A lot of people have brung up the fact that I neglected to mention the Snow Fox, land sections, and the Ice Worm. I personally did the land sections in the Prawn, never built the Snow Fox other than the one time I tried it out and it seemed to barely work, and found the Ice Worms extremely easy to evade in the Prawn. I personally found the Ice Worm a cool background character to make my journey to the land cache a bit more "epic," but overall it was pretty whatever. In all honesty, the fact that I forgot about the Snow Fox, the land portions, and the Ice Worm entirely while writing the script says pretty much all that needs to be said about them.
In the early access the Ice Worm apparantly used to be a really cool high speed chase across the snowscapes, different from Subnautica but cool in its own way, then it was completely wrecked in the final version by the ice worm being given way too huge hit boxes and knocking you off the snow fox each time it hit you
since u mention prawn suit, i literally skipped the part where u need the hydraulic fluid by jumping and strafing sideways with the prawn suit over the bridge; for some reason you can go stupidly fast if you press W and D
I skipped the Snow Fox in favor of the Prawn too. It felt a lot safer, and I didn't have to worry about the temperature. Feels like they missed the mark with the land sections.
@@TheFelmasterThe Cyclops is quite possibly the most useless thing in the entire game. The only reason you need one is for the Cyclops Shield Generator. The Prawn Suit can get you down into the Lava Zones and back out in one trip. It’s even easier to avoid the Sea Dragons in the Prawn since you’re so close to the ground.
@@Hedron1027 Yeah but I want a base in the lost river and the lava zone and the grand reef and I ain't dragging that one piece at a time. It's not pratical to have bases like that but I'm roleplaying a survivor
Don't forget the [relatively] small preadators that are as loud as the huge leviathans and can be heard everywhere, basically nullifying any fear factor.
!Gen z trigger alert - contains facts about reality! Not all animals have proportional noise levels. Maybe that part of the game was too realistic for the gen Z crowd.
I was baffled how, whatever the fuck medum size sharks were called, near one of the land outposts were louder at a distance than Reapers are point blank. They didnt do much damage but were so obnoxiously loud it cut what enjoyment of the game I had at that point, and dropped that save like 1 hour later.
dont forget how the only reason you have nothing at the start is because she just didnt bring ANYTHING of usefulness unlike how in the first game you have a reason not to have anything seeing as you were forced to be there
Though considering the stuff scattered around your crash site it looks like she did bring stuff (nutrient bars and bottles of water) but it got scattered in the crash and due to the meteor strikes she didn’t really have time to find everything. Also there’s the absolute brain fart of her not starting with the blueprints for a habitat builder. At least the first game assumes that if you’ve landed on an alien planet you might want to build a makeshift shelter. What exactly was her plan if Alterra hadn’t left a broken one lying around?
@@cathygrandstaff1957 she didnt plan to stay long enough to need anything but the shelter she towed with her shuttle. her plan was to simply find out what happened and get out before alterra even knew she was there. The fact that there was originally an alterra gunship that was to try to intercept her in the ending would have showed that alterra was not messing around. sadly it was scrapped, probably due to being too elaborate of an animation sequence.
During the open beta, the story was different. Sam was alive and giving us missions. Another Alterra employee got another part of the precursor on his mind and infected everyone on the mother ship with the virus and prevented you from sending the antitode, threatining you to surrender the precursor on your mind to him. It was a really intresting story for me but they scrapped it whole.
The original starting section with the space debris raining down where you jump into the water to escape it was one of the most thrilling openings to a survival game I had ever seen Then they replaced it was a gentle walk. Flabbergasting
I played the beta up until the part where you get ALAN and decided I wanted to play the rest when the game was finished. Huge mistake on my part. Some of the best parts BZ had to offer were scrapped before full release.
@@bertvanbeterbed9702 truly, I remember watching a couple gameplay videos and then deciding to wait to see the rest so I could experience the story myself. It had promise back then, now its just sad.
It wasn't really a good idea to introduce an alive precursor to begin with, also the whole spiel with the virus is just... lame. The entire thing feels like sequel-megalomania, where the devs and writer are disconnected from what made the first game succesfull in the first place and they think, that expanding and explaining uneccessary story bits what would make the game better... Subnautica's primary protagonist was always the enviroment. When it got downgraded significantly and a lot more land proportions were introduced, that's when they failed completely. The game could have a gow awful story (it has), but if the underwater exploration bits and the enviroment was good, no-one would really give a fuck for the rest.
Its genuinely such a shame because the stuff with the vesper station was really interesting but they scrapped ALL OF IT. The original story with one of the coworkers picking up Alan, going insane and activating the planet wide forcefield was so much better and im so disappointed we got this slop instead.
Honestly that story line was so much better that sometimes when i recall the story i actually think of that then suddenly remember that it's not actually part of the story
@@rtixboi I know but why was it so rushed? Subnautica took years to iron out even the most basic bugs/work out story but instead of repeating that process they just pushed out below zero right away. I guess they just wanted to work on the official subnautica 2 faster and below zero took too much time/money?
@VishkarSentry I saw in another comment it basically came down to the original writer (not an employee but sort of on contract) leaving to work on other projects, and the dev team taking the opportunity to rewrite the story because they apparently didn't like how it was turning out. They were fairly late in development when that happened though, so the rewrite was half baked.
Also a roboticist just casually cured the Kararr by combining like two local plants - something the hyper-advanced Precursors apparently couldn’t figure out for centuries.
To be fair she would have been working using the biochemical analysis of the enzyme from the first game as a starting point, something the precursors didn’t have. And it’s stated in the first game that even experts usually use AI to do most of the work for them. But the recipe is definitely too simple. IMO it would make more sense for the cure to be something the biologists experimenting with the kharaa had formulated ahead of time in case someone got infected, which Sam only appropriated for her own use.
I would have much preferred the precursors stay a total enigma rather than revealing them to be whatever BZ portrayed them as... it was frankly quite disappointing
Actually, Sector Zero experienced rapid growth of plant life after Alterra scientists released the enzyme into the ecosystem. It can be surprised that the plants this helped revitalize or even create in the first place can be used to synthesize the vaccine. It's quite easy when the entire world is laced with it.
You forgot that they removed a bunch of immersive sounds like the player character coughing up water when they're close to asphyxiating as they finally breach the surface
@@RealTallestSkiloh very funny. "Woke is why it's bad" man you're so original and funny! Have you ever thought of stand up comedy as a career path? Sound design is not music composing lmao, and Ben is a much better music composer than Simon could even dream of
The first draft of the script and story was SO much better than whatever we got. Alan and Robyn both felt like characters who were actually inquisitive of each other, both were scientists after all. Alan probes her mind, learning what it means to be separated and free from the systems he's known. Robyn asks him questions pertaining to the precursors to learn more about their species. The inclusion of an atmospheric shield as a backup to stop the kharaa makes so much sense. Why wouldn't the precursors build a backup? Also, when it comes to leviathans,this game fell incredibly short. I immediately took note that the shadow levithans, the biggest "threat" to you in the game, followed and easy to read path. Yeah, they don't wander in search of food aimlessly in a hunting ground like in the first game. They follow a very easy to read path, removing any kind of fear factor. When it comes to the story, there is a video covering everything as it was in production, up until the activation of the atmospheric shield. (Link below.) ruclips.net/video/Sd6PMW1tQZA/видео.html&si=Ig4gNzqovn2hYZTK
And the Reaper Leviathan was present relatively early on in the game. Its the most violent and the most scary, maybe comparable with the dragon. Compare that to Sub Zero, and there's not much. The seals are noisy, but don't do that much damage, nor are they as big as the Reapers. And the Shadow Leviathan are only in a small chunk of the game
Rewrote the dialogue and story, changed voice actors. I remember the early access period, some of the choices they made were truly baffling. But I don't hate the end product, apparently I'm in the minority (based on this comments section)
The sea truck would've been good if the map was much bigger, so it warrants having much more compartments to it, but it need more of a reason to go back to your storage unite, i mean base
The idea is excellent, a portable minibase solves a common issue in games like this with the player being forced to travel back and forth at all times to collect important items from base or clear their inventory. The sea-truck makes exploration far from base much more seamless and makes themless reliant on fast travelling all the time, but as you said, the idea demands a big map to be more than a gimmick.
The real problem with the seatruck is that while the concept of a modular submarine being cool itself, it goes after the small, practical, nimble... And modular seamoth that is better for short missions, and the bigger, more complete, much more comfortable... And even more modular cyclops that IS better for long range exploration. Actually, the seatruck is like Sub below Zero. It's not necessary that bad... It just comes after the masterclass. Well, fauna in Below Zero is more realistic and goodlooking tbh.
@@blitzburn2871 Except that the Cyclops in the original game does this job much better, as it has near unlimited storage and never felt as clunky to drive as the Seatruck. Especially given that you rarely wanted to use the Seatruck to its full potential because adding more than 3 trailers made it stupidly slow.
If anyone wants to know why Below Zero's story turned out so bad here's why From January 2019 to November 2019, Tom Jubert, who was also the writer for Subnautica, was the writer for below zero. Before the November update Deep Dive, Tom Jubert left the project for 2 reasons 1. Unknown Worlds wasn't happy with the direction the game or story was heading 2. Tom Jubert wanted to work on other projects. He was not an employee of the studio and was not fired, from what I understand he left on his own accord. Unknown Worlds hired writer Jill Murray to rewrite the story of Below Zero, however at this point they had already spent millions on the game and so much of the assets and environment had already been remade. This means Jill Murray had to write the story to fit around the already made game, which is incredibly difficult to do. This is essentially the reason the story turned out so bad, Unknown Worlds was trying to fit a story to the game instead of building the game around the story like with Subnautica.
