that revolutionized the Survival AND Exploration genres was so misbegotten.
@@CetomimusGillii there are no living witnesses, one of tge torguls saw her stabbing a reaper as it swims off with her never to be seen again, the in below zero when we see her she has a reaper leviathan head and mandibles hanging in her base and bones used to decorate several other parts of her base
My favorite Al-An inconsistency is when he says he doesn’t know what music is and Robin has to explain it to him and then like 30 Minutes later he explains that the Precursors are a hive mind using a musical analogy (strings in search of harmony). A+ writing there
It would be funnier if you could hear him typing or searching through an archive before making the analogy, making it clear that he was trying to make an analogy that worked for Robin.
@@derpfluidvariant0916 but that would imply this alien species achieved all its Clarketech without a basic understanding of harmonics, something the ancient Greeks considered one of the most vital foundations of mathematics >2000 years ago. Like getting to space in Civ without inventing the wheel.
@@ultureWell but what if the civilization used spheres instead of wheels, and some other basic concept that exists on such a planet instead of harmonics
@@ulture But then your comment implies that harmonics are the only possible way to understand mathematics, or that wheels are the only possible way to invent vehicles. But there are alternatives, as another commenter pointed out, why not use spheres instead of wheels? Why not use planets instead of harmonics?
Having to hear a character talk in general was a bit odd, especially after the silent character of the original game. Completely different style of design
One thing about the subnautica leviathans is your first encounter with a Reaper, and leviathans in general, was probably around the Aurora where the waters are murky, visibility is extremely low. You'd hear their terrifying roar and have no clue where it came from. You don't even know where to look for it because it could literally be anywhere around you. It very quickly sets the realization that the world WILL kill you and you need to respect it. Reapers are also found in the Dunes which is another pretty low visibility biome and there's warpers in there. And frequently that's what they did with enemies in subnautica. You'd hear warpers coming in from nowhere and would have to try to sneak around terrified of if they saw you or not. For the most part, the game provided a feeling of powerlessness You slowly get used to some of the early biome stuff as you play the game but past a certain depth, everything is just scary. People talk about how they don't want to go to certain biomes in Subnautica. And it's not horror in the classical horror sense, it's terror. It's that visceral knowledge that you can't do anything about your situation. Meanwhile SBV is waxing about high school philosophy with not that many predators and casual free diving down 200m without a rebreather.
Sound was the most complimented and commented on with the original. It sucks that they fired the composer & sound designer before or during BZ’s development.
better one is that they kill eatch other i belive that it's implied that the dragon ones feed on reapers it dosen't help that you can hear a leviathans roar in every biom
I think it's also because creatures like the shadow leviathan stand out too much It has a bright light blue stomach which can easily be seen from afar. Whilst reapers have nothing but their white/reddish skin.
The crash site is the scariest biome for me in the original game, even more than the crater's edges. The murky waters, the constant roaring of the reapers, and the fear of being there when the night fall make me freak even after having played this game for 7 years. There is nothing of it in BZ. But to be fair, there was also some lack of inspiration in this horror fealing in the original game too, especialy in the latest parts, with the sea dragon who look like a plastic toy. A lot of the later creature have this uninspired look, they just look like goffy water dinosaurs, not like aliens creatures like the crabsquids and the reapers.
What you said about warpers is spot on for me! This game wormed it's way into me fears so much that just hearing one warp in makes me turn around and run! Subnautica really is just such an amazing experience!
I dont even really care that she talked. But she would talk and comment on litteraly everything and she would spell out how your suposed to feel in any situation instead of YOU figuring out how to feel.
It definitely took away from the first one you used your inner dialogue while the second one spelled it out for you…almost like the devs were trying to manipulate you on how to feel/think. Intentional dumbing down.
I was once walking on the ground then picked up a databox. A bug occured (I guess) and the PDA started to talk with its old voice and said « New blueprint acquired ». That blink from the old game just made me realise how much I disliked playing Below Zero and that I was actually forcing me to play it, always expecting something good to happen. I think one of the major issues with this game is indeed the lack of tension but also Robin itself. She. Talks. Every. Time. She comments everything and it snuffs out my own thoughts about a discovery. In the old game, the character didn’t said a single word so I was completely identifying to him and I really got that sensation than it was me being on the planet. Without internet, I would never have known the character had an actual identity.
I didn’t even know he had an identity 😂 but you hit the nail on the head with one of my biggest gripes about the game. Her talking constantly, then Alan butting in and they’d go on this long conversation it drove me kind of crazy at times when I was trying to concentrate. The existence of Alan also ruins the precursors too. Imagine instead of having this constant head companion they treated it more like the sea emperor and left some mystery to the whole race. I mean sure there’s still stuff to consider but it’s just exposition dump after exposition dump. Then again I was playing the EA apparently people who played it later got an entirely different story
@@absolutelydegenerate1900lol I saw one review by someone who said they didn’t know the protagonist of the first game’s name but he in retrospect they felt they should thank them for keeping their damn mouth shut the entire playthrough
Subnautica had it right with going for a silent protagonist. Survival games don't need character commentary to shine. It's always up to the player's imagination to make it work. Leave the talking protagonists to FPS campaigns and RPGs.
The original writing for Al-An and Robin was so much better, he was sparky, rude, and even threatened Robin, telling her if she didnt leave she would die. When he got transfered to her brain he groans about it being uncomfortable and begs her to put him back. Robin's origional voice actor was SO much better, and her character was written better. My first playthrough of below zero on the full release I literally never did anything related to Sam, I completely forgot about that I was supposed to be working on her. The origional story to below zero was just superior in every way to the re-write. On top of that, while the game is focused on being less horror based, all of the fauna is all designed to be extremely aggressive looking, meaning the extensive and believable evolution tree from the first game is completely thrown out. While the fauna in the first game were designed to fit into their environment, and their designs made sense evolutionary, the animals in the second make NO sense for their environment, all of the animals being plated instead of fatty means that they would have evolved in a rough, likely warm environment and wouldn't be able to survive in the Arctic waters. It's sad to see such a promising premise flop so hard.
@@HYDROCARBON_XD I believe the most memorable ones are vertebrate-like in subnautica, but I don't think they're the majority. Would have to check it. There's those green isopods, the floating eyes etc. Not mentioning all the unnamed inverts or symbionts throughout the biomes
I think one of the best things to note on the topic of the empty biomes is I NEVER went into the area with the jellyfish because I thought they were the games way of telling me "this is the edge of the map, just void down there" and the fact the entire area looked smoothed over and empty just convinced me that was a map edge. I'm also glad to hear I'm not the only one that didn't understand the "B-Plot" story with her sister and why she's blowing up everything. She just sounds like a complete nutter. She heard 1 time that her company was using her to make a bio weapon and instead of writing poetry like her sister or Openheimer she decided to kill all her friends who 100% were not in on the scheme. She's clearly the villain of the story!
@@MizutamariVT she didn't blew up the building, she blew up the cavern, the only one there was the security guy, also one of her close friends is the reason Robin even is in that place, she sent a message to her saying something was fishy
@@Ricardo_Rick she literally blows a massive hole in a building underwater that the player themselves can't get out and to the surface without drowning
I'll say basically what I said in the original upload: The most infuriating part of this game, for me at least, third to the lack of anything remotely scary, and second to the plot in general is the writing. Just as you pointed out, both Robin and Al-An are both high ranking scientists, both are xeno-biologists, they're the ideal people to speak to each other in this situation...and yet they are some of the most illogical and poorly written characters I've seen. Al-An can barely remain consistent on whether or not he's an individual or a collective or emotional or emotionless, and Robin just vomits unfunny quips and cliché pieces of dialogue constantly. Basically, Al-An feels like a human poorly imitating an AI and Robin sounds like a child trying to act like a philosopher, neither remotely sounding like xeno-biologists let alone any kind of scientist. If Al-An was, say, a guard at one of the alien facilities and Robin was an Alterra dock worker or something, I'd be way more forgiving, but when you put these characters on such a high pedestal, you need the writing to back it up. Overall, I just feel like Subnautica was a very fortunate accident now. The devs' true vision of the game they wanted seemingly went against almost everything that made the 1st game beloved: crushing isolation, fear of the unknown, a focus on deep diving, and being immersed in the game world. I know I might sound like I'm mad, but I'm mostly just disappointed. The devs obviously have the potential to make another amazing game like Subnautica, and they know what people loved about it, but they intentionally ignored what fans liked to follow their original vision for the game. Usually I'd respect a creator sticking to their guns and making what they truly want to make, it's just unfortunate that what these creators wanted to make was this. I should probably end this wall of text on a high note, and that would be how well made this video is. Like, literally, it's the most well written video on the game that I've seen and I'm glad it's here, even if it needed to be reuploaded.
This game is more of a gimmicky spinoff than an actual sequel to Subnautica. I get the feeling that they were afraid of running subnautica into the ground without innovating at all. Problem is, they innovated in all the wrong ways. I want to see more underwater sci-fi creatures and stuff. That's what worked about the OG game, and instead of expanding upon that, they directed a significant portion of their attention away from it, to give us... Land sections. And a pretty mid story with pretty mid characters. Unknown worlds is going to announce some more stuff in 2023. I've heard rumours that it's gonna be the "Subnatica 2" we've been longing for. With a larger map, and multiplayer. Don't know why they didn't just do that from the get-go, but whatever. I'm glad.
i mean, they hired writer for first game when game was...about 80% complete. Yep, game had 0 story until that point unless you count "survive" as plot. So, same writer started working on this game, finished story by like 90% and then...left ( or was fired together with main composer). So they completely redid story using key elements from first draft...but whoever replaced writer clearly lacked talent. which makes you wonder how bad story for next part will be eh?
i remember when the Seatruck first came out, i thought it'd move more like a water snake - but instead, it moves like a metal bar. Everything goes down at once (just like the cyclops), but it doesn't work here because of how narrow the caves are. and as you said, it moves slower with each module you add.
Yea when I first saw the Seatruck and piloted it I figured that when more modules were added it'd still have a sense of flexibility to it as when you look at the things that connect the modules together they appear similar to those things that connect bus compartments together and it allows buses to have more flexibility I constantly hit a bunch of walls and ceilings because when I tried to move the Seatruck with every module attached to it, it'd always collide with a creature because as you perfectly described it, it's like a moving metal bar rather than a water snake
The cyclops had the same problem, the seatruck is more practical in how you can change the modules depending on your mission instead of lugging it all around at once even though the game gives you the freedom to do so. I dont know why you thought a string of connected metal boxes would move like a cylindrical nonmetallic snake, not really a valid criticism.
@@nathanl5070 The Cyclops at least had external cameras, allowing you to see around the hull. When you back the seatruck, there's no way to see what the hell you're crushing into. Also, you're not going to "change the modules" because you very quickly figure out that only the storage and docking modules are really needed. MAYBE the teleporter, but it's more of a gimmick.
@Alknix you can easily get by with just the prawn suit attachment like I've done to beat the game. And having cameras doesn't change the fact you're still driving around a massive hulking sub. It's pretty easy getting used to the size of whatever you're driving so this is a stupid criticism
@@nathanl5070 Indeed, you can. But a design where the optimal setup is to ditch 75% of the features is not a good design. And no, it doesn't, but cameras still helped, and it was just nice to be able to look around while in travel. Also, Cyclops was bulky, but for a good reason - it was a full-fledged mobile base, and it was easily customizable. And it was FAST. Here, you need to spend a ton of extra resources and sacrifice even more speed if you want to add a fucking fabricator or a few lockers!
On the topic of the sea truck, on my last playthrough I found it be ridiculously overpowered and completely indestructable due to a small quick in its design. When you're driving it, the game treats it as a seamoth, so hostile creatures can and will attack you. When you're not driving it and you have modules attached, it switches to being a base and creatures cannot attack it. I found this out by accident when jumpscared by a shadow leviathan and accidentally letting go of the sea trucks control's, leading to the beast suddenly being unable to attack. As long as you let go of the controls before the attack animation plays, nothing can hurt the sea truck.
That happens to every vehicle, it's innate to their engine. Mind you it only turns aggression off, so if a mob was mid attack animation and too close to the vehicle, it will take damage
@@BaddabyThat makes so much sense. No reason to have a player’s seamoth or prawn get destroyed after they’ve died and are a thousand meters away from it. And that explains why the cyclops uses a custom sound system to cause creature aggression, a purposeful way to avoid it being a non-attackable seabase.
This is why I missed the Beta story. It ends with the orbital base, which our sister is on, had a containment breach and the Kharaa is free. We go to one of those baby Sea Emperor Leviathans and chat and theyre like "oh yeah sure here's some Enzyme-42". We send it up, aaaaand this other missing Alterra guy on the surface who we were looking for - who could possibly also have one of the Precursors in their head - activates a massive planetary shield to destroy the shuttle with Enzyme-42. I miss that. I wish they went in that direction.
Reminds me of what happened to halo 5 Bonny Ross didn’t like the gritty and more down to earth story cooked up by the lead director so with 16 monthes to go she ordered him to scrap the story and redo it from scratch. The director was the lead for star wars republic commandos and he would later say that Bonnie Ross was solely to blame for all the missteps halo 5 took especially the t rating.
The first thing I noticed was how trash the pda is in bz but in the og I would constantly smile at the little quips like when it said "what ever its design was It clearly failed" when it was talking about that sunken base that got attacked by a sea dragon
Yeah. I actually liked the voice actor for the new PDA, but they completely forgot to add the personality. The reason the quips from the PDA worked in the first one is that you, the player, were in this incredibly dangerous and stressful environment, but the PDA, being just a machine, lacked the context and acted like it was any normal work day. In the sequel it feels like they tried to move the quipy dialogue to Robin and Al-an, but it doesn't work in that setting. Robin should _know_ how dangerous her current situation is, she shouldn't be making jokes.
The plot of Subnautica: Below Zero could have been improved in the following ways: 1) Make Robin the silent protagonist. Keep the part where she came to the planet looking for her sister. Reveal that she is looking for her sister through audio files and messages on her PDA. Have her decipher data pads and pick up notes as she searches for any traces of same. Her being silent and only showing emotion when she hears Sam's voice (rubs her hands nervously, drums her fingers against the keyboard, or punches the wall upon realizing she is at another dead end) would only highlight her determination and how much she put at stake. Make Sam talk to Robin in the found records and PDAs to show that she always found some comfort in imagining she is talking to her sis. 2) Make Robin an engineer and Sam a xenobiologist declared dead in a research mission gone wrong. All Robin knows is that Sam went to the planet with a team of researchers, and while the rest made it back successfully, she never returned. Alterra was reluctant or slow to send a rescue party (you can attribute that to their bureaucratic/greedy philosophy that was glimpsed in Subnautica), so Robin took it upon herself to discover what happened. Also, after arriving on the planet, Robin has all her tools with her because she came prepared. She basically follows a trail of breadcrumbs, finding traces of Sam in some friendlier biomes -- but then she realizes that Sam went deeper than she calculated, which requires her to build new equipment or improve her current one to be able to follow her. 3) Connect Sam's and Al-An's plotlines -- leave the Khara virus alone, it's done. Reveal that Al-An was the reason why Sam went too far. Maybe after studying whatever was left of Precursors and becoming convinced that some of their race is STILL on the planet. Eager about the unique opportunity to encounter an actual sentient alien, Sam tried to promote the idea to other scientists. Still, they took it with a grain of salt since they wanted to stay within their current mission (researching local flora and fauna) and had no desire to dive into dangerous biomes unprepared. However, Sam was afraid that if she didn't provide tangible evidence to Alterra, there would be no other expedition, so she tried to investigate Precursors all by herself and never made it back. Here is also a good place to mention the difference between the two sisters: for instance, Sam has always been fascinated by the concept of aliens, while Robin felt much safer thinking that they were alone in the universe, which was the subject they often argued about. 4) Make Al-An upload himself into Sam's mind and basically make her his host -- and when Robin finally finds her, he explains through Sam that he needs to build a portal back to his world. It's also a great opportunity to tie the events of Subnautica to Subnautica BE by Al-An catching up with what he missed and building a portal to his homeworld. He also needs to bring the cure from the Kharaa Bacterium with him but he lacked knowledge on how the cure was found, so he still thinks he needs to collect enzymes Sea Emperor Leviathans -- but the leviathans kept responding to him aggressively, recognizing him as Precursor and not letting him get close. So he delegates Robin to do the task of collecting enzymes, promising her that he will release Sam once he is done. Also, it'd be better to leave his intentions open to the player's interpretation: he doesn't elaborate on the origin of the Kharaa Bacterium, he doesn't even let Robin approach him directly (maybe he always speaks to her from another room or through comms to trick her into believing she is helping her sister who isn't well), he states what he needs and nothing else. Make it unclear whether he is like that because he is shady or because he has trouble articulating words using a human voice box and brain activity, to preserve the air of mystery surrounding Precursors. 5) Let Al-An leave alone, but not before warning that he isn't sure how Sam's mind was affected by his intrusion, resulting in a cliffhanger. So, the next scene shows Robin back at her base, where sends a signal to her acquaintance (who promised to pick her up if she would be alive to send a signal) -- and yes, it turns out she *could* leave, she had a way back, she just didn't need it without knowing the truth or finding Robin. She then waits, worried, near Sam who is just lying unconscious on a cot at her base. The PDA informs Robin about Sam's poor health condition due to emaciation, lack of nourishment, sunlight, and generally, her body overexerting itself to support intense brain activity. Then Sam opens her eyes and stares at Robin, bleary-eyed and confused, which makes her (and our) heart think believing that Al-An mind-wiped Sam like a floppy disk -- but then Sam says "Robin?" in a weak whisper, and the credits roll.
Below Zero was so disappointing after the lightning in a bottle that was the original Subnautica. Genuinely confused by most of the decisions made by the development team and my expectations are now at a record low for any potential Subnautica 3.
@@DankMadness12 suppose this is were I disagree with you most of the lifeforms where In the original game and my immersion was constantly broken by the two dumbasses talking to each over and the story just kinda sucks ass
I had a hard time getting through Below Zero, but there was exactly 1 biome that really grabbed my attention, and it was the Arctic Spires. Why? Because I also did it wrong by going through it on foot, AND there was a snowstorm in the area that I thought was just the natural weather for that biome. Being able to hear the Ice Worms and feel the ground shake as I moved from spire to spire in the nearly pitch white hellscape was more horrifying than anything the first game had done by a huge margin. The worm was way more aggressive, but because of how much I couldn't see and the fact that I kept managing to stay just BARELY out of reach, it felt like I was a mouse sneaking my way through a room full of hungry cats. It was exhilarating and horrifying. And... It really shows how much the horror element is important to the Subnautica experience. Below Zero deciding to pull back on the horror element was unfortunately a terrible decision, and nothing shows it better than the fact that Below Zero's best section is also its scariest.
Agreed about the Arctic Spires. I did something similar when the game was in Early Access, and that area was genuinely amazing. Approaching the entrance, hearing the roars, and unwittingly triggering an Ice Worm and hearing that rumbling was terrifying the first time. My only issue is that it just gets monotonous after that, especially once you get a Snow Fox or a Prawn Suit. And what you say about horror elements is very important. Also take the rest of this with a grain of salt since my memory isn't perfect and this was a while ago. If you don't know, there was an early access area called the Deep Arctic that got cut. IIRC there was an unfinished dialogue trigger there where Marguerit ambushed you with a Prawn and tells you to leave so presumably there was a story reason to go there. Anyway, the Deep Arctic was an underwater area dominated by floating glaciers. Pitch black like the Dunes, but even worse since in this case there was no floor to stick to, just floating ice surrounded by darkness. At that point there were no enemies but the Ice Dragon Leviathan would have been there. Even with nothing around the silence and darkness was a nasty combination. The Deep Arctic could have been a successor to the Dunes and Crash Zone, probably even better than they were. Cutting them out was a big mistake.
