Came here to also say this is some wonderful narration. Writing aside which is excellent whenever you hear that spark of joy in a creators voice as they ADR their projects it's a great sign
@@FranklyGaming it is from the warpers. because the pda can translate it, and since they were developed by the precursors it would make sense the warpers use the same language-ish, so yeah thats why the pda can partially translate the radio messages
The warpers we're made by the precursors to enforce the quarantine it's implied that they are the ones who destroyed most of the other pods my head cannon is you the player wasn't detected until later on because you were unconscious
Literally, my eyebrows just kept going further up. Like, sure, your thing might not be my thing, but that's a wild concept to hear about. The 'I'm messing with you guys' made me instantly relax and hang my head. I thought I was learning some cursed lore to haunt my friends with.
Just want to add, the frozen Leviathan that's infected with Khara was confirmed to be dead by the devs, the Khara is still alive because it has been slowly consuming the inside of the leviathan... Similar to the way Margaret was eating the inside of the Reaper Leviathans while simultaneously using it as shelter.
Yeah, with that i also didnt understand him calling Riley selfish for trying to leave a planet he almost diednon multiple times. He would be isolated from people for the reat of that time, he was fully cured by the end of the game too.
@@tfordham13I want to argue that regardless of that, he has the enzymes needed to be a cure and make a cure within his blood, even with trace amounts, he will also be a cure if needed
The khara didn't necessarily have to be eating it to survive! Some bacteria are capable of going into and indefinite dormancy, often triggered by extremely cold temperatures. It's actually a threat on Earth too, as with glaciers melting, dangerous and ancient diseases could be released!
In regards to the whole lifepod thing, you can actually find a PDA entry in the Aurora that details that the lifepods are SUPPOSED to be stocked with much more resources than you actially find in your lifepod (can't remember the exact entry, it said that they must be stocked with multiple first aid kits, tools, etc), so Alterra isn't even stocking their lifepods like they're supposed to
Kind of also an indirect nod to the Titanic. It was supposed to be stocked with more lifeboats as well as being built to a better standard, but because the company that built it skipped a bunch of steps and the guy funding it was greedy as hell, well, we got the historical disaster we have in textbooks now (Also, the guy who commissioned the Titanic and paid for it also died on that failed voyage, karma really is a bitch)
It's likely they did cut corners, but not all Lifepods were made equal. Ours had food and water, and another had an Emergancy Seaglide, said in a voicelog. They really just threw diffent crap into lifepods and said "Okay, thats enough safety."
12:29 Just a minor note on Ghost leviathan, much like Diablos in monster hunter, they are highly territorial, but not carnivorous. So they wouldn't eat the survivors, just tear them to shreds for existing.
Wait, the Ghosts aren’t carnivores? I knew the Diablos thing (I play way too much Monster Hunter) but I didn’t know the Ghosts didn’t eat meat. That’s really cool.
@@diseasedwombat5611 Oh I see where the confusion might come from. Wiki says they eat other animals when they are juveniles (though does not cite its source weirdly), where as data entry says the mature ones feed on microscopic life forms.
@@Techstriker1 Which character is it a plot point for? I just finished the game but I might've missed something. All I can think of is Marguerit Maida and the Reaper Leviathan
The vents that peepers are circulating through to the emperor's tank were specifically designed to carry the enzyme out. When you see a peeper in the wild that has a glittering trail on it, it has interesting flavor text about carrying the enzyme. This was a small measure to slow the extinction event of the planet's life and most likely would have been a fully functioning distribution system for the cure if the precursors had been able to hatch emperors. If you put one of the glittering peepers into an aquarium with an infected fish, it will get cured. So, Maida was probably eating these enzyme-rich peepers to stave off her infection.
It would be interesting, too, if we could drop those carrier peepers to infected stalkers and watch the bacteria die off on the surface. I think that'd really sell the bioaccumulation point.
@@allinairhanson6886 But she was also eating the flesh of the reaper she killed, and we don't know if the reapers could be infected in the first place or not.
@@LovebugsLab leviathans can be infected, BUT, are significantly more resistant due to possessing enzymes similar in function to enzyme 42 in their bodies. It is extremely likely that an ancestral form of this enzyme plays some role in the common leviathan ancestor's immune system, and as evolution occurs, the enzyme also evolves to fit different environmental pressures. It just so happens the mutant known as enzyme 42 has perfect ability to cure Kharaa.
@@louiesatterwhite3885 Thank you! That seems to be the puzzle piece I was missing. A lot of things in the environment seem closely related, especially with how we have canon confirmation that a lot of species have evolved, de-evolved, or regional variants. Many thanks!
One thing about Tier 2. The whole point of Riley being able to leave was because he was cured. The canon being shut down wouldnt matter if he couldn't survive the virus. But in curing himself, he also released the cure (the baby leviathans) making it accessible to the entire planet. So by the time SubZero happened, the virus would be much less of a threat by then and also I dont really consider Riley leaving selfish, because he technically released the cure out onto the whole planet.
Yeah, when I got to the end it kinda clicked. Natural Selction and Subnautica could be that way around. Natural Selection could be the initial outbreak possibly of a bioweapon. With Subnautica being the future after it falls. Seems a lot more likely. Given you are cured and the cure is both actively known and spreading.
Just to consider as well, it's never explored (at least to what I remember reading) about how long space travel is in the game. If Riley was still infected I'm sure he/or she, would be long dead before returning to home planet
Also, Alterra was researching Kharaa from the frozen leviathan and evolving it, which is a huge part of the plot of BZ. Even after Sam destroyed the project and Robin cured the leviathan, Alterra still could have some data about the virus and could continue to work on it. I truly don't believe it was Riley who brought the virus to other planets, rather than it's some Alterra shenanigans that went wrong
@@taniajs well, it also could be that Natural Selection and Subnautica have the same world-biuld universe and they aren't cannon to eachother. with no information both are equally possible.
It makes sense that the warpers killed off or ensured all the survivors would die. Considering that our radio/pda can pick up the warpers sending radio messages, the warpers should be able to intercept ours. Riley, the protaganist, never sent a transmission because the radio was damaged and he wasn't awake to fix it untill everyone else was already killed off.
@@luckyshamrock6649unlike the others, though, it didnt have a human voice, which maybe the warpers were just feeling a little goofy and didnt decide to take a vacation to the safe shallows
@@luckyshamrock6649 I'm pretty sure it sends a distress for a rescue ship or somethin, because we would have had a recorded message explaining our situation. We didn't need to be brought to a safer area. It likely was a distress call for a ship to rescue them. After all after the radio is fixed is says in 9999 hours help will arive
About the gargantuan leviathan theory, we need to keep in mind that the playable area for subnautica is situated in a volcanic creator as stated by the first few messages of the PDA, so if the planet really is full of water as the PDA states, there should be more than enough space for the gargantuan leviathan, or even bigger creatures, to roam outside of the creator. It might have got inside the volcano for testing from the precursors or even by accident.
It's unlikely that the gargantuan was brought by the precursors. They died out 1000 years before the game but the leviathan itself is more than 3 million years old. It's possible they found the skeleton in the void and brought it back, but it seems more likely that they simply found it where it rests in game.
I'm pretty sure the game actually tells you that the area changed during those millions of years and the Lost River was originally in open water, not a sorta long cave.
Keep in mind that planets change all the time just look at how much earth has changed since the Dino's. The skelly has probably been there for millions of years. The planet probably changed from eruptions and plates shifting
"The Khaara kills you in about a week." Well thats not true. Passenger 00FU survived for more than half a year after Alterra forgot him there due to a shift in management lol
Straight up, the "why has no one found this out about the leviathans yet" point is because there have been like 6 people alive on that planet in the last thousand years, and most of them have been pretty preoccupied with survival lol
I think he meant the precursors but I see what you mean. After the precursors left/died nobody would have any proper facility to research it or wouldn't have the resources or time to capture/k*ll a leviathan
I thought it was pretty obvious that the mysterious messages were accidentally intercepted communications between Warpers. The various Lifepods being empty are usually explained by the PDAs you find in or near them or their locations. Several of them are in places with Reapers or Ampeels. One's PDA recording even cuts off with an explosion.
@@danielthecake8617 Right, and the two guys who got canopenered by the Bow and Stern Aurora Reaper Leviathans, and the one that smashed itself to bits when the airbrakes and parachute failed, and the doctor who died of Kharaa because doctors aren't really trained by Alterra, and the couple that tried to jury-rig a seaglide to escape which failed, and the engineer who had to jury rig repairs to a damaged pod which sank in the Bloodkelp zone. Lots of explanations for why the pods are empty, and the people who went abroad were clearly caught by Warpers. That's the implication of the radio messages. Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
39:00 the "distress calls" talking about hunting / analyzing is the Warpers communicating to each other via radio waves. The reason most survivors are dead is because the warpers found and eliminated them. The reason Riley survives is because his radio breaks and therefore cannot send out messages
7:50 The Mesmer's entry in the PDA states at the end that you should get a closer look. This means either that the PDA wants to implicitely harm/kill you or that the Mesmer is capable of hacking the PDA. i'm not sure what would be scarier
The only hypnosis and hallucination inducing animal has a messed up entry and you think the PDA is at fault? I’m pretty sure the scanning had been tampered with by it, or the PDA entry was messed up by it.
Note: the Void is the actual main landmass of the planet 4546b. The reason why we are on the map at all and not down a couple dozen kilometers or stuck in the middle of the void at the beginning of the game is because the captain stayed behind and guided the Aurora onto a plateau miles above the surface of the planet. The entire map of subnautica is quite literally the top of a colossal mountain. Also, the Ghost Leviathans are bottom feeders at the base of 4546b’s main ecosystem. We haven’t scratched the surface of what this planet originally contained, and we likely never will since many of the original ideas were scrapped. (The Sea Emperor is a normal fish in the void and used to live in schools btw. It also was originally going to be the size of the Aurora.)
@@WarriorTakeda Yes. We have seen the planet from loading screens and during the end of the game which gives us a very clear view of it. It is 98% submerged with mostly deep blue water indicating no visible landmass outside of a few islands (likely other supermassive plateaus such as what we landed on and other floater islands) and the frozen polar caps. There are no continents on the planet above the surface. What part about this is wrong exactly?
So a few points...Sam and her sister are born and raised on Earth - in the original beta they were even outright from England (still not sure why they made them American in the final release). Margaret may have survived due to her diet and the low frequency of Kharaa in the isolated arctic region (the only real source there is the frozen one). "Transgov" doesn't mean they're government-run, it means they transcend governments - Alterra and their many competitors are pure corporate entities, which is why we get the funny epilogue in the closing credits of the first game. The Emperor leviathans probably aren't gone - we just don't get to explore much beyond the regions we work in. Also, we find out in BZ that the Kharaa is by that point extinct on the planet except for in the frozen leviathan, which suggests the disease doesn't make it off due to human intervention, having been cured by the Emperor's enzyme release (and the babies continuing the job). There is no socialism in the Subnautica future - it's a capitalist dystopia where all major groups are companies and corporations of various sorts, and even the independent ones are dependent on the big transgov corporations. Sol just means our solar system - the Sunbeam is from the Sol system, _our_ system.