@@icedragon769 see his first point, from what I can tell they didn't necessarily get rid of Jubert for that reason but once he was gone they thought it was a good opportunity to have the new writer rewrite the story, though we now know this was a terrible idea as they were way too far into the creation of the game by then.
That actually explains so much. As a writer I struggeled understanding some of the decisions made, but now I see it. The poor guy was set on a challange run
it's funny how there's a hidden message of "big corporation bad and evil!" but: 1. alterra was doing valuable life changing research 2. her sister killed herself and a colleague due to negligence rather than alterra being behind it like it's implied 3. none of the alterra employees seem that bad, just the usual office personalities so why jam "le alterra bad" in every other line of dialogue?
Gee, I don't know, why would someone who's angry at their family dying blame anyone but their family? Basic fucking grief, Comic Book Guy. Basic fucking grief.
RIGHT?! You'd THINK there'd be a PDA showing 'OH MAH GAWD THEY'RE DEVELOPIN A BIOLOGICAL WEAPON FOR THE BLACK MARKET, THAT'LL GO TERRIBLY!' but uh... From what I understand, that never happens. Sure they're a toxic corporation but hey, it's not worth commiting terrorisim.
Because the player knows Alterra is bad from having played the first game and they never considered what the viewpoint of the characters in the game would be instead
"Somehow, Marguerit returned 😧" All I need is the jukebox installed in the cyclops and I can die happy playing the original game for the rest of my life
Actually, Marguerit surviving isn't that illogical. In the first game, as the main silent protagonist explore the waters, three types of sea animals can be encountered regarding the bacteria : the normal healthy ones (zero change), the infected ones (green pustules all over the body) and cured ones (small glittering aura and fast as f*ck boi.) The last one is the one that matters because it's a given lore fact that, because of the sea emperor enzyme 42 spread out in the sea, some individual organisms ended up getting in contact and getting cured from the bacteria - contributing to the disease to recede in fluctuation. Hypothically, if we consider that, out the the three rescapees from the crash Marguerit was part of, she was the huntress and got at sea to hunt games of any kind, it's not far-fetched to consider that she got her hand on a cured fish (or whatnot), cooked it and then eaten it some times prior to her Reaper encounter. It by no mean contributed to cure her but most likely help contributing to drastically slow her infection rate and her getting to the area of "below zero" simply did not make her change her hunting nor eating habits in the slightest, thus contributing to the slowing of the infection (drastically so seeing how she lived through everything.) By extension, this means that she lived long enough for the protagonist of "Subnautica" to fulfill the hatching of the Sea Emperor's children and contributing to Enzyme 42's full release into the Ocean. All that it take then is a little bit of migration work for the different species of Subnautica that goes through area below zero to get hunted by Marguerit like usual and voila : she gets the proper exposure to Enzyme 42 and survive through the whole thing. A bit convoluted. But nonetheless coherent.
@@Tenhys except the degassi crash happened several years prior to when the game took place and both the other survivors got infected and died, the kid even said in his last diary entry that he’d join his dad and Margaritte when he goes. The only way she could’ve survived is not to have even been infected at all somehow and I just don’t think that’s possible since the player gets infected early on not too long after the crash. Sadly I think the writers just wanted to surprise the audience for the sake of surprising the audience. They don’t bother to explain how she survived.
It sucks because the ice worms were actually a very cool Leviathan with lots of neat death animations. But being on land sucked so much that you just wanted to rush through it.
The prawn suit is too OP on the land sections, it’s faster than the snowfox even with just one grapple arm. Once I tried out the prawn suit on the land sections I realized there is no reason to make a snowfox. With two grapple arms you can even get places that you shouldn’t be and just skip over the ice worm zones.
I could write a whole essay on the things that I didn't like about BZ or that the original did way better but you hit most of my main gripes on the head lol, only thing you forgot to mention is how the land sections are annoying as fuck to go through and that you can just straight up ignore the main plot if you beeline getting al-an his body back, AND THE GAME DOESN'T EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE IT IF YOU LEAVE BEFORE FINDING WHAT HAPPENED TO SAM, making it feel useless to do.
@@SgtRamen I honestly forgot about the land sections while writing the script, which I guess says everything that needs to be said about the land sections
@@aleatheltrashcan478I too finished BZ before subnautica, but even after experiencing it first I have to agree with a lot of these points. It’s not a bad game, and I really enjoyed playing it, but the first game was a lot more cohesive and well done.
The writing team was a complete disaster due to intimidation from management - the reason Robin doesn't remark about Sam is because SAM WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ALIVE THE WHOLE TIME and they just didn't want to fix the story to have alternate dialogue.
Changing the story at the last moment was a terrible call and completely ruined it. In Early Access, the game starts with the base being evacuated and Robin getting left behind, so it makes sense that every location looks like everyone just packed up and left 5 minutes ago. In the new story, Robin arrives at the Alterra base who knows how long after, so the environmental storytelling no longer makes sense. And worse, the main objective of the story (destroy the last Kharaa sample so Alterra can't get their hands on it) becomes completely nonsensical and pointless because by now, Alterra has clearly had more than enough time to grab as many samples as they want. Their investigator even leaves an audio log right at the frozen Leviathan site, proving that Alterra very much DID have access to it for quite a while. Destroying it now accomplishes absolutely nothing. Not to mention that even that whole storyline gets overshadowed by all the alien mind-buddy stuff, to a point where on my first playthrough, I was allowed to complete the game without ever finishing the "main" storyline because Robin apparently didn't care about her dead sister anymore, she wanted to go on an adventure with her alien friend.
Yep. So true. Subnautica One is a survival game with great depth and an excuse plot... which, due to dev boredom/interest has as much depth as the game. The story, literally, does not matter in regards to ths enjoyability of the baseline game as you are not What's-his-name. You are you. You find the name of a good candidate but it is still ambiguous as not all bodies are accounted for. The story only matters if you interect with it. Below Zero is an rpg within a survival game. The writers could not unify so the role you, the player plays, is jumbled to hell. The reason it is an RPG as you are given a name, a goal and motivation in the first cinematic. That is why the story matters for quality as the game puts focus on that. You are doing survival things in service of that story. People say the story doesn't matter in Below Zero and that such arguments are in bad faith but when the game focuses on the story the story matters. Subnautica story does not have to matter. Anything could have brought down the aurora. Anything could be keeping you there. Below Zero? Just having Sam survive ends the game before it starts. Riley not caring before the start ends the game. Poor writing has this happen anyways but that is a slightly different issue.
Contributing to the game-likeness is the fact that some plants just exist to keep you alive. In Subnautica if you wanted to dive into a deeper zone you had to figure it out. You had to upgrade your suit, your seamoth, build pipes, or do something to ensure you don't drown while exploring somewhere a human was never meant to go. In Below Zero there's plants that give you oxygen for some reason. This feels less like you're mastering a hostile environment and more like it's giving you the tools to survive. Same with the heat plants.
Once you find the peppers, heat becomes a non-issue. Totally killed the worry in the land segments. I did not mind the oxygen flowers though. The first game had the brain reefs that gave a bubble every few seconds, but the flowers gave 30 seconds every minute which streamlined without just topping you off.
TBF, Brain Coral exists to give you air in the first game as well. However, the heat plants is a little odd, plus the Brain Coral wasn't very common the deeper you got. That coral did save my tuchus several times exploring caves, though.
@@haydrionslaughter3747that was the beauty behind the Brain Coral, in my opinion...you see it Early, in the Shallow areas, when all it does is save you the tedious swim back up to Surface (which is like, what, 50m up?)...but you can Farm them... in some of my playthroughs, id bring some Titanium to place ExteriorPlanters along a commonly-traveled path, and then plant a whole bunch of BrainCoral in them...theyre like little Oxygen Checkpoints, and i can just scoot around on the SeaGlide... ...but by the time you can upgrade your Vehicles to go deeper, they become the better source of Oxygen...
@@AlphalanceVOThe peppers were so dimb to me. Spice doesnt actually warm you up, it just gives you the sensation of burning. Also its hilarious how it heats you up and gives you hydration at the same time.
Something else that makes the Seatruck worse than the Cyclops is a bug that eliminates the danger of the grabbing leviathans. If a leviathan is about to grab the sea truck, you can just get out of the seat and the leviathan completely ignores you. I found this out in the Crystal Caverns and it makes the Shadow Leviathan so non-threatening when you know you can press a single button to avoid it.
@@OryAlle I read that creatures don't attack the Cyclops when the engine is off. But if a creature is about to attack when you're driving the Cyclops and you get out of the seat, the creature still damages the Cyclops. It's the same if you turn off the engine then get out of the seat.
@@OryAlle the only way they don't attack the cyclops is if the engine is off, the best way to test it is by the ghost leviathans in the deadzone, they will keep attacking the cyclops until the engine is off.
I fucking hated how loud EVERYTHING WAS. Even the brinewing sounded like a leviathan, totally ruining any fear I held before. I do think the small predators are cute
something else i didn´t like was the map looking so much the same, like in the first one you'd look out of the water, see the aurora, panic because you're too close, run away in fear. Now is just... ice, everywhere, and you can't see jackshit more than a palm away from your face
the new safe shallows area was also boring as hell. the shallows in Subnautica are still my favorite biome because they’re so colorful but in BZ theyre all a select few shades of purple and blue.
If the game didn't force leviathan encounters, it would have been at least 5-10% better. This is another unfortunate side effect of making biomes smaller. One of the reasons why Reaper encounters are great and memorable (compared even to Ghosties and Sea Dragons, and all BZ leviathans) is because you don't get forced to encounter it in narrow spaces, they were in open areas and you always had a choice to f*ck around and find out or run away. The Shadow leviathan spawns were scary the first few times, but because you had to go back and forth in the end game area, it got annoying real quick, forcing me to drill 3/4 of them. I still flinch when I hear a Reaper's roar in the distance while others don't scare me as much anymore.