What I think it is, and maybe this is what happened, is when the original story was being made the entire studio worked together and they had a scheduled plan and felt safe. Then they got the wrong message, removed all of it, and panicked at the creative stage so they decided to do one of the worst things some studios have done and dictated portions of it out to groups with poor communications between. Every single bit of dialogue, every character, every interaction, every plot point, feels like a different person thought it up. By themselves, they make sense and might have been good. -Altera being the company it is would use a bacteria to hold more power. A team of scientists would be pressured to work on it even knowing they are making a weapon, one of them would go out of their way to try fixing it. -A scientist asking a mercenary for help, one that would most likely be insane, and gets told to bomb it all. -The mercenary, still insane, says the only way she can be alone is by destroying a radio, despite them having eyes on the entire planet at this point. -A sister comes looking for answers, sneaks during a storm and crashes on the planet and probably losing most of her equipment (like the previous game). -The sister interacts with alien ruins and are forced to work together under stressful circumstances. -The alien constantly being both robotic and organic in personality, a hivemind and an individual, a scientist and an absolute fucking idiot, could be due to him going insane after wiping a planet of life then nearly dying after locked up for a thousand years. And more, like every point by itself works. Everyone had good ideas. But puzzle pieces don't work together when they are made individually and not as a group. Also fuck that PDA voice. I hated it. I wish Alan took the role of the PDA voice once he attached himself.
Sub zero feels like it's holding your hand and not allowing you to be scared, forgetting why people called the original a "horror game wearing the skin of a survival game." While the original's scare factor slowly wears off, you were attacked by each of the original's unique biome creatures. never actually allowing you to have a moment to catch your breath.
@@danielshore1457 Subnautica wasn’t meant to be horror, but people found it scary during early access and so they leaned into it. Honestly feels like they didn’t do the same development here, from how rushed and poorly thought out most of the game is.
I just think the creatures aren't scary The shadow leviathan is cool looking but only scared me the first time I played The ice worm is annoying and not scary And the fucking chelicrate is just stupid looking. Genuinely the first time I played i thought to myself "that's the replacement for the reaper leviathan?"
One thing I remember thinking constantly during Subnautica was “Oh this place is so cool! I can’t wait to set up a base here!” I think I thought that maybe once in BZ.
Even if you find a cool looking area good luck actually managing to make a base without modding, I've been watching my girlfriend play and pretty much everywhere she tried that was in a cave the restrictions with base modules hitting terrain was far too restrictive to actually let her build
The reason things run away is not to keep you safe it's to prevent you from killing them. It's also why they removed the stasis rifle. The developers made it clear in a number of posts they regretted adding that item in because it allowed players to kill leviathans. when in truth most only killed 1 or 2 juvenile ghost leviathans. Shadow Leviathans are the only ones that a killable because they are stuck in a small space.
Didn't the leviathans respawn in the first game anyway? Even so, why remove the option either way? I was actually excited at first to get the stasis rifle just to easily scan the leviathans, what other way is there besides killing them? Kinda defeats their whole "pro-life" ideology, doesn't it
THAT is what infuriates me the most about Below Zero. They made the gameplay worse by acting all authoritarian because they were mad that gamers were doing stuff they didn't like despite it not being game-breaking.
@@paulmerviel1617 I mean tbh it is pretty dumb you can kill leviathans with a knife. But rather than take the stasis out, it could have been handled better by just making creatures frozen by stasis invulnerable or just make leviathans take no damage from the knife, forcing you to use mechs if you wanted to kill them.
@@VisibleNoises I mean, I think the fact that it takes so long to kill the leviathans in Subnautica and get nothing out of it is a much better way to deter killing them than just removing a very useful defensive tool and making all the threats run at the slightest nick. It kills all sense of threat when all you have to do is touch something for it to go running. You want to deter people from fighting the leviathans? Make them more agressive when they take damage, make them act more like an injured predator than prey. Their solution just doesn't work, instead of deterring it they just made it more tedious.
@@hona6924 Yea running away when attacked is silly, but it's a balancing act, you want some way to drive them away too and a predator would eventually give up if the prey is putting up too much of a fight. I'd still support making Leviathans just immune to knife damage since that is too easy and looks too silly. Hell, maybe just make leviathans immune to damage or have a health regeneration factor.
I feel like Below Zero would have been much better if it was really just a DLC to the first game like how it was originally planned, rather than a completely new game. It was very obvious that they stretched the content for miles in order to fill the amount of a full game, when they could have just kept it to a smaller amount and added it to the Crater somehow. Just take *one* of the above ground biomes (preferably Arctic Spires because that's the most visually cool one) and use the above ground flora and fauna there. And for the underwater, take the most interesting from that pool as well, which would be the Twisty Bridges (all forms), Tree Spires, Crystal Caves, Fabricator Caves, and Deep Lilypad Caves, though obviously they should all be tweaked to fit the first game's style more. It may be less content, but it would feel less monotonous than trudging through an entire game of almost nothing.
Here's my theoretical two cents; I'm almost certain that DLC cannot technically go through an early access phase. And unfortunately, Unknown Worlds Entertainment isn't used to not doing early access, so creating a different game page for Below Zero makes technical sense if they wanted it to go through early access. However, the downside of this it that it clashes with the original plan of Below Zero merely being DLC, because a seperate Subnautica game page with far fewer content & playtime than the original wouldn't really justify its existence. So the devs had to add more till they had just enough and wrapped it up. I do believe they wanted to make something special with this project, but since it wasn't technically possible to keep it small as they originally intended, they did a lot more work than they wanted and lost a lot of passion in the process.
@@sword_racer185 Look, while I agree Simon Chylinsky should never have been fired, that is besides the point. I seriously doupt him staying around could have saved the game, because the source of the problem for Below Zero is more of a technical one than a wokeness one. Charlie Cleveland, the UWE director, has always been woke. The whole reason why he wanted to make the first Subnautica was that he wanted to "play his part" after the Sandy Hook shooting by making a non-violent game with no guns. While that is obviously an extremely stupid idea from which to make a game, that didn't stop Subnautica from reaching god-tier levels of quality. Unfortunately, it's pretty much just a freak accident that will never be recreated, and neither will the smoothness of its early access phase.
It seemed weird to me that Enzyme 42, the whole point of the first game, is now something you can fabricate out of local flora in the glacial basin. They should have leave the Sea Emperor Juvenile in so that then when you encounter it, Alan will ask how is it that a Sea Emperor is found in Sector Zero. This opens up an opportunity to have Robin tell us about what happened to Ryley, and to Alan how there was a survivor that finished what he and his people have struggled for so long 2 other details that i find weird is that how Alterra seemingly never caught up with Robin tampering with their radar, and Alan activating the Phase Gate yet leave it in the open and did nothing to cover their track when leaving the planet. In original story, one of the research member intentionally infected the entire board of operation overseers then activate the planetary shield which kinda make more sense than what we got (despite the fact he somehow activated the planetary shield) Aside from story details, i think i must point out the lack of leviathan class in BZ. You almost never run into them, aside from the Shadow lev and Ice Worm which you're obligated to run into them to progress the story. In original game, you'd know they're there the moment you enter their territory with their spine chilling roars and shrieks, and the game ensures that you will ALWAYS run into them if you want to progress the story. Mean while in BZ, i only ran into the Chelicerate like once and never found them again, glow whales are mostly neutral til you get really close so they pose little to no threat, and the Shadow lev was horribly done compared to Sea Dragon because unlike the Sea Dragon, you can grapple the Shadow lev with the prawn suit and drill it to death while the Sea Dragon will swat you out of the way then continue attacking you. Basically Shadow lev just becomes a joke when you know how to deal with it. As for Ice Worm... ngl i abused the game's physic (by flinging myself around at mach 3 in the prawn suit using grapple like a sling shot) instead of making a snow fox so i never had to deal with them, although they are the most dangerous i admit given the fact you CANNOT fight them
Agreed. Enzyme 42 was what Al-EN's race was trying to get from the Sea Emperor. She was confined to a research tank in a fortified location at the bottom of the ocean. The fact tat in BZ you can make enzyme 42 out of random things scattered around the place makes the entire plot of the first game irrelevant. If they could make enzyme 42 out of stuff you pick up off the ground then why did the bother building the massive research facility for the Sea Emperor?
Well, I assumed that them being a research scientist of a highly advanced species would at least able to have the capabilities to create the Enzyme-42 with a very large and sohpisticated research base at her disposal. I also assumed that this occured roughly in line or after the events of Subnautica 1 and lead to Enzyme-42 being released into the environment en-masse, hence why the things on the planet is still alive and the Khraa is basicaly eliminated in everything but the Frozen Leviathan. Also yes, I abused the prawn suit's grapple but because I found the overground part of the game so miserable that I refused to engage with it naturally. The one time I did was one my one and ONLY death because the combined effect of getting knocked off my SnowFox 2-3 times and being confused was enough for me to have my health lowered enough to be instagibbed by the Ice Worm. it also isn't an actual enemy but triggers on the map of where it can attack you, which is rather stupid game design and not at all enjoyable. The Prawn suit bypasses this by just not triggering anything.
@@Mallchad you made the E42 with a basic fabricator, and that's not accounting on the ezyme being dense enough like the ones made from the sea emperors to cure you. Remember the reason we survived for so long when others didn't is because we ate E42 infused fishes made by the old sea emperor, but it's not dense enough to cure you but can only delay the infection spread
I think the reason why they could turn the shield on was probably because they were uninfected and presumably could turn it on just like how you can turn the gun off when uninfected.
The original Subnautica with the art direction of Alex Reis, and QOL features of Below zero would be the perfect survival game. Period. Those two things are the only redeeming qualities of below zero. Alex is a brilliant artist and worldbuilder, and his designs are uniquely alien, and all fit into some kind of phylogenic tree, like real alien life. Features like new furniture, pinned tabs, large rooms, and beacon customization make Below Zero quite smooth and polished to use- but don't help a lackluster game.
Below zero fauna does look alien,many subnautica 1 fauna looks like mutated earth animals like reaper leviathans,they look more like demon sharks than aliens,or sea dragons that are literally dragons with tentacles.
I think a huge problem with the land stuff is that the movement wasn’t really improved upon over the first game. You still move slowly and clunkily. The snow fox doesn’t really work with the terrain you’re given and even in the more wide open spires you’re constantly getting knocked off of it by the worm. If the movement on land felt better, more graceful and clean like moving underwater does, it probably would have done wonders for those sections.
The worst part is that the Prawn suit, the vehicle no one would think is fast on land, is actually the best way of moving around on land. That thing has ridiculous strafe speed and for some reason it keeps that speed on land. Jumping and strafing is as fast if not faster than the Snow Fox for some reason.
This is one of my largest gripes about the game for me. One of the most interesting and well designed gameplay areas in the game were all the above ground sections and the fluffed up 3 tiny things that completely ruined it. SnowFox was one. not fixing the extremely buggy and limting ground movement that wasn't even attempted to be improvemened from the first game was another. Artificially limiting your inventory space with food and being seperated from your sea vehicles/structures and forcing you to dive very far into a cold and uncomfortable for snowfox and snow fur was the final nail in the coffin for me. Having to go all the way back to back to build these things after struggling for ages in the cold long overground section or contenting with the obviously-not-meant-for-it above ground base building is a tragedy of this game and takes away from the only kinda-nice experience this game has to offer- the game was clearny not meant for surface stuff, even walking up slopes is not a good experience, its a swimming game...
I remember watching Jacksepticeye encounter a shadow leviathan in one of the early access builds. I believe that at the time, the time they were founded was significantly darker because I remember being terrifying as hell, and then when I actually got my hands on the game itself didn’t really stand out much
I was playing around in the early access build once and spawned it at night when they first added it via experimental mode and panicked cuz it blended into the night and all i could see were the red landing strip lights on it’s back which was incredible dim. In short: Early Access was scarier than release Mostly due to my own fault but that’s not important! 😂
The main issue was that they focused to much on the story and made the world fit that story where the opposite was true for the first game. the story was made to be passive and the world felt much much larger, deeper, and scary.
Actually, it seems like they didn't; they wrote a new story last minute that had to be fit into the world. And I think that's the problem; instead of saying "Okay, here is what's going to happen, now we need to create a world for it to happen in", it's "Shit, I need to invent stuff to put into all these places."
What worked so well about Subnautica is that we knew nothing. We didn't know about the degasi or the other survivors. I mean we know that the precursors were powerful but that's it. You can see it on UA-cam. There was so much stuff when the first game came out talking about the precursors bc we didnt know. But with below zero and being told everything that interest faded.
There is one important thing that the Sea-truck sales at as what is in my opinion a replacement for the cyclops generally more than just the Seamoth, you know when you have all the modules taped onto it and it’s now a mobile base like the cyclops. Vibes. It’s just a long tube. The Cyclops on the other hand made me feel like a submarine captain with its standing piloting position and all the cool gizmos on the screen, speed-settings and silent running mode, and grand scale to the thing with a full 2 decks. Yeah I get it it’s a bit much especially in the smaller map of bellow zero but MY GOD (like everything else) THE VIBES ARE GONE! I SEEK TO BE A CAPTAIN BELLOW THE SEA! NEMO IN HIS SUBMARINE! Alas, that feeling ‘tis gone…
Great video! I gave up on BZ after I cured the frozen leviathan. I was dumbfounded that the MAIN QUEST ended with my character simply saying "ok. I habe closure now". I was so confused because it was such a lame way to wrap up the literal main story line. I thought something would happen, but that was actually it and I just stopped playing shortly after. Also the way Marge tells you what happened to your sister by giving you a PDA? ???? And then neither of you say another word and you just leave???? I was SO confused and so sure I was missing something. Holy hell the story was bad!
another thing too about Robin and Al-An is that in the early access version, she actually reacted to him being in her head. and after he tells her his name, she's comments how she's waited to meet intelligent life for her entire career/lifetime, and the first dude she meets is called Alan and it's really funny, cuz that's kinda how i'd expect someone to react. You'd think he'd have a more alien name, but it's just fucking "Alan", lmao. but now, she doesn't do that. She just gets mad at him for "going silent" on her as if they're old friends reuniting after a long-held feud, rather than her meeting a literal alien and justifiably reacting to the situation as such. it's just so bland and devoid of personality. I guess it was changed because robin got re-written to be a very generic "strong female lead" and they forgot to give her any other personality traits. There's a couple other things like that too, but i don't remember exactly which ones. finally finished the game a couple weeks ago purely out of spite, and by god is it worse than i remember.
@@moondrop3855 i don't think so, but if it is it's not as funny or characterized as it was in early access. i don't wanna reinstall and slog through the game to check though, so i'll believe ya.
@@vizthex It is still in the game but the new VA doesn't deliver that as well. Some of that child-like intrigue from the first ever British one was really charming to me and carried the dialogue imo.
@@bipstymcbipste5641 yeah, i'd expect a xenologist to be over the moon after meeting aliens. but rn, she acts more like she's meeting an old friend. It just doesn't work.
All the devs had to do was add new building parts and quality of life improvements to the first game, lean in to base-building, and maybe add some more DLC missions.
What baffles me is that the zones in BZ weren't even that bad (there are way too many goddamned caves and cavasses though, like, Jesus Christ.) all they had to do was keep the seamoth and cyclops in the game and space things out better. The shallow twisty bridges area for instance should have had some big ass carnivores and been located 1,000m down. It feels like they just placed the zones on the map based on what they dreamt up first - not what made sense from a gameplay perspective.
I think of sequels like the Hippocratic oath - first, do no harm. You make sure you build on stuff that you did right the first time, only then adding brand new features and concepts. The devs here seem to think fans of the first game were clueless and made a different, and worse, game. I mean it's almost laughable. You have a hit game called "Subnautica" where the big draw is underwater exploring and the feeling of being alone on a strange world and you add more land, make the map tiny, and load the game with annoying cookie-cutter characters who send you on WOW quests.
i was nearly shocked when i saw that an hour and a half long video with high quality sound and some great montage had only 16 likes. But comments do explain why it is how it is, so ye, thanks for the review! Just wanted to say that it's really strange how an average player doesn't feel free in the game that's supposed to be about discovering stuff in open world. Devs made it way more linear for no reason. The whole SBZ feels like the lost river and lava zones biomes from the original game because these biomes are like tonnels with doors in the walls with necessary loot behind them. And the entirety of SBZ feels kinda like that which is like.... why
I don't know, Lost River is one of the most fascinating biomes in the original game for how varied it is, how strong its atmosphere is, and what a sheer departure it is from what came before. I'd say SBZ feels more like the Underwater Islands biome where it's mostly just empty water which they threw a million Bonesharks into because there had to be _something_ there.
Wait what, the lost river is one of the coolest biomes in the game. It feels like entering an alien world even in comparison to the cool biomes that came before it, which were also literally part of an alien world lol
@@JDizzle785 okay these are just personal opinions, but my point was that lost river is more linear, there is less freedom than in “surface” part of the map. CruelestChris also made a good point that SBZ is more like floating islands. Idk now if my point is that relevant after that but ye I’ll not argue on how cool the lost river is but just its structure provides less freedom and sbz feels like that too
Subnautica is a game where you feel like you're not supposed to be there, but Below Zero is a game where the world itself is designed to help you survive. Oxygen plants? Titan holefish? Thermal lilies? Fevered peppers? How am I supposed to be immersed in a world where you ask me to stretch my disbelief this much with such wildly implausible evolutionary results?
25:56 Anyone who adds eating sounds like that in ANY video game should be barred from EVER making sound design decisions in games or any audiovisual medium.
This I why I’m so exited so Acii’s Call of the Void mod where if you make it past the ghost leviathans you can find little islands in the void and other cool stuff. It leans far more into the horror element and encourages exploration and interaction with the environment so much more and includes so much new flora and fauna.
Honestly, the penguin dudes are the biggest highlight of this game. Like even if it wasn’t a great successor, they did one thing better than the original, and added those adorable goobers.
Its actually crazy how i complained about the exact same things you did except i did before they even released the alpha version.. I was invested in the subnautica community because i LOVED the game so i joined a lot of different foruns where Devs usually answered questions or did constant updates on what they were aiming with the new game. I remember reading a dev post where they introduced Sam and the alien dude, they talked about how they were trying to make a story with objectives rather than finding it yourself by exploring. I also remember reading that they wanted to put more dialogue into the game and ease a little bit of tensions. After reading those posts, i did a lot of my own threads asking why were they running away from the things that made subnautica 1 successful eg: mistery terror/fear of unknown and scary exploration with the feeling of isolation and that you were completely alone. They either ignored or had the same npc response that they were aiming at different things, its actually insane that the huge majority at the time agreed with me and i actually saw thousands of posts asking the same thing, i cant believe they moved foward with such a nonsense story. Can't say i didnt warn them lmao
Tbh, it could’ve been good (at least the story), if the initial writer from the first game stuck around. Idk if he was fired or if he left, but all they had was the first draft that the new writer picked apart (hence why the *motivation* for exploring the planet to find your sister is *optional* and not *mandatory*). BZ also was meant to be a dlc/expansion to the original, but they decided to make it a stand alone title. It feels like they didn’t go through the same process as the first game in acknowledging feedback and iterating upon it. I think they had a strict deadline too. Doesn’t help that that the sound designer/composer was fired who helped with one of the biggest elements that people loved about the original, the sounds.