As far as I remember, the pandemic hit while they were still fleshing out the story BZ, and getting voice lines recorded as they went. Something about the corona complications meant that they could no longer work with the UK recording studio at the time they needed to get updated recordings done. Also, the main writer moved on from the company, so they ended up getting a new writer and just going in a different direction with the storylines and voice actors.
So as someone who got really into this game, I just want to clarify the subject matter at the beginning of tier 4. The things hunting people and keeping count of targets remaining are the purple teleporting squid creatures. They are hunter/seeker androids built by the aliens to kill survivors from shot down ships. You even encounter a factory where they are assembled inside one of the alien structures.
literally was looking for this comment, its actually quite clear if people took the time to read through the lore, it establishes that there are creatures beyond regular accounts quite early on in the game
@@hiddendesire3076 The quarantine measures were so strict that anyone who entered 4546B's atmosphere was considered infected and had to be killed. That's why they shot down ships in the first place; even ships that didn't make landfall were considered a containment breach risk.
I swear the PDA used to say that the incident on Obraxis Prime was about a guy who crash landed on the planet then eliminated all the wild life, so they only put the Survival Knife in the essential survival kit
While we don't know what really happened on Obraxis Prime, it is pretty obviously implying that a survivor or series of survivors on the planet fabricated guns which they used to kill other people, either in desperation or out of madness.
I don't know if this is a commonly missed detail, but in the PDA Ghost Leviathans are filter feeders, but due to their size they aggressively protect their feeding territory through ramming attacks
The giant peeper thing was in all honesty probably a bug. When Subnautica first went into Early Access, I played it on a really cruddy Dell All-In-One desktop (basically a monitor with a PC in it). It could barely run the game and it took up to 15 minutes to load a save. I played on this for 2 years until it crapped out. Occasionally, I'd have issues with area & model loading, and sometimes I'd see things like giant reefbacks spinning wildly in areas they don't normally spawn in. In the early days, the game's prototype stage coding could just swap the AI and models of some fish, leading to - for example - a reefback in the dunes with the AI and size of a reaper leviathan, and that was back when you needed reefback DNA for depth upgrades! It's still a neat urban legend, but really it's not all that surprising.
Subnautica is 100% the scariest game I have ever played. I couldn't even make it out of the starting area. Then again, I have a lifelong fear of deep water and the unknown things that dwell within it.
i also have a super deep fear of the ocean and deep waters, And I *STRONGLY* recommend seeing it through to the end, it has really helped me with my fear and can be turnes off whenever I feel ut needa too and is really fun on top of that
I've only seen the trailer for the film, the meg, and I never want to watch it because that is absolutely terrifying to me, I never want to go too far from land in water in case something happens
@n1uk it's strange because I am terrified of the reapers in the main game and the shadow leviathan in the second game but I definitely prefer the second game
i an interview with a dev, he said that he created an animation that would play just before the game ends where an infected cave crawler scuttles across the roof of your shuttle right before the screen cuts to black, implying that Riley did in fact carry the infection off planet and was the catalyst for the war seen in Natural Selection
Idea for a terrifying third game: subnautica the void. Set at the bottom of the bottom of the void's ocean floor, you have one objective. Find your way up back to the surface
The primary tension of the game is the need to surface to replenish your oxygen and the anxiety of losing access to it by going into cave systems. If you start at the bottom, your oxygen has to come from some other source, and once you have that, you no longer fear being anywhere deep. You remove the main reason the game is scary right off the bat.
The bone plate leviathan looks more like a crustacean than a slug. The holes on it's sides are where it's legs or similar appendages were attached. The holes are reminiscent of a crustacean with its legs removed.
How do you think the legs were removed? If I was to assume, I’d assume the legs got removed/ate by a bigger creature, and then smaller creatures used the opportunity to eat the rest of it from the eyes & the insides of the legs and back out.
@@ZacksRockingLifestyle there is also a possibility that the legs were just made from something that could not fossilise. I'm pretty sure it is related to the sand shark which also has some small legs
@@yvindlarsen1220 Most things like tendons and cartilage don't fossilize, and if the 'fossil' is thin enough, and underwater, it will eventually break down into dust.
im pretty sure the leviathan skeleton is imagined to be a lot longer than what the devs actually added to the game, otherwise it would ruin the whole point of sticking the other end into the ground only for it to end right after, so more like a serpent creature
This is critical to your theory about Natural Selection and the Kharaa: In the original version of Below Zero, the Kharaa bacterium WAS actually going to get off the planet. They changed producers in the middle of Below Zero’s development and massively altered the storyline when they did so. In the original iteration, the satellite above the planet is actually called Vespa Station, and you have to regularly send supplies and samples to the station while you are working for Alterra (your sister is actually ON Vespa Station and was very much alive when you were there). During the game, you actually send a sample of the Kharaa bacterium secured from the Leviathan to Vespa Station which somehow escapes containment. What happens after this, we’ll never know since the situation was never resolved before the story change.
I asume it would have little to no impact. If I recall correctly it's clearly stated khaara is already a massive issue in the whole universe and that's why precursors are looking in every planet for a way to heal it, infecting any planet they step on btw. They found it on 4546b but never got the eggs to hatch so their studies where incomplete but after Riley got it from the Emperor they should at least try to stop Khaara for ever (maybe we'll see it future games?)
15:36 Bioaccumulation is the process by which materials such as vitamins and microplastics are gradually concentrated in organisms closer to the top of the food chain. This occurs because, while the prey (peepers with Enzyme 42) have a low amount of the material, their predators accumulate a lot of it by eating many of them, and then their predators eat many of them, and so on. So Reapers would have a very high concentration of Enzyme 42 in their body due to preying on so many organisms that prey on organisms containing Enzyme 42. This is most likely how eating a ton of Reaper flesh was able to cure Marguerite
Except enzymes would most likely be broken down when digested. The only proteins I’m familiar with that aren’t broken down enough to completely lose their function are prions.
@@DracaliaRay The entire point of the enzyme carrying peepers is to disperse the enzyme throughout the ecosystem. This wouldn't be possible if Enzyme 42 was destroyed during digestion as soon as the lowest level predator eats it. Enzyme 42 likely is absorbed into the body very quickly or can survive digestion. It's most probable that it is simply absorbed very quickly since it's only a matter of seconds for the huge glob of it to be absorbed into Ryley's hands, something that'd happen even faster through the skin of the mouth or esophagus
One thing to know is that you can find a Natural Selection 2 poster in the upper deck of Wreck 1 located in the Grassy Plateaus, as well as in the deepest section of Wreck 2 inside a Prawn Suit bay, found in the same biome. A third poster can be found in the Living Quarters (Cabin 6) of the Aurora. This 100% proves that both games are based in the same universe.
I love the idea of Azmuth sitting over the Ultimatrix in a blind fury while he tries to figure out why, after millions of years of evolution, all his DNA samples keep turning into crabs
The fact that the only human is no kind of predator and is in fact essentially bait, just suriving by their wits, is probably my favourite thing about the first game.
39:15 It's the Warpers. They're basically biological AI watchers created by the precursors. They're not distress calls, we're just accidentally tapping into their radio frequencies.
Another theory is that the kharaa that we encounter in the first subnautica game cannot survive in the freezing temperatures of Sector Zero, therefore not killing Marguerite. And the frozen leviathan we see in Below Zero has the kharaa, but isn't contagious.
No matter how cold the planet is, Marguerite is still human and warm. The kharaa would still survive in her body and kill her unless she was cured. Also, cold in general doesn't usually kill bacteria, it just puts it into stasis or slows it down.
I think the one outlier is they also said the kharaa on the frozen leviathan is mutated, either it be on purpose from the labs or naturally and when you scan the kharaa on the frozen leviathan it says that while less contagious it’s just as dangerous and still very alive
Unfortunately as much as I wish this was the case as it would make it easy to piece together straightforward evidence a lot easier, this is debunked as the story with the Mercury II as multiple crew members contracted the virus as well as multiple fauna having green pustules and having sluggish movement.
@@icantthinkofagoodname1838 aCTUALLY, FUN FACT LOL Hospitals can keep their sick patients from producing more bacterium and actually keep them healthier longer despite an infection with their abnormally cold temperatures. They keep them low to keep staff safe, but also to help ensure their patients core temperatures are lower than ideal for the mass production of bacterial cells, but high enough to keep the patient 'healthy'.
Really enjoyed this video and the comments explaining things as well. I’ve had this game for years and finally found the time to play it over the holidays, thankfully my steam deck runs it great. And now I’m addicted to the lore so your video was recommended just in time. Quality content! ❤
Id like to add that the sea dragon didn’t randomly attack the base. The precursors knew that the sea emperors could produce the cure for Kharaa, so they stole its egg. The sea dragon then rammed the facility, leading to its death and the spread of khraa to the whole planet.
All a dream is always dumb. Some hallucinations because of a concusion is possible. Like the ship getting shot down. No matter if the gun is disabled or not. There is never debre reaching the water floating around. Just a hallucination because of the injury and all the stress of being the only survivor. Not only did we take the virus to humans by leaving with the rocket. But most of the flora and fauna would die anyway because of the explosion and radiation leak caused by the aurora.
@@1000-THR True! Which is why it can come off as lazy with how people try to apply it to every single piece of media possible.. Plus, It's rarely done well.
33:53 the holes in the side could suggest that the creature had more delicate fleshy fins or legs sticking out of the side, possibly sacrificial if attacked by some gargantuan leviathan.
I actually felt that Earth being no longer existent was implied…that is why majority of the ships/PDAs/pods have enough knowledge to be able to let humans construct habitat in other planets (i remember there was even a terraforming gun before)…meaning Alterra is somewhat like Weyland Yutani supplying humans with necessary technology to colonize other planets…same goes with other intra company ships…
Colonisation doesn't always mean you don't have your own home. Pretty sure Alterra just had several protocols for planetary survival. With the main idead being: atmosphere planet, water planet, land planet, maybe even "ice" or "fire" planets
I doubt Riley would infect the world, since he technically owes 3 billion credits to Alterra because of all the equipement, alien techonoliges, life pods, and basically the entire Aurora itself since he's the last survivor from the Aurora, and they gotta blame someone and CHARGE someone or else they're not letting him land.
I believe he was only charged for equipment, which with the amount of info on his PDA he could likely bargain, since we could have scanned everything on the crater, biomes, flora and fauna, Riley could definitely make it back
Hes probably is a prisioner cuz he def dont have money to pay for all that, and alterra probably stole his pda with so much information to know more about the planet then below zero happened
@@bandit3019 remember that he's the sole survivor of a GIANT mining ship, these things dont just go missing like this, what about the famillies? there's just too much problems for Alterra to just swipe it off the table, they HAD to blame someone or atleast make them pay (literally) for everything.
@@amprobaconhair2722 Well we already know that alterra fucked it up in subnautica below zero, they wanted kharaa to test it, and then well natural selection 1 and 2 happens.
The secondary mission wasn't top secret really, it was a "while you are in the area for this time, search for what happened to the ship that disappeared near this planet" mission. This is because the degassi ship that was shot down had an insurance policy that required the insurance company to pay for a reasonable effort to search for it in the event it didnt "come home". It was known that the planet was an ocean planet and is why the aurora was outfitted with subs and the new mark 3 prawn suit specifically so it had the tools to perform a thorough search of this planet. Also, as for the missing life pods the game literature addressed that as well. The Aurora was damaged in such a way only the port side life pods could deploy and those are all accounted for. The starboard side life pods were immediately destroyed explaining why they are never found other then maybe being pieces of scrap metal.