Yep, the Shadow leviathan was one of the better beasts in the game with cool animations. I think it would have been MUCH better if it was more lethal. As they were, with a simple shock, you chase them off and any future encounters simply makes them an annoyance. There was no reason to be scared of them because they were so weak.
Idk i dont consider the shadow leviathans a serious treat you just press a button and its gone dealing miserable damage just dont get out of your seatruck when one is near boneshark level treat
As much as I wanted to suspend my disbelief & dread the Shadow Leviathan, I found myself wandering the crystaline caverns so much, I discovered you can use the electric attack release yourself from any leviathan grip. I straight-up ignored the existence of the Shadow Levithan, using the taser to instantly release myself. Subnautica 1's taser module had to compete with all the other modules, namely sonar, so I didn't feel I have a choice but to equip & use it.
honestly the original version of the game looked really good... the last few months before 1.0 release.. they all the sudden scrapped the entire story...... which reuined the gameplay and ofc story. nothing flowed together anymore. and the story was now instead of a hero finding out what happened. an annoying looser. with other annoying chars etc in game... i followed game dev very close, there at least was, i assume still is early ea gameplay of this when it was still GOOD. we got to see and hear basic begining of story. was interesting. fun. well done and thought out. progression was good. main issues at the time. was the map just didnt flow like before sadly.
as i think about it.. i recall the sjw, or as i call them. rainbow warriros...... were upset about something in the story. wanted more woman bs or something. i dk. point is. for whatever bs reason. studio caved. threw away years of work. finished work that was alread in the game, game designed around their original story...... for the pc culture bs we got. that was rushed to meet their deadline of 1.0.
@@NotHappening-b8t Wannabe bolsheviks ruin everything. This is yet another case. How much longer will we be forced to tolerate their existence? I'm well-past tired of this silly bullshit where we have to pretend and pander and play like anyone gives a fuck about what they want.
There's also very few good spots to build a base. The drop pod area works, and I always built just to the north of the island near the purple vents because it's a central location, but besides those nowhere else really works. The eastern and southern parts of the map are rarely used, and there's no reason to build a land base because you only need to head out there for 3 locations, most of which you don't need to return to. The sandworm area is huge but you have to rush through it on your snowfox, and the crystal cave, while very pretty, also forces you to rush through it as fast as you can. Once.
i only really had fun with the crystal caves because i made it my goal after realizing its not as good as the original to kill as many leviathans as i could. The ones with the beak that i forgot the name of had wayyyy to big of an area to go, although I know you aren't supposed to kill them, they shouldn't drag you to the void.
I didn't have a problem building a base There's an easy spot next to the broken ship, another is just a bit above that south of the island, if you go further west to Marguerites there's a few decent places in the caves If your thinking of large-scale: northwest of the island where the underwater bridges are (pretty much right next to where you find Alan I think or just a relic), there's a good placemeny next to the giant jellyfish terrarium things hole, and the crystal caves as well as the glacial surface are both ripe for big base building just about anywhere Its not that hard once you figure out that the leviathans won't attack you in the base the problem is making the base fit
I tried basing near the purple vents just because of the mining facility and nice atmosphere of the area. I like the vibe, I wish they gave the game more time
You can totally just use the prawn on land. You can still outrun the worm in it, its safer, and its a real enclosed vehicle so even temp doesn't matter.
My snow fox just fell through the map and landed at the very bottom of the world, and my last save was well over an hour and a half ago, so I used cheats to fly down, grab it, and bring it back up (the only time I used cheats in the game), and little did I know this would disable achievements for the remainder of the game. Incredible
The prawn on land can be hilarious though, the grapple is glitched and causes you to accelerate as you move and if you jump you can carry all that momentum and fly out of bounds
I'd also like to mention that even though they nerfed tf out of water prawn activities, a fully upgraded prawn suit can still outperform the brand new dedicated snowfox, not just by being all around far more useful on land(protection from hostiles, offense against hostiles, mobile inventory), but even in the one respect that the snowfox should win in which is speed. Using a jump jet and grappling hooks with the prawn on land allows you to literally fly sometimes. I actually like below zero as it's own game, but it massively fails when compared to the original. Both are fun for base building though
My main gripes was the character talking. *Cool new alien enters your head.* Me: "Oh cool, wonder if we can be friends, there's so much to learn!" Main character: *Decides to hate and insult the alien for no reason for the entire game.*
This is exactly why a silent main character is so great. It allows for the player itself to think for everything they see and experience. If Robin in bz found something new and said that it was ugly, stupid or dumb, the player was basically coerced into thinking the same
@@Couch_Banana of course. who would listen to some lady talking to you through a screen. but i'd rather not hear the opinions of a virtual lady that i will immediately dismiss
Fun fact: the first time I beat this game I didn't understand why the hell my character was leaving with Alan when I never uncovered what exactly happened to their sister. I had to look up on the wiki to find out I failed to pick up something at one point and thus completely missed that part of the story but the game still let me beat the game despite never doing the one thing I came to do. To be fair I might have missed it because by that point I had turned voices off in the game because I could not stand the dialogue anymore.
in the base game subnautica all you have to do is one time go to the thermal plant to get blue tablet and ion power then once to primary containment facility and then once to the gun to disable it. No story needed.
Oddly enough, I think that's a good thing to BZ's credit. The game does not create some contrived reason why you have to destroy the Kharaa in the frozen leviathan in order to leave the planet. It's up to you to finish that plot point. Too bad that it's an underwhelming subplot.
@@kuolettavaVids It shouldn't have BEEN a subplot. As it is it's a massive plot hole that the MC goes to the planet specifically to find her sister but will leave without ever finding her and make no mention of that fact whatsoever.
Cause it's not an Alterra PDA it come from another big company where Robin was working for so we they don t have the same voice. But i'm agree with you the voice sound bad. Oh yes : As a french i can confirm it s not a french accent cause PDA sound not that worse lol, if you want it just add more " RRRRRR "
honestly the game wasn't terrible, but it just felt so bad compared to the other one. The desolation and loneliness was part of what i liked about Subnautica, with the only other voice being the pda voice lines and any logs you find. It made them pop more. BZ had so much dialogue and banter that there wasn't any dead space. As long as you were progressing at an even mediocre pace, you'd just constantly get new banter and voice lines. The Degasi story continuation also made very little sense to me, as the explanation just didn't pass the sniff test(she made a fire...while floating on a dead fish, from its fat, on a planet made 90% of water? and she never got washed out by a storm or rains? and the Ghosts left a dead Reaper alone?). Finding out her sister was, in fact, completely incompetent was actually the point where i lost my drive to even finish the story, especially when the MC refused to acknowledge that. How hard would it have been to write a corporate espionage story with the security guard catching her and trying to stop/kill her, thus having her activate it in a "self-sacrifice" instead of by accident? At least she would have died heroically... as it stands, she's a bumbling idiot and a murderer to boot.
It also failed to not softlock you out of certain blueprints, because there do not physically exist enough seamonkey nests for the endgame blueprints to generate within, you will be missing atleast one endgame blueprint per save on average, but I got worse rng than that and was missing like 2 endgame blueprints Og subnautica had enough redundant blueprint locations that it was not a problem I went through almost the entirety of subzero without finding the high capacity tank, I only realized this when I found the ultrajigh capacity blueprint and realized I was missing the high capacity tank to craft it. Quick trip to the wiki revealed it only spawned in one specific spot I swam over.
I actually find Below Zero to be more lonely, due to the smallness, snowiness, and the abandoned bases everywhere. Throughout the whole game I felt feelings of abandonment, whereas in subnautica, it's surprisingly happy, despite how much scarier it is
The monsters ai was the worst thing for me. They just beeline towards you non stop, which not only made them extremely annoying but also predictable, which compared to the first game. The leviathans had super random behavior which increased the anxiety around them. The dumber ai made it better
Eh, if felt too distracting and loud at points. Less abstract, and more in your face with it. The first game's OST did a way better job with tone and mixing in with the setting imo.
@@guardiandaytona8454 I'm an aesthetic guy. To me this OST fits perfectly with the setting of the game. It's as melodic as the environment is detailed, it's a marriage. It would feel off to listen to haunted tones like the first game with such small and detailed and beautiful places to look at. The first game's OST also felt fitting, abstract songs for a vast and unknown environment. See?
When I played subnautica for the first time I was taking my time exploring, building my base, and just getting immersed in the world. The story wasn't the focus, it was about the gameplay and the world. BZ wanted to be a story and the gameplay and world suffered, I felt like I was just trying to progress through the game and finish the story rather than taking my time and enjoying the world like in the first one.
Fish tanks were dope vewing galleries. 100% Customizable. Can detach and take the first pod only. Can leave seatruck pods anywhere you want for supplies.
In the base subnautica update they should’ve added the jukebox just so we could make one in the cyclops and jam out to tunes while doing void dives instead of having to resort to fires to get music
Add the lack of lore on why Sector Zero is able to support life. The Crater could support life because of the whole Sea Emperor + Alien Vents + Enzyme Peeper system. But Sector Zero's ecosystem would have been destroyed by Kharaa just like everywhere else. Sector Zero COULD have been written as the product of an ancient glaciation event, where the planet cooled and polar ice caps formed - and where Sector Zero, despite being in the midst of a massive ice cap, remained warm due to geothermal vents. This event would have isolated the local organisms from their parent populations, allowing their evolution to diverge. The surrounding ice cap would have protected the ecosystem from the later Kharaa outbreak. Infected creatures, like the frozen leviathan, would all succumb to Kharaa before they'd ever be able to cross the expansive ice cap and reach Sector Zero. But instead they decided to write Sector Zero as being open to the rest of the ocean - all to allow the shoehorning in of the Marguerit Maida B-Plot. She had to be able to drift in from The Crater (Kharaa infection and all)...