I think the only disappointing encounter I had in the original Subnautica, was the sea dragon. However, It’s sound design was amazing and really added to the atmosphere of the lava zones. (It was disappointing for me as it looked really goofy, and I was easily able to outmaneuver it with my prawn suit CONSTANTLY, and in the active lava zone, it didn’t even notice me.)
Funny thing, i never knew how to get the hydraulic fluids to unlock the bridge portion, so i just ingored it and kept playing the game. I came back to it a while later with a prawn suit and a grappling hook, and i realized i could catapult myself over the gap without fixing the bridge. Prawn suit carries the entirety of the land area with only that grappling hook in general, fastest mobility option in the game.
A lot of the problem I had with the tension was that you got attacked so often that they couldn’t make it fatal because it was unavoidable. And once you were attacked and survived you just learned to repair and continue, over and over because you couldn’t avoid being attacked. The worm ended up being unavoidable, in early access I spent ages stealthing around so it wouldn’t find me, in subsequent play throughs I can’t seem to avoid it at all, even the thumpers you’re supposed to use are next to useless so you just stomp around in a prawn suit and repair every so often, it takes all the tension and fun out of encountering the worm. I think the snow fox could have been fun if it had a large section of map devoted to it, I feel like it’s purpose should be to go places fast so you don’t freeze to death but you need to have a big map for that to work(instead we got a small maze like area where you just continually crash into walls and the snow fox speed was never that useful so instead it was just a really cumbersome hot water bottle. The prawn suit kinda makes both the worm and the cold a non-issue(except that traversing a large area in a slow prawn would have been tedious). The same problem exists with the shadow leviathans you can’t avoid them so just keep repairing and keep going. With reapers from the original they would do most of your seamoths health in damage in a single attack so if you were slightly damaged then it could just destroy it or leave it on so little health that while running away to find somewhere safe to repair a collision could destroy it. That was scary because you could be left in hostile waters with out your support vehicle so you really had to avoid it.
About the Prawn Suit, I found that thing to be unreasonably fast. For some reason it maintains its ridiculous strafe speed on land, to the point that jumping and strafing is as fast if not faster than the Snow Fox.
I actually really liked the worm it reminded me of the dune reapers bc you couldn't really avoid detection but you could outrun it if you were paying attention
best video on this topic ive seen. i cant believe the letsplayers ive watched just did not see these glaring shortcomings in the sequel. when i played the game, i was literally shocked at how bad it was. and the story and cringe dialogue is just the start of these obvious problems!
Jacksepticeye played the early release, and really loved it (which honestly I would agree that the early release had way more promise because it actually had good dialogue and charming characters that had personalities.) then he played the frostbite update and you can immediately tell the charm of the game is gone and the happiness Sean had is gone as well, and he is very disappointed with it. Then the full release comes and…it’s just not a fun let’s play. A lot of it is Sean criticizing it, as he should. And the only good part was the ending. But even then I’m the comments, people are saying he didn’t get enough lore or look at enough PDA’s, and I mean, who blames him? Below zero is just…boring. It doesn’t have anything, there’s no incentive to look at the PDA’s because there’s no charm or personality, and like this video says, they’re all near the surface anyways so it’s not like you’re traveling deep to learn about the lower depths of this area and what happened. Like the map itself, it’s all very shallow.
@@lovelightstarboy Does he really criticize it? I'm about to watch that let's play. I ignored it at first out of lack of interest and wanting to play the game myself. If he does see the flaws then I kinda do wanna watch him play
Every improvement made to habitats in BZ should've been added to the original Subnautica. Large rooms and glass roofs are a godsend for immersing yourself in the environment, having specific docking modules for the Seamoth and Cyclops would've been great for making your habitats look less like an underwater house and more of an actual seabase, and the control room is just the cherry on top. Because of how small the map is in BZ, there's no incentive to build multiple large bases. Aside from building a few outposts to serve as pitstops between "dangerous" areas, the only reason why you would build multiple bases in BZ is if you build research and/or alien containment bases for immersion, but you can't immerse yourself in the world because the environment is weaker than the original and it wouldn't make sense story wise because you're trying to hide from Alterra. So that leaves you with no gameplay or story reason to expand beyond 3 or 4 rooms.
Subnautica director : Charlie Clevaland Subnautica Writer : Tom Jubert Subnautica Compositor : Simon Chylinski Each one of them left the company or was straigth up fired, leaving talentless people in charge. Subnautica was great for it's game design, it's story and the tension build up with the music.
Yea I remember hearing Simon was fired for making a joke on Twitter. Explains why the soundtrack for Below Zero is so soulless and lacks any of that original subnautica energy.
Fired for joke on Twitter? Sounds about right for emotionally stunted blue-haired writers for "modern audiences". I will be so happy when people can say dumb things and people just move on.
@@curtisyue182my favorite thing about the original sound track (minus it making me piss myself out of fear) was the fact that Donald Trump says China in the sparse reef. It's so well mixed unless you know it's there and are listening it blends in
what I'd have changed is replace the hover bike with the hover van from the promo art. Then, the crystal caves are accessible only once you go over the ice worm territory. Equally, the water in the crystal caves is just above freezing, so you'll still loose heat if you try to swim in it. This would be the contrast to Sub 1, as it ended in boiling hot lava caves. So, you need the prawn suit to dive down, simply so you don't freeze to death. But, if you try to walk the prawn across the worm's territory, it gets aggro fast, since the prawn is very heavy and very audibly makes noise as it walks. The answer is, you need to find the hovervan Sam drove, that she then accidently encased in rock during her brief terrorism career. All the over vans were taken by altera. So, you can scan that van, as you learn of the new mission. You can then load the prawn into the hover van like its a mobile moon pool, and this van can glide across water and ice equally well, while also providing lots of storage. So you carefully navigate the ice worm territory in the van, to reach the opening to the crystal caves, where you can unload the prawn suit and jump in. Now the ice worm has a story use other than minor annoyance for a non-crucial story.
The only point I'd add is the inconsistent voice direction. Robin will not be silent under any circumstances, monologuing even when Al-An isn't there yet. However, when a leviathan or shark come barreling towards her, she is dead silent. The moment where even a silent person would yell out something in a panic, she is mute. It breaks the last pieces of immersion for me.
Personally, I've always seen Al-An as the sort of creature that was part of a hivemind, but having been separated from it for so long, has developed more of a personality of his own. But since he had no one to communicate with and no real prior experience, he doesn't know how to process how to properly be his own person so he keeps contradicting himself about being many and one. We learnt from the previous game data entries that hiveminds can disagree with its components, form differing solutions to solve problems and even have internal conflict until one faction wins out and the hive stabilizes. Architects are undoubtedly capable of individual thought even with their hivemind, but value the hive more than the individual within it, thus also giving Al-An skewed ideas of things like the value of individuality and personal goals or values. The way he contradicts himself about the stuff like dreams and music in-game I see as him learning about and starting to appreciate those things while living inside Robin's mind and seeing her memories/experiences etc. In doing so, he also starts to appreciate Robin a whole lot more as they journey together, little by little. Thinking of him as a character struggling to cope with both responsibility and his changing self has made me tolerate him better. Perhaps thanks to that, I find the architect storyline to be overall better than the human ones (which isn't saying much though). But this is all really just me filling plotholes with my hyperactive author brain.
Absolutely same, I think my brain definitely filled in gaps and accepted things in ways other people just wouldn't, so when Fish was talking about how bad AL-AN's story was, I didn't quite see it in as bad a light as Fish did. Fish makes absolutely valid points, but I kind of just let myself get lost in my suspense of disbelief
Nice to see this pop up again. I’ve watched it several times, and I find it cathartic. I don’t HATE BZ…it’s still fun, just less good in every way. I think what explains a lot it is: SN had amazing ludonarrative harmony. Simple gameplay loop: explore, gather, craft, upgrade, so you can explore farther and deeper, so you can gather better resources, so you can build better things, so you can explore…etc etc etc. Which perfectly supports the simple but engaging plot; everything you do is in order to survive and get off this planet. Which is supported by an ambiance of isolation, solitude, dread and foreboding. In the process, you unravel the mystery of what’s going on. In BZ…the story is a garbage fire, your character even forgets why she’s there halfway though, you don’t even need most of the upgrades to…gather alien boyfriend parts or whatever… There’s just no point to any of it, none of the parts fit together, even with themselves…
The ice worm section was presented in a way that made me think the thumpers were practically required, so I made them before seeing any ice worms and thus rarely saw the ice worms.
The hope poems hit harder with the original voice actress, who was actually GOOD. I was also expecting Alan to betray us at the end, and was more surprised that he DIDNT when he finally got his body. Wait THATS why they scrapped the original story? I thought it was internal problems or a writers strike that caused them to have to redo the story, and that’s why it was so bad in general cuz they didn’t have actual writers do the new story line. They thought they had enough biomes?? I was waiting for a cool dark trench biome with glaciers above!! They barely used any glaciers or ice in the water.
The original game is in my top 5 favourite games ever. Picking up Below Zero, my standards were very high, as was set by the former game. Sadly, it really hasn’t got the charm the first had. The ocean just doesn’t feel… alive enough. I miss the original wonder of Subnautica where you can go anywhere and find new creatures and environments. Below Zero is just ice, more cold stuff, maybe a cool biome or two here and there, and the same 5 fish copy pasted everywhere. I hope that if they make future entries, they take the feedback and make a complete experience once again.
My favorite part of the "why do humans use ball and socket joints they're so primitive" exchange is that alan's new body clearly ALSO uses ball and socket joints, meaning he's also a hypocrite who decided to roast robin for literally no reason.
one of my biggest gripes with the progression (primarily in base building) is that there's this new mineral detector tool but then the scanner room is still easily accessible
You forget, in Subnautica we can find that the Architects HAD HUMAN ARTIFACTS, meaning they came into contact with early humans are took some of our stuff for their little museum, and yet AL-AN DOESN"T KNOW ANNYTHING ABOUT HUMANS????
When i played through the game i didnt even get Alan until i had basically done all the stuff on land and spent a considerable amount of time exploring. I didn't even know about Alan untill i started following some flashing lights to where you find him initially.
I had the complete opposite experience. I was doing some early exploration and I just happened upon him. I assumed having a sentient alien living inside your head and just giving you directions to everywhere you needed to go was some super late game content and I'd managed to sequence break the game, but apparently it really does happen quite early, I just got him a little earlier than normal.
here's a light observation I made that doesn't really mean anything I just thought it was interesting: think of the kill animation for the reaper leviathan when it attacks you. it grabs you and swallows you whole, so fast that you'll miss it if you blink. now think of the chelicerate and squidshark animations: weirdly drawn out, detailed, and slow. it feels like somebody with a vore fetish was hired into the studio between the two games. doesn't mean a whole lot of anything but it just feels weird.
I get that they wanted to add some horror in the animations (maybe a leftover from the original vision for BZ being an expansion to SN). But now that you mention it, it feels like there were other reasons… Even one of the animations (for those things that drag you to them) feels janky. At least Robin fights back (or at least tries to). Also doesn’t help that the Shadow/Phantom Leviathan bio kind of lines up with this. 😬
I know that tons of other creators have already done this, but I would love to hear your review of the first Subnautica! Your way of analyzing and interpreting the various aspects of the game is super interesting and a video essay similar to this one covering the first game would be awesome
The first 5 minutes were so exciting because I had absolutely no idea what was going on and regularly dived WAAAY below my safe depth. I thought this would be the gimmick of the game: going beyond your comfort zone to progress. However, once I discovered the high capacity tank, the game lost all that precious tension. I think that the smaller world was a workable idea, but they seemed to hate the idea of making the player uncomfortable and so it all just kinda feels underwhelming
A good survival game is going to, by default, be pretty close to a horror game as far as the minimum tension is concerned. Below zero felt like subnautica for toddlers
Below Zero needed more pacing, I ended up getting the Prawn Suit pretty early in the game, which pretty much made every encounter after that worthless.
I remember some moments from the first game where it felt like I was breaking the game and wasn't supposed to be so deep/far which is a feeling that stuck with me. The deadly curiosity I felt was like an itch I just had to scratch no matter the danger, I wanted to go deeper and deeper even if I knew I probably wouldn't be able to make it back. Below Zero just lacks these feelings because Robin is there by choice.
Honestly the largest thing I felt while playing the game was massive confusion as to why they thought removing lead drill piles was an okay idea, made base building feel needlessly hostile.
I feel like the biggest thing for me is that I was never afraid of dying. The map was so small that you can memorize it very easily, the game is basically never dark they all are lit by bioluminescent plants and stuff like that, and really the monsters weren’t all that scary they don’t lurk in the dark like the reaper they don’t reworded massive roars like there was no big threat no scary environments which is what I liked about the first game you were stranded on an alien planet where everything wants to kill you or make you shit yourself
I just wish the map had a different layout or had some cut ideas implemented, because the more fleshed out biomes are pretty gorgeous. The lilypad caves are very different looking than the actual lilypad biome and the cave connection to the crystal caverns is a neat trail. I really do like the twisty bridges. Purple vents would be a nice weird small biome that has a bunch of little patches. the east arctic is a nice view if you’re the #1 glow whale fan but it’s empty. The kelp forest caves are neat, but the actual kelp forest being a color swap from the original game is horrid. I actually really like the northern arctic fringe butting against the iceberg and being super dark even during the day, but its just… there. The thermal vents, the east and west arctic, and the sparse arctic are absolutely useless and provide no exploration incentive. The few interesting biomes we have are clustered next to each other and muddled by the sheer amount of bland copy paste wastes. In the original, there are the floating islands, mountains, bulb zone, dunes, sea treader’s path, wreckage, sparse reef, and grand reef for non-repeating biomes. Some of the most memorable areas, the blood kelp zone and mushroom forests, ARE repeated zones but have different threat levels and feels completely different based on which one you’re in. None of the repeating biomes in below zero feel worth being repeated, and the map is so small anyway that the repetition is more like an uninterrupted chain than splotches of repeated terrain. Also the lost river is such a cool deep scary underwater cave that the crystal caverns PALE in comparison. it’s just a straight shot more or less with no cool detours and scenic shots. If you’re not familiar with the river, it’s pretty easy to get turned around in its many chambers and routes. The ghosts are dangerous, but the large pieces in the environment can actually protect you from them, and they’re placed in grand chambers to emphasize how grand THEY are. the shadows are just sprinkled throughout an incredibly samey looking tube, that is very easy to get lost in because it IS so similar looking all the way down. There’s a single tunnel, a handful of crevices, and two different entrances, but it is a straight tube. The fabricator caverns are a big blob of the exact same cave with a color swap and even more crammed in fucking shadows. it’s a joke. they threw in some neat plants in there as set dressing. It’s bright as hell, it’s not unique, the shadows are just annoying, so you get NONE of that fun tension keeping you on guard as you go into what is supposed to be the most dangerous part of the game. Whack. Whack as hell. It evokes the first game, but only to prove the first game’s strengths. The world design can be beautiful at times, but it is squandered by how lackluster and uninspired the rest is. It feels like the first draft of something truly great. The freeform element of story and exploration from the first game is expertly reflected in the large wide open map, and the confusing, railroaded story element of this game has been shoved into a wasted, overbearing and oversimplified map.
I couldn't find the final body part in the purple crystal caves for a while because I figured I had missed something on or near the surface. I found the alien base in the red crystal caves but was told to come back later with all three blueprints instead of 2/3. I needed a hint from a friend who was kind enough to look at the wiki for me and let me know what biome to explore in, so I didn't have to spoil its exact location to myself. I was not guided to it by Alan as I had been with the other artifacts so I had no reason to assume I missed it the first time through the purple biome I had already visited. He does not pipe up about it until you are well and deep on traversing the dead-end route housing the organs. I also could not find Marguerit's base for a while after my PDA gave me her PRAWN's Last Known Location. Maybe it was changed after the game was released but that waypoint absolutely did not pinpoint her base location for me, nor the cave entrance that leads to her. That waypoint is way closer to the destroyed nuclear Alterra base, which is what I thought the game wanted me to find from that waypoint. There was evidence in that ruined base that Marguerit had sabotaged it, and I figured it might have "happened" super recently, like the survivors in the other life pods dying off-screen while Riley is knocked out in Subnautica's intro. I considered it might even be possible that I had missed out on talking with those people before she blew them up seeing as NPCs were suddenly on the table! Thanks for putting into words much of what I thought was missing from this game. I hope UWE understands these nuances if the franchise continues.
I remember when they announced Below Zero, the community (or maybe the devs, it's hard to remember exactly) assumed that the game would be simply larger than what the original was. To be honest, I believe we deserved that much; a better, more unique take on an already incredible idea that just worked out fantastically thanks to its unique design direction. Hell, there were even teasers that some of the bigger community-made submarines could potentially make it in Below Zero, which is what personally excited me. What we got was a project about half the size and length of the original with twice as many bugs that make it feel like it's still in pre-release alpha, but they try to convince you it's the final product because they didn't feel like actually finishing it. This game feels like it was made by a team completely misguided and disconnected from the original development squad who made the first one. It's a shame.
@Bollibompa honestly I don't think anyone could make a sequel as good as Subnautica. Subnatica was lighting in a bottle not just bc of game play but because of circumstance It was a small studio who out of shear luck got their game picked up in early development by UA-camrs who then led it to blow up in popularity and let the team take their time
Honestly besides the story problems everything else sounds like the devs sat there with some guy looking over their shoulder saying make it less terrifying make it less subnautica and they had no choice but to comply for some reason. at least thats what it feels like
I was looking for this review! I doubted this was the right one until I read that pin It's just a well made critique to listen to and reminisce on this poorly made thing. I did see while searching there seems to have been an update, so that's good the devs are working on improving it slightly. (Though jesus nothing will save that story and dialogue) Wishing the new channel luck!
Pretty brave to be insulting the Cyclops. I think part of the reason the vehicle works so well in the original is for the longest time you are just at the mercy of the unknown and terrified. Until you get the massive sub that you can fit all the amenities of a base onto and the difference in exploration and comfort is very noticeable.