The one about the life pods not being built to save you is for two reasons. 1. It’s a game and is meant to make survival harder for the player 2. Most life pods and boats are meant to keep you alive long enough for rescue under normal conditions
Life pods/boats for spaceships would realistically be able to keep you for months so that a rescue mission could be planned, unless they are just there to give a chance at survival instead of keep alive for an expensive rescue mission
40:40 i think I remember watching an old video a LONG, LONG time ago, that had something deeper than Lava zone, it was like caves, but on the floor, it looked like ash, or something...
For the part being talked about at 7:45 there's literally a pda that's about some robot assistant acting up because one of the crew members started fiddling with it, so they could have somehow integrated that into all the blueprints. (Like near the propulsion cannon fragments in the Aurora.) 18:30 there probably wouldn't be enough reaper leviathans to use as a cure, thus they had to rule that out and besides, did the precursors even eat meat?
45:00 the Kharaa got its name from the Mongolian word for "Watch Out!" This was stated in Natural Selection 2, where the name originally came about when the first recordings of the bacterium were recovered from a Mongolian ship, in which the recordings consistently had the ships crew shouting out the phrase. It was at first assumed to be the first name of the infection, and the misconception stuck around after it was disproven.
31:37 I always assumed the massacre of Obraxis Prime was caused by a survivor of a crash on the planet that got a little too "trigger happy" with either the wildlife or his fellow survivors, prompting them to remove all weapons except for the survival knife to prevent excessive damage. 33:50 One theory on the anatomy of this creature is that it was an invertebrate with a shell, which is what is left behind, and it would have "legs" that came out of the holes that line its sides.
The only two iceberg videos of yours I’ve watched, you’ve added troll entries 😂 please tell me this is a regular thing you do for every iceberg video I love it
It was so wild when I realized that Unknown Worlds made this, back in 2002-2006 i played natural selection 1 competatively, winning a couple of tournaments with my team. I was playing subnautica without realizing it, and when I saw the term "the kharaa virus" i almost did a damn back flip. I really wish they'd make a NS 3. NS 2 didn't catch on and I think that was because the engine they used was so different from the original source engine and the original half life engine, but with ultra modern engines like unity or UE5, you can make a game feel like whatever the hell you want!
I never got to even try natural selection but it does look cool for sure after checking it out for his iceberg, thanks for watching and supporting the channel!
I wish there was a more story-centric singleplayer NS game...I'd love to see one honestly, with more aspects linking the two subnautica games into the universe.
Durin the bit where he talks about A.I, there's also a PDA entry on the Aurora where someone reprogrammed a bot to have a personality and only responds to politeness or something similar. Been a while since I've seen it, but I think it's interesting to note.
Someone's asking for a propulsion cannon and the AI robot brings them a repulsion cannon (a lot stronger) The mistake made the person yell at the AI robot and then he was instructed that politeness was the only way to get the AI to work properly. Something like that.
IIRC, the unused biome below the lava zones was from the alpha builds when the Emperor Leviathan was being implemented. Its been a loooong time since I've seen the development updates from that period, but I do recall a biome at the bottom of the map that was essentially just a big empty bubble of safe shallows where they'd test locomotion for the larger species. Again, my knowledge on this is incredibly dated, so I could very well be wrong entirely
if you look at the map at 40:57, you can see icons for Peepers on the edge of the map (near the Grand Reef, the Sea Treader etc) - maybe some more support to the theory of Peepviathans? :p
34:10 I think the big holes on the sides are basically for fins, and it does seem similar to sand sharks in terms of body plates. I don't think it was a sea floor animal, more like an agile omnivore (judging from the eyes on the sides) that is a ancestor to said sandsharks
I don't think Riley is the karar spreader, i believe Alterra probably took the karar in the frozen leviathan intending to use it as a bioweapon but allowed It to get out, either intentionally or unintentionally
That single cell zone along with the Atlas sub visual give me hope that it will be in the next game. We know that it will have likely have multiplayer, which probably means a bigger sub and therefore a bigger map. Perfect opportunity to implement an idea like the single cell zone.
I feel like in the next game the biome should take place in the void which would make it more scary because you finally find out why it's thousands of meters deep and why there's nothing else really down there
About AI research on 4546B: This was pretty much confirmed in some of the PDAs in Below Zero. A few of the scientists and researchers either had some background in AI, or were there for the express purpose of AI research.
Fantastic video! I have never played Subnautica but I have always enjoyed the lore behind it. Who knew something that seemed so shallow could actually be hiding a lot in it's depths
Thanks so much for watching! Ya honestly after doing these icebergs series so many games have a lot of really cool lore no one knows about its fun to explore
38:31 i once saw a really cool leviathan fan concept that i honestly wish existed in the game - a mesmer leviathan according to the concept this thing would send you fake radio messages and basically "hack" into all your technology, making the AI think your mission was to come towards it by any means possible idk something about the idea of those messages being much more dangerous than they are in game and having to sift through them, trying to figure out which ones are real and which ones aren't by small "tells" like maybe a voice glitch or an unnatural pitch in tone sounds really fun to me
I'm honestly still so upset about the way that margaret survived, bc it doesn't match up AT ALL with what Bart's later description of the attack on their base. Even ignoring how little her story makes sense on its own, Bart describes LIGHTS coming UP from the CAVES BELOW THEIR BASE. He describes the creature that attacked them as "massive tentacles from the deep" and the ONLY creature that matches the description is a sea dragon leviathan (massive, tentacled, lives in deep caves, bioluminescent) and we also ALREADY KNOW that the sea dragons come up to the open waters periodically to catch and drag reaper leviathans down into their volcanic caves and eat them, so a sea dragon is the only thing that makes sense. Best I can tell is they totally retconned the attack to bring margaret back. I honestly have so many criticisms about below zero (and ESPECIALLY ABOUT ITS STORY) but I don't feel like typing it all out here bc I would be here for forever. og subnautica is an absolute masterpiece and should be played by everyone, but below zero was just. mid.
Hell, there was a concept art of a leviathan with tentacles, who looked quite realistically small in comparison to a reaper and had plenty of lights on it. Honestly, Below Zero really turned out worse after they changed the story
My experience playing Subnautica wasn't necessarily thalassophobia, but general fear of the unknown. I refused to use guides or maps for the best experience of this, only knowing what to expect from clips I saw online. Only after I had a true genuine idea of where everything was, including the lava zones did I look at a map just to 100% some stuff. It was one of the most fun experiences I've had with a video game. By not knowing where anything was, even the Grassy Plateaus were scary at first (LOL). Little did I know just how deep the ocean got, how dark the surroundings could get, and how surprising some of the fish could be. It kept me on my toes at all times not knowing what I'd find. However, that somewhat hurt the replayability for me because knowing what to expect and where everything is just takes the fear aspect out of the game. It's still very beautiful, just not absolutely terrifying the way it is initially. Below Zero helped me experience that feeling all over again but still just fear of the unknown. I can't wait for subnautica 3 to experience it all over again.
I think it would be absolutely incredible if unknown worlds were to create a whole bunch of bigger games that encompass a larger scope of the subnautica universe entirely
I can see its already been said but yeah, the intercepted transmissions are from the warper's although i do like the idea that they are purposefully using the distress signals from the other life pods to lure any survivors into more dangerous territory, adds more intelligence and intention that feels very chilling. (Its also a neat bow that gives an in lore reason as to why you can find broken and abandoned life pods well before you ever get their distress signals.)
Wonderful video. It’s wonderful to see how much thought and imagination you’ve put into the world of Subnautica. I shall neither confirm nor deny anything herein. Happy hunting. -Flayra (design director on Subnautica and Natural Selection 1/2)
33:36 unlikely that this resembled a sea slug. the large openings on either side of each segment suggest that it had fins or similar appendages made of softer tissue (cartilage?), perhaps eaten or rotted away by time. both the bone leviathan and especially research specimen theta resemble the placoderms of the devonian period in real life, and theta reminds me of dunkleosteus specifically. perhaps they had similarly formidable bite force and speed to feed on armored/shelled prey, but that's just my speculation. disclaimer: this video is my first introduction to subnautica, I just never got over my childhood obsession with _walking with dinosaurs: chased by sea monsters_ lol
My theory on why maida survived so long: As Frankly said maybe consuming the reaper may have helped her but what if that reaper may have consumed a pepper with enzyme 42
Well if the reaper ate a ton of peepers with the enzyme, or ate other smaller predators that themselves ate peepers, it would end up with a ton of Enzyme 42 in its system via bioaccumulation. It’s just like how mercury builds up in fish at the top of the food chain making them dangerous for humans to eat, except in Marguerit’s case this process saved her life.
Could also be possible that all leviathans have some sort of similiar enzyme that of the 42 one. remember, whole game is basically how the bacterium got out after the Architects (one in particular) stole the Sea Dragon eggs, which made the parent mad and broke the facility. This tidbit proves that other leviathans aside from the Sea Emperors create some similiar stuff like e42 (i mean The Guy in Below Zero confirms that they weren't wrong abt the Dragons having a cure) Soooo the Reapers could have a weaker enzyme in their bodies that they couldn't expel (unlike the Emperors) which could basically halt the bacterium for a while, for example 10 years. and it was basically luck that Marg survived that long until Ryley managed to actually release the cure, and it reaching Sector Zero, curing her completely.
Theory about the gargantuan leviathan. It was a juvenile when it entered the lost river to eat ghost leviathans but due to the absence of food it didn’t leave until it grew too big to swim back out. Left to slowly starve as it tried to escape. The bones might in fact still be of a juvenile leviathan…. It could very well be bigger
man i remember hearing about the single celled biome and wishing it was in the game. Its such a cool idea, but it feels kind reasonable that it was cut
The bladder fish joke had me saying, "What!" Right before it was revealed to be a joke 😂 I hope in the second game they add some weapons, not anything like guns per say, but a harpoon gun with the ability to craft lethal and non lethal harpoon bolts for hunting. I really would like to see them expand on the hunting and base building. Add in more base abilities and decoration options. More vehicles would also be awesome. I love exploring the seas in it. It would be cool to have a ship also.
I'm not going to lie your voice sounds amazing and listening to explain lore is like an amazing to listen to you explain the lower in subnautica and there's probably better but to me you're my best love your videos Man
happy halloween man! love your videos so much, the quality is always great and you are a really good narrator, wishing you a horrendous amount of subs ❤
I always had some re-writes, but you can take them and twist them into theories if you want: It has always given me some sorts of sad-delight to imagine the Precursors where driven to find a cure because they viewed themselves as the only Intelligent and maybe even Sentient life out there. The death of their whole species wasn't just something tragic to themselves, but as one of the 'Fermi Paradox Barriers' so difficult to overcome in the first place... it might never have reoccurred. Now if only this race was also telepathic, and hadn't driven the one creature that could help into seclusion. Thus the precursors died thinking they where the only ones, and the last ones, to know the fear of extinction before it's cold touch. The part that you can use as a theory though: A desperate group working in this very research station, after everything had obviously failed, decided to do something heretical at that point. They deliberately intergraded their consciousnesses into a range of bio-machines knowing that it would destroy their sentience. It was a last ditch attempt to hold onto at least some of their intelligence, putting it into these cold machines that are driven by purposes programed. Creating not only a whole range of creatures that we know to be the warpers but things we have yet to see down there in the Void.... Perhaps something more machine then biological, at this point.