I've always felt like Below Zero is backwards, in which I mean Subnautica 1 ends up feeling like the sequel game where they fix the problems of Below Zero. Bigger map, better biomes, better sea life, better vehicles, no terrible voice overs, an actual reason for the protagonist to exist besides stupidity and I'm sure there's plenty more. I've never really experienced anything like it before, where the original actually ends up feeling like it was built from the ground up to improve on the sequel, or I guess, where a sequel is built from the ground up to make everything good about the original worse...
I mean technically the smallest leviathan in subnautica is the sea treader, but most people do forget them and they‘re not really present except in a biome at the edge of the crater which has no story importance whatsoever. Better phrasing for the reaper would probably be: „smallest relevant leviathan in subnautica“, but I get how that wouldn‘t really work for such a fast pace video where the text is only there for a few seconds.
The sea treader plays a nice role in resource and bio fuel collection, as well as being a great world building device, it goes toward making the game feel more alive
@@lookatthetree978 yes, obviously, and I love them for it, but I’m just saying that unless you go out of your way to do research or explore the map to it‘s full extend, you probably won‘t run into them on a typical playthrough (depending on where you build your base and do your exploration, obviously)
also them being leviathans kinda doesn't make sense for most people so even those that do remember that they actually exist still don't subconsciously think that they are leviathans
they can also be found in specific paths along the grand reef. i do think that it was kind of a blunder to give the sparse reef literally 0 importance. the sea treaders and a single life pod (who's real purpose is to lead you to the blood kelp trench) are the only notable part about it, but beyond that it has nothing notable. it has no unique resources, no abundance of resources, no interesting terrain generation, and nothing story-related. and then they stuck it at the far corner of the world so that you dont even need to traverse it to get to anywhere except for the blood kelp trench. the ONLY thing it does is give a small glimpse into what the kararr does to a place when it takes hold, but that's not nearly enough. the only other places that come close to being this useless and desolate are the crash zone (which, duh), and the very very far end of the bulb zone
I've got over 500 hours in Subnautica, and about 200 in BZ. Still baffles me why they took the sea moth out of BZ, it's the perfect craft for that cramped map. The problem with BZ is mostly that it's not as much fun to just chill out and build bases, you are pushed into following the narrative they put in in order to make progress. Once you've played through BZ and maybe started over a couple of times to try putting bases in different locations there just no pull to get you back in. Seems like they had ideas for making the land areas fun but just couldn't get it to work because the snow fox was such a pain to control, the land areas just end up being a slog, very little enjoyment gained from exploring them.
They made the prawn suit too OP on the land sections, it’s much faster than the snowfox and can reach more places if you use the grapple arm well. Not to mention it makes it so that you can ignore snow stalkers and brush off ice worms.
Would've been supercool if you actually had to do some trucking. Like transport large amounts of resources, or large equipment across the map for a huge project. But as an exploration vehicle it just felt awkward.
@@eneco3965 not as authentic, + in the seatruck and bases you get the muffling effect when outside and it quietens when you have distance, 10x more immersive than external music.
I'm a huge Subnautica fan, it's first on my list for favorite games and I've replayed it countless times. I felt bad and thought that I wasn't a true fan for not liking Below Zero and not even completing it once, this makes me feel a lot better though. Great video!
For me its just that it didn't feel as desolate it actually felt more lively and friendly you actually get to meet someone and talk to em your not completely alone so that drives the fear factor down a ton Plus not many moments where you feel as terrified like when you gotta go to the Aurora and swim by the leviathans or just swimming in open water till yah hit an island or the cramped feeling of traveling through the biomes till you reach the lost river etc That true empty and on edge feeling is what made og submautica so horrifying but subzero is genuinely comforting and i even feel cozy at times and you dont feel as in danger
Earlier yesterday I played below zero, and it was below average. I watched a 60 minute video that explains most of the points urs does, but you do it in a fraction of the time. Just like a compliment idk
Same. I made this video because I was playing Below Zero again and got irritated by the fact that every video on its failures spent way too long explaining things that the target audience already knew and restating their points a dozen times. You’ll notice, for instance, that I never actually explain who AL-AN is in this video, nor what the Seamoth is, who Sam is, what Kharaa is, who Marguerit is, who Alterra are, etc.
Seatruck has no cameras or free look or at least a rearview mirror Its like trying to drive a tank but with no tank commanders For people who don't know tank drivers can only see what's in front of them that's why they have tank commanders or anyone to look at the surroundings
One of my biggest issues that turned me away in like 2 hours after spending SO MUCH time in the first game was the fact that the protagonist was voiced. The almost constant silence in regard to communication in the first game really helped sell the atmosphere for me. You were truly alone, with the only spoken words you ever really heard until the end came from the radio. It meant the players voice was the characters, how you reacted when entering a new area, or seeing a new leviathan was truly YOUR reaction, it wasn’t spoon fed to you by a poorly voice acted character that felt difficult to relate too.
I honestly couldn't relate. I could, sometimes, understand her but never relate. Robin: "lets go to a planet with nothing but our clothes, rations for a day and an empty survival pod!" Me: "What?" Me: "When are we going to find out what happened to Sam, your sister?" Robin: "Who? Lol this alien planet is so beautiful!" Robin: "Awesome! An alien is in my head! I can talk up so much artsy things while talking down his sciency things!" Me: "Where is the nearest wild crashfish? I feel compelled to hug it."
The only change I would make to the seatruck is to add an engine module, 2 extra engines and 2 extra battery slots, and a Flexor Module, so it can bend like a bending bus. That way you could add enough storage to ACTUALLY HAVE ENOUGH RESOURCES transported at a reasonable rate to make a cool base. Presently, the lategame of base-building is hellishly slow despite the abundance of cool set pieces to build in.
I love below zero but i just wish it could be so much more. I think crunch really hit this game hard and causes most issues especially when it comes to story. I really hope they give Subnautica 2 more time to take shape
That's exactly what I expect happened. Both pandemic and desire to get started on the sequel probably led to parts that weren't as great as they could've been. Also it's a "spinoff" as some have said. Not the true sequel we were hopping for.
they had a really interesting story untill about the half way point where they hired a new director so time was a HUGE problem and they just took some story elements from the first half and smashed them together with a half done new story and the result was kinda bad
The only reason i prefer 1st subnautica is: 1. The map is much bigger 2. The leviathans are also much bigger and scarier + the biomes they're in are much more creepy e.g The Dunes and The Purple Vents
I feel like the ice worm had way more fear potential. I mean something so big and deadly tunneling beneath you popping out whenever sounds spooky, but it ended up being an annoyance basically the whole time. So with a better biome and mechanics, maybe borrowing elements from tremors, it could have been as close to the scariness of reapers in my opinion.
@@simula152 To be honest, the last time I fully played the game was when it was still fairly new. The dialogue was quite bugged as there was no sound from the people talking. And there wasn't an ending to the story or at least thats what it seemed to be for me as it got to a point where I had nothing else to do. I do agree with you about the lack of a feeling of isolation though. In the first game, you crash landed on an alien planet realising that you could be the only survivor. In the second, your character travels back to 4546B on an escape pod trying to investigate the 'death' of your sister which could turn out not to be. You also meet Marguerit which throws the whole idea of being alone out the window.
Something I appreciated about Subnautica was that the ecosystem felt very intentionally laid out. As an example, what do the Sea Dragons actually eat to survive? The answer is Reaper Leviathans! There’s actually a massive hole leading up from the Inactive Lava Zone to the Aurora Crash Site, which was covered up by the crash debris. Sea Dragons, when hungry, would use this tunnel to go into the area that’s now the Crash Zone, and drag Reaper Leviathans down into the Inactive Lava Zone to be eaten. This is why there are Reaper Leviathans skeletons down there despite none actually appearing anywhere nearby. Below Zero on the other hand completely dodges these kinds of details. It feels like very little thought was put into the overall construction of the ecosystem and how the creatures interact with each other, in favor of “let’s just make whatever’s cool”. Which isn’t to say the creatures suck, independent of the gameplay I think it’s fairly unarguable that the fauna are very cool, but they don’t fit together in the same way Subnautica’s do.
Really, that's how the Sea Dragons get up there? Shewt, that means they'll hafta claw their way out now cause their old tunnel is crushed. Or they'll just wiggle out through the caves, but that seems like a hassle...
@@haydrionslaughter3747 More likely they'll just die. The PDA estimates the species was close to extinction even before the Aurora's crash, so that likely will just speed things up a bit.
@@Wildcat12 Ah... Bummer. The optimist in me hopes Alterra sees profit in reclaiming the Aurora's wreckage, so the hole is opened again. ... Yes, that's the headcanon I'm goin with. 😅
The dialogue was the worst part for me. I remember the original had a PDA line that went something like, ‘Rationing the daily water portions will help protect against dehydration, and eventual death.’, with how dry the PDA is with its humor in the original, that one always gets a good laugh out of me. It’s so blunt. But the PDA in BZ? Perhaps the most painful line is something about the control room analyzing structural integrity, but not the integrity of societal power structures. I actually mute the audio whenever that line plays. It’s THAT bad.
The plot of this game could have been significantly improved with one thing. Alterra actually intending to turn Kharra into a bio weapon, instead of the vague, morally gray but still reasonable “we’re just studying it”. Adding that definate risk, and enforcing the need to finish the sister’s work and neutralise the virus would have helped a lot IMO.