For me the Cyclops is OP because you make it OP in the first place, it really does rewards you greatly the more you invest in modules and upgrades, being OP in that thing is a reward for all the time and effort you put into making, maintaining, charging and upgrading the thing . . . Unlike the Sea Truck that actively punishes you for getting more modules and *still* manages to be more stupidly op broken than the cyclops itself lmao
The land sequences were totally dead to me when I realized the prawn is a perfect counter to everything that's dangerous about them. I also found a goofy physics bug with the grapple arm that let me yeet myself halfway across entire biomes at once
what broke it for me was that the biomes dont make sense there is no cycle of life every biome in the original all had gamey borders but the creatures in it all made sense and fit in the foodcycle it all felt natural as well as tense, it felt alive
awesome video! you described the game quite well and I like your takes on solutions. Didnt know about the cut content either like damn that frozen dragon wouldve been cool, and less squid sharks lmao
So glad this video is back up. Easily the best critique of such a disappointing game. You perfectly summed up all my thoughts. Love the way you broke down the plot beat by beat because it is truly fucking insane how little sense it makes, especially the Sam plot (which ends up literally being a side quest). You missed my favorite part though. At the beginning Robin says some shit like, “Alterra claims Sam got her coworker and herself killed in an explosion due to her own negligence. There’s no way, that’s not something Sam sould do!” …And then it turns out that, no, that’s actually literally exactly what fuckin happened. I genuinely hope the developers see this because it really is a thoughtful and fair critique. Also that Will Sasso edit was so unexpected and perfect. Classic PF Changs clip
One thing I'll say mildly in their defense, I don't think it was a mistake to want to make something, building off of Subnautica, but with a different vibe and a different goal, rather than just, "The same thing, but more, and maybe better," I think that's understandable. But the devil is in the details, as they say, and the devil was in there fuckin' shit up real good, apparently. Beyond that--I haven't actually played the game myself, because if I was going to I'd want to finish the original first, and the original *gets* to me *real* bad even knowing almost everything about it already... but I kinda wasn't that interested after watching other people play through it anyway. I wouldn't feel comfortable commenting on a lot of the elements without getting my hands on it myself, but the dialogue, *thank* you. I remember watching IGP keep playing through different builds and he'd listen to the dialogue and get all excited turning ideas around in his head and would keep trying to agree with Al-An and I'm over here like, "...Bruh, all of this is cringe and dumb; they are both dumb and cringe, and I appreciate your enthusiasm, but this is plastic kiddie pool levels of deep, my guy." Frustrating. 😶
Long but well done review. Surprised that I agree with everything you said. Though I think the Seatruck is a pretty good replacement for the Seamoth and Cyclops. It may be the thing I liked most about BZ.
I will admit you have good points. I just finished the game so let me spit ball my two cents. Though the game is smaller the biomes feels stretched. I’m not sure if I noticed this but I could have sworn there was more variety and less scale to each biome on the first game. I swear that 70 percent of the non land areas involved the reefs and twisty bridges. I felt “safe” for about 90 percent of the game. I didn’t even die once unlike the many times I died in the previous game. Chalk it up to experience, but below zero has a few design quirks that makes the game easier. The only biomes that makes you twist and turn heavily is the sea monkey’s den. It was the only time I felt cramped, yet for some odd reason the biome was so bright. I never got lost. There was a lack of urgency in the game. The robin and Alan ruin the atmosphere. I feel calm and safe knowing that Robin and Alan’s conversations can level done my tension. The biomes are pretty! Don’t get me wrong! But I think an over reliance on stronger brighter colors makes me feel safe. I feel safer in the shallow waters. I feel safe in the snow fox ignoring cold. I feel safe since the only leviathans I ran into are easy to avoid unlike the previous games where you have to be creative and be sneaky. I felt safe the entire time. I’m okay with earning safety, but I don’t like these hand outs.
Yea, the original Subnautica a lot of fun for me was running around being terrified of everything until you build up your bases and especially your Cyclops so you can keep the dangers at bay. Going from not being able to see anything at night and then getting ample warning with the sonar, learning the safe areas to travel through/marking them via beacons, and getting countermeasures like the Cyclops shield and thermal module to be able to self sustain whereever you go, made it very satisfying to progress and felt like you earned it.
I have watched many analysis after playing the game and I think you said what I think about this game the best. The setting in the first oner had me terrified, all those wide open spaces made me realize, that I feel very unsafe when havinng no point of reference anywhere. Caves where only spooky becauser of those mindcontrol guys. The only time I felt that primal dread in Below Zero, was at the world edge. I really missed those drops into the abyss, that was the stuff that really amde my heart go nuts. The base building is really enjoyable, when you install the mod that lets you use all ressources in lockers nearby. I also really liked the Seatruck. I didn't use the Prawn Suit or the Cyclops in the first game at all, it was just me and my Seamoth. And even now, the prawn suit seemd kinda useless, because it was just able to get 100 m deeper than the Seatruck, so I only used it to mine ressources and for the land parts. Found it really handy to be able to just stick it to my truck. Also the Big Ghost Leviathan in the cave doesn,t seem to detect you, when you are just using the seaglider and the seatruck has a module that shocks him, so there is no real danger. It's just so disappointing, Subnautica was the only game I ever played that managed to infuse this kind of dread in me, Below Zero made me feel safe all the time. And yes, the story was real dogshit, but I kinda liked the PDA entry about the bird called hope, it was cheasy as hell, but at least memorable.
I remember this on the other channel and this is what I point too for all my problems with the game. This story is… so garbage. I’m playing through this again and I’m not comprehending well. I agree that gameplay should be the focus of a game but if you’re heavily focusing “gameplay” on story that story needs to be good too. If the story sucks it can ruin everything… like this
It honestly feels like the developers were ashamed of the first game being considered a semi horror and did everything they could to remove that in Below Zero. The overly bright areas, the non-scary creatures and Leviathans, the waypoints and maps to every point of interest, the voiced dialogue... it reeks of the devs trying to wash away the feeling of horror.
@@HYDROCARBON_XD Shadow Leviathans were cool, but they were ruined for me by being in one area that's lit up like christmas. You could see them coming a mile away.
I think in universe as to why the PDA has a different voice is because Robin’s PDA is not from Alterra. It’s from Xenoworks, which Alterra bought out and now owns Xenoworks. I still hate the new voice though.
I've lost 2 Snowfoxes by putting them into my inventory, and then later deploying them and watching them clip through the ground and fall out of sight. I like the _idea_ of the Snowfox, but in practice it's... it's not great.
Robin was such a strong female character that she had to remind you of that multiple times throughout the game. She was so cringe...every word out of her mouth.
Something that I hate about below zero is that Riley isn't mentioned once. I wish there was at least something that mentioned him and his fate after coming back to Earth. I loved Riley way more than Robin even though Riley didn't talk I still felt like he had a better personality than she did with the little animations that he did, like how he would swing the knife around after he made it or grabbed his hand with the propulsion cannon. I wanted to know what happened to him after he got back, but nothing was mentioned, which was one of my biggest disappointments with below zero.
I think a cool way to add tension where it wasn't in the original would be to make power and technology harder to obtain. If the idea in the story is that you're trying to go behind this big company's back, it would make sense to not have access to much of the technology that allowed you to survive in the first game. Have it so you get immediately locked out of your PDA system and have it say something like "unauthorised user, initiating emergency mode" or something. Strip back the tech you have access to and make it so the recipes are much more scrappy and make more use of the environment. Anything more complex has to be scavenged from the camps on the ice, locking it behind progression you make on your own. It would've been something different and helped create some challenge for veterans too. Have it so Robin doesn't have immediate access to oxygen tanks so she has to first make a snorkel, then the pipes, before finally gaining access to a rebreather or something. It recreates some of that challenge of food/water/oxygen from the first game for vets by not allowing them to rely on their knowledge from the first game to help them survive. It would also help with the more story-focus the game is going for by really putting you in Robin's shoes (or flippers, I guess) I haven't finished the video, so maybe you already had a similar or better idea, but that's just my thoughts!
Yeah, but they wanted more children and weak-hearted people to play. Less terror, less violence, less death. It was not for the fans but some new market.
I think a simple 3-step solution to inventory management in both games. Allow fabricators to just pull resources from lockers (Whether through an upgrade or just base kit) Like if you have a base, the fabricator can pull resources from any locker in the base. Fabricator in your cyclops in the first game? Pulls from every locker. Same goes for the fabricator module in the seatruck. Craftable inventory upgrades that add an extra row or just base kit add an extra 2-3 rows to your inventory. Finally, and this is just for below zero, but change up the Quantum locker to make it a lot more interesting. Keep the deployable option, but also add an option to place it in your base. Then, for each quantum locker placed in the world the size of the locker increases. You can even make the first one start smaller to compensate if you want. But maybe it's like 1 Locker = 4 spaces 2 = 8 3 = 12 ect. That way late game you can just create single mass storage devices around the world, as well as carrying a deployable around with you to instant store resources. This even opens up the possibilities to create things like a Quantum storage module for the seatruck or the prawn suit, which would help massively with resource gathering and management.
This is an incredibly well done video, you covered it extremely well, I've watched it three times now. I'm so pleased I found it, it really added a different perspective to my own view while going through the game. Since this is such a comprehensive debate on the design of Subnautica 2 (1.5?) that I thought I would write about what I found to be just immersion breaking on my playthrough (to me at least). 1. The zones were so extremely cluttered with visual and fauna effects that I would seriously consider this game about exploring an ocean should have a claustrephobia warning on it. 2. The whole plot of Subnautica 1 was that nothing except the immediate area around the Sub1 end storyplot survived for enzyme reasons The bacteria was a planet killer, a galaxy killer. So how did this sector survive and not be void? Was there another captured *spolier*?? Was this area never contaminated at all? (But why would there by a frozen contaminated leviathan then) Or is everthing we see in this part of the planet just newly evolved? In which case omg that was fast. 3. Alterra when discovering a live sample of a bacteria capable of destroying an entire super advanced alien civilization would first secure the enzyme as a cure and then immedately take about 50 000 samples and spread them across its entire corporate empire in hundreds of hermatically sealed labs. "curing" the original frozen leviathon isn't going to matter much.
Hey folks - this is a reupload from my other channel Ceronesthes, so if you feel like you've seen this video before under a different name, you have! Sorry for any confusion, thanks for bearing with me as I move stuff around.
I've watched this video two times allready and saved it so i was confused when i couldn't find it. I think you perfectly explained why below zero was so lacking compared to subnautica 1. Especially in terms of how not immersive below zero is because of the dialogue, leviathans and bioms. Let alone the shitty story.
What happend to the original upload?
@@mrmelis he's splitting the channel so this one is for review style stuff and the other one is for Conan Horselord stuff.
52:00 please tell me the name of that
@@Oldsah Pim from Smiling Friends
I like how Subnautica 1 really enforced the illusion that you weren't supposed to survive. The only difference between Riley and the other passengers was where their life pods landed. It felt like you were beating the odds with every breath
They made BZ a lot easier and less oppressive with fewer horror elements. All for mass appeal.
man I really remember every time I went deeper and deeper in I would think "I'm not supposed to be here, am I ?". and actually discovering a new biome felt like a huge accomplishment because I never felt like I "conquered" the sea, more like I'm slowly learning how to adapt to it.
@@Jonouchigambler Exactly! I remember this too. A combination of laziness and fear made it so that it took me years to actually finish the game lol. Every biome I ventured through felt like a whole new adventure to defeat. New threats, new resources, new story, new visuals! BZ was just so mediocre in comparison (Although I will confess it had several pretty, unique looking zones)
@@Bollibompa I really do question if going for mass appeal often helps or is a detriment. Seems like the only true success for taking away horror elements for mass appeal was Resident Evil. Could also argue that it only worked because I think it didn't have as much competition, so they were able to transition away from it to become more action packed. Which I guess then helped it break into the movies. Other horror games like Dead Space are not really talked about anymore.
Riley was lucky minus the traumatic head trauma
i still prefer how Sam was in orbit helping Robin in Early Access. Gives you a reason to actually care about her.
Absolutely. I still don't know why they decided to change that.
@@ZombieManF I'm not entirely sure, but if it was the early access with the big shield around the planet, my guess is that it would be kind of a retcon, since in the previous game the reason why nothing can get on or off the planet is from the big G.U.N on the island, so if there was another defense like a shield, then the Sunbeam or the player would be unable to arrive/leave.
Agreed. I think the original story direction and the original voice for Robin, are much better. I don't know why they decided to completely overhaul the story. The original story had more tension and interest. It is really just disappointing for those of us who played the early access and were excited for what they were initially building.
@@Teslabluewolf Thats what I'm saying. The og story was so much more interesting with the rogue agent and Alan needing to hide from alterra. Everything about that story is just better.
@@FlareFritz I'm glad its not just me who feels this way. I remember playing it back in beta and being excited for what they were building. It was a real bummer when they scrapped it.
Reposting the spoiler of all dialog between Robin and Al-an:
Al-an: You humans do a thing. We don't do that. It's stupid.
Robin: It is in fact very, very good that humans do that thing!
Al-an: I do not understand.
Robin: Then maybe you are wrong for not doing that thing you don't do.
or:
Al-an: That thing that just happened. I will re-state that it happened.
Robin: Yes.
I always thought that those interactions and the PDA about a colony of sentient microorganisms were so neat-- exploring the differences alien life could have from our own while still being somewhat relatable. AL-AN finding bits of information about human behavior that he finds odd or intriguing, and bringing this seemingly normal thing to attention as something unique or at least done differently than how he expects. And as for why Al-An wants to have a body despite not explicitly needing one, Robin actually asks this question. Al-An explains it such:
"When stored as data, it is true our consciousness remains intact, but nuances in personality caused by interplay with the storage medium are... lost. It is like a factory reset." I believe that is roughly how he words it... and that implies that despite being very helpful, transferring their mind as data is *not* a lossless process.
For a xenobiologist, Robin striked me as very close-minded.
@@yogurtofthemultiverse2200
But he already is stored as data, so that process has occurred, it's not like he can un-lose these "nuances," whatever they're supposed to be, or for that matter that if it's truly like a "factory reset" he wouldn't even be able to remember them happening in the first place. He also can't ever decide if he's an individual or a collective.
@@CruelestChris Bruh, you obviously didn't hear him. Alan's an INDIVIDUAL COLLECTIVE, duh.
Jk. Honestly though, I was trying so hard to enjoy this game because of how great the first one was, that I didn't even notice how stupid a lot of this stuff was at first. Then the game forces you into so much tedium, that it was only a matter of time before I was treated to enough time devoid of gameplay to really take in Robin lecturing Alan like a freshman in Philosophy 101 might spout off to their mom to sound smart.
Funny thing about actually erudite people, is that they tend to be pretty humble when interacting with other experts. But here goes Robin, someone who's probably spent about 80% of their life in school, likely having at most a couple of years of experience in Xenobiology, giving what amounts to a colleague - 1000+ years her senior - a good old-fashioned man(kind)splaining. Like damn, I know that the Dunning-Kruger effect is in the process of being debunked, but as written, our girl Robin really lends credence to the theory.
@@meneither3834dude,most astrobiologists are like "ooh we found hydrocarbons in mars for the 29384828338th time!!! We will first say it may be life but then that it is not because we'll volcanoes !!!!"
A perfect way of forcing the player to complete sam's story would just be for Alan to say "I must see my people again, but I cannot show my face again before I fix the mistake I made" and then force the player to cure the frozen leviathan, completing Sam's story, proving that the antidote works, then make the antidote again (which should have had a peeper in the recipe) and bring it with you to end of the game.
It really wasn't that difficult.
You can cure the leviathan?
Maybe they just didn't want to do it like that?
"It really wasn't that difficult."
It's probably not that it was hard, it was just the writers wanted to take the game a different route.
What is that other route?
Maybe the recipe had a misspelling this whole time. Perhaps it was a peeper but writer accidentally typed pepper and the programmer simply followed orders lol
The recipe would need a peeper from the equatorial region of the planet though. So it would probably only be found barely alive in an aquarium in some base somewhere. 🙂
I will always consider Below Zero as the Arctic DLC. It just makes sense.
Also, I think Riley and Al-An would have a MUCH more interesting dynamic: The one who failed to cure the bacterium and the one who succeeded. A lowly technician and a high xeno-biologist.
Same bro literally felt like Halo ODST & I knew this pretty much from the start
AL-An: Fascinating! How did you managed to make the Empress cooperate in synthes-
Riley: *My brother in Christ you’re the reason my entire bloodline is going to be in eternal crippling dept, don’t talk*
Makes sense cause I only got 20 hours from BZ while I got 100 hours from OG subnautica
It was designed as a DLC at first literally, but was released seperately
It would have been super satisfying to hear this "high and mighty, superior than you" punk get told that his attitude is the only reason for his race becoming unalive.
"You just had to ask."
I bet he'd get really angry at first and rant about how his personal views on science above all could totally have fixed everything given more time.
Only to eventually break down and sadly admit that his hubris cost him and everyone he knew their lives and now he wants you to build him a body so he can go home and look for survivors of his shattered civilisation.
You know....listening to this made me realize that Below Zeros plot sounds like one big fanfiction
That's simply what the whole game looked like to me. Seemed like a self-insert fan-fiction story with childish and illogical characters. Dodged a bullet by not buying.
@@LethalOwl its good
@@LethalOwl it actually good.
@@LethalOwl worth playing. But it’s not as good as it could have been. Still a great game
That's insulting, most fanfics are actually written better than this lol
I am astounded to hear that the developers were INTENTIONALLY trying to move away from the horror element. That was probably the most important ingredient to the first game's success! Baffling decision.
complete disagree. subnautica isnt really a horror game, its mostly an exploration game, with horror elements. below zero is not that much diferent.
the problem is, the first game was hands off, when it came to the story, while B0 was all in your face, which feels guided.
Why not, most studios sacrifice the elements that put them on the map, in favor for political fluff and lazy design.
Flame me in the comments but, I don’t think subnautica below zero was that bad. It scared me at times and was beautiful.
@@SammysCreations i dont think many people consider it to be bad.
mostly mediocre. which means, middle of the road.
its still one of the best first person survival games on the market. its just that, it doesnt feel like a worthy sequel to the original game(which, i still defend is far from perfect as well).
Subnautica was NEVER intended to be a horror game! The devs didn't want it to scare people. They were trying to maintain their vision. Personally I think the horror elements make Subnautica not as enjoyable to play. I enjoyed Below Zero much more than Subnautica purely because it didn't have the horror elements.
Honestly, I feel like this game was lacking any events. Like when the Aurora explodes or the Sunbeam is shot down. Big stuff like that stuck with me and made me feel small and alone within the world of subnautica
For sure
I remember the early access event impacted me a lot, the game started very calm and then suddenly it kicks to a very high pace, with you trying to survive
Both events help tell the story with little to no dialogue, it all feels so organic.
That's exactly it, in subnautica 1 you felt like part of the bigger world, In below zero you feel like the whole world revolves around you. It's not immersive at all
Fr their was so much grand events that made you feel lucky & helpless at the same time the first game was such a masterpiece
@@lucydrop8105very true I only got scared twice in BZ it felt like I could do anything
The first game was not angry. It was not aggressive and it did not hate you.
The first game was indifferent, and that's scarier still. It gives a sense of scale, because you're tiny and not meant to be there; the whole game leaves you with the feeling that you're not welcome in a way that even a map full of enemies, placed there especially for you, just can't.
The second game is story driven, and the devs want you to get through it. There may be hazards around, but the game itself is far more... welcoming.
In Subnautica _you're_ out of place. In Below Zero, you're on a ride.
Well said. Subnautica's like being in one of those dreams where you know you're not supposed to be, and filled with this feeling of anxious dread. Not because something's specifically out to get you, but the laws of nature just keep moving, indifferent to your presence.