That first paragraph would make sense, but the Precursors had come to Earth at on point. I can't give an exact time of when they did, but there are some Earth Artifacts, one of which is a sword from (if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong) Mongolia. A metal sword would be a good indicator of a species being well past the Stone Age. Not to mention, if the Precursors have went to Earth, they would've been all over the planet but didn't take any artifact. Not to mention, there were billions of the Precursor Race, so there would've definitely been a few that went "What if those primitives on Earth are slowly getting to the space age?" Precursors were terribly smart (or at least the ones on 4546B), but their short-sighted efforts are what made them perform less than ideal tests.
The theory about the Kharar virus being a “natural response” to the universe’s draining resources reminds me of the theory regarding the monsters in Evolve (remember that game?). Where those monsters were meant to stop colonization, since they’re incredibly aggressive, spread fast, and essentially decimate an entire planet (in a week iirc). The difference here is that I believe it was hinted that the monsters were artificially made, while the kharar is still up in the air as to whether or not it was made artificially or naturally.
14:25 its not actually entirely necessary that this creature had more than one set of eyes. If you look at reptile skulls, there are usually 2-3 holes (except for turtles) but of course only two eye sets. It could be a larger/prehistoric relative of sand shark (possibly with only two eyes, maybe 4 but we dont really know)
I like to think that millions, or even billions of years ago, there was a primitive civilisation on 4546b because of the fact in an older build in Subnautica, there were strange underwater structures that almost looked like buildings with bridges
@@henrymugello3387 I do indeed, I think they were place holders for the QEP island, everyone was freaking out and calling them monoliths back then lmao
36:54 I'm pretty sure this message system was from the teleporting cyborg squids made by the precursors. It would make sense since they are like the automated security force and they probably got a few body counts on the leftover human survivors in the crash clean up. Hence, them detecting one last human alive (you).
tbh seeing how easily the lifepod falls apart during descent (during the cutscene) and the fact how much the player is supposed to pay when returning with the rocket says alot about Alterra
The "Missing Entity" is the Warper. I'm surprised you didn't even mention it at all during that segment. The Warper is a artificial organism with the sole purpose of hunting/analyzing infected organisms. The radio transmissions are conversations between different Warpers.
Absolutely love this game and suggest it to anyone who enjoys singleplayer exploring. I've dumped hundreds of hours into both 1 and 2. Just being alone in a world with only your PDA speaking to you really sets the mood. Not to mention the simple building and crafting allows your to get lost in just building bases before you even get far into story progression.
your iceberg videos are really entertaining, so much so that I can't stop watching them lol, keep up the good work and wish you the best of luck with your career!
Yeah idk about the entity one, man. The radio signals talking about the unaccounted target are from the warpers communicating to each other. And they're talking about you the player Edit: Forgot to point out. Notice how the warpers mostly watch you and study you, especially before being infected. In my opinion they are the creepiest things in the game
''What if planet 4546b is earth?'' Great theory! It is very common for a planet to grow another massive moon and for its other moon to change face completly.
Just want to point out that we do get a little bit of lore about earth (although not exactly about the planet itself) when we scan the cuddlefish (yes that cute little guy/girl) where it states that the dolphin species (pretty certain it's the battlenose dolphin) went extinct. So I'm assuming that implies earths still around and populated though it's probably unrecognizable at this rate.
The idea of the life pod theory, the one where you aren’t actually supposed to survive, seems super plausible. Honestly Alterra is a super ruthless and vicious company, they don’t seem to care what happens to employees. If a employee(s) survive far from earth they don’t want to spend money recovering them. Evidence for this theory is lack of supplies, as said in the video, but another piece is that look at how the life pod is constructed. When Riley was shot off it started to break, the fire extinguisher instantly came off, then the panel that knocked him out came off, it also caught fire that could have killed him. Maybe it’s just me, I mean obviously anything would have probably caught damage, but Alterra is a super advanced company. Don’t you think they’d be able to keep a fire extinguisher and panel of all things in place? Idk maybe just me.
I agree with you especially about the fire extinguisher! I was thinking Ok this is like if something came flying up off the lunar module… haven’t they heard of Velcro in this world bare minimum?? Lol
I think you might enjoy a Divinity Original Sin 2 iceberg, lots of stuff going on there that gets crazier the more you learn and what characters you interact with. Really in depth game and very fun
The warpers were sending the messages as the crew members were all infected they hunted them after the distress messages were sent until riley was the last person left and after he is cured they dont attack him they are hunting the infected to stop the spread
Good video, i have a few things to point out 1) Margerit is described as fighting the reaper with a seaglide and a piece of scrap, .....no mention of her prawn suit (at least in the first game anyways) 2) your lifepod theory assumes their floatation collar dosnt work, i dont think they would sink if it had 3) your theory on the Mercury's name is flawed, when you consider that Mercury is actually also the god of messages, and messengers The Mercury 2 was sent to send a message to the Mongolians 4) why would you remove weapons from SURVIVAL bluprints because of a colony uprising? Its more likely that a massacre occured in a survival situation I would speculate that survivors of a crash either wiped out each other, or wiped out a native species (massacre dosnt nessecarily indicate the victims were human)
The strange messages you get about the hunting/analyzing I think are from the warpers because they both make clicking noises and in one of the bases the warpers data scan says that it’s possibly made up of multiple creatures so I think the precursors made the warpers to kill anything with the virus because after you get cured with enzyme 42 the warpers stop attacking so I think it’s the warpers studying you and seeing if you have the virus cause at first you don’t see a lot and then as the game progresses you see more and more and also I noticed the warpers often attack other creatures with the virus
in tier two you say that Marguerit Maida killed the reaper with her praw suit but in one of pauls voice logs he says that she swam after it with a seaglide and a jagged bit of steel
Yeah, I got confused about that part, I think he goofed a bit. It did also say the leviathan carried her away into the darkness, not specifically down. In the game, we can see that reaper leviathans don't like going all that deep as it is where its predator lies and is probably incapable of withstanding those pressures, seeing as that is how the sea dragon kills them (heat and pressure) from draging them into the deep lava zone. It is unlikely she was carried too far down as it is later mentioned in below 0 (I think) she barely had enough oxygen to get to the surface, and she was carried farther out into the void than she expected.
Just found this today :) I really like your narration!
Really appreciate it man! Your videos made it so much easier doing all the research love your channel it’s awesome!
@@FranklyGaming I love subnautica because its the perfect fit between horror sandbox and exploration, DI MOLTO!
Came here to also say this is some wonderful narration. Writing aside which is excellent whenever you hear that spark of joy in a creators voice as they ADR their projects it's a great sign
@@ajax3310 appreciate the kind words and support!
The legend arrives
The distress signal messages are intercepted from the Warper enemies which is why they hunt you down.
Will check this out thanks
@@FranklyGaming it is from the warpers. because the pda can translate it, and since they were developed by the precursors it would make sense the warpers use the same language-ish, so yeah thats why the pda can partially translate the radio messages
@@kekahoz ya that for sure would make sense as well, appreciate it!
@@FranklyGaming np man, i really enjoyed your video though!
The warpers we're made by the precursors to enforce the quarantine it's implied that they are the ones who destroyed most of the other pods my head cannon is you the player wasn't detected until later on because you were unconscious
"I'm just messing with you guys"
you have no idea how much relief I felt at that. Don't ruin the sacred bladderfish.
😂😂 haha thanks for watching
Fr
What's wrong with a little omutsu omorashi?
Literally, my eyebrows just kept going further up. Like, sure, your thing might not be my thing, but that's a wild concept to hear about. The 'I'm messing with you guys' made me instantly relax and hang my head. I thought I was learning some cursed lore to haunt my friends with.
@@AliceJaneSyndicate Aoi Kurage
Just want to add, the frozen Leviathan that's infected with Khara was confirmed to be dead by the devs, the Khara is still alive because it has been slowly consuming the inside of the leviathan... Similar to the way Margaret was eating the inside of the Reaper Leviathans while simultaneously using it as shelter.
Yeah, with that i also didnt understand him calling Riley selfish for trying to leave a planet he almost diednon multiple times. He would be isolated from people for the reat of that time, he was fully cured by the end of the game too.
@@YvngKrishnadoesn't mean he don't have trace amounts or has stowaway
@@tfordham13I want to argue that regardless of that, he has the enzymes needed to be a cure and make a cure within his blood, even with trace amounts, he will also be a cure if needed
@@tfordham13
Stowaway? Be real.
The khara didn't necessarily have to be eating it to survive! Some bacteria are capable of going into and indefinite dormancy, often triggered by extremely cold temperatures. It's actually a threat on Earth too, as with glaciers melting, dangerous and ancient diseases could be released!
In regards to the whole lifepod thing, you can actually find a PDA entry in the Aurora that details that the lifepods are SUPPOSED to be stocked with much more resources than you actially find in your lifepod (can't remember the exact entry, it said that they must be stocked with multiple first aid kits, tools, etc), so Alterra isn't even stocking their lifepods like they're supposed to
50/50, there is a first aid kit generator at least
Kind of also an indirect nod to the Titanic. It was supposed to be stocked with more lifeboats as well as being built to a better standard, but because the company that built it skipped a bunch of steps and the guy funding it was greedy as hell, well, we got the historical disaster we have in textbooks now (Also, the guy who commissioned the Titanic and paid for it also died on that failed voyage, karma really is a bitch)
It's likely they did cut corners, but not all Lifepods were made equal. Ours had food and water, and another had an Emergancy Seaglide, said in a voicelog. They really just threw diffent crap into lifepods and said "Okay, thats enough safety."
@@ericlamb4501there's also the theory the Titanic was swapped out with the Olympia I believe it is called, seemed plausible
Our lifepod was on fire so it likely just burned
12:29 Just a minor note on Ghost leviathan, much like Diablos in monster hunter, they are highly territorial, but not carnivorous. So they wouldn't eat the survivors, just tear them to shreds for existing.
Wait, the Ghosts aren’t carnivores? I knew the Diablos thing (I play way too much Monster Hunter) but I didn’t know the Ghosts didn’t eat meat. That’s really cool.
@@diseasedwombat5611 It's a major plot point for a character in Below Zero. Not sure if its mentioned in base Subnautica.
@@diseasedwombat5611 Oh I see where the confusion might come from. Wiki says they eat other animals when they are juveniles (though does not cite its source weirdly), where as data entry says the mature ones feed on microscopic life forms.
@@Techstriker1 that’s really cool. I love when games dive into their animals’ ecology like that.
@@Techstriker1 Which character is it a plot point for? I just finished the game but I might've missed something. All I can think of is Marguerit Maida and the Reaper Leviathan
The vents that peepers are circulating through to the emperor's tank were specifically designed to carry the enzyme out. When you see a peeper in the wild that has a glittering trail on it, it has interesting flavor text about carrying the enzyme. This was a small measure to slow the extinction event of the planet's life and most likely would have been a fully functioning distribution system for the cure if the precursors had been able to hatch emperors. If you put one of the glittering peepers into an aquarium with an infected fish, it will get cured. So, Maida was probably eating these enzyme-rich peepers to stave off her infection.