That would be blandening of Alterra image. They aren't "evil corp" and never were. Alterra is just doing business. Understanding that their routine studies may or may not cause many to suffer depending on the numbers in a annual report is the most dreadful thought about Alterra.
@@legolegs87 But Alterra is "evil" if you think about it. When Riley comes back home in Subnautica the PDA says that he CANNOT land until he has paid off the 1 TRILLION credits debt and the PDA line that says "Anything you discover is property of the Alterra" so yeah they seem like a pretty greedy and evil company to me...
@@Tombrisque before Subnautica? No. There were only two instances of humans visiting 4546b before the Aurora. The Mercury from the Sol Transgov which appears in below zero and the Degasi, from the Mongolians in Subnautica. None of them belonged to Alterra and the only reason the company went to 4546b initially was to find out whatever happened to the Degasi and their crew At least I wouldnt call that evil
I really enjoyed BZ but yeah, you are absolutely right about everything! "Writing: screenshot not found" 😂👌 right on the money. I got disappointed when I found out they removed the Cyclops, got a bit more disappointed when I found out they also removed the Seamoth and then got thoroughly disappointed when I entered the SeaTruck. However worst part by far was listening going through the PDA entries searching for clues, oh boy it was rough, sometimes I would just want to turn of the PDA entry that I was listening to from cringe but then I knew I would have to listen to it from the beginning... It was hard it was really hard, harder than evading leviathans, which have amazing design but are as dangerous as a water puddle on the street... while flying an aircraft. Great video tho, make some more Subnautica content
Bro fr the giant shrimp don't give 2 shits about you and the only thing that actively attacks you are the glowing sea dogs who don't shut the fuck up but they're so slow you can outrun them with a seaglide or heck even the flippers alone and only do like 25 damage on top of that IF they bit you they do it once and stop for fat minute
Also, the statics defense system basically made you untouchable in below zero. When the shadow leviathan attacks you, pressing the button that activates the electric shield cancels the animation and you barely get a scratch, losing that sense of mortality and danger. Feels cool at first, but then just too easy finishing the game.
@@TheBubblegumgirl14 you dont need BP, there is one built in Marges seabase ... which you can get to the moment you build the truck. Kinda hard to miss to be frank, its literally right next to stuff she tells you to pick up.
That is like the problems that BZ has. The biomes is just so colorful and unrealistic, I'm pretty sure people playing Subnautica is because we trying to enjoy the ocean's terror and excitement, BZ just have more land and land vehicles, Which is completely unnecessary. And the creatures more like cartoon forms instead of practical and real like old Subnautica. BZ just make me doesn't feels like a underwater game anymore.
Keep in mind, the devs never intended the first game to be scary. Its a happy accident. I think the bigget issue is just how much land is in BZ and how much it sucks to be on. In the first game it was an interesting "safe zone". In BZ its just a chore the plot forces you to go through.
@@eightcoins4401 the first game was origionally built from the ground up to not really have land segments then the islands came along but they are so small that they didn't need much change even then you could tell the graphics and movement on them was tricky at times. Then you have that same foundation of course with changes being applied to the "sequel" which I think origionally started life as a more dlc type of deal but the scope got too large oh and all the land is in the arctic so no cool lush forests like the first game and limited other possible land biomes
@@eightcoins4401 I didn't feel like the plot was a chore, any more than the plot of dark souls is... its just the story that glues the game elements together. The plot of BZ isn't even bad on paper, its just that the game it serves isn't worthy of a lot more effort, so the plot is forgettable and feels "thin" as a result.
I felt like the fact that BZ had way more dialogue in it sorta removed the feeling of isolation that the original had. In the original, the dialogue was in PDAs and was optional. In BZ, there's lots of mandatory dialogue and I often found it distracting from the gameplay. Also, there was just something about the way the original Subnautica was designed that BZ didn't have which kinda made it not feel like Subnautica to me.
To me, there were only three main things that made me enjoy BZ less. 1. The story. The main problem is how they basically shoved the story of Sam to the side in favour of Al-An. They either should have gotten rid of Sam's story altogether or found some way to intertwine the stories. Like maybe Sam interacted with Al-An at one point and Al-Al learned of Alterra's plan to weaponize the virus but then Al-An showed Sam how dangerous the Kharra virus is by showing what it did to the Precursor race and that's what pushes Sam to cure the virus. And then Al-An insists that we cure the Leviathan before we leave to force us to resolve the sister storyline. Not saying that's what should have happened but its already better and makes the stories feel more intertwined. 2. The more cramped environment. This is the main thing that seperates the original and BZ for me. The original was vast, open, and even if it was mostly open water, the Leviathans often made you wish it wasn't. In BZ, everything is so cramped which makes exploring less fun. There are exceptions like the Lily Pad biome and the Tree Spires. But in general, the more cramped environment made it less enjoyable as the original. 3. The Seatruck and the Hover bike. Yeah, completely agree. I dislike the sea truck and much favour the Seamoth. I also miss the Cyclops but again, the Cyclops wouldn't have worked with the more cramped environment. And I don't think I need to explain why the hoverbike sucks. Everything else, I did kinda like. I did enjoy the land sections, interacting with Al-An. Didn't really mind the new Leviathans, and I did enjoy the game overall. But it was mainly those three things that made it way inferior to the original.
now that you point it out the fact you dont have to resolve the sisters story line especially after yiu think alterra is trying to weaponise the virus i such a big flaw. its like if you saw in the first game that the sunbeam got shot down and the game allowed you to just build the rocket and launch without deactivating the gun.
I love the visual aesthetic of the game, but that's probably its strongest suit. Had the rest of the game been cohesive, and biomes been placed in more realistic (or at least believable) areas with more thought given to the biodiversity and the ecosystem's interactions with itself, I would probably like it more than the first game. The concepts are so fucking good, they just dropped the ball with actually putting them in practice. God I hope Subnautica 3 is good.
Main issue: story. It was supposed to be the selling point but it's disappointing, and the small map means that it's easy to go to places out of order, breaking any immersion.
I think you summed up my gripes with the game pretty well. I still enjoyed BZ quite a bit, but it was certainly a noticeable step down from the original.
biggest issue with the truck for me is the length, you need to do most things, so you get stuck like I did, you have to take it apart piece by piece to turn it around and get out.
The single issue is that it's to bright and "happy" where as subnautica was, and still is on subsequent play throughs, scary. The sound design, the darkness, the fog, the deep, the freaky looking creatures is what made subnautica one the better game.
And the shadow leviathan isn't the largest below zero, that would go to the ice worm, or the frozen leviathan if you count that. But I do overall think the leviathans aren't as cool in BZ
@@eneco3965 well yeah I meant that its a separate game instead of a dlc that you can buy for the game. I agree it is an expansion of the story but I wouldn't Say it's an expansion of the base game
Gentle story time for anyone reading this, I had to make TWO snowfoxes in my first (and only) playthrough because when I parked one and came back for it later, it had reloaded UNDER the ground and was floating on water INSIDE the land, basically noclipped. I tried commands to teleport to it / it to me, but it didn't work. I ended up making another one and turning off the tracking for the first one. Not to mention...I 100% the game (all achievements) in ONE playthrough. It took me 3 on the first Subnautica (granted, one was first time & before most Steam achievements, second was a year or two ago, and third was nitty-gritty out-of-the-way things.) TLDR: if people remember ONLY the stressful times they went through in a game, that's not a good sign.
I largely agree with this video though I didn't necessarily mind Marguerit being alive. I wanted to know what she actually saw within the void. My snow fox fell into the snow when I set it down and immediately dissapeared... apparantly never to appear again? I spent 15 minutes trying to locate it before giving up and closing and reopening the game. I also fell through the snow once and got stuck both in-and-not-in water that did not/should not have existed in the game. Also the snowfox got caught on snow that it wasn't even touching and half the time I tried to board it, I ended up accidentally picking it up (this killed me more than once). Half the leviathans and threats I physically ran into didn't even notice me. I repeatedly walked into a snow stalker and... nothing. It didn't even see me. Everything was messy. I started skipping all the dialogue parts. It felt like it was written by Chat GPT and like even I could write better dialogue. The plot felt so unedited and yet so easily fixable that it became more and more frustrating. That being said I liked some of the new creatures and, while I wanted there to be more, I did like the design of many of the biomes. I also enjoyed being able to keep random aquatic creatures in my home. I hope Subnautica 2 is better.
What I don't see people mentioning is enemy critters. BZ has such generic hostile creatures that I just don't care about them. That giant fish? Not only is it's spastic movement immersion breaker, what made Reaper Leaviathan so creepy was it's face. It's deep in the uncanny valley territory where you can see it's not human, but it reminds of you one.
I didn't really have a problem when they announced that the protagonist would speak, in the early alpha she had a different voice actress and the story itself was quite a bit more interesting. If I remember correctly the sister was still alive in a space station and would converse with the player, creating a decent sister dynamic. I imagine this was cut because it took away the original games sense of loneliness, but then you have ALAN the Alien chatting to you constantly anyway... (Still enjoyed the DLC but it had issues, wish they kept to the original script)
@@ZoofyZoof I'd disagree, there was a charm to the old one, and i don't remember any lines from the new PDA while I'll remember some from the first game to my dying breath. "Detecting multiple leviathan class life-forms in the area. Are you certain whatever you are doing is worth it?" or "this biome displays 7 of the 9 attributes that cause fear in humans." Its almost like a snarky robot. The accent on the new one jest felt too thick. Maybe if you had something like "I picked it because it reminds me of a friend" or something to give a reason for it being non-standard, but they didnt.
I remember finally finding main characters sister and spending the rest of the game feeling like I was missing some important part of the story that would make it make sense but nope. that's just how the story is.