True. I have no problem with narrative driven games, I actually enjoy them a lot, but what adding a narrative does is introduce another barrier to success, because they can work against you as well as for you. Bad games are rarely rescued by a strong narrative, but good games are frequently diminished by a bad one. So it's risky to add such a heavy handed one to a genre game where it isn't required, and to top it off they chose to center it around an active, extant, fully voiced hyper advanced alien. Advanced aliens are such a trap as plot devices. They're like time travel: great writers can pull them off but anyone less than great is going to be tripping over their shoelaces trying to write them and so would be better served by not even bothering. BZ spends a lot of time tripping.
@Jacob-df5hr What's even weirder is that Subnautica was already a pretty narrative heavy story for its genre,
But it was executed with a subtle hand and it was perfect to nudge the players in the right direction
But never force them
Only thing I'd point out is that the Ghost Leviathans are apparently filter feeders, but are highly highly territorial, so no they wouldn't have tried to eat the dead reaper, but if Margeruit tried going into the water they would've tried to maul her
but there arent judt ghodt leviathans out there. the void near the below zero sector is full of giant chelicerate which definitely aren't filter feeders. and could definitely nibble and nip at the corpse, and beside there was a vast amount of space between the 2 maps and there is nothing but plankton and the most massive of all leviathan out in the void.
I was thinking the same thing, but for that to work we need to assume only Ghosts are out there, and there are at least Chelicerate, and this is to assume that the Gargantuan Leviathan is actually extinct and not just living in the deep void
I mean I had the idea she just sort of floated through using the corpse of the reaper like a canoe. I would think the ghosts wouldn't attack a corpse, and if she if hidden was from view by virtue of being in the top of the reaper, they should have no issues with her
I think there's a decent chance that we were supposed to question her reliability as a narrator. She spends a lot of effort to be intimidating, so perhaps the tales of her exploits are made up. I don't think there were any witnesses, but it's been forever since I played this heap of half-baked mediocrity, so I can't remember.
Just another example of an idea that could have been kind of cool if resources had been allocated correctly. It's just so apparent that the vision for this story changed completely with the new writer, and that the game never had a strong direction anyway. Years later, I'm still in shock that the "sequel" to the game that revolutionized the Survival AND Exploration genres was so misbegotten.
@@CetomimusGillii there are no living witnesses, one of tge torguls saw her stabbing a reaper as it swims off with her never to be seen again, the in below zero when we see her she has a reaper leviathan head and mandibles hanging in her base and bones used to decorate several other parts of her base
My favorite Al-An inconsistency is when he says he doesn’t know what music is and Robin has to explain it to him and then like 30
Minutes later he explains that the Precursors are a hive mind using a musical analogy (strings in search of harmony). A+ writing there
It would be funnier if you could hear him typing or searching through an archive before making the analogy, making it clear that he was trying to make an analogy that worked for Robin.
@@derpfluidvariant0916 but that would imply this alien species achieved all its Clarketech without a basic understanding of harmonics, something the ancient Greeks considered one of the most vital foundations of mathematics >2000 years ago. Like getting to space in Civ without inventing the wheel.
LOL, for real tho
@@ultureWell but what if the civilization used spheres instead of wheels, and some other basic concept that exists on such a planet instead of harmonics
@@ulture But then your comment implies that harmonics are the only possible way to understand mathematics, or that wheels are the only possible way to invent vehicles. But there are alternatives, as another commenter pointed out, why not use spheres instead of wheels? Why not use planets instead of harmonics?
The interactions between Robin and Alan are something straight out of a children's animated movie.
Hey, there's some really good children's movies!
@@bipstymcbipste5641 they did not insult kid movies. They just said this game has that vibe to it.
@@akashafofo6939 he's roasting he's not serious
Just add more big levithans and cool zones
Should've been a dating sim side quest to romance ALAN
having to hear Robin eat food during my playthroughs were the worst, you described the pain perfectly
Having to hear a character talk in general was a bit odd, especially after the silent character of the original game. Completely different style of design
I don't ever wanna listen to my character fucking moaning while eating
*eats a raw fish*
“MMHhhh 😩😩”
I hated it, out of context lewd noises while there are people around is simply awkward
@@iminacatsuit I have it on my Nintendo switch and I’d have to play it alone in my room.
Robin’s eating sounds REALLY bad out of context… 😭
One thing about the subnautica leviathans is your first encounter with a Reaper, and leviathans in general, was probably around the Aurora where the waters are murky, visibility is extremely low. You'd hear their terrifying roar and have no clue where it came from. You don't even know where to look for it because it could literally be anywhere around you. It very quickly sets the realization that the world WILL kill you and you need to respect it. Reapers are also found in the Dunes which is another pretty low visibility biome and there's warpers in there.
And frequently that's what they did with enemies in subnautica. You'd hear warpers coming in from nowhere and would have to try to sneak around terrified of if they saw you or not.
For the most part, the game provided a feeling of powerlessness You slowly get used to some of the early biome stuff as you play the game but past a certain depth, everything is just scary. People talk about how they don't want to go to certain biomes in Subnautica. And it's not horror in the classical horror sense, it's terror. It's that visceral knowledge that you can't do anything about your situation.
Meanwhile SBV is waxing about high school philosophy with not that many predators and casual free diving down 200m without a rebreather.
Sound was the most complimented and commented on with the original. It sucks that they fired the composer & sound designer before or during BZ’s development.
better one is that they kill eatch other i belive that it's implied that the dragon ones feed on reapers
it dosen't help that you can hear a leviathans roar in every biom
I think it's also because creatures like the shadow leviathan stand out too much
It has a bright light blue stomach which can easily be seen from afar. Whilst reapers have nothing but their white/reddish skin.
The crash site is the scariest biome for me in the original game, even more than the crater's edges. The murky waters, the constant roaring of the reapers, and the fear of being there when the night fall make me freak even after having played this game for 7 years. There is nothing of it in BZ.
But to be fair, there was also some lack of inspiration in this horror fealing in the original game too, especialy in the latest parts, with the sea dragon who look like a plastic toy. A lot of the later creature have this uninspired look, they just look like goffy water dinosaurs, not like aliens creatures like the crabsquids and the reapers.
What you said about warpers is spot on for me! This game wormed it's way into me fears so much that just hearing one warp in makes me turn around and run! Subnautica really is just such an amazing experience!
The main character not beeing able to shut up is pretty much my biggest complain. The constant talking completely destroyed any immersion for me.
Voiced Protagonists are a pox upon immersive gaming.
I dont even really care that she talked. But she would talk and comment on litteraly everything and she would spell out how your suposed to feel in any situation instead of YOU figuring out how to feel.
It definitely took away from the first one you used your inner dialogue while the second one spelled it out for you…almost like the devs were trying to manipulate you on how to feel/think. Intentional dumbing down.
I also got mad at how disrespectful and stupid she was being, actively disagreeing with my decisions and thoughts constantly
I was once walking on the ground then picked up a databox. A bug occured (I guess) and the PDA started to talk with its old voice and said « New blueprint acquired ». That blink from the old game just made me realise how much I disliked playing Below Zero and that I was actually forcing me to play it, always expecting something good to happen.
I think one of the major issues with this game is indeed the lack of tension but also Robin itself. She. Talks. Every. Time. She comments everything and it snuffs out my own thoughts about a discovery. In the old game, the character didn’t said a single word so I was completely identifying to him and I really got that sensation than it was me being on the planet. Without internet, I would never have known the character had an actual identity.
I didn’t even know he had an identity 😂 but you hit the nail on the head with one of my biggest gripes about the game. Her talking constantly, then Alan butting in and they’d go on this long conversation it drove me kind of crazy at times when I was trying to concentrate. The existence of Alan also ruins the precursors too. Imagine instead of having this constant head companion they treated it more like the sea emperor and left some mystery to the whole race. I mean sure there’s still stuff to consider but it’s just exposition dump after exposition dump. Then again I was playing the EA apparently people who played it later got an entirely different story
@@absolutelydegenerate1900lol I saw one review by someone who said they didn’t know the protagonist of the first game’s name but he in retrospect they felt they should thank them for keeping their damn mouth shut the entire playthrough
Subnautica had it right with going for a silent protagonist. Survival games don't need character commentary to shine. It's always up to the player's imagination to make it work. Leave the talking protagonists to FPS campaigns and RPGs.
Forsakenautica
@@J7T800ye fuckin imagine if minecraft steve would start saying "with this block of wood i might be able this and that"
The original writing for Al-An and Robin was so much better, he was sparky, rude, and even threatened Robin, telling her if she didnt leave she would die. When he got transfered to her brain he groans about it being uncomfortable and begs her to put him back. Robin's origional voice actor was SO much better, and her character was written better. My first playthrough of below zero on the full release I literally never did anything related to Sam, I completely forgot about that I was supposed to be working on her. The origional story to below zero was just superior in every way to the re-write.
On top of that, while the game is focused on being less horror based, all of the fauna is all designed to be extremely aggressive looking, meaning the extensive and believable evolution tree from the first game is completely thrown out. While the fauna in the first game were designed to fit into their environment, and their designs made sense evolutionary, the animals in the second make NO sense for their environment, all of the animals being plated instead of fatty means that they would have evolved in a rough, likely warm environment and wouldn't be able to survive in the Arctic waters. It's sad to see such a promising premise flop so hard.
Only mammals/vertebrates follow that fatty trend, inverts (the vast majority of our fauna) come in all shapes and have very different cold adaptations
@@Baddabydude,most of the fauna in subnautica are vertebrate-like and related,and you don't see fat fish in the artic right?
@@HYDROCARBON_XD I believe the most memorable ones are vertebrate-like in subnautica, but I don't think they're the majority. Would have to check it.
There's those green isopods, the floating eyes etc. Not mentioning all the unnamed inverts or symbionts throughout the biomes
AGREED
@@HYDROCARBON_XD besides, the vertebrate/invertebrate classification has no meaning outside of Earth, idk why SN fanbase keeps using it
I think one of the best things to note on the topic of the empty biomes is I NEVER went into the area with the jellyfish because I thought they were the games way of telling me "this is the edge of the map, just void down there" and the fact the entire area looked smoothed over and empty just convinced me that was a map edge.
I'm also glad to hear I'm not the only one that didn't understand the "B-Plot" story with her sister and why she's blowing up everything. She just sounds like a complete nutter. She heard 1 time that her company was using her to make a bio weapon and instead of writing poetry like her sister or Openheimer she decided to kill all her friends who 100% were not in on the scheme. She's clearly the villain of the story!
Sam in the official plot literally comes off as legitimately schizophrenic.
She didn't kill all her friends, she killed one and was an accident since she also died there
@Ricardo_Rick it's unclear how many ended up dead as at least 3 times through audio you can hear her crewmates were in the very building she blew up.
@@MizutamariVT she didn't blew up the building, she blew up the cavern, the only one there was the security guy, also one of her close friends is the reason Robin even is in that place, she sent a message to her saying something was fishy
@@Ricardo_Rick she literally blows a massive hole in a building underwater that the player themselves can't get out and to the surface without drowning
I'll say basically what I said in the original upload:
The most infuriating part of this game, for me at least, third to the lack of anything remotely scary, and second to the plot in general is the writing. Just as you pointed out, both Robin and Al-An are both high ranking scientists, both are xeno-biologists, they're the ideal people to speak to each other in this situation...and yet they are some of the most illogical and poorly written characters I've seen.
Al-An can barely remain consistent on whether or not he's an individual or a collective or emotional or emotionless, and Robin just vomits unfunny quips and cliché pieces of dialogue constantly. Basically, Al-An feels like a human poorly imitating an AI and Robin sounds like a child trying to act like a philosopher, neither remotely sounding like xeno-biologists let alone any kind of scientist.
If Al-An was, say, a guard at one of the alien facilities and Robin was an Alterra dock worker or something, I'd be way more forgiving, but when you put these characters on such a high pedestal, you need the writing to back it up.
Overall, I just feel like Subnautica was a very fortunate accident now. The devs' true vision of the game they wanted seemingly went against almost everything that made the 1st game beloved: crushing isolation, fear of the unknown, a focus on deep diving, and being immersed in the game world. I know I might sound like I'm mad, but I'm mostly just disappointed. The devs obviously have the potential to make another amazing game like Subnautica, and they know what people loved about it, but they intentionally ignored what fans liked to follow their original vision for the game. Usually I'd respect a creator sticking to their guns and making what they truly want to make, it's just unfortunate that what these creators wanted to make was this.
I should probably end this wall of text on a high note, and that would be how well made this video is. Like, literally, it's the most well written video on the game that I've seen and I'm glad it's here, even if it needed to be reuploaded.
This game is more of a gimmicky spinoff than an actual sequel to Subnautica. I get the feeling that they were afraid of running subnautica into the ground without innovating at all. Problem is, they innovated in all the wrong ways. I want to see more underwater sci-fi creatures and stuff. That's what worked about the OG game, and instead of expanding upon that, they directed a significant portion of their attention away from it, to give us... Land sections. And a pretty mid story with pretty mid characters.
Unknown worlds is going to announce some more stuff in 2023. I've heard rumours that it's gonna be the "Subnatica 2" we've been longing for. With a larger map, and multiplayer. Don't know why they didn't just do that from the get-go, but whatever. I'm glad.
I knew I watched this vid already despite YT not showing that I did (DUH, it's a reupload), but I still enjoyed it again.
Agreed. Sticking to a vision is fine, but that in and of itself isn’t worthy of praise if it turns out to be terrible.
i mean, they hired writer for first game when game was...about 80% complete. Yep, game had 0 story until that point unless you count "survive" as plot. So, same writer started working on this game, finished story by like 90% and then...left ( or was fired together with main composer). So they completely redid story using key elements from first draft...but whoever replaced writer clearly lacked talent.
which makes you wonder how bad story for next part will be eh?
Its not a horror game and was never meant to be.
If you want scary then Subnautica isnt a game for you.
i remember when the Seatruck first came out, i thought it'd move more like a water snake - but instead, it moves like a metal bar. Everything goes down at once (just like the cyclops), but it doesn't work here because of how narrow the caves are.
and as you said, it moves slower with each module you add.
Yea when I first saw the Seatruck and piloted it I figured that when more modules were added it'd still have a sense of flexibility to it as when you look at the things that connect the modules together they appear similar to those things that connect bus compartments together and it allows buses to have more flexibility
I constantly hit a bunch of walls and ceilings because when I tried to move the Seatruck with every module attached to it, it'd always collide with a creature because as you perfectly described it, it's like a moving metal bar rather than a water snake
The cyclops had the same problem, the seatruck is more practical in how you can change the modules depending on your mission instead of lugging it all around at once even though the game gives you the freedom to do so. I dont know why you thought a string of connected metal boxes would move like a cylindrical nonmetallic snake, not really a valid criticism.
@@nathanl5070 The Cyclops at least had external cameras, allowing you to see around the hull. When you back the seatruck, there's no way to see what the hell you're crushing into. Also, you're not going to "change the modules" because you very quickly figure out that only the storage and docking modules are really needed. MAYBE the teleporter, but it's more of a gimmick.
@Alknix you can easily get by with just the prawn suit attachment like I've done to beat the game. And having cameras doesn't change the fact you're still driving around a massive hulking sub. It's pretty easy getting used to the size of whatever you're driving so this is a stupid criticism
@@nathanl5070 Indeed, you can. But a design where the optimal setup is to ditch 75% of the features is not a good design. And no, it doesn't, but cameras still helped, and it was just nice to be able to look around while in travel. Also, Cyclops was bulky, but for a good reason - it was a full-fledged mobile base, and it was easily customizable. And it was FAST. Here, you need to spend a ton of extra resources and sacrifice even more speed if you want to add a fucking fabricator or a few lockers!
On the topic of the sea truck, on my last playthrough I found it be ridiculously overpowered and completely indestructable due to a small quick in its design. When you're driving it, the game treats it as a seamoth, so hostile creatures can and will attack you. When you're not driving it and you have modules attached, it switches to being a base and creatures cannot attack it. I found this out by accident when jumpscared by a shadow leviathan and accidentally letting go of the sea trucks control's, leading to the beast suddenly being unable to attack. As long as you let go of the controls before the attack animation plays, nothing can hurt the sea truck.
Its such an exploitable glitch lol
That happens to every vehicle, it's innate to their engine. Mind you it only turns aggression off, so if a mob was mid attack animation and too close to the vehicle, it will take damage
Are you sure? I've been attacked while walking in the cyclops. I died when a ghost leviathan flipped it over.
@@Bollibompa cyclops’s can be attacked whenever, but I can confirm seatrucks are treated as bases when you’re simply standing in them
@@BaddabyThat makes so much sense. No reason to have a player’s seamoth or prawn get destroyed after they’ve died and are a thousand meters away from it. And that explains why the cyclops uses a custom sound system to cause creature aggression, a purposeful way to avoid it being a non-attackable seabase.
This is why I missed the Beta story.
It ends with the orbital base, which our sister is on, had a containment breach and the Kharaa is free. We go to one of those baby Sea Emperor Leviathans and chat and theyre like "oh yeah sure here's some Enzyme-42". We send it up, aaaaand this other missing Alterra guy on the surface who we were looking for - who could possibly also have one of the Precursors in their head - activates a massive planetary shield to destroy the shuttle with Enzyme-42.
I miss that. I wish they went in that direction.
The fact that they changed the story (multiple times, from what i hear) is a massive red flag. The fuck was going on with the devs.
@@xenn4985 they fired the lead writer iirc. and the new guy (or gal) wanted to tell a different story
@@jsamue12 thats wild...
Like having a new person come in an make some tweaks is one thing. But to redo the ENTIRE story? Actually insane.
Reminds me of what happened to halo 5 Bonny Ross didn’t like the gritty and more down to earth story cooked up by the lead director so with 16 monthes to go she ordered him to scrap the story and redo it from scratch. The director was the lead for star wars republic commandos and he would later say that Bonnie Ross was solely to blame for all the missteps halo 5 took especially the t rating.
Eh, a lot of people tend to prefer semi-happy endings to depressing ones, so I can see why it was changed.
The first thing I noticed was how trash the pda is in bz but in the og I would constantly smile at the little quips like when it said "what ever its design was It clearly failed" when it was talking about that sunken base that got attacked by a sea dragon
"30 seconds.."
"Oh-xygen"
In BZ, a lot of it feels like weird infomercial quips
the little 'alterraaa' song when you first opened ur PDA was awesome lol
I loved the time when it said you would have to pay for all of the resources you used to survive when you first pick up the diamond
Yeah. I actually liked the voice actor for the new PDA, but they completely forgot to add the personality. The reason the quips from the PDA worked in the first one is that you, the player, were in this incredibly dangerous and stressful environment, but the PDA, being just a machine, lacked the context and acted like it was any normal work day. In the sequel it feels like they tried to move the quipy dialogue to Robin and Al-an, but it doesn't work in that setting. Robin should _know_ how dangerous her current situation is, she shouldn't be making jokes.
The plot of Subnautica: Below Zero could have been improved in the following ways:
1) Make Robin the silent protagonist. Keep the part where she came to the planet looking for her sister. Reveal that she is looking for her sister through audio files and messages on her PDA. Have her decipher data pads and pick up notes as she searches for any traces of same. Her being silent and only showing emotion when she hears Sam's voice (rubs her hands nervously, drums her fingers against the keyboard, or punches the wall upon realizing she is at another dead end) would only highlight her determination and how much she put at stake. Make Sam talk to Robin in the found records and PDAs to show that she always found some comfort in imagining she is talking to her sis.