It would be interesting, too, if we could drop those carrier peepers to infected stalkers and watch the bacteria die off on the surface. I think that'd really sell the bioaccumulation point.
Though the issue with that is that it is only a treatment and not a cure, and she certainly didn't have enough peepers for that
@@allinairhanson6886 But she was also eating the flesh of the reaper she killed, and we don't know if the reapers could be infected in the first place or not.
@@LovebugsLab leviathans can be infected, BUT, are significantly more resistant due to possessing enzymes similar in function to enzyme 42 in their bodies. It is extremely likely that an ancestral form of this enzyme plays some role in the common leviathan ancestor's immune system, and as evolution occurs, the enzyme also evolves to fit different environmental pressures. It just so happens the mutant known as enzyme 42 has perfect ability to cure Kharaa.
@@louiesatterwhite3885 Thank you! That seems to be the puzzle piece I was missing. A lot of things in the environment seem closely related, especially with how we have canon confirmation that a lot of species have evolved, de-evolved, or regional variants. Many thanks!
One thing about Tier 2. The whole point of Riley being able to leave was because he was cured. The canon being shut down wouldnt matter if he couldn't survive the virus. But in curing himself, he also released the cure (the baby leviathans) making it accessible to the entire planet. So by the time SubZero happened, the virus would be much less of a threat by then and also I dont really consider Riley leaving selfish, because he technically released the cure out onto the whole planet.
Yeah, when I got to the end it kinda clicked.
Natural Selction and Subnautica could be that way around.
Natural Selection could be the initial outbreak possibly of a bioweapon. With Subnautica being the future after it falls.
Seems a lot more likely. Given you are cured and the cure is both actively known and spreading.
Just to consider as well, it's never explored (at least to what I remember reading) about how long space travel is in the game. If Riley was still infected I'm sure he/or she, would be long dead before returning to home planet
Also, Alterra was researching Kharaa from the frozen leviathan and evolving it, which is a huge part of the plot of BZ. Even after Sam destroyed the project and Robin cured the leviathan, Alterra still could have some data about the virus and could continue to work on it.
I truly don't believe it was Riley who brought the virus to other planets, rather than it's some Alterra shenanigans that went wrong
@@taniajs well, it also could be that Natural Selection and Subnautica have the same world-biuld universe and they aren't cannon to eachother. with no information both are equally possible.
"By the time SubZero happened" just had me thinking the MK ninja grandmaster on the frozen lands of 4546B like "TF did I get here?"
It makes sense that the warpers killed off or ensured all the survivors would die. Considering that our radio/pda can pick up the warpers sending radio messages, the warpers should be able to intercept ours. Riley, the protaganist, never sent a transmission because the radio was damaged and he wasn't awake to fix it untill everyone else was already killed off.
first interaction with the radio after you repair it sends out a distress signal, even in legacy.
@@luckyshamrock6649unlike the others, though, it didnt have a human voice, which maybe the warpers were just feeling a little goofy and didnt decide to take a vacation to the safe shallows
@@luckyshamrock6649 I'm pretty sure it sends a distress for a rescue ship or somethin, because we would have had a recorded message explaining our situation. We didn't need to be brought to a safer area. It likely was a distress call for a ship to rescue them. After all after the radio is fixed is says in 9999 hours help will arive
About the gargantuan leviathan theory, we need to keep in mind that the playable area for subnautica is situated in a volcanic creator as stated by the first few messages of the PDA, so if the planet really is full of water as the PDA states, there should be more than enough space for the gargantuan leviathan, or even bigger creatures, to roam outside of the creator. It might have got inside the volcano for testing from the precursors or even by accident.
It's unlikely that the gargantuan was brought by the precursors. They died out 1000 years before the game but the leviathan itself is more than 3 million years old. It's possible they found the skeleton in the void and brought it back, but it seems more likely that they simply found it where it rests in game.
I'm pretty sure the game actually tells you that the area changed during those millions of years and the Lost River was originally in open water, not a sorta long cave.
It’s theorized that there was a huge opening where the Aurora lands, which was sealed off after the crash
Keep in mind that planets change all the time just look at how much earth has changed since the Dino's. The skelly has probably been there for millions of years. The planet probably changed from eruptions and plates shifting
"The Khaara kills you in about a week."
Well thats not true.
Passenger 00FU survived for more than half a year after Alterra forgot him there due to a shift in management lol
Straight up, the "why has no one found this out about the leviathans yet" point is because there have been like 6 people alive on that planet in the last thousand years, and most of them have been pretty preoccupied with survival lol
I think he meant the precursors but I see what you mean. After the precursors left/died nobody would have any proper facility to research it or wouldn't have the resources or time to capture/k*ll a leviathan
It was really obvious he was talking about the precursors
You're not too smart are you?
@@SalesmanWaveprecursors weren't biological lifeforms anymore though
@SalesmanWave I don't think they need to eat, and maybe back then they didn't have immunity.
I thought it was pretty obvious that the mysterious messages were accidentally intercepted communications between Warpers.
The various Lifepods being empty are usually explained by the PDAs you find in or near them or their locations. Several of them are in places with Reapers or Ampeels. One's PDA recording even cuts off with an explosion.
That was an accident from a flare.
@@danielthecake8617 Right, and the two guys who got canopenered by the Bow and Stern Aurora Reaper Leviathans, and the one that smashed itself to bits when the airbrakes and parachute failed, and the doctor who died of Kharaa because doctors aren't really trained by Alterra, and the couple that tried to jury-rig a seaglide to escape which failed, and the engineer who had to jury rig repairs to a damaged pod which sank in the Bloodkelp zone.
Lots of explanations for why the pods are empty, and the people who went abroad were clearly caught by Warpers. That's the implication of the radio messages. Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
@@aircraftcarrierwo-class There is literally a pda recording with "Don't wave that around, it's not a signal flare, you'll hit the fuel- (explosion)."
@@danielthecake8617 I dont know what you're trying to do by telling me something I already said.
The one about the life pods not being meant to save you :
Stuff like that is made to last you long enough for rescue under NORMAL conditions
That bladderfish bit actually went so hard, i completely believed you right up until you turned it around. Great vid lad keep it up.
Lol glad you appreciate that 😂, thanks for watching
Bladderfish is non vegan water
I was in SHOCK LMFAO I was so relieved it was a joke😦
my disappointment is immeasurable
@@Nopunsforyou AYO WHAT
39:00 the "distress calls" talking about hunting / analyzing is the Warpers communicating to each other via radio waves. The reason most survivors are dead is because the warpers found and eliminated them. The reason Riley survives is because his radio breaks and therefore cannot send out messages
7:50 The Mesmer's entry in the PDA states at the end that you should get a closer look. This means either that the PDA wants to implicitely harm/kill you or that the Mesmer is capable of hacking the PDA. i'm not sure what would be scarier
its more on the branch of messing with your brain, but ramped up to alien levels instead of just "oooo optical illusion! scary? go away maybe???"
The only hypnosis and hallucination inducing animal has a messed up entry and you think the PDA is at fault? I’m pretty sure the scanning had been tampered with by it, or the PDA entry was messed up by it.
Note: the Void is the actual main landmass of the planet 4546b. The reason why we are on the map at all and not down a couple dozen kilometers or stuck in the middle of the void at the beginning of the game is because the captain stayed behind and guided the Aurora onto a plateau miles above the surface of the planet. The entire map of subnautica is quite literally the top of a colossal mountain.
Also, the Ghost Leviathans are bottom feeders at the base of 4546b’s main ecosystem. We haven’t scratched the surface of what this planet originally contained, and we likely never will since many of the original ideas were scrapped. (The Sea Emperor is a normal fish in the void and used to live in schools btw. It also was originally going to be the size of the Aurora.)
I really hope we get to learn more about the void environment in a future game
@@aleaf1494i don't, that's fucking scary as hell.
No the void isn’t the main part of the planet, we’ve seen the outside of the planet in loading screens and in both games, this theory is just wrong
@@WarriorTakeda Yes. We have seen the planet from loading screens and during the end of the game which gives us a very clear view of it. It is 98% submerged with mostly deep blue water indicating no visible landmass outside of a few islands (likely other supermassive plateaus such as what we landed on and other floater islands) and the frozen polar caps. There are no continents on the planet above the surface.
What part about this is wrong exactly?
@@alphastronghold715 so we saw dark blue and you assume that’s the void?, our ocean is dark blue and has beautiful coral etc, your just wrong
So a few points...Sam and her sister are born and raised on Earth - in the original beta they were even outright from England (still not sure why they made them American in the final release). Margaret may have survived due to her diet and the low frequency of Kharaa in the isolated arctic region (the only real source there is the frozen one). "Transgov" doesn't mean they're government-run, it means they transcend governments - Alterra and their many competitors are pure corporate entities, which is why we get the funny epilogue in the closing credits of the first game. The Emperor leviathans probably aren't gone - we just don't get to explore much beyond the regions we work in. Also, we find out in BZ that the Kharaa is by that point extinct on the planet except for in the frozen leviathan, which suggests the disease doesn't make it off due to human intervention, having been cured by the Emperor's enzyme release (and the babies continuing the job). There is no socialism in the Subnautica future - it's a capitalist dystopia where all major groups are companies and corporations of various sorts, and even the independent ones are dependent on the big transgov corporations. Sol just means our solar system - the Sunbeam is from the Sol system, _our_ system.
As far as I remember, the pandemic hit while they were still fleshing out the story BZ, and getting voice lines recorded as they went. Something about the corona complications meant that they could no longer work with the UK recording studio at the time they needed to get updated recordings done. Also, the main writer moved on from the company, so they ended up getting a new writer and just going in a different direction with the storylines and voice actors.
No the sunbeam says they're from the Andromeda Galaxy
I was also disappointed by the changes to Robin Ayou during development.
@@JonathanRossRogers Sam being cut is definitely the worst offender. Especially since BZ lost all contrast with the first game
Sunbeams from the Amdromeda galaxay
So as someone who got really into this game, I just want to clarify the subject matter at the beginning of tier 4. The things hunting people and keeping count of targets remaining are the purple teleporting squid creatures. They are hunter/seeker androids built by the aliens to kill survivors from shot down ships. You even encounter a factory where they are assembled inside one of the alien structures.
literally was looking for this comment, its actually quite clear if people took the time to read through the lore, it establishes that there are creatures beyond regular accounts quite early on in the game
Actually it isn’t specifically “survivors from shot down ships”. Rather it is infected individuals.
@@hiddendesire3076 The quarantine measures were so strict that anyone who entered 4546B's atmosphere was considered infected and had to be killed. That's why they shot down ships in the first place; even ships that didn't make landfall were considered a containment breach risk.
"as someone who got really into the game" followed by not being able to name such a prominent creature (Warper) strikes me as a tad weird ngl
@@Electrosa And as I said, it wasn’t specifically just survivors from shot down ships. Hell, if a peeper was deemed infected it would go for it.