I agree with most of this, but the map size itself isn't really an issue. With the massive size of the Crater I always ended up spending most of my time in only two or three biomes except when actively seeking certain resources or trying to find certain places. Overall, I do think a smaller map can work... but it was done poorly in Below Zero.
A lot of people have brung up the fact that I neglected to mention the Snow Fox, land sections, and the Ice Worm.
I personally did the land sections in the Prawn, never built the Snow Fox other than the one time I tried it out and it seemed to barely work, and found the Ice Worms extremely easy to evade in the Prawn. I personally found the Ice Worm a cool background character to make my journey to the land cache a bit more "epic," but overall it was pretty whatever.
In all honesty, the fact that I forgot about the Snow Fox, the land portions, and the Ice Worm entirely while writing the script says pretty much all that needs to be said about them.
In the early access the Ice Worm apparantly used to be a really cool high speed chase across the snowscapes, different from Subnautica but cool in its own way, then it was completely wrecked in the final version by the ice worm being given way too huge hit boxes and knocking you off the snow fox each time it hit you
Well, my friends, the game is called "SUBnautica" not "Abovenautica". So why focus on landmass.
@@DrMopsi because why add it if it will boring, atleast let it be good
espically if in the main subnautica its VITAL to beat the game
since u mention prawn suit, i literally skipped the part where u need the hydraulic fluid by jumping and strafing sideways with the prawn suit over the bridge; for some reason you can go stupidly fast if you press W and D
I skipped the Snow Fox in favor of the Prawn too. It felt a lot safer, and I didn't have to worry about the temperature. Feels like they missed the mark with the land sections.
my biggest gripe was not having "all systems: Online" in it
I don't care how big and allegedly clunky it was, I'll always be a Cyclops fan.
@@TheFelmaster One of my friends made the cyclops, found out how big and clunky it was, and literally ditched it in the middle of the ocean.
@@TheFelmasterThe Cyclops is quite possibly the most useless thing in the entire game. The only reason you need one is for the Cyclops Shield Generator. The Prawn Suit can get you down into the Lava Zones and back out in one trip. It’s even easier to avoid the Sea Dragons in the Prawn since you’re so close to the ground.
@@Hedron1027 Yeah but I want a base in the lost river and the lava zone and the grand reef and I ain't dragging that one piece at a time. It's not pratical to have bases like that but I'm roleplaying a survivor
@@bipstymcbipste5641 at this point the cyclops IS my base
Don't forget the [relatively] small preadators that are as loud as the huge leviathans and can be heard everywhere, basically nullifying any fear factor.
!Gen z trigger alert - contains facts about reality!
Not all animals have proportional noise levels.
Maybe that part of the game was too realistic for the gen Z crowd.
@@thatman4752 It's not about realism, it's that it always seems like there's a big threat, so it makes the actual big threats feel less intimidating.
I was baffled how, whatever the fuck medum size sharks were called, near one of the land outposts were louder at a distance than Reapers are point blank. They didnt do much damage but were so obnoxiously loud it cut what enjoyment of the game I had at that point, and dropped that save like 1 hour later.
@@harley2938 how is this a problem after you identified the sounds?
@@thatman4752you're talking about realism in a game that takes place in the future on some unknown planet?
dont forget how the only reason you have nothing at the start is because she just didnt bring ANYTHING of usefulness unlike how in the first game you have a reason not to have anything seeing as you were forced to be there
I didn’t think about that, but yea
Though considering the stuff scattered around your crash site it looks like she did bring stuff (nutrient bars and bottles of water) but it got scattered in the crash and due to the meteor strikes she didn’t really have time to find everything.
Also there’s the absolute brain fart of her not starting with the blueprints for a habitat builder. At least the first game assumes that if you’ve landed on an alien planet you might want to build a makeshift shelter. What exactly was her plan if Alterra hadn’t left a broken one lying around?
that might be a huge plot hole
@@cathygrandstaff1957 she didnt plan to stay long enough to need anything but the shelter she towed with her shuttle. her plan was to simply find out what happened and get out before alterra even knew she was there. The fact that there was originally an alterra gunship that was to try to intercept her in the ending would have showed that alterra was not messing around. sadly it was scrapped, probably due to being too elaborate of an animation sequence.
I couldn't care less about plot holes. I play games for the gameplay
During the open beta, the story was different. Sam was alive and giving us missions. Another Alterra employee got another part of the precursor on his mind and infected everyone on the mother ship with the virus and prevented you from sending the antitode, threatining you to surrender the precursor on your mind to him. It was a really intresting story for me but they scrapped it whole.
The original starting section with the space debris raining down where you jump into the water to escape it was one of the most thrilling openings to a survival game I had ever seen
Then they replaced it was a gentle walk. Flabbergasting
I played the beta up until the part where you get ALAN and decided I wanted to play the rest when the game was finished. Huge mistake on my part. Some of the best parts BZ had to offer were scrapped before full release.
@@bertvanbeterbed9702 truly, I remember watching a couple gameplay videos and then deciding to wait to see the rest so I could experience the story myself. It had promise back then, now its just sad.
It wasn't really a good idea to introduce an alive precursor to begin with, also the whole spiel with the virus is just... lame.
The entire thing feels like sequel-megalomania, where the devs and writer are disconnected from what made the first game succesfull in the first place and they think, that expanding and explaining uneccessary story bits what would make the game better... Subnautica's primary protagonist was always the enviroment. When it got downgraded significantly and a lot more land proportions were introduced, that's when they failed completely.
The game could have a gow awful story (it has), but if the underwater exploration bits and the enviroment was good, no-one would really give a fuck for the rest.
Wait there was another Story? That would make it a total of 3 by my accounts.
Its genuinely such a shame because the stuff with the vesper station was really interesting but they scrapped ALL OF IT. The original story with one of the coworkers picking up Alan, going insane and activating the planet wide forcefield was so much better and im so disappointed we got this slop instead.
Honestly that story line was so much better that sometimes when i recall the story i actually think of that then suddenly remember that it's not actually part of the story
Also with Vesper station and having Alterra constantly monitoring us, added a sense of urgency.
its because the story was changed last minute
@@rtixboi I know but why was it so rushed? Subnautica took years to iron out even the most basic bugs/work out story but instead of repeating that process they just pushed out below zero right away.
I guess they just wanted to work on the official subnautica 2 faster and below zero took too much time/money?
@VishkarSentry I saw in another comment it basically came down to the original writer (not an employee but sort of on contract) leaving to work on other projects, and the dev team taking the opportunity to rewrite the story because they apparently didn't like how it was turning out. They were fairly late in development when that happened though, so the rewrite was half baked.
Diesel Prawnsuit💀
Engine. Powering. Up.
Even in death, I still serve.
Hell yeah
Hell yeah, brother.
The Thing IS for a regular engine to Work It needs oxygen in Land thats find but under water ? Where Most of the Game Takes place ??
Also a roboticist just casually cured the Kararr by combining like two local plants - something the hyper-advanced Precursors apparently couldn’t figure out for centuries.
To be fair she would have been working using the biochemical analysis of the enzyme from the first game as a starting point, something the precursors didn’t have. And it’s stated in the first game that even experts usually use AI to do most of the work for them. But the recipe is definitely too simple. IMO it would make more sense for the cure to be something the biologists experimenting with the kharaa had formulated ahead of time in case someone got infected, which Sam only appropriated for her own use.
I would have much preferred the precursors stay a total enigma rather than revealing them to be whatever BZ portrayed them as... it was frankly quite disappointing
They used to have a sea emperor juvenile in the game, they could have used that to get the cure, but noooooo and they removed it
Maybe the Sea Emperors from the first game affected the flora on the planet? They were dumping antibodies ad naeseum.
Actually, Sector Zero experienced rapid growth of plant life after Alterra scientists released the enzyme into the ecosystem. It can be surprised that the plants this helped revitalize or even create in the first place can be used to synthesize the vaccine. It's quite easy when the entire world is laced with it.
You forgot that they removed a bunch of immersive sounds like the player character coughing up water when they're close to asphyxiating as they finally breach the surface
Can’t have good sound design; that’s fascist.
@@RealTallestSkiloh very funny. "Woke is why it's bad" man you're so original and funny! Have you ever thought of stand up comedy as a career path?
Sound design is not music composing lmao, and Ben is a much better music composer than Simon could even dream of
@@ThylineTheGay Literally no one said that.
@@RealTallestSkil you're really not being subtle about it. When the music composer for the first game was kicked out for being fascist 🙄
@@ThylineTheGay There’s nothing to be subtle about when I explicitly said what I actually said and not what you invented. And no, he wasn’t.
No intro No asking for subs or likes, just pure uninterrupted objective hate. I love it
The first draft of the script and story was SO much better than whatever we got. Alan and Robyn both felt like characters who were actually inquisitive of each other, both were scientists after all. Alan probes her mind, learning what it means to be separated and free from the systems he's known. Robyn asks him questions pertaining to the precursors to learn more about their species.
The inclusion of an atmospheric shield as a backup to stop the kharaa makes so much sense. Why wouldn't the precursors build a backup?
Also, when it comes to leviathans,this game fell incredibly short. I immediately took note that the shadow levithans, the biggest "threat" to you in the game, followed and easy to read path. Yeah, they don't wander in search of food aimlessly in a hunting ground like in the first game. They follow a very easy to read path, removing any kind of fear factor.