2) Make Robin an engineer and Sam a xenobiologist declared dead in a research mission gone wrong. All Robin knows is that Sam went to the planet with a team of researchers, and while the rest made it back successfully, she never returned. Alterra was reluctant or slow to send a rescue party (you can attribute that to their bureaucratic/greedy philosophy that was glimpsed in Subnautica), so Robin took it upon herself to discover what happened. Also, after arriving on the planet, Robin has all her tools with her because she came prepared. She basically follows a trail of breadcrumbs, finding traces of Sam in some friendlier biomes -- but then she realizes that Sam went deeper than she calculated, which requires her to build new equipment or improve her current one to be able to follow her.
3) Connect Sam's and Al-An's plotlines -- leave the Khara virus alone, it's done. Reveal that Al-An was the reason why Sam went too far. Maybe after studying whatever was left of Precursors and becoming convinced that some of their race is STILL on the planet. Eager about the unique opportunity to encounter an actual sentient alien, Sam tried to promote the idea to other scientists. Still, they took it with a grain of salt since they wanted to stay within their current mission (researching local flora and fauna) and had no desire to dive into dangerous biomes unprepared. However, Sam was afraid that if she didn't provide tangible evidence to Alterra, there would be no other expedition, so she tried to investigate Precursors all by herself and never made it back. Here is also a good place to mention the difference between the two sisters: for instance, Sam has always been fascinated by the concept of aliens, while Robin felt much safer thinking that they were alone in the universe, which was the subject they often argued about.
4) Make Al-An upload himself into Sam's mind and basically make her his host -- and when Robin finally finds her, he explains through Sam that he needs to build a portal back to his world. It's also a great opportunity to tie the events of Subnautica to Subnautica BE by Al-An catching up with what he missed and building a portal to his homeworld. He also needs to bring the cure from the Kharaa Bacterium with him but he lacked knowledge on how the cure was found, so he still thinks he needs to collect enzymes Sea Emperor Leviathans -- but the leviathans kept responding to him aggressively, recognizing him as Precursor and not letting him get close. So he delegates Robin to do the task of collecting enzymes, promising her that he will release Sam once he is done. Also, it'd be better to leave his intentions open to the player's interpretation: he doesn't elaborate on the origin of the Kharaa Bacterium, he doesn't even let Robin approach him directly (maybe he always speaks to her from another room or through comms to trick her into believing she is helping her sister who isn't well), he states what he needs and nothing else. Make it unclear whether he is like that because he is shady or because he has trouble articulating words using a human voice box and brain activity, to preserve the air of mystery surrounding Precursors.
5) Let Al-An leave alone, but not before warning that he isn't sure how Sam's mind was affected by his intrusion, resulting in a cliffhanger. So, the next scene shows Robin back at her base, where sends a signal to her acquaintance (who promised to pick her up if she would be alive to send a signal) -- and yes, it turns out she *could* leave, she had a way back, she just didn't need it without knowing the truth or finding Robin. She then waits, worried, near Sam who is just lying unconscious on a cot at her base. The PDA informs Robin about Sam's poor health condition due to emaciation, lack of nourishment, sunlight, and generally, her body overexerting itself to support intense brain activity. Then Sam opens her eyes and stares at Robin, bleary-eyed and confused, which makes her (and our) heart think believing that Al-An mind-wiped Sam like a floppy disk -- but then Sam says "Robin?" in a weak whisper, and the credits roll.
bro just made a subnautica game
These are really cool ideas, thanks for sharing!
@@notrealkhris Bro just _fixed_ a Subnautica game.
Oi, why arent you a head writer?!
Below Zero was so disappointing after the lightning in a bottle that was the original Subnautica. Genuinely confused by most of the decisions made by the development team and my expectations are now at a record low for any potential Subnautica 3.
exactly
I like Below Zero much more than the original.
@@DankMadness12 can i ask why you do
@@darcweld biomes, creature designs and the overall atmosphere has me more immersed than I was in the original.
@@DankMadness12 suppose this is were I disagree with you most of the lifeforms where In the original game and my immersion was constantly broken by the two dumbasses talking to each over and the story just kinda sucks ass
I had a hard time getting through Below Zero, but there was exactly 1 biome that really grabbed my attention, and it was the Arctic Spires. Why? Because I also did it wrong by going through it on foot, AND there was a snowstorm in the area that I thought was just the natural weather for that biome. Being able to hear the Ice Worms and feel the ground shake as I moved from spire to spire in the nearly pitch white hellscape was more horrifying than anything the first game had done by a huge margin. The worm was way more aggressive, but because of how much I couldn't see and the fact that I kept managing to stay just BARELY out of reach, it felt like I was a mouse sneaking my way through a room full of hungry cats. It was exhilarating and horrifying. And... It really shows how much the horror element is important to the Subnautica experience. Below Zero deciding to pull back on the horror element was unfortunately a terrible decision, and nothing shows it better than the fact that Below Zero's best section is also its scariest.
Agreed about the Arctic Spires. I did something similar when the game was in Early Access, and that area was genuinely amazing. Approaching the entrance, hearing the roars, and unwittingly triggering an Ice Worm and hearing that rumbling was terrifying the first time. My only issue is that it just gets monotonous after that, especially once you get a Snow Fox or a Prawn Suit.
And what you say about horror elements is very important. Also take the rest of this with a grain of salt since my memory isn't perfect and this was a while ago. If you don't know, there was an early access area called the Deep Arctic that got cut. IIRC there was an unfinished dialogue trigger there where Marguerit ambushed you with a Prawn and tells you to leave so presumably there was a story reason to go there. Anyway, the Deep Arctic was an underwater area dominated by floating glaciers. Pitch black like the Dunes, but even worse since in this case there was no floor to stick to, just floating ice surrounded by darkness. At that point there were no enemies but the Ice Dragon Leviathan would have been there. Even with nothing around the silence and darkness was a nasty combination.
The Deep Arctic could have been a successor to the Dunes and Crash Zone, probably even better than they were. Cutting them out was a big mistake.
What I think it is, and maybe this is what happened, is when the original story was being made the entire studio worked together and they had a scheduled plan and felt safe.
Then they got the wrong message, removed all of it, and panicked at the creative stage so they decided to do one of the worst things some studios have done and dictated portions of it out to groups with poor communications between. Every single bit of dialogue, every character, every interaction, every plot point, feels like a different person thought it up. By themselves, they make sense and might have been good.
-Altera being the company it is would use a bacteria to hold more power. A team of scientists would be pressured to work on it even knowing they are making a weapon, one of them would go out of their way to try fixing it.
-A scientist asking a mercenary for help, one that would most likely be insane, and gets told to bomb it all.
-The mercenary, still insane, says the only way she can be alone is by destroying a radio, despite them having eyes on the entire planet at this point.
-A sister comes looking for answers, sneaks during a storm and crashes on the planet and probably losing most of her equipment (like the previous game).
-The sister interacts with alien ruins and are forced to work together under stressful circumstances.
-The alien constantly being both robotic and organic in personality, a hivemind and an individual, a scientist and an absolute fucking idiot, could be due to him going insane after wiping a planet of life then nearly dying after locked up for a thousand years.
And more, like every point by itself works. Everyone had good ideas. But puzzle pieces don't work together when they are made individually and not as a group. Also fuck that PDA voice. I hated it. I wish Alan took the role of the PDA voice once he attached himself.
Bro im Not gonna read that book you wrote xD
@@philiproler5572 ah yes, because the world revolves around you
@@realschmidt5657 youre Just jealous that i commented before you
@@Baddaby U are jealous 2
@@philiproler5572U are either a narcissist or a kid.
Sub zero feels like it's holding your hand and not allowing you to be scared, forgetting why people called the original a "horror game wearing the skin of a survival game."
While the original's scare factor slowly wears off, you were attacked by each of the original's unique biome creatures. never actually allowing you to have a moment to catch your breath.
I think its because the devs never intended to make a horror type game so it seems they wanted to over-correct it maybe?
@@danielshore1457 Subnautica wasn’t meant to be horror, but people found it scary during early access and so they leaned into it.
Honestly feels like they didn’t do the same development here, from how rushed and poorly thought out most of the game is.
Credit where it's due, I found the Deep Bridges one of the scariest biomes from either game.
I just think the creatures aren't scary
The shadow leviathan is cool looking but only scared me the first time I played
The ice worm is annoying and not scary
And the fucking chelicrate is just stupid looking. Genuinely the first time I played i thought to myself "that's the replacement for the reaper leviathan?"
@@tealishpotato Ah, it makes a lot more sense now.
One thing I remember thinking constantly during Subnautica was “Oh this place is so cool! I can’t wait to set up a base here!”
I think I thought that maybe once in BZ.
Even if you find a cool looking area good luck actually managing to make a base without modding, I've been watching my girlfriend play and pretty much everywhere she tried that was in a cave the restrictions with base modules hitting terrain was far too restrictive to actually let her build
@@heretichazel in the first game underwater caves where much larger so you could actually build bases in them like the lost river and thermal zone
@@sword_racer185 I like that area with the big tree in it its very nice to look at and peaceful with the ghost rays hanging about
💯 this
@@darcweldmy fav place too
The reason things run away is not to keep you safe it's to prevent you from killing them. It's also why they removed the stasis rifle. The developers made it clear in a number of posts they regretted adding that item in because it allowed players to kill leviathans. when in truth most only killed 1 or 2 juvenile ghost leviathans. Shadow Leviathans are the only ones that a killable because they are stuck in a small space.
Didn't the leviathans respawn in the first game anyway? Even so, why remove the option either way? I was actually excited at first to get the stasis rifle just to easily scan the leviathans, what other way is there besides killing them? Kinda defeats their whole "pro-life" ideology, doesn't it
THAT is what infuriates me the most about Below Zero. They made the gameplay worse by acting all authoritarian because they were mad that gamers were doing stuff they didn't like despite it not being game-breaking.
@@paulmerviel1617 I mean tbh it is pretty dumb you can kill leviathans with a knife. But rather than take the stasis out, it could have been handled better by just making creatures frozen by stasis invulnerable or just make leviathans take no damage from the knife, forcing you to use mechs if you wanted to kill them.
@@VisibleNoises I mean, I think the fact that it takes so long to kill the leviathans in Subnautica and get nothing out of it is a much better way to deter killing them than just removing a very useful defensive tool and making all the threats run at the slightest nick. It kills all sense of threat when all you have to do is touch something for it to go running. You want to deter people from fighting the leviathans? Make them more agressive when they take damage, make them act more like an injured predator than prey. Their solution just doesn't work, instead of deterring it they just made it more tedious.
@@hona6924 Yea running away when attacked is silly, but it's a balancing act, you want some way to drive them away too and a predator would eventually give up if the prey is putting up too much of a fight. I'd still support making Leviathans just immune to knife damage since that is too easy and looks too silly. Hell, maybe just make leviathans immune to damage or have a health regeneration factor.
I feel like Below Zero would have been much better if it was really just a DLC to the first game like how it was originally planned, rather than a completely new game. It was very obvious that they stretched the content for miles in order to fill the amount of a full game, when they could have just kept it to a smaller amount and added it to the Crater somehow. Just take *one* of the above ground biomes (preferably Arctic Spires because that's the most visually cool one) and use the above ground flora and fauna there. And for the underwater, take the most interesting from that pool as well, which would be the Twisty Bridges (all forms), Tree Spires, Crystal Caves, Fabricator Caves, and Deep Lilypad Caves, though obviously they should all be tweaked to fit the first game's style more. It may be less content, but it would feel less monotonous than trudging through an entire game of almost nothing.
It'd also be more forgivable as a dlc
Here's my theoretical two cents;
I'm almost certain that DLC cannot technically go through an early access phase. And unfortunately, Unknown Worlds Entertainment isn't used to not doing early access, so creating a different game page for Below Zero makes technical sense if they wanted it to go through early access. However, the downside of this it that it clashes with the original plan of Below Zero merely being DLC, because a seperate Subnautica game page with far fewer content & playtime than the original wouldn't really justify its existence. So the devs had to add more till they had just enough and wrapped it up.
I do believe they wanted to make something special with this project, but since it wasn't technically possible to keep it small as they originally intended, they did a lot more work than they wanted and lost a lot of passion in the process.
@Paul Merviel they also fired an amazing composer for mean tweets quite literally. Wich is why I lost respect for unknown worlds.
@@sword_racer185 Look, while I agree Simon Chylinsky should never have been fired, that is besides the point. I seriously doupt him staying around could have saved the game, because the source of the problem for Below Zero is more of a technical one than a wokeness one.
Charlie Cleveland, the UWE director, has always been woke. The whole reason why he wanted to make the first Subnautica was that he wanted to "play his part" after the Sandy Hook shooting by making a non-violent game with no guns. While that is obviously an extremely stupid idea from which to make a game, that didn't stop Subnautica from reaching god-tier levels of quality. Unfortunately, it's pretty much just a freak accident that will never be recreated, and neither will the smoothness of its early access phase.
@Paul Merviel oh I know i just miss hus music, below zero felt super floaty and not eery, wich is one of my main complaints
It seemed weird to me that Enzyme 42, the whole point of the first game, is now something you can fabricate out of local flora in the glacial basin. They should have leave the Sea Emperor Juvenile in so that then when you encounter it, Alan will ask how is it that a Sea Emperor is found in Sector Zero. This opens up an opportunity to have Robin tell us about what happened to Ryley, and to Alan how there was a survivor that finished what he and his people have struggled for so long
2 other details that i find weird is that how Alterra seemingly never caught up with Robin tampering with their radar, and Alan activating the Phase Gate yet leave it in the open and did nothing to cover their track when leaving the planet. In original story, one of the research member intentionally infected the entire board of operation overseers then activate the planetary shield which kinda make more sense than what we got (despite the fact he somehow activated the planetary shield)
Aside from story details, i think i must point out the lack of leviathan class in BZ. You almost never run into them, aside from the Shadow lev and Ice Worm which you're obligated to run into them to progress the story. In original game, you'd know they're there the moment you enter their territory with their spine chilling roars and shrieks, and the game ensures that you will ALWAYS run into them if you want to progress the story. Mean while in BZ, i only ran into the Chelicerate like once and never found them again, glow whales are mostly neutral til you get really close so they pose little to no threat, and the Shadow lev was horribly done compared to Sea Dragon because unlike the Sea Dragon, you can grapple the Shadow lev with the prawn suit and drill it to death while the Sea Dragon will swat you out of the way then continue attacking you. Basically Shadow lev just becomes a joke when you know how to deal with it. As for Ice Worm... ngl i abused the game's physic (by flinging myself around at mach 3 in the prawn suit using grapple like a sling shot) instead of making a snow fox so i never had to deal with them, although they are the most dangerous i admit given the fact you CANNOT fight them
Agreed. Enzyme 42 was what Al-EN's race was trying to get from the Sea Emperor. She was confined to a research tank in a fortified location at the bottom of the ocean. The fact tat in BZ you can make enzyme 42 out of random things scattered around the place makes the entire plot of the first game irrelevant. If they could make enzyme 42 out of stuff you pick up off the ground then why did the bother building the massive research facility for the Sea Emperor?
Well, I assumed that them being a research scientist of a highly advanced species would at least able to have the capabilities to create the Enzyme-42 with a very large and sohpisticated research base at her disposal. I also assumed that this occured roughly in line or after the events of Subnautica 1 and lead to Enzyme-42 being released into the environment en-masse, hence why the things on the planet is still alive and the Khraa is basicaly eliminated in everything but the Frozen Leviathan.
Also yes, I abused the prawn suit's grapple but because I found the overground part of the game so miserable that I refused to engage with it naturally. The one time I did was one my one and ONLY death because the combined effect of getting knocked off my SnowFox 2-3 times and being confused was enough for me to have my health lowered enough to be instagibbed by the Ice Worm. it also isn't an actual enemy but triggers on the map of where it can attack you, which is rather stupid game design and not at all enjoyable. The Prawn suit bypasses this by just not triggering anything.
@@Mallchad you made the E42 with a basic fabricator, and that's not accounting on the ezyme being dense enough like the ones made from the sea emperors to cure you. Remember the reason we survived for so long when others didn't is because we ate E42 infused fishes made by the old sea emperor, but it's not dense enough to cure you but can only delay the infection spread
@@Mallchad It isn't trigger on the map to my knowledge but just an event that can randomly happen throughout the Arctic Spires.
I think the reason why they could turn the shield on was probably because they were uninfected and presumably could turn it on just like how you can turn the gun off when uninfected.
The original Subnautica with the art direction of Alex Reis, and QOL features of Below zero would be the perfect survival game. Period. Those two things are the only redeeming qualities of below zero. Alex is a brilliant artist and worldbuilder, and his designs are uniquely alien, and all fit into some kind of phylogenic tree, like real alien life. Features like new furniture, pinned tabs, large rooms, and beacon customization make Below Zero quite smooth and polished to use- but don't help a lackluster game.
Bit late, but: good news! Apparently they ported below zero's QOL features (and actual content i.e: the big rooms)
Below zero fauna does look alien,many subnautica 1 fauna looks like mutated earth animals like reaper leviathans,they look more like demon sharks than aliens,or sea dragons that are literally dragons with tentacles.
I think a huge problem with the land stuff is that the movement wasn’t really improved upon over the first game. You still move slowly and clunkily. The snow fox doesn’t really work with the terrain you’re given and even in the more wide open spires you’re constantly getting knocked off of it by the worm. If the movement on land felt better, more graceful and clean like moving underwater does, it probably would have done wonders for those sections.
The worst part is that the Prawn suit, the vehicle no one would think is fast on land, is actually the best way of moving around on land. That thing has ridiculous strafe speed and for some reason it keeps that speed on land. Jumping and strafing is as fast if not faster than the Snow Fox for some reason.
This is one of my largest gripes about the game for me. One of the most interesting and well designed gameplay areas in the game were all the above ground sections and the fluffed up 3 tiny things that completely ruined it. SnowFox was one. not fixing the extremely buggy and limting ground movement that wasn't even attempted to be improvemened from the first game was another. Artificially limiting your inventory space with food and being seperated from your sea vehicles/structures and forcing you to dive very far into a cold and uncomfortable for snowfox and snow fur was the final nail in the coffin for me.
Having to go all the way back to back to build these things after struggling for ages in the cold long overground section or contenting with the obviously-not-meant-for-it above ground base building is a tragedy of this game and takes away from the only kinda-nice experience this game has to offer- the game was clearny not meant for surface stuff, even walking up slopes is not a good experience, its a swimming game...
I remember watching Jacksepticeye encounter a shadow leviathan in one of the early access builds. I believe that at the time, the time they were founded was significantly darker because I remember being terrifying as hell, and then when I actually got my hands on the game itself didn’t really stand out much
I was playing around in the early access build once and spawned it at night when they first added it via experimental mode and panicked cuz it blended into the night and all i could see were the red landing strip lights on it’s back which was incredible dim.
In short: Early Access was scarier than release
Mostly due to my own fault but that’s not important! 😂
@@tealishpotato idk why it is so hard for these studios to not just make 10 different leviathans like that should be minimum
@@GamingDualities
we got like 2 and a recolor, and both of them are not even 1/20th as intimidating as the reaper. embarassing.
yeah same@@yurifairy2969
The main issue was that they focused to much on the story and made the world fit that story where the opposite was true for the first game. the story was made to be passive and the world felt much much larger, deeper, and scary.