I swear the PDA used to say that the incident on Obraxis Prime was about a guy who crash landed on the planet then eliminated all the wild life, so they only put the Survival Knife in the essential survival kit
While we don't know what really happened on Obraxis Prime, it is pretty obviously implying that a survivor or series of survivors on the planet fabricated guns which they used to kill other people, either in desperation or out of madness.
I don't know if this is a commonly missed detail, but in the PDA Ghost Leviathans are filter feeders, but due to their size they aggressively protect their feeding territory through ramming attacks
People just see a huge scary monster and assume it’s carnivorous. Maybe also because it’s bigger than the reaper
I mean half of the leviathans are literally herbivorous/filter feeders ex: ghost leviathan sea treader etc.
The giant peeper thing was in all honesty probably a bug. When Subnautica first went into Early Access, I played it on a really cruddy Dell All-In-One desktop (basically a monitor with a PC in it). It could barely run the game and it took up to 15 minutes to load a save. I played on this for 2 years until it crapped out. Occasionally, I'd have issues with area & model loading, and sometimes I'd see things like giant reefbacks spinning wildly in areas they don't normally spawn in. In the early days, the game's prototype stage coding could just swap the AI and models of some fish, leading to - for example - a reefback in the dunes with the AI and size of a reaper leviathan, and that was back when you needed reefback DNA for depth upgrades!
It's still a neat urban legend, but really it's not all that surprising.
Thank you for sharing this artifact
I always wondered why the scanner room allows you to track reefbacks
@@HeatherHoltwell, they also carry resources on their backs
Subnautica is 100% the scariest game I have ever played. I couldn't even make it out of the starting area. Then again, I have a lifelong fear of deep water and the unknown things that dwell within it.
It really does have such a great atmosphere most games don’t, and thanks for watching and supporting my channel!
i also have a super deep fear of the ocean and deep waters, And I *STRONGLY* recommend seeing it through to the end, it has really helped me with my fear and can be turnes off whenever I feel ut needa too and is really fun on top of that
@@CanadianCat64 Good reccomendation. Might pick it back up once I get burnt out on Pathfinder: Wrath.
I've only seen the trailer for the film, the meg, and I never want to watch it because that is absolutely terrifying to me, I never want to go too far from land in water in case something happens
@n1uk it's strange because I am terrified of the reapers in the main game and the shadow leviathan in the second game but I definitely prefer the second game
i an interview with a dev, he said that he created an animation that would play just before the game ends where an infected cave crawler scuttles across the roof of your shuttle right before the screen cuts to black, implying that Riley did in fact carry the infection off planet and was the catalyst for the war seen in Natural Selection
Idea for a terrifying third game: subnautica the void. Set at the bottom of the bottom of the void's ocean floor, you have one objective. Find your way up back to the surface
Just swim.
And clap those leviathans cheeks
*Subnautica : Call of the Void*
100% suggest searching up the text above, i feel it may be up your alley
Not much story in that tho and no resources or food there
The primary tension of the game is the need to surface to replenish your oxygen and the anxiety of losing access to it by going into cave systems. If you start at the bottom, your oxygen has to come from some other source, and once you have that, you no longer fear being anywhere deep. You remove the main reason the game is scary right off the bat.
The bone plate leviathan looks more like a crustacean than a slug. The holes on it's sides are where it's legs or similar appendages were attached. The holes are reminiscent of a crustacean with its legs removed.
How do you think the legs were removed? If I was to assume, I’d assume the legs got removed/ate by a bigger creature, and then smaller creatures used the opportunity to eat the rest of it from the eyes & the insides of the legs and back out.
@@ZacksRockingLifestyle there is also a possibility that the legs were just made from something that could not fossilise. I'm pretty sure it is related to the sand shark which also has some small legs
@@yvindlarsen1220 Most things like tendons and cartilage don't fossilize, and if the 'fossil' is thin enough, and underwater, it will eventually break down into dust.
Its a vertebrate,then it’s not a crab,lol
im pretty sure the leviathan skeleton is imagined to be a lot longer than what the devs actually added to the game, otherwise it would ruin the whole point of sticking the other end into the ground only for it to end right after, so more like a serpent creature
This is critical to your theory about Natural Selection and the Kharaa:
In the original version of Below Zero, the Kharaa bacterium WAS actually going to get off the planet.
They changed producers in the middle of Below Zero’s development and massively altered the storyline when they did so. In the original iteration, the satellite above the planet is actually called Vespa Station, and you have to regularly send supplies and samples to the station while you are working for Alterra (your sister is actually ON Vespa Station and was very much alive when you were there). During the game, you actually send a sample of the Kharaa bacterium secured from the Leviathan to Vespa Station which somehow escapes containment.
What happens after this, we’ll never know since the situation was never resolved before the story change.
I asume it would have little to no impact. If I recall correctly it's clearly stated khaara is already a massive issue in the whole universe and that's why precursors are looking in every planet for a way to heal it, infecting any planet they step on btw. They found it on 4546b but never got the eggs to hatch so their studies where incomplete but after Riley got it from the Emperor they should at least try to stop Khaara for ever (maybe we'll see it future games?)
@@marcps3522 It was a massive issue throughout the Precursor empire, but 4546b was the first time humanity had contact with the bacterium.
15:36
Bioaccumulation is the process by which materials such as vitamins and microplastics are gradually concentrated in organisms closer to the top of the food chain. This occurs because, while the prey (peepers with Enzyme 42) have a low amount of the material, their predators accumulate a lot of it by eating many of them, and then their predators eat many of them, and so on. So Reapers would have a very high concentration of Enzyme 42 in their body due to preying on so many organisms that prey on organisms containing Enzyme 42. This is most likely how eating a ton of Reaper flesh was able to cure Marguerite
Except enzymes would most likely be broken down when digested. The only proteins I’m familiar with that aren’t broken down enough to completely lose their function are prions.
@@DracaliaRay The entire point of the enzyme carrying peepers is to disperse the enzyme throughout the ecosystem. This wouldn't be possible if Enzyme 42 was destroyed during digestion as soon as the lowest level predator eats it. Enzyme 42 likely is absorbed into the body very quickly or can survive digestion. It's most probable that it is simply absorbed very quickly since it's only a matter of seconds for the huge glob of it to be absorbed into Ryley's hands, something that'd happen even faster through the skin of the mouth or esophagus
Holy crap that's smart but I feel there's no way this was intended by the writers, just coincidence and it was left a mystery how Maida was cured.
Or maybe this was proof that sea emperor leviathans do exist in the void, as the incomplete enzyme 42 can only slow down the infection of karaa
And I doubt the bioaccumulation of even a reaper would last for several decades
One thing to know is that you can find a Natural Selection 2 poster in the upper deck of Wreck 1 located in the Grassy Plateaus, as well as in the deepest section of Wreck 2 inside a Prawn Suit bay, found in the same biome. A third poster can be found in the Living Quarters (Cabin 6) of the Aurora. This 100% proves that both games are based in the same universe.
I love the idea of Azmuth sitting over the Ultimatrix in a blind fury while he tries to figure out why, after millions of years of evolution, all his DNA samples keep turning into crabs
The fact that the only human is no kind of predator and is in fact essentially bait, just suriving by their wits, is probably my favourite thing about the first game.
The player can be a predator by. Wiping out the leviathans
"the only human is no kind of predator"
Me: *crack prawn suit fingers looking at leviathans* Observe.
39:15 It's the Warpers. They're basically biological AI watchers created by the precursors. They're not distress calls, we're just accidentally tapping into their radio frequencies.
Another theory is that the kharaa that we encounter in the first subnautica game cannot survive in the freezing temperatures of Sector Zero, therefore not killing Marguerite. And the frozen leviathan we see in Below Zero has the kharaa, but isn't contagious.
but the other creatures still die from it
No matter how cold the planet is, Marguerite is still human and warm. The kharaa would still survive in her body and kill her unless she was cured. Also, cold in general doesn't usually kill bacteria, it just puts it into stasis or slows it down.
I think the one outlier is they also said the kharaa on the frozen leviathan is mutated, either it be on purpose from the labs or naturally and when you scan the kharaa on the frozen leviathan it says that while less contagious it’s just as dangerous and still very alive
Unfortunately as much as I wish this was the case as it would make it easy to piece together straightforward evidence a lot easier, this is debunked as the story with the Mercury II as multiple crew members contracted the virus as well as multiple fauna having green pustules and having sluggish movement.
@@icantthinkofagoodname1838 aCTUALLY, FUN FACT LOL
Hospitals can keep their sick patients from producing more bacterium and actually keep them healthier longer despite an infection with their abnormally cold temperatures. They keep them low to keep staff safe, but also to help ensure their patients core temperatures are lower than ideal for the mass production of bacterial cells, but high enough to keep the patient 'healthy'.
Really enjoyed this video and the comments explaining things as well.
I’ve had this game for years and finally found the time to play it over the holidays, thankfully my steam deck runs it great. And now I’m addicted to the lore so your video was recommended just in time. Quality content! ❤
Thank you so much!
Id like to add that the sea dragon didn’t randomly attack the base. The precursors knew that the sea emperors could produce the cure for Kharaa, so they stole its egg. The sea dragon then rammed the facility, leading to its death and the spread of khraa to the whole planet.
The frozen leviathan is dead. It's been confirmed multiple times. It died a long time ago and it's body was preserved in the ice.
Could you give a link to this info I thought their was a log saying it was alive thanks
@@evanelzinga282 the khaara bacteria is still alive in the frozen leviathan. Which is why altera was interested in it as they wanted to use it.
@@silferdeath cool thanks for correcting me
To clarify: the leviathan is dead but the virus is alive and preserved because of the ice
@@British132. Few years ago, they did find a new virus in the Siberian perma frost.
Just so you know, you got flora and fauna mixed up. An easy way to remember is that plants are on the floor(a). Or that a fawn(a) is a baby deer
I always think of “floral” for flora but that’s a good one to remember fauna I like that a lot
💀🤓
Ah the "all is just a dream" theory, no theory i have ever hated so much
It’s in freaking every fandom for no reason
All a dream is always dumb. Some hallucinations because of a concusion is possible. Like the ship getting shot down. No matter if the gun is disabled or not. There is never debre reaching the water floating around. Just a hallucination because of the injury and all the stress of being the only survivor. Not only did we take the virus to humans by leaving with the rocket. But most of the flora and fauna would die anyway because of the explosion and radiation leak caused by the aurora.
@@ryllis4293because it can be applied to almost anything
@@1000-THR True! Which is why it can come off as lazy with how people try to apply it to every single piece of media possible.. Plus, It's rarely done well.
But hey that’s just a theory A GAME THEORY
33:53 the holes in the side could suggest that the creature had more delicate fleshy fins or legs sticking out of the side, possibly sacrificial if attacked by some gargantuan leviathan.
I actually felt that Earth being no longer existent was implied…that is why majority of the ships/PDAs/pods have enough knowledge to be able to let humans construct habitat in other planets (i remember there was even a terraforming gun before)…meaning Alterra is somewhat like Weyland Yutani supplying humans with necessary technology to colonize other planets…same goes with other intra company ships…
Colonisation doesn't always mean you don't have your own home. Pretty sure Alterra just had several protocols for planetary survival. With the main idead being: atmosphere planet, water planet, land planet, maybe even "ice" or "fire" planets
I doubt Riley would infect the world, since he technically owes 3 billion credits to Alterra because of all the equipement, alien techonoliges, life pods, and basically the entire Aurora itself since he's the last survivor from the Aurora, and they gotta blame someone and CHARGE someone or else they're not letting him land.