When it comes to the story, there is a video covering everything as it was in production, up until the activation of the atmospheric shield. (Link below.)
ruclips.net/video/Sd6PMW1tQZA/видео.html&si=Ig4gNzqovn2hYZTK
yeah I didn't interact with the shadow leviathan much I just waited for it to move in a circle and continued
Oh my god there's a LINK in a youtube comment section!? I thought youtube removed those
And the Reaper Leviathan was present relatively early on in the game. Its the most violent and the most scary, maybe comparable with the dragon. Compare that to Sub Zero, and there's not much. The seals are noisy, but don't do that much damage, nor are they as big as the Reapers. And the Shadow Leviathan are only in a small chunk of the game
what really gets me is that they had two other voice actors for robin in early access, with better voices, and tossed them away
Rewrote the dialogue and story, changed voice actors. I remember the early access period, some of the choices they made were truly baffling. But I don't hate the end product, apparently I'm in the minority (based on this comments section)
@@Onaterdem its not a terrible game (well it is) however it isnt one you would expect from the studio that created it
She sounded like an actual scientist before and not a marvel clone!
Despite all the problems, I really loved it.
@@noha4309 Unknown Worlds is unfortunately one of those studios where I don't expect anything good to come out of them ever again.
The sea truck would've been good if the map was much bigger, so it warrants having much more compartments to it, but it need more of a reason to go back to your storage unite, i mean base
The idea is excellent, a portable minibase solves a common issue in games like this with the player being forced to travel back and forth at all times to collect important items from base or clear their inventory. The sea-truck makes exploration far from base much more seamless and makes themless reliant on fast travelling all the time, but as you said, the idea demands a big map to be more than a gimmick.
The real problem with the seatruck is that while the concept of a modular submarine being cool itself, it goes after the small, practical, nimble... And modular seamoth that is better for short missions, and the bigger, more complete, much more comfortable... And even more modular cyclops that IS better for long range exploration.
Actually, the seatruck is like Sub below Zero. It's not necessary that bad... It just comes after the masterclass.
Well, fauna in Below Zero is more realistic and goodlooking tbh.
@@blitzburn2871 Except that the Cyclops in the original game does this job much better, as it has near unlimited storage and never felt as clunky to drive as the Seatruck. Especially given that you rarely wanted to use the Seatruck to its full potential because adding more than 3 trailers made it stupidly slow.
It almost feels like the sea truck was designed for Subnautica and the Seamoth for Bellow Zero honestly
@@blitzburn2871they needed a smaller cyclops so we got the seatruck
If anyone wants to know why Below Zero's story turned out so bad here's why
From January 2019 to November 2019, Tom Jubert, who was also the writer for Subnautica, was the writer for below zero. Before the November update Deep Dive, Tom Jubert left the project for 2 reasons
1. Unknown Worlds wasn't happy with the direction the game or story was heading
2. Tom Jubert wanted to work on other projects. He was not an employee of the studio and was not fired, from what I understand he left on his own accord.
Unknown Worlds hired writer Jill Murray to rewrite the story of Below Zero, however at this point they had already spent millions on the game and so much of the assets and environment had already been remade. This means Jill Murray had to write the story to fit around the already made game, which is incredibly difficult to do. This is essentially the reason the story turned out so bad, Unknown Worlds was trying to fit a story to the game instead of building the game around the story like with Subnautica.
Very well said, it’s good someone is shining light on this actually
That doesn't explain why they changed it away from the perfectly serviceable alpha story
@@icedragon769 see his first point, from what I can tell they didn't necessarily get rid of Jubert for that reason but once he was gone they thought it was a good opportunity to have the new writer rewrite the story, though we now know this was a terrible idea as they were way too far into the creation of the game by then.
Also believe Below Zero had the problem of it starting off as DLC and not a full expansion. That tends to always hurt projects.
That actually explains so much. As a writer I struggeled understanding some of the decisions made, but now I see it. The poor guy was set on a challange run
it's funny how there's a hidden message of "big corporation bad and evil!" but:
1. alterra was doing valuable life changing research
2. her sister killed herself and a colleague due to negligence rather than alterra being behind it like it's implied
3. none of the alterra employees seem that bad, just the usual office personalities
so why jam "le alterra bad" in every other line of dialogue?
Gee, I don't know, why would someone who's angry at their family dying blame anyone but their family?
Basic fucking grief, Comic Book Guy. Basic fucking grief.
RIGHT?! You'd THINK there'd be a PDA showing 'OH MAH GAWD THEY'RE DEVELOPIN A BIOLOGICAL WEAPON FOR THE BLACK MARKET, THAT'LL GO TERRIBLY!' but uh... From what I understand, that never happens. Sure they're a toxic corporation but hey, it's not worth commiting terrorisim.
@@haydrionslaughter3747 Yep, at worst they're just greedy. No good reason is ever given to us for thinking poorly about Alterra.
Because the player knows Alterra is bad from having played the first game and they never considered what the viewpoint of the characters in the game would be instead
@@ngwoo Yeah, it's weird, almost like they expected most players of a sequel to have played the first game.
"Somehow, Marguerit returned 😧"
All I need is the jukebox installed in the cyclops and I can die happy playing the original game for the rest of my life
Actually, Marguerit surviving isn't that illogical.
In the first game, as the main silent protagonist explore the waters, three types of sea animals can be encountered regarding the bacteria : the normal healthy ones (zero change), the infected ones (green pustules all over the body) and cured ones (small glittering aura and fast as f*ck boi.) The last one is the one that matters because it's a given lore fact that, because of the sea emperor enzyme 42 spread out in the sea, some individual organisms ended up getting in contact and getting cured from the bacteria - contributing to the disease to recede in fluctuation.
Hypothically, if we consider that, out the the three rescapees from the crash Marguerit was part of, she was the huntress and got at sea to hunt games of any kind, it's not far-fetched to consider that she got her hand on a cured fish (or whatnot), cooked it and then eaten it some times prior to her Reaper encounter. It by no mean contributed to cure her but most likely help contributing to drastically slow her infection rate and her getting to the area of "below zero" simply did not make her change her hunting nor eating habits in the slightest, thus contributing to the slowing of the infection (drastically so seeing how she lived through everything.) By extension, this means that she lived long enough for the protagonist of "Subnautica" to fulfill the hatching of the Sea Emperor's children and contributing to Enzyme 42's full release into the Ocean. All that it take then is a little bit of migration work for the different species of Subnautica that goes through area below zero to get hunted by Marguerit like usual and voila : she gets the proper exposure to Enzyme 42 and survive through the whole thing.
A bit convoluted. But nonetheless coherent.
@@Tenhys except the degassi crash happened several years prior to when the game took place and both the other survivors got infected and died, the kid even said in his last diary entry that he’d join his dad and Margaritte when he goes. The only way she could’ve survived is not to have even been infected at all somehow and I just don’t think that’s possible since the player gets infected early on not too long after the crash. Sadly I think the writers just wanted to surprise the audience for the sake of surprising the audience. They don’t bother to explain how she survived.
The ice worms "knock off" mechanic made me so sad
WHY CAN GROUND TREMORS KNOCK YOU OFF A HOVERING VEHICLE
yeah also it takes fall damage for some reason
It sucks because the ice worms were actually a very cool Leviathan with lots of neat death animations. But being on land sucked so much that you just wanted to rush through it.
I never noticed it since my hover bike exploded and I just walked the rest of the way... it wasn't even hard.
The prawn suit is too OP on the land sections, it’s faster than the snowfox even with just one grapple arm. Once I tried out the prawn suit on the land sections I realized there is no reason to make a snowfox. With two grapple arms you can even get places that you shouldn’t be and just skip over the ice worm zones.
I could write a whole essay on the things that I didn't like about BZ or that the original did way better but you hit most of my main gripes on the head lol, only thing you forgot to mention is how the land sections are annoying as fuck to go through and that you can just straight up ignore the main plot if you beeline getting al-an his body back, AND THE GAME DOESN'T EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE IT IF YOU LEAVE BEFORE FINDING WHAT HAPPENED TO SAM, making it feel useless to do.
@@SgtRamen I honestly forgot about the land sections while writing the script, which I guess says everything that needs to be said about the land sections
You’re mostly biased for the old game. I played BZ first and then the original and I had nowhere near as many complaints about the game.
@@aleatheltrashcan478try replaying BZ after playing subnautica
@@aleatheltrashcan478I too finished BZ before subnautica, but even after experiencing it first I have to agree with a lot of these points. It’s not a bad game, and I really enjoyed playing it, but the first game was a lot more cohesive and well done.
The writing team was a complete disaster due to intimidation from management - the reason Robin doesn't remark about Sam is because SAM WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ALIVE THE WHOLE TIME and they just didn't want to fix the story to have alternate dialogue.
how could you miss the Snow Fox being about as fun as having your glans stapled shut?
I honestly forgot it existed because I never used it and nobody else ever used it either
Prawn on land is way better@@pieguy6992
@@pieguy6992 exactly
@@pieguy6992the prawn suit is faster then it 😂
@@jaysonpirang9827 I know right!? I used prawn suit too. The only reason I built the snow fox was because of achievement.
Changing the story at the last moment was a terrible call and completely ruined it. In Early Access, the game starts with the base being evacuated and Robin getting left behind, so it makes sense that every location looks like everyone just packed up and left 5 minutes ago. In the new story, Robin arrives at the Alterra base who knows how long after, so the environmental storytelling no longer makes sense. And worse, the main objective of the story (destroy the last Kharaa sample so Alterra can't get their hands on it) becomes completely nonsensical and pointless because by now, Alterra has clearly had more than enough time to grab as many samples as they want. Their investigator even leaves an audio log right at the frozen Leviathan site, proving that Alterra very much DID have access to it for quite a while. Destroying it now accomplishes absolutely nothing. Not to mention that even that whole storyline gets overshadowed by all the alien mind-buddy stuff, to a point where on my first playthrough, I was allowed to complete the game without ever finishing the "main" storyline because Robin apparently didn't care about her dead sister anymore, she wanted to go on an adventure with her alien friend.
Yep. So true.