Actually, it seems like they didn't; they wrote a new story last minute that had to be fit into the world. And I think that's the problem; instead of saying "Okay, here is what's going to happen, now we need to create a world for it to happen in", it's "Shit, I need to invent stuff to put into all these places."
What worked so well about Subnautica is that we knew nothing. We didn't know about the degasi or the other survivors. I mean we know that the precursors were powerful but that's it.
You can see it on UA-cam. There was so much stuff when the first game came out talking about the precursors bc we didnt know. But with below zero and being told everything that interest faded.
There is one important thing that the Sea-truck sales at as what is in my opinion a replacement for the cyclops generally more than just the Seamoth, you know when you have all the modules taped onto it and it’s now a mobile base like the cyclops.
Vibes. It’s just a long tube. The Cyclops on the other hand made me feel like a submarine captain with its standing piloting position and all the cool gizmos on the screen, speed-settings and silent running mode, and grand scale to the thing with a full 2 decks. Yeah I get it it’s a bit much especially in the smaller map of bellow zero but MY GOD (like everything else) THE VIBES ARE GONE! I SEEK TO BE A CAPTAIN BELLOW THE SEA! NEMO IN HIS SUBMARINE! Alas, that feeling ‘tis gone…
Great video!
I gave up on BZ after I cured the frozen leviathan. I was dumbfounded that the MAIN QUEST ended with my character simply saying "ok. I habe closure now". I was so confused because it was such a lame way to wrap up the literal main story line. I thought something would happen, but that was actually it and I just stopped playing shortly after.
Also the way Marge tells you what happened to your sister by giving you a PDA? ???? And then neither of you say another word and you just leave???? I was SO confused and so sure I was missing something. Holy hell the story was bad!
Best part is you can complete the game without ever encountering the “Main” quest. It’s hilarious.
literally the greenhouse moment made me so mad
another thing too about Robin and Al-An is that in the early access version, she actually reacted to him being in her head.
and after he tells her his name, she's comments how she's waited to meet intelligent life for her entire career/lifetime, and the first dude she meets is called Alan
and it's really funny, cuz that's kinda how i'd expect someone to react. You'd think he'd have a more alien name, but it's just fucking "Alan", lmao.
but now, she doesn't do that. She just gets mad at him for "going silent" on her as if they're old friends reuniting after a long-held feud, rather than her meeting a literal alien and justifiably reacting to the situation as such.
it's just so bland and devoid of personality. I guess it was changed because robin got re-written to be a very generic "strong female lead" and they forgot to give her any other personality traits.
There's a couple other things like that too, but i don't remember exactly which ones.
finally finished the game a couple weeks ago purely out of spite, and by god is it worse than i remember.
Yeah the early access dialog and overall story is much better than the release wich is sad, but that's why steam lets you tamper with files
That's still in the game when you first get Alan
@@moondrop3855 i don't think so, but if it is it's not as funny or characterized as it was in early access.
i don't wanna reinstall and slog through the game to check though, so i'll believe ya.
@@vizthex It is still in the game but the new VA doesn't deliver that as well. Some of that child-like intrigue from the first ever British one was really charming to me and carried the dialogue imo.
@@bipstymcbipste5641 yeah, i'd expect a xenologist to be over the moon after meeting aliens.
but rn, she acts more like she's meeting an old friend. It just doesn't work.
All the devs had to do was add new building parts and quality of life improvements to the first game, lean in to base-building, and maybe add some more DLC missions.
What baffles me is that the zones in BZ weren't even that bad (there are way too many goddamned caves and cavasses though, like, Jesus Christ.) all they had to do was keep the seamoth and cyclops in the game and space things out better. The shallow twisty bridges area for instance should have had some big ass carnivores and been located 1,000m down. It feels like they just placed the zones on the map based on what they dreamt up first - not what made sense from a gameplay perspective.
No developer just wants to make the same game over and over again. But I feel you.
@@Synnabelle Call of Duty 47? FIFA 2099? Most games are basically the same and hugely successful and people like them.
@@Camcolito yeah but that's not usually what the devs want to do. That's what the corporations want.
I think of sequels like the Hippocratic oath - first, do no harm. You make sure you build on stuff that you did right the first time, only then adding brand new features and concepts. The devs here seem to think fans of the first game were clueless and made a different, and worse, game. I mean it's almost laughable. You have a hit game called "Subnautica" where the big draw is underwater exploring and the feeling of being alone on a strange world and you add more land, make the map tiny, and load the game with annoying cookie-cutter characters who send you on WOW quests.
i was nearly shocked when i saw that an hour and a half long video with high quality sound and some great montage had only 16 likes. But comments do explain why it is how it is, so ye, thanks for the review! Just wanted to say that it's really strange how an average player doesn't feel free in the game that's supposed to be about discovering stuff in open world. Devs made it way more linear for no reason. The whole SBZ feels like the lost river and lava zones biomes from the original game because these biomes are like tonnels with doors in the walls with necessary loot behind them. And the entirety of SBZ feels kinda like that which is like.... why
I don't know, Lost River is one of the most fascinating biomes in the original game for how varied it is, how strong its atmosphere is, and what a sheer departure it is from what came before. I'd say SBZ feels more like the Underwater Islands biome where it's mostly just empty water which they threw a million Bonesharks into because there had to be _something_ there.
Wait what, the lost river is one of the coolest biomes in the game. It feels like entering an alien world even in comparison to the cool biomes that came before it, which were also literally part of an alien world lol
@@JDizzle785 okay these are just personal opinions, but my point was that lost river is more linear, there is less freedom than in “surface” part of the map. CruelestChris also made a good point that SBZ is more like floating islands. Idk now if my point is that relevant after that but ye I’ll not argue on how cool the lost river is but just its structure provides less freedom and sbz feels like that too
Well this was reuploaded, hence the low view and like count.
Subnautica is a game where you feel like you're not supposed to be there, but Below Zero is a game where the world itself is designed to help you survive. Oxygen plants? Titan holefish? Thermal lilies? Fevered peppers? How am I supposed to be immersed in a world where you ask me to stretch my disbelief this much with such wildly implausible evolutionary results?
25:56 Anyone who adds eating sounds like that in ANY video game should be barred from EVER making sound design decisions in games or any audiovisual medium.
Like either just have a confirmation ding or something that barely sounds like eating like how it works in minecraft
This I why I’m so exited so Acii’s Call of the Void mod where if you make it past the ghost leviathans you can find little islands in the void and other cool stuff. It leans far more into the horror element and encourages exploration and interaction with the environment so much more and includes so much new flora and fauna.
Honestly, the penguin dudes are the biggest highlight of this game.
Like even if it wasn’t a great successor, they did one thing better than the original, and added those adorable goobers.
Hence why they made such goobers the mascot for BZ I think.
Its actually crazy how i complained about the exact same things you did except i did before they even released the alpha version.. I was invested in the subnautica community because i LOVED the game so i joined a lot of different foruns where Devs usually answered questions or did constant updates on what they were aiming with the new game. I remember reading a dev post where they introduced Sam and the alien dude, they talked about how they were trying to make a story with objectives rather than finding it yourself by exploring. I also remember reading that they wanted to put more dialogue into the game and ease a little bit of tensions. After reading those posts, i did a lot of my own threads asking why were they running away from the things that made subnautica 1 successful eg: mistery terror/fear of unknown and scary exploration with the feeling of isolation and that you were completely alone. They either ignored or had the same npc response that they were aiming at different things, its actually insane that the huge majority at the time agreed with me and i actually saw thousands of posts asking the same thing, i cant believe they moved foward with such a nonsense story. Can't say i didnt warn them lmao
Tbh, it could’ve been good (at least the story), if the initial writer from the first game stuck around. Idk if he was fired or if he left, but all they had was the first draft that the new writer picked apart (hence why the *motivation* for exploring the planet to find your sister is *optional* and not *mandatory*).
BZ also was meant to be a dlc/expansion to the original, but they decided to make it a stand alone title. It feels like they didn’t go through the same process as the first game in acknowledging feedback and iterating upon it. I think they had a strict deadline too.
Doesn’t help that that the sound designer/composer was fired who helped with one of the biggest elements that people loved about the original, the sounds.
I think the only disappointing encounter I had in the original Subnautica, was the sea dragon. However, It’s sound design was amazing and really added to the atmosphere of the lava zones.
(It was disappointing for me as it looked really goofy, and I was easily able to outmaneuver it with my prawn suit CONSTANTLY, and in the active lava zone, it didn’t even notice me.)
I will agree with the Sea Dragon design as it looks like one of those dinosaur toys you’d find at Asda or any other retail store.
Funny thing, i never knew how to get the hydraulic fluids to unlock the bridge portion, so i just ingored it and kept playing the game. I came back to it a while later with a prawn suit and a grappling hook, and i realized i could catapult myself over the gap without fixing the bridge. Prawn suit carries the entirety of the land area with only that grappling hook in general, fastest mobility option in the game.
A lot of the problem I had with the tension was that you got attacked so often that they couldn’t make it fatal because it was unavoidable. And once you were attacked and survived you just learned to repair and continue, over and over because you couldn’t avoid being attacked.
The worm ended up being unavoidable, in early access I spent ages stealthing around so it wouldn’t find me, in subsequent play throughs I can’t seem to avoid it at all, even the thumpers you’re supposed to use are next to useless so you just stomp around in a prawn suit and repair every so often, it takes all the tension and fun out of encountering the worm.
I think the snow fox could have been fun if it had a large section of map devoted to it, I feel like it’s purpose should be to go places fast so you don’t freeze to death but you need to have a big map for that to work(instead we got a small maze like area where you just continually crash into walls and the snow fox speed was never that useful so instead it was just a really cumbersome hot water bottle. The prawn suit kinda makes both the worm and the cold a non-issue(except that traversing a large area in a slow prawn would have been tedious).
The same problem exists with the shadow leviathans you can’t avoid them so just keep repairing and keep going.
With reapers from the original they would do most of your seamoths health in damage in a single attack so if you were slightly damaged then it could just destroy it or leave it on so little health that while running away to find somewhere safe to repair a collision could destroy it. That was scary because you could be left in hostile waters with out your support vehicle so you really had to avoid it.
About the Prawn Suit, I found that thing to be unreasonably fast. For some reason it maintains its ridiculous strafe speed on land, to the point that jumping and strafing is as fast if not faster than the Snow Fox.
I actually really liked the worm it reminded me of the dune reapers bc you couldn't really avoid detection but you could outrun it if you were paying attention
best video on this topic ive seen. i cant believe the letsplayers ive watched just did not see these glaring shortcomings in the sequel.
when i played the game, i was literally shocked at how bad it was. and the story and cringe dialogue is just the start of these obvious problems!
Jacksepticeye played the early release, and really loved it (which honestly I would agree that the early release had way more promise because it actually had good dialogue and charming characters that had personalities.) then he played the frostbite update and you can immediately tell the charm of the game is gone and the happiness Sean had is gone as well, and he is very disappointed with it. Then the full release comes and…it’s just not a fun let’s play. A lot of it is Sean criticizing it, as he should. And the only good part was the ending. But even then I’m the comments, people are saying he didn’t get enough lore or look at enough PDA’s, and I mean, who blames him? Below zero is just…boring. It doesn’t have anything, there’s no incentive to look at the PDA’s because there’s no charm or personality, and like this video says, they’re all near the surface anyways so it’s not like you’re traveling deep to learn about the lower depths of this area and what happened. Like the map itself, it’s all very shallow.
@@lovelightstarboy Does he really criticize it? I'm about to watch that let's play. I ignored it at first out of lack of interest and wanting to play the game myself. If he does see the flaws then I kinda do wanna watch him play
@@bipstymcbipste5641 He gives his praises and criticisms of the game after he beats it.
@@lovelightstarboyI don't think he even finished the below zero series did he?
I believe Sethorven saw the game for what it was. But he might be the only one I watched that did.
Every improvement made to habitats in BZ should've been added to the original Subnautica. Large rooms and glass roofs are a godsend for immersing yourself in the environment, having specific docking modules for the Seamoth and Cyclops would've been great for making your habitats look less like an underwater house and more of an actual seabase, and the control room is just the cherry on top.
Because of how small the map is in BZ, there's no incentive to build multiple large bases. Aside from building a few outposts to serve as pitstops between "dangerous" areas, the only reason why you would build multiple bases in BZ is if you build research and/or alien containment bases for immersion, but you can't immerse yourself in the world because the environment is weaker than the original and it wouldn't make sense story wise because you're trying to hide from Alterra. So that leaves you with no gameplay or story reason to expand beyond 3 or 4 rooms.
Hey just wanted to let you know if you missed it, subnautica 2.0 is live on steam now
@@emergensiexit yup, haven't gotten around to playing it yet but I'm super excited.
Dude predicted everything
He came up with a better story than a whole team
To be fair that's not hard achievement. Even original story was way better, and it wasn't finished yet
Writing better than a committee is not hard. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
The story of this game was completely rewritten,(for some baffling reason) which lead to the current, nonsensical and none-consequential storyline.
Subnautica director : Charlie Clevaland
Subnautica Writer : Tom Jubert
Subnautica Compositor : Simon Chylinski
Each one of them left the company or was straigth up fired, leaving talentless people in charge. Subnautica was great for it's game design, it's story and the tension build up with the music.
Yea I remember hearing Simon was fired for making a joke on Twitter. Explains why the soundtrack for Below Zero is so soulless and lacks any of that original subnautica energy.
Fired for joke on Twitter? Sounds about right for emotionally stunted blue-haired writers for "modern audiences".
I will be so happy when people can say dumb things and people just move on.
@@curtisyue182my favorite thing about the original sound track (minus it making me piss myself out of fear) was the fact that Donald Trump says China in the sparse reef. It's so well mixed unless you know it's there and are listening it blends in
what I'd have changed is replace the hover bike with the hover van from the promo art. Then, the crystal caves are accessible only once you go over the ice worm territory.
Equally, the water in the crystal caves is just above freezing, so you'll still loose heat if you try to swim in it. This would be the contrast to Sub 1, as it ended in boiling hot lava caves.
So, you need the prawn suit to dive down, simply so you don't freeze to death. But, if you try to walk the prawn across the worm's territory, it gets aggro fast, since the prawn is very heavy and very audibly makes noise as it walks.
The answer is, you need to find the hovervan Sam drove, that she then accidently encased in rock during her brief terrorism career. All the over vans were taken by altera. So, you can scan that van, as you learn of the new mission. You can then load the prawn into the hover van like its a mobile moon pool, and this van can glide across water and ice equally well, while also providing lots of storage.
So you carefully navigate the ice worm territory in the van, to reach the opening to the crystal caves, where you can unload the prawn suit and jump in.
Now the ice worm has a story use other than minor annoyance for a non-crucial story.
"During her brief terrorism career" has me weak
The only point I'd add is the inconsistent voice direction. Robin will not be silent under any circumstances, monologuing even when Al-An isn't there yet. However, when a leviathan or shark come barreling towards her, she is dead silent.
The moment where even a silent person would yell out something in a panic, she is mute. It breaks the last pieces of immersion for me.
Personally, I've always seen Al-An as the sort of creature that was part of a hivemind, but having been separated from it for so long, has developed more of a personality of his own. But since he had no one to communicate with and no real prior experience, he doesn't know how to process how to properly be his own person so he keeps contradicting himself about being many and one. We learnt from the previous game data entries that hiveminds can disagree with its components, form differing solutions to solve problems and even have internal conflict until one faction wins out and the hive stabilizes. Architects are undoubtedly capable of individual thought even with their hivemind, but value the hive more than the individual within it, thus also giving Al-An skewed ideas of things like the value of individuality and personal goals or values. The way he contradicts himself about the stuff like dreams and music in-game I see as him learning about and starting to appreciate those things while living inside Robin's mind and seeing her memories/experiences etc. In doing so, he also starts to appreciate Robin a whole lot more as they journey together, little by little. Thinking of him as a character struggling to cope with both responsibility and his changing self has made me tolerate him better. Perhaps thanks to that, I find the architect storyline to be overall better than the human ones (which isn't saying much though).
But this is all really just me filling plotholes with my hyperactive author brain.
This is actually a pretty good explanation to the Hive mind issue he described here.
This is pretty much what I thought of him.
Absolutely same, I think my brain definitely filled in gaps and accepted things in ways other people just wouldn't, so when Fish was talking about how bad AL-AN's story was, I didn't quite see it in as bad a light as Fish did.
Fish makes absolutely valid points, but I kind of just let myself get lost in my suspense of disbelief
Nice to see this pop up again. I’ve watched it several times, and I find it cathartic. I don’t HATE BZ…it’s still fun, just less good in every way. I think what explains a lot it is: SN had amazing ludonarrative harmony. Simple gameplay loop: explore, gather, craft, upgrade, so you can explore farther and deeper, so you can gather better resources, so you can build better things, so you can explore…etc etc etc. Which perfectly supports the simple but engaging plot; everything you do is in order to survive and get off this planet. Which is supported by an ambiance of isolation, solitude, dread and foreboding. In the process, you unravel the mystery of what’s going on. In BZ…the story is a garbage fire, your character even forgets why she’s there halfway though, you don’t even need most of the upgrades to…gather alien boyfriend parts or whatever… There’s just no point to any of it, none of the parts fit together, even with themselves…
Yeah. I've always stopped playing after around six hours. Never can continue past when the story takes a cringey nosedive.
I hope this video blows up. It’s genuine and precise. This is my first time looking at your channel and I love you already.
The ice worm section was presented in a way that made me think the thumpers were practically required, so I made them before seeing any ice worms and thus rarely saw the ice worms.
The hope poems hit harder with the original voice actress, who was actually GOOD.
I was also expecting Alan to betray us at the end, and was more surprised that he DIDNT when he finally got his body.
Wait THATS why they scrapped the original story? I thought it was internal problems or a writers strike that caused them to have to redo the story, and that’s why it was so bad in general cuz they didn’t have actual writers do the new story line.
They thought they had enough biomes?? I was waiting for a cool dark trench biome with glaciers above!! They barely used any glaciers or ice in the water.
The original game is in my top 5 favourite games ever. Picking up Below Zero, my standards were very high, as was set by the former game. Sadly, it really hasn’t got the charm the first had. The ocean just doesn’t feel… alive enough. I miss the original wonder of Subnautica where you can go anywhere and find new creatures and environments. Below Zero is just ice, more cold stuff, maybe a cool biome or two here and there, and the same 5 fish copy pasted everywhere. I hope that if they make future entries, they take the feedback and make a complete experience once again.
My favorite part of the "why do humans use ball and socket joints they're so primitive" exchange is that alan's new body clearly ALSO uses ball and socket joints, meaning he's also a hypocrite who decided to roast robin for literally no reason.
one of my biggest gripes with the progression (primarily in base building) is that there's this new mineral detector tool but then the scanner room is still easily accessible
You forget, in Subnautica we can find that the Architects HAD HUMAN ARTIFACTS, meaning they came into contact with early humans are took some of our stuff for their little museum, and yet AL-AN DOESN"T KNOW ANNYTHING ABOUT HUMANS????
You say that like Unknown Worlds bothered remembering anything about the first game
@@gothamwarrior Yeah true
When i played through the game i didnt even get Alan until i had basically done all the stuff on land and spent a considerable amount of time exploring. I didn't even know about Alan untill i started following some flashing lights to where you find him initially.