I believe he was only charged for equipment, which with the amount of info on his PDA he could likely bargain, since we could have scanned everything on the crater, biomes, flora and fauna, Riley could definitely make it back
Hes probably is a prisioner cuz he def dont have money to pay for all that, and alterra probably stole his pda with so much information to know more about the planet then below zero happened
@@bandit3019 remember that he's the sole survivor of a GIANT mining ship, these things dont just go missing like this, what about the famillies? there's just too much problems for Alterra to just swipe it off the table, they HAD to blame someone or atleast make them pay (literally) for everything.
@@amprobaconhair2722 Well we already know that alterra fucked it up in subnautica below zero, they wanted kharaa to test it, and then well natural selection 1 and 2 happens.
@@bandit3019 in the game the PDA says that everything on the planet of property of Alterra. So the resources he uses on the planet all cost him.
The secondary mission wasn't top secret really, it was a "while you are in the area for this time, search for what happened to the ship that disappeared near this planet" mission. This is because the degassi ship that was shot down had an insurance policy that required the insurance company to pay for a reasonable effort to search for it in the event it didnt "come home". It was known that the planet was an ocean planet and is why the aurora was outfitted with subs and the new mark 3 prawn suit specifically so it had the tools to perform a thorough search of this planet. Also, as for the missing life pods the game literature addressed that as well. The Aurora was damaged in such a way only the port side life pods could deploy and those are all accounted for. The starboard side life pods were immediately destroyed explaining why they are never found other then maybe being pieces of scrap metal.
25 of the life pods launched which is the entirety or the port side life pods
The one about the life pods not being built to save you is for two reasons.
1. It’s a game and is meant to make survival harder for the player
2. Most life pods and boats are meant to keep you alive long enough for rescue under normal conditions
Life pods/boats for spaceships would realistically be able to keep you for months so that a rescue mission could be planned, unless they are just there to give a chance at survival instead of keep alive for an expensive rescue mission
@@odstvi9512 Alterra, however, is a scummy company and cuts budget to save money
40:40 i think I remember watching an old video a LONG, LONG time ago, that had something deeper than Lava zone, it was like caves, but on the floor, it looked like ash, or something...
For the part being talked about at 7:45 there's literally a pda that's about some robot assistant acting up because one of the crew members started fiddling with it, so they could have somehow integrated that into all the blueprints. (Like near the propulsion cannon fragments in the Aurora.)
18:30 there probably wouldn't be enough reaper leviathans to use as a cure, thus they had to rule that out and besides, did the precursors even eat meat?
Looking at Al-An fraternising with Robin: they are very much into meat
45:00 the Kharaa got its name from the Mongolian word for "Watch Out!" This was stated in Natural Selection 2, where the name originally came about when the first recordings of the bacterium were recovered from a Mongolian ship, in which the recordings consistently had the ships crew shouting out the phrase. It was at first assumed to be the first name of the infection, and the misconception stuck around after it was disproven.
31:37 I always assumed the massacre of Obraxis Prime was caused by a survivor of a crash on the planet that got a little too "trigger happy" with either the wildlife or his fellow survivors, prompting them to remove all weapons except for the survival knife to prevent excessive damage.
33:50 One theory on the anatomy of this creature is that it was an invertebrate with a shell, which is what is left behind, and it would have "legs" that came out of the holes that line its sides.
big bug
Man I would've loved a Peeper Leviathan as a non-hostile counterpart to the Reaper Leviathan
Good pun
42:45 - 42:60
Bro was having a stroke trying to say “No struggle at all”
The only two iceberg videos of yours I’ve watched, you’ve added troll entries 😂 please tell me this is a regular thing you do for every iceberg video I love it
You know it 😏
It was so wild when I realized that Unknown Worlds made this, back in 2002-2006 i played natural selection 1 competatively, winning a couple of tournaments with my team. I was playing subnautica without realizing it, and when I saw the term "the kharaa virus" i almost did a damn back flip. I really wish they'd make a NS 3. NS 2 didn't catch on and I think that was because the engine they used was so different from the original source engine and the original half life engine, but with ultra modern engines like unity or UE5, you can make a game feel like whatever the hell you want!
I never got to even try natural selection but it does look cool for sure after checking it out for his iceberg, thanks for watching and supporting the channel!
I wish there was a more story-centric singleplayer NS game...I'd love to see one honestly, with more aspects linking the two subnautica games into the universe.
Durin the bit where he talks about A.I, there's also a PDA entry on the Aurora where someone reprogrammed a bot to have a personality and only responds to politeness or something similar.
Been a while since I've seen it, but I think it's interesting to note.
Someone's asking for a propulsion cannon and the AI robot brings them a repulsion cannon (a lot stronger)
The mistake made the person yell at the AI robot and then he was instructed that politeness was the only way to get the AI to work properly. Something like that.
IIRC, the unused biome below the lava zones was from the alpha builds when the Emperor Leviathan was being implemented.
Its been a loooong time since I've seen the development updates from that period, but I do recall a biome at the bottom of the map that was essentially just a big empty bubble of safe shallows where they'd test locomotion for the larger species.
Again, my knowledge on this is incredibly dated, so I could very well be wrong entirely
if you look at the map at 40:57, you can see icons for Peepers on the edge of the map (near the Grand Reef, the Sea Treader etc) - maybe some more support to the theory of Peepviathans? :p
34:10 I think the big holes on the sides are basically for fins, and it does seem similar to sand sharks in terms of body plates. I don't think it was a sea floor animal, more like an agile omnivore (judging from the eyes on the sides) that is a ancestor to said sandsharks
Yeah, fins degrade over time because they don't have any bones in them.
Am I the only one thinking it has arms and those are sockets?
I don't think Riley is the karar spreader, i believe Alterra probably took the karar in the frozen leviathan intending to use it as a bioweapon but allowed It to get out, either intentionally or unintentionally
Great job packing all of that lore into this one video. It definitely felt a lot shorter than 40 minutes, very entertaining.
Really appreciate that! Thanks for supporting the channel
You call this lore???
This is a pipe dream of subnautica
That single cell zone along with the Atlas sub visual give me hope that it will be in the next game. We know that it will have likely have multiplayer, which probably means a bigger sub and therefore a bigger map. Perfect opportunity to implement an idea like the single cell zone.
I feel like in the next game the biome should take place in the void which would make it more scary because you finally find out why it's thousands of meters deep and why there's nothing else really down there
@@Z_Galaxy…thus making it not scary
@@Z_Galaxyit should feature a peeper leviathan that kills you irl
@@Z_Galaxyit should feature a peeper leviathan that kills you irl
38:00 That's the Warpers communicating.
Fascinating video. Just got this game for the fam. Thank you for making this. I know it takes a lot of work. 😀
Really appreciate that! And subnautica is great you will love it
@@FranklyGaming No worries and thanks again!
About AI research on 4546B: This was pretty much confirmed in some of the PDAs in Below Zero. A few of the scientists and researchers either had some background in AI, or were there for the express purpose of AI research.
Fantastic video! I have never played Subnautica but I have always enjoyed the lore behind it. Who knew something that seemed so shallow could actually be hiding a lot in it's depths
Thanks so much for watching! Ya honestly after doing these icebergs series so many games have a lot of really cool lore no one knows about its fun to explore
@@FranklyGaming credit to you and to the developers as well. You'd be doing the indie devs a great service by creating lore dives on their content.
Same with me and fanf lore
Really love the way you do iceberg videos, rarely do the first tiers get me this engaged as much as the last tier. Awesome video 🔥
Thanks so much that means a lot! Appreciating you taking the time to watch and comment
38:31 i once saw a really cool leviathan fan concept that i honestly wish existed in the game - a mesmer leviathan
according to the concept this thing would send you fake radio messages and basically "hack" into all your technology, making the AI think your mission was to come towards it by any means possible
idk something about the idea of those messages being much more dangerous than they are in game and having to sift through them, trying to figure out which ones are real and which ones aren't by small "tells" like maybe a voice glitch or an unnatural pitch in tone sounds really fun to me
I like this idea a lot!!
I'm honestly still so upset about the way that margaret survived, bc it doesn't match up AT ALL with what Bart's later description of the attack on their base. Even ignoring how little her story makes sense on its own, Bart describes LIGHTS coming UP from the CAVES BELOW THEIR BASE. He describes the creature that attacked them as "massive tentacles from the deep" and the ONLY creature that matches the description is a sea dragon leviathan (massive, tentacled, lives in deep caves, bioluminescent) and we also ALREADY KNOW that the sea dragons come up to the open waters periodically to catch and drag reaper leviathans down into their volcanic caves and eat them, so a sea dragon is the only thing that makes sense. Best I can tell is they totally retconned the attack to bring margaret back. I honestly have so many criticisms about below zero (and ESPECIALLY ABOUT ITS STORY) but I don't feel like typing it all out here bc I would be here for forever. og subnautica is an absolute masterpiece and should be played by everyone, but below zero was just. mid.
Hell, there was a concept art of a leviathan with tentacles, who looked quite realistically small in comparison to a reaper and had plenty of lights on it. Honestly, Below Zero really turned out worse after they changed the story
I hate that the game never addresses how she survived. Hell with how they treat the virus, you'd think it wasn't a big deal
My experience playing Subnautica wasn't necessarily thalassophobia, but general fear of the unknown. I refused to use guides or maps for the best experience of this, only knowing what to expect from clips I saw online. Only after I had a true genuine idea of where everything was, including the lava zones did I look at a map just to 100% some stuff. It was one of the most fun experiences I've had with a video game. By not knowing where anything was, even the Grassy Plateaus were scary at first (LOL). Little did I know just how deep the ocean got, how dark the surroundings could get, and how surprising some of the fish could be. It kept me on my toes at all times not knowing what I'd find. However, that somewhat hurt the replayability for me because knowing what to expect and where everything is just takes the fear aspect out of the game. It's still very beautiful, just not absolutely terrifying the way it is initially. Below Zero helped me experience that feeling all over again but still just fear of the unknown. I can't wait for subnautica 3 to experience it all over again.
I think it would be absolutely incredible if unknown worlds were to create a whole bunch of bigger games that encompass a larger scope of the subnautica universe entirely
They did, the scifi shooter games take place in the same universe.
I can see its already been said but yeah, the intercepted transmissions are from the warper's although i do like the idea that they are purposefully using the distress signals from the other life pods to lure any survivors into more dangerous territory, adds more intelligence and intention that feels very chilling. (Its also a neat bow that gives an in lore reason as to why you can find broken and abandoned life pods well before you ever get their distress signals.)
Wonderful video. It’s wonderful to see how much thought and imagination you’ve put into the world of Subnautica.
I shall neither confirm nor deny anything herein. Happy hunting.
-Flayra (design director on Subnautica and Natural Selection 1/2)
Really appreciate the kind worlds charlie! You’ve made some really great stuff
33:36 unlikely that this resembled a sea slug. the large openings on either side of each segment suggest that it had fins or similar appendages made of softer tissue (cartilage?), perhaps eaten or rotted away by time. both the bone leviathan and especially research specimen theta resemble the placoderms of the devonian period in real life, and theta reminds me of dunkleosteus specifically. perhaps they had similarly formidable bite force and speed to feed on armored/shelled prey, but that's just my speculation. disclaimer: this video is my first introduction to subnautica, I just never got over my childhood obsession with _walking with dinosaurs: chased by sea monsters_ lol
My theory on why maida survived so long: As Frankly said maybe consuming the reaper may have helped her but what if that reaper may have consumed a pepper with enzyme 42
Well if the reaper ate a ton of peepers with the enzyme, or ate other smaller predators that themselves ate peepers, it would end up with a ton of Enzyme 42 in its system via bioaccumulation. It’s just like how mercury builds up in fish at the top of the food chain making them dangerous for humans to eat, except in Marguerit’s case this process saved her life.
Reapers love peppers
Could also be possible that all leviathans have some sort of similiar enzyme that of the 42 one.
remember, whole game is basically how the bacterium got out after the Architects (one in particular) stole the Sea Dragon eggs, which made the parent mad and broke the facility.
This tidbit proves that other leviathans aside from the Sea Emperors create some similiar stuff like e42 (i mean The Guy in Below Zero confirms that they weren't wrong abt the Dragons having a cure)
Soooo the Reapers could have a weaker enzyme in their bodies that they couldn't expel (unlike the Emperors) which could basically halt the bacterium for a while, for example 10 years. and it was basically luck that Marg survived that long until Ryley managed to actually release the cure, and it reaching Sector Zero, curing her completely.
Theory about the gargantuan leviathan. It was a juvenile when it entered the lost river to eat ghost leviathans but due to the absence of food it didn’t leave until it grew too big to swim back out. Left to slowly starve as it tried to escape. The bones might in fact still be of a juvenile leviathan…. It could very well be bigger
Your theory of starvation is good, but it was already confirmed as a juvenile in the game
man i remember hearing about the single celled biome and wishing it was in the game. Its such a cool idea, but it feels kind reasonable that it was cut
The bladder fish joke had me saying, "What!" Right before it was revealed to be a joke 😂 I hope in the second game they add some weapons, not anything like guns per say, but a harpoon gun with the ability to craft lethal and non lethal harpoon bolts for hunting. I really would like to see them expand on the hunting and base building. Add in more base abilities and decoration options. More vehicles would also be awesome. I love exploring the seas in it. It would be cool to have a ship also.
I'm not going to lie your voice sounds amazing and listening to explain lore is like an amazing to listen to you explain the lower in subnautica and there's probably better but to me you're my best love your videos Man
Really appreciate the kind words!
happy halloween man! love your videos so much, the quality is always great and you are a really good narrator, wishing you a horrendous amount of subs ❤
Appreciate it and happy Halloween to you as well!
I always had some re-writes, but you can take them and twist them into theories if you want:
It has always given me some sorts of sad-delight to imagine the Precursors where driven to find a cure because they viewed themselves as the only Intelligent and maybe even Sentient life out there. The death of their whole species wasn't just something tragic to themselves, but as one of the 'Fermi Paradox Barriers' so difficult to overcome in the first place... it might never have reoccurred. Now if only this race was also telepathic, and hadn't driven the one creature that could help into seclusion. Thus the precursors died thinking they where the only ones, and the last ones, to know the fear of extinction before it's cold touch.
The part that you can use as a theory though:
A desperate group working in this very research station, after everything had obviously failed, decided to do something heretical at that point. They deliberately intergraded their consciousnesses into a range of bio-machines knowing that it would destroy their sentience. It was a last ditch attempt to hold onto at least some of their intelligence, putting it into these cold machines that are driven by purposes programed. Creating not only a whole range of creatures that we know to be the warpers but things we have yet to see down there in the Void....
Perhaps something more machine then biological, at this point.
That first paragraph would make sense, but the Precursors had come to Earth at on point. I can't give an exact time of when they did, but there are some Earth Artifacts, one of which is a sword from (if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong) Mongolia. A metal sword would be a good indicator of a species being well past the Stone Age. Not to mention, if the Precursors have went to Earth, they would've been all over the planet but didn't take any artifact. Not to mention, there were billions of the Precursor Race, so there would've definitely been a few that went "What if those primitives on Earth are slowly getting to the space age?"
Precursors were terribly smart (or at least the ones on 4546B), but their short-sighted efforts are what made them perform less than ideal tests.
The theory about the Kharar virus being a “natural response” to the universe’s draining resources reminds me of the theory regarding the monsters in Evolve (remember that game?).
Where those monsters were meant to stop colonization, since they’re incredibly aggressive, spread fast, and essentially decimate an entire planet (in a week iirc). The difference here is that I believe it was hinted that the monsters were artificially made, while the kharar is still up in the air as to whether or not it was made artificially or naturally.
I really enjoyed your take on that format/meme/whatever iceberg video is.
Good stuff here.
14:25 its not actually entirely necessary that this creature had more than one set of eyes. If you look at reptile skulls, there are usually 2-3 holes (except for turtles) but of course only two eye sets.
It could be a larger/prehistoric relative of sand shark (possibly with only two eyes, maybe 4 but we dont really know)
I like to think that millions, or even billions of years ago, there was a primitive civilisation on 4546b because of the fact in an older build in Subnautica, there were strange underwater structures that almost looked like buildings with bridges
Wait you remember the old structures back then? Did you also know the giant walls during the early stages of the game?
@@henrymugello3387 I do indeed, I think they were place holders for the QEP island, everyone was freaking out and calling them monoliths back then lmao
@@Jay_Dub1120 Yeah, not to mention the scary horn sounds when you're near the giant walls.
9:22 you forgot to mention the game says that the skeleton was just a juvenile a juvenile that was a mile long
36:54 I'm pretty sure this message system was from the teleporting cyborg squids made by the precursors. It would make sense since they are like the automated security force and they probably got a few body counts on the leftover human survivors in the crash clean up. Hence, them detecting one last human alive (you).
Yeahhh this guy probably hasn't played much, you get a lot of this stuff on one playthrough of the game
tbh seeing how easily the lifepod falls apart during descent (during the cutscene) and the fact how much the player is supposed to pay when returning with the rocket says alot about Alterra
The "Missing Entity" is the Warper. I'm surprised you didn't even mention it at all during that segment. The Warper is a artificial organism with the sole purpose of hunting/analyzing infected organisms. The radio transmissions are conversations between different Warpers.
Absolutely love this game and suggest it to anyone who enjoys singleplayer exploring. I've dumped hundreds of hours into both 1 and 2. Just being alone in a world with only your PDA speaking to you really sets the mood. Not to mention the simple building and crafting allows your to get lost in just building bases before you even get far into story progression.
your iceberg videos are really entertaining, so much so that I can't stop watching them lol, keep up the good work and wish you the best of luck with your career!
Really appreciate the kind words and thanks for watching!
Yeah idk about the entity one, man. The radio signals talking about the unaccounted target are from the warpers communicating to each other. And they're talking about you the player
Edit: Forgot to point out. Notice how the warpers mostly watch you and study you, especially before being infected. In my opinion they are the creepiest things in the game
''What if planet 4546b is earth?''
Great theory! It is very common for a planet to grow another massive moon and for its other moon to change face completly.
😂😂
It s been a while since I watched such a well made video about a game. Good job and keep up the good content
Thank you for the support!
Just want to point out that we do get a little bit of lore about earth (although not exactly about the planet itself) when we scan the cuddlefish (yes that cute little guy/girl) where it states that the dolphin species (pretty certain it's the battlenose dolphin) went extinct. So I'm assuming that implies earths still around and populated though it's probably unrecognizable at this rate.
The idea of the life pod theory, the one where you aren’t actually supposed to survive, seems super plausible. Honestly Alterra is a super ruthless and vicious company, they don’t seem to care what happens to employees. If a employee(s) survive far from earth they don’t want to spend money recovering them. Evidence for this theory is lack of supplies, as said in the video, but another piece is that look at how the life pod is constructed. When Riley was shot off it started to break, the fire extinguisher instantly came off, then the panel that knocked him out came off, it also caught fire that could have killed him. Maybe it’s just me, I mean obviously anything would have probably caught damage, but Alterra is a super advanced company. Don’t you think they’d be able to keep a fire extinguisher and panel of all things in place? Idk maybe just me.
I agree with you especially about the fire extinguisher! I was thinking Ok this is like if something came flying up off the lunar module… haven’t they heard of Velcro in this world bare minimum?? Lol
Well it can't be that they were damaged by a rough landing surely
I think you might enjoy a Divinity Original Sin 2 iceberg, lots of stuff going on there that gets crazier the more you learn and what characters you interact with. Really in depth game and very fun
Ya that’s another series I think would be really fun I’ll make a post later today asking what you want to see, thanks for the support hunter
@@FranklyGaming my pleasure, thanks for the content!
The warpers were sending the messages as the crew members were all infected they hunted them after the distress messages were sent until riley was the last person left and after he is cured they dont attack him they are hunting the infected to stop the spread
Good video, i have a few things to point out
1) Margerit is described as fighting the reaper with a seaglide and a piece of scrap, .....no mention of her prawn suit (at least in the first game anyways)
2) your lifepod theory assumes their floatation collar dosnt work, i dont think they would sink if it had
3) your theory on the Mercury's name is flawed, when you consider that Mercury is actually also the god of messages, and messengers
The Mercury 2 was sent to send a message to the Mongolians
4) why would you remove weapons from SURVIVAL bluprints because of a colony uprising?
Its more likely that a massacre occured in a survival situation
I would speculate that survivors of a crash either wiped out each other, or wiped out a native species (massacre dosnt nessecarily indicate the victims were human)
26:00
I’m 100% confidant that the biome was based on the crypted “the black carpet”
It's not, but that's a cool comparison
The strange messages you get about the hunting/analyzing I think are from the warpers because they both make clicking noises and in one of the bases the warpers data scan says that it’s possibly made up of multiple creatures so I think the precursors made the warpers to kill anything with the virus because after you get cured with enzyme 42 the warpers stop attacking so I think it’s the warpers studying you and seeing if you have the virus cause at first you don’t see a lot and then as the game progresses you see more and more and also I noticed the warpers often attack other creatures with the virus
I think the Peeper Leviathan thing came from back then when many experimented with the commands, including changing the sizes of the mobs.
Well a peeper leviathan existed on the planet at some point we find that out on the PDA
in tier two you say that Marguerit Maida killed the reaper with her praw suit but in one of pauls voice logs he says that she swam after it with a seaglide and a jagged bit of steel
Yeah, I got confused about that part, I think he goofed a bit. It did also say the leviathan carried her away into the darkness, not specifically down. In the game, we can see that reaper leviathans don't like going all that deep as it is where its predator lies and is probably incapable of withstanding those pressures, seeing as that is how the sea dragon kills them (heat and pressure) from draging them into the deep lava zone. It is unlikely she was carried too far down as it is later mentioned in below 0 (I think) she barely had enough oxygen to get to the surface, and she was carried farther out into the void than she expected.
"Margiruet might have accidentally cured herself from the Kharaa by eating a Reaper Leviathan"
Mission Failed Successfully.