I had the complete opposite experience. I was doing some early exploration and I just happened upon him. I assumed having a sentient alien living inside your head and just giving you directions to everywhere you needed to go was some super late game content and I'd managed to sequence break the game, but apparently it really does happen quite early, I just got him a little earlier than normal.
here's a light observation I made that doesn't really mean anything I just thought it was interesting:
think of the kill animation for the reaper leviathan when it attacks you. it grabs you and swallows you whole, so fast that you'll miss it if you blink.
now think of the chelicerate and squidshark animations:
weirdly drawn out, detailed, and slow. it feels like somebody with a vore fetish was hired into the studio between the two games.
doesn't mean a whole lot of anything but it just feels weird.
I get that they wanted to add some horror in the animations (maybe a leftover from the original vision for BZ being an expansion to SN). But now that you mention it, it feels like there were other reasons…
Even one of the animations (for those things that drag you to them) feels janky. At least Robin fights back (or at least tries to). Also doesn’t help that the Shadow/Phantom Leviathan bio kind of lines up with this. 😬
Yknow what? I'd not be surprised if someone in the dev team was into vore.
Good observation, but my bet is they just wanted to add detail for quality sake.
I know that tons of other creators have already done this, but I would love to hear your review of the first Subnautica! Your way of analyzing and interpreting the various aspects of the game is super interesting and a video essay similar to this one covering the first game would be awesome
The first 5 minutes were so exciting because I had absolutely no idea what was going on and regularly dived WAAAY below my safe depth. I thought this would be the gimmick of the game: going beyond your comfort zone to progress. However, once I discovered the high capacity tank, the game lost all that precious tension. I think that the smaller world was a workable idea, but they seemed to hate the idea of making the player uncomfortable and so it all just kinda feels underwhelming
A good survival game is going to, by default, be pretty close to a horror game as far as the minimum tension is concerned. Below zero felt like subnautica for toddlers
Below Zero needed more pacing, I ended up getting the Prawn Suit pretty early in the game, which pretty much made every encounter after that worthless.
I remember some moments from the first game where it felt like I was breaking the game and wasn't supposed to be so deep/far which is a feeling that stuck with me. The deadly curiosity I felt was like an itch I just had to scratch no matter the danger, I wanted to go deeper and deeper even if I knew I probably wouldn't be able to make it back. Below Zero just lacks these feelings because Robin is there by choice.
Honestly the largest thing I felt while playing the game was massive confusion as to why they thought removing lead drill piles was an okay idea, made base building feel needlessly hostile.
As an Indian, I prefer the accent/voice of the first game over the Indian accent of the second one.
I feel like the biggest thing for me is that I was never afraid of dying. The map was so small that you can memorize it very easily, the game is basically never dark they all are lit by bioluminescent plants and stuff like that, and really the monsters weren’t all that scary they don’t lurk in the dark like the reaper they don’t reworded massive roars like there was no big threat no scary environments which is what I liked about the first game you were stranded on an alien planet where everything wants to kill you or make you shit yourself
I just wish the map had a different layout or had some cut ideas implemented, because the more fleshed out biomes are pretty gorgeous. The lilypad caves are very different looking than the actual lilypad biome and the cave connection to the crystal caverns is a neat trail. I really do like the twisty bridges. Purple vents would be a nice weird small biome that has a bunch of little patches. the east arctic is a nice view if you’re the #1 glow whale fan but it’s empty. The kelp forest caves are neat, but the actual kelp forest being a color swap from the original game is horrid. I actually really like the northern arctic fringe butting against the iceberg and being super dark even during the day, but its just… there.
The thermal vents, the east and west arctic, and the sparse arctic are absolutely useless and provide no exploration incentive. The few interesting biomes we have are clustered next to each other and muddled by the sheer amount of bland copy paste wastes.
In the original, there are the floating islands, mountains, bulb zone, dunes, sea treader’s path, wreckage, sparse reef, and grand reef for non-repeating biomes. Some of the most memorable areas, the blood kelp zone and mushroom forests, ARE repeated zones but have different threat levels and feels completely different based on which one you’re in.
None of the repeating biomes in below zero feel worth being repeated, and the map is so small anyway that the repetition is more like an uninterrupted chain than splotches of repeated terrain.
Also the lost river is such a cool deep scary underwater cave that the crystal caverns PALE in comparison. it’s just a straight shot more or less with no cool detours and scenic shots. If you’re not familiar with the river, it’s pretty easy to get turned around in its many chambers and routes. The ghosts are dangerous, but the large pieces in the environment can actually protect you from them, and they’re placed in grand chambers to emphasize how grand THEY are. the shadows are just sprinkled throughout an incredibly samey looking tube, that is very easy to get lost in because it IS so similar looking all the way down. There’s a single tunnel, a handful of crevices, and two different entrances, but it is a straight tube. The fabricator caverns are a big blob of the exact same cave with a color swap and even more crammed in fucking shadows. it’s a joke. they threw in some neat plants in there as set dressing. It’s bright as hell, it’s not unique, the shadows are just annoying, so you get NONE of that fun tension keeping you on guard as you go into what is supposed to be the most dangerous part of the game.
Whack. Whack as hell. It evokes the first game, but only to prove the first game’s strengths. The world design can be beautiful at times, but it is squandered by how lackluster and uninspired the rest is. It feels like the first draft of something truly great. The freeform element of story and exploration from the first game is expertly reflected in the large wide open map, and the confusing, railroaded story element of this game has been shoved into a wasted, overbearing and oversimplified map.
I couldn't find the final body part in the purple crystal caves for a while because I figured I had missed something on or near the surface. I found the alien base in the red crystal caves but was told to come back later with all three blueprints instead of 2/3. I needed a hint from a friend who was kind enough to look at the wiki for me and let me know what biome to explore in, so I didn't have to spoil its exact location to myself. I was not guided to it by Alan as I had been with the other artifacts so I had no reason to assume I missed it the first time through the purple biome I had already visited. He does not pipe up about it until you are well and deep on traversing the dead-end route housing the organs.
I also could not find Marguerit's base for a while after my PDA gave me her PRAWN's Last Known Location. Maybe it was changed after the game was released but that waypoint absolutely did not pinpoint her base location for me, nor the cave entrance that leads to her. That waypoint is way closer to the destroyed nuclear Alterra base, which is what I thought the game wanted me to find from that waypoint. There was evidence in that ruined base that Marguerit had sabotaged it, and I figured it might have "happened" super recently, like the survivors in the other life pods dying off-screen while Riley is knocked out in Subnautica's intro. I considered it might even be possible that I had missed out on talking with those people before she blew them up seeing as NPCs were suddenly on the table!
Thanks for putting into words much of what I thought was missing from this game. I hope UWE understands these nuances if the franchise continues.
I remember when they announced Below Zero, the community (or maybe the devs, it's hard to remember exactly) assumed that the game would be simply larger than what the original was. To be honest, I believe we deserved that much; a better, more unique take on an already incredible idea that just worked out fantastically thanks to its unique design direction. Hell, there were even teasers that some of the bigger community-made submarines could potentially make it in Below Zero, which is what personally excited me.
What we got was a project about half the size and length of the original with twice as many bugs that make it feel like it's still in pre-release alpha, but they try to convince you it's the final product because they didn't feel like actually finishing it.
This game feels like it was made by a team completely misguided and disconnected from the original development squad who made the first one. It's a shame.
Everytime i get subnautica cravings and want to go and play...I ALWAYS go back to the original rather than below zero
Just beat Subnautica for tge first time. Loved it. Still after beating it, I have no clue as to how anyone could make a true sequel to it.
A good developer could. BZ had a troubled development filled with bad decisions.
@Bollibompa honestly I don't think anyone could make a sequel as good as Subnautica.
Subnatica was lighting in a bottle not just bc of game play but because of circumstance
It was a small studio who out of shear luck got their game picked up in early development by UA-camrs who then led it to blow up in popularity and let the team take their time
Honestly besides the story problems everything else sounds like the devs sat there with some guy looking over their shoulder saying make it less terrifying make it less subnautica and they had no choice but to comply for some reason. at least thats what it feels like
That sounds pretty accurate, especially with how they randomly ditched and ignored what made Subnautica great, like listening to community feedback.
I was looking for this review! I doubted this was the right one until I read that pin
It's just a well made critique to listen to and reminisce on this poorly made thing. I did see while searching there seems to have been an update, so that's good the devs are working on improving it slightly. (Though jesus nothing will save that story and dialogue) Wishing the new channel luck!
Pretty brave to be insulting the Cyclops. I think part of the reason the vehicle works so well in the original is for the longest time you are just at the mercy of the unknown and terrified. Until you get the massive sub that you can fit all the amenities of a base onto and the difference in exploration and comfort is very noticeable.
For me the Cyclops is OP because you make it OP in the first place, it really does rewards you greatly the more you invest in modules and upgrades, being OP in that thing is a reward for all the time and effort you put into making, maintaining, charging and upgrading the thing
. . . Unlike the Sea Truck that actively punishes you for getting more modules and *still* manages to be more stupidly op broken than the cyclops itself lmao
The land sequences were totally dead to me when I realized the prawn is a perfect counter to everything that's dangerous about them. I also found a goofy physics bug with the grapple arm that let me yeet myself halfway across entire biomes at once
what broke it for me was that the biomes dont make sense
there is no cycle of life
every biome in the original all had gamey borders but the creatures in it all made sense and fit in the foodcycle
it all felt natural as well as tense, it felt alive
awesome video! you described the game quite well and I like your takes on solutions. Didnt know about the cut content either like damn that frozen dragon wouldve been cool, and less squid sharks lmao
So glad this video is back up. Easily the best critique of such a disappointing game. You perfectly summed up all my thoughts. Love the way you broke down the plot beat by beat because it is truly fucking insane how little sense it makes, especially the Sam plot (which ends up literally being a side quest). You missed my favorite part though. At the beginning Robin says some shit like, “Alterra claims Sam got her coworker and herself killed in an explosion due to her own negligence. There’s no way, that’s not something Sam sould do!” …And then it turns out that, no, that’s actually literally exactly what fuckin happened.
I genuinely hope the developers see this because it really is a thoughtful and fair critique.
Also that Will Sasso edit was so unexpected and perfect. Classic PF Changs clip
One thing I'll say mildly in their defense, I don't think it was a mistake to want to make something, building off of Subnautica, but with a different vibe and a different goal, rather than just, "The same thing, but more, and maybe better," I think that's understandable. But the devil is in the details, as they say, and the devil was in there fuckin' shit up real good, apparently.
Beyond that--I haven't actually played the game myself, because if I was going to I'd want to finish the original first, and the original *gets* to me *real* bad even knowing almost everything about it already... but I kinda wasn't that interested after watching other people play through it anyway. I wouldn't feel comfortable commenting on a lot of the elements without getting my hands on it myself, but the dialogue, *thank* you. I remember watching IGP keep playing through different builds and he'd listen to the dialogue and get all excited turning ideas around in his head and would keep trying to agree with Al-An and I'm over here like, "...Bruh, all of this is cringe and dumb; they are both dumb and cringe, and I appreciate your enthusiasm, but this is plastic kiddie pool levels of deep, my guy." Frustrating. 😶
Long but well done review. Surprised that I agree with everything you said.
Though I think the Seatruck is a pretty good replacement for the Seamoth and Cyclops. It may be the thing I liked most about BZ.
I will admit you have good points. I just finished the game so let me spit ball my two cents.
Though the game is smaller the biomes feels stretched. I’m not sure if I noticed this but I could have sworn there was more variety and less scale to each biome on the first game. I swear that 70 percent of the non land areas involved the reefs and twisty bridges.
I felt “safe” for about 90 percent of the game. I didn’t even die once unlike the many times I died in the previous game. Chalk it up to experience, but below zero has a few design quirks that makes the game easier.
The only biomes that makes you twist and turn heavily is the sea monkey’s den. It was the only time I felt cramped, yet for some odd reason the biome was so bright. I never got lost.
There was a lack of urgency in the game.
The robin and Alan ruin the atmosphere. I feel calm and safe knowing that Robin and Alan’s conversations can level done my tension.
The biomes are pretty! Don’t get me wrong! But I think an over reliance on stronger brighter colors makes me feel safe.
I feel safer in the shallow waters. I feel safe in the snow fox ignoring cold. I feel safe since the only leviathans I ran into are easy to avoid unlike the previous games where you have to be creative and be sneaky.
I felt safe the entire time. I’m okay with earning safety, but I don’t like these hand outs.
Yea, the original Subnautica a lot of fun for me was running around being terrified of everything until you build up your bases and especially your Cyclops so you can keep the dangers at bay.
Going from not being able to see anything at night and then getting ample warning with the sonar, learning the safe areas to travel through/marking them via beacons, and getting countermeasures like the Cyclops shield and thermal module to be able to self sustain whereever you go, made it very satisfying to progress and felt like you earned it.
I have watched many analysis after playing the game and I think you said what I think about this game the best. The setting in the first oner had me terrified, all those wide open spaces made me realize, that I feel very unsafe when havinng no point of reference anywhere. Caves where only spooky becauser of those mindcontrol guys.
The only time I felt that primal dread in Below Zero, was at the world edge. I really missed those drops into the abyss, that was the stuff that really amde my heart go nuts.
The base building is really enjoyable, when you install the mod that lets you use all ressources in lockers nearby.
I also really liked the Seatruck. I didn't use the Prawn Suit or the Cyclops in the first game at all, it was just me and my Seamoth. And even now, the prawn suit seemd kinda useless, because it was just able to get 100 m deeper than the Seatruck, so I only used it to mine ressources and for the land parts. Found it really handy to be able to just stick it to my truck.
Also the Big Ghost Leviathan in the cave doesn,t seem to detect you, when you are just using the seaglider and the seatruck has a module that shocks him, so there is no real danger.
It's just so disappointing, Subnautica was the only game I ever played that managed to infuse this kind of dread in me, Below Zero made me feel safe all the time.
And yes, the story was real dogshit, but I kinda liked the PDA entry about the bird called hope, it was cheasy as hell, but at least memorable.
I remember this on the other channel and this is what I point too for all my problems with the game.
This story is… so garbage. I’m playing through this again and I’m not comprehending well. I agree that gameplay should be the focus of a game but if you’re heavily focusing “gameplay” on story that story needs to be good too. If the story sucks it can ruin everything… like this
It honestly feels like the developers were ashamed of the first game being considered a semi horror and did everything they could to remove that in Below Zero. The overly bright areas, the non-scary creatures and Leviathans, the waypoints and maps to every point of interest, the voiced dialogue... it reeks of the devs trying to wash away the feeling of horror.
I find shadow leviathans terrifying,and chelicerates can sometimes jumpscare you
@@HYDROCARBON_XD Shadow Leviathans were cool, but they were ruined for me by being in one area that's lit up like christmas. You could see them coming a mile away.
I think in universe as to why the PDA has a different voice is because Robin’s PDA is not from Alterra. It’s from Xenoworks, which Alterra bought out and now owns Xenoworks. I still hate the new voice though.
I've lost 2 Snowfoxes by putting them into my inventory, and then later deploying them and watching them clip through the ground and fall out of sight.
I like the _idea_ of the Snowfox, but in practice it's... it's not great.
Erhm, what? That is due to glitching, not the snowfox....
@@Bollibompa it's a glitch with the snowfox.
@@aircraftcarrierwo-classamazing that you had to explain that 😂
@@Bollibompa🤓👆
@@aircraftcarrierwo-class
Yes. So, not something to do with the Snowfox design... Are you dumb?
Robin was such a strong female character that she had to remind you of that multiple times throughout the game. She was so cringe...every word out of her mouth.
she basically single handily killed the game
Something that I hate about below zero is that Riley isn't mentioned once. I wish there was at least something that mentioned him and his fate after coming back to Earth. I loved Riley way more than Robin even though Riley didn't talk I still felt like he had a better personality than she did with the little animations that he did, like how he would swing the knife around after he made it or grabbed his hand with the propulsion cannon. I wanted to know what happened to him after he got back, but nothing was mentioned, which was one of my biggest disappointments with below zero.
I think a cool way to add tension where it wasn't in the original would be to make power and technology harder to obtain. If the idea in the story is that you're trying to go behind this big company's back, it would make sense to not have access to much of the technology that allowed you to survive in the first game. Have it so you get immediately locked out of your PDA system and have it say something like "unauthorised user, initiating emergency mode" or something.
Strip back the tech you have access to and make it so the recipes are much more scrappy and make more use of the environment. Anything more complex has to be scavenged from the camps on the ice, locking it behind progression you make on your own. It would've been something different and helped create some challenge for veterans too. Have it so Robin doesn't have immediate access to oxygen tanks so she has to first make a snorkel, then the pipes, before finally gaining access to a rebreather or something. It recreates some of that challenge of food/water/oxygen from the first game for vets by not allowing them to rely on their knowledge from the first game to help them survive. It would also help with the more story-focus the game is going for by really putting you in Robin's shoes (or flippers, I guess)
I haven't finished the video, so maybe you already had a similar or better idea, but that's just my thoughts!
Yeah, but they wanted more children and weak-hearted people to play. Less terror, less violence, less death. It was not for the fans but some new market.
@@Bollibompa "weak-hearted people" 💀
@@lixyororke
Don't know what it means?
I think a simple 3-step solution to inventory management in both games.
Allow fabricators to just pull resources from lockers (Whether through an upgrade or just base kit)
Like if you have a base, the fabricator can pull resources from any locker in the base. Fabricator in your cyclops in the first game? Pulls from every locker. Same goes for the fabricator module in the seatruck.
Craftable inventory upgrades that add an extra row or just base kit add an extra 2-3 rows to your inventory.
Finally, and this is just for below zero, but change up the Quantum locker to make it a lot more interesting. Keep the deployable option, but also add an option to place it in your base. Then, for each quantum locker placed in the world the size of the locker increases. You can even make the first one start smaller to compensate if you want. But maybe it's like
1 Locker = 4 spaces
2 = 8
3 = 12
ect.
That way late game you can just create single mass storage devices around the world, as well as carrying a deployable around with you to instant store resources. This even opens up the possibilities to create things like a Quantum storage module for the seatruck or the prawn suit, which would help massively with resource gathering and management.
This is an incredibly well done video, you covered it extremely well, I've watched it three times now. I'm so pleased I found it, it really added a different perspective to my own view while going through the game.
Since this is such a comprehensive debate on the design of Subnautica 2 (1.5?) that I thought I would write about what I found to be just immersion breaking on my playthrough (to me at least).
1. The zones were so extremely cluttered with visual and fauna effects that I would seriously consider this game about exploring an ocean should have a claustrephobia warning on it.
2. The whole plot of Subnautica 1 was that nothing except the immediate area around the Sub1 end storyplot survived for enzyme reasons The bacteria was a planet killer, a galaxy killer. So how did this sector survive and not be void? Was there another captured *spolier*?? Was this area never contaminated at all? (But why would there by a frozen contaminated leviathan then) Or is everthing we see in this part of the planet just newly evolved? In which case omg that was fast.
3. Alterra when discovering a live sample of a bacteria capable of destroying an entire super advanced alien civilization would first secure the enzyme as a cure and then immedately take about 50 000 samples and spread them across its entire corporate empire in hundreds of hermatically sealed labs. "curing" the original frozen leviathon isn't going to matter much.