Subnautica One is a survival game with great depth and an excuse plot... which, due to dev boredom/interest has as much depth as the game. The story, literally, does not matter in regards to ths enjoyability of the baseline game as you are not What's-his-name. You are you. You find the name of a good candidate but it is still ambiguous as not all bodies are accounted for. The story only matters if you interect with it.
Below Zero is an rpg within a survival game. The writers could not unify so the role you, the player plays, is jumbled to hell. The reason it is an RPG as you are given a name, a goal and motivation in the first cinematic. That is why the story matters for quality as the game puts focus on that. You are doing survival things in service of that story. People say the story doesn't matter in Below Zero and that such arguments are in bad faith but when the game focuses on the story the story matters.
Subnautica story does not have to matter. Anything could have brought down the aurora. Anything could be keeping you there. Below Zero? Just having Sam survive ends the game before it starts. Riley not caring before the start ends the game. Poor writing has this happen anyways but that is a slightly different issue.
Contributing to the game-likeness is the fact that some plants just exist to keep you alive.
In Subnautica if you wanted to dive into a deeper zone you had to figure it out. You had to upgrade your suit, your seamoth, build pipes, or do something to ensure you don't drown while exploring somewhere a human was never meant to go. In Below Zero there's plants that give you oxygen for some reason. This feels less like you're mastering a hostile environment and more like it's giving you the tools to survive. Same with the heat plants.
Once you find the peppers, heat becomes a non-issue. Totally killed the worry in the land segments.
I did not mind the oxygen flowers though. The first game had the brain reefs that gave a bubble every few seconds, but the flowers gave 30 seconds every minute which streamlined without just topping you off.
TBF, Brain Coral exists to give you air in the first game as well. However, the heat plants is a little odd, plus the Brain Coral wasn't very common the deeper you got. That coral did save my tuchus several times exploring caves, though.
@@haydrionslaughter3747that was the beauty behind the Brain Coral, in my opinion...you see it Early, in the Shallow areas, when all it does is save you the tedious swim back up to Surface (which is like, what, 50m up?)...but you can Farm them...
in some of my playthroughs, id bring some Titanium to place ExteriorPlanters along a commonly-traveled path, and then plant a whole bunch of BrainCoral in them...theyre like little Oxygen Checkpoints, and i can just scoot around on the SeaGlide...
...but by the time you can upgrade your Vehicles to go deeper, they become the better source of Oxygen...
@@AlphalanceVOThe peppers were so dimb to me.
Spice doesnt actually warm you up, it just gives you the sensation of burning.
Also its hilarious how it heats you up and gives you hydration at the same time.
Something else that makes the Seatruck worse than the Cyclops is a bug that eliminates the danger of the grabbing leviathans. If a leviathan is about to grab the sea truck, you can just get out of the seat and the leviathan completely ignores you. I found this out in the Crystal Caverns and it makes the Shadow Leviathan so non-threatening when you know you can press a single button to avoid it.
Or you can get the shock barrier which let's you click a button and it stops attacking you. Makes everything trivial.
I'm pretty sure the Cyclops is also invulnerable when you're not in the driver's seat.
@@OryAlle I read that creatures don't attack the Cyclops when the engine is off.
But if a creature is about to attack when you're driving the Cyclops and you get out of the seat, the creature still damages the Cyclops. It's the same if you turn off the engine then get out of the seat.
Yeah I did this to farm Ruby while sitting directly under a Chalicerate in that crater area.
@@OryAlle the only way they don't attack the cyclops is if the engine is off, the best way to test it is by the ghost leviathans in the deadzone, they will keep attacking the cyclops until the engine is off.
I fucking hated how loud EVERYTHING WAS. Even the brinewing sounded like a leviathan, totally ruining any fear I held before. I do think the small predators are cute
something else i didn´t like was the map looking so much the same, like in the first one you'd look out of the water, see the aurora, panic because you're too close, run away in fear.
Now is just... ice, everywhere, and you can't see jackshit more than a palm away from your face
those aurora reapers be hittin dif fr
Duck together strong
No it’s about the same as the first one. Being near the Aurora didn’t mean much unless you were foggy in the front or back
the new safe shallows area was also boring as hell. the shallows in Subnautica are still my favorite biome because they’re so colorful but in BZ theyre all a select few shades of purple and blue.
I was scared to be far from it for some reason..
I think cyberpunk 2077 does the “I’m stuck in your head, I want out and you want me out” thing exponentially better than below zero could have done
They are 2 different games
@@Tyekiller115 with the same plot
@@droidmotorola3884 umm not at all
"Subnautica Below average" got me dying
If the game didn't force leviathan encounters, it would have been at least 5-10% better. This is another unfortunate side effect of making biomes smaller.
One of the reasons why Reaper encounters are great and memorable (compared even to Ghosties and Sea Dragons, and all BZ leviathans) is because you don't get forced to encounter it in narrow spaces, they were in open areas and you always had a choice to f*ck around and find out or run away.
The Shadow leviathan spawns were scary the first few times, but because you had to go back and forth in the end game area, it got annoying real quick, forcing me to drill 3/4 of them.
I still flinch when I hear a Reaper's roar in the distance while others don't scare me as much anymore.
Yep, the Shadow leviathan was one of the better beasts in the game with cool animations. I think it would have been MUCH better if it was more lethal. As they were, with a simple shock, you chase them off and any future encounters simply makes them an annoyance. There was no reason to be scared of them because they were so weak.
A huge issue people forget is also that biomes with bad visibility is what made the leviathans work in the first game.
Idk i dont consider the shadow leviathans a serious treat you just press a button and its gone dealing miserable damage just dont get out of your seatruck when one is near
boneshark level treat
As much as I wanted to suspend my disbelief & dread the Shadow Leviathan, I found myself wandering the crystaline caverns so much, I discovered you can use the electric attack release yourself from any leviathan grip. I straight-up ignored the existence of the Shadow Levithan, using the taser to instantly release myself. Subnautica 1's taser module had to compete with all the other modules, namely sonar, so I didn't feel I have a choice but to equip & use it.
The reapers will always be iconic
The moment the characters started talking I knew it's gonna be bad.
honestly the original version of the game looked really good...
the last few months before 1.0 release.. they all the sudden scrapped the entire story...... which reuined the gameplay and ofc story. nothing flowed together anymore.
and the story was now instead of a hero finding out what happened. an annoying looser. with other annoying chars etc in game...
i followed game dev very close, there at least was, i assume still is early ea gameplay of this when it was still GOOD. we got to see and hear basic begining of story. was interesting. fun. well done and thought out. progression was good.
main issues at the time. was the map just didnt flow like before sadly.
as i think about it.. i recall the sjw, or as i call them. rainbow warriros...... were upset about something in the story. wanted more woman bs or something. i dk.
point is. for whatever bs reason. studio caved. threw away years of work. finished work that was alread in the game, game designed around their original story......
for the pc culture bs we got. that was rushed to meet their deadline of 1.0.
@@NotHappening-b8t Wannabe bolsheviks ruin everything. This is yet another case.
How much longer will we be forced to tolerate their existence? I'm well-past tired of this silly bullshit where we have to pretend and pander and play like anyone gives a fuck about what they want.
I loved it with every fiber of my soul, dunno what you're talking about. The silent protagonist trope must die.
@@Soundwave1900 Well if it's going to then it's gonna be really shitty replacing them with this then lolol
There's also very few good spots to build a base. The drop pod area works, and I always built just to the north of the island near the purple vents because it's a central location, but besides those nowhere else really works. The eastern and southern parts of the map are rarely used, and there's no reason to build a land base because you only need to head out there for 3 locations, most of which you don't need to return to. The sandworm area is huge but you have to rush through it on your snowfox, and the crystal cave, while very pretty, also forces you to rush through it as fast as you can. Once.
i only really had fun with the crystal caves because i made it my goal after realizing its not as good as the original to kill as many leviathans as i could. The ones with the beak that i forgot the name of had wayyyy to big of an area to go, although I know you aren't supposed to kill them, they shouldn't drag you to the void.
I didn't have a problem building a base
There's an easy spot next to the broken ship, another is just a bit above that south of the island, if you go further west to Marguerites there's a few decent places in the caves
If your thinking of large-scale: northwest of the island where the underwater bridges are (pretty much right next to where you find Alan I think or just a relic), there's a good placemeny next to the giant jellyfish terrarium things hole, and the crystal caves as well as the glacial surface are both ripe for big base building just about anywhere
Its not that hard once you figure out that the leviathans won't attack you in the base the problem is making the base fit
@@pengu3753that makes sense as they live in the void and come into hunt I hope the 3rd recapture that magic of the first game
I tried basing near the purple vents just because of the mining facility and nice atmosphere of the area. I like the vibe, I wish they gave the game more time
You can totally just use the prawn on land. You can still outrun the worm in it, its safer, and its a real enclosed vehicle so even temp doesn't matter.
My snow fox just fell through the map and landed at the very bottom of the world, and my last save was well over an hour and a half ago, so I used cheats to fly down, grab it, and bring it back up (the only time I used cheats in the game), and little did I know this would disable achievements for the remainder of the game. Incredible
The prawn on land can be hilarious though, the grapple is glitched and causes you to accelerate as you move and if you jump you can carry all that momentum and fly out of bounds
And you can use the air bladder to launch into the air, VROOM
I'd also like to mention that even though they nerfed tf out of water prawn activities, a fully upgraded prawn suit can still outperform the brand new dedicated snowfox, not just by being all around far more useful on land(protection from hostiles, offense against hostiles, mobile inventory), but even in the one respect that the snowfox should win in which is speed. Using a jump jet and grappling hooks with the prawn on land allows you to literally fly sometimes.
I actually like below zero as it's own game, but it massively fails when compared to the original. Both are fun for base building though
My main gripes was the character talking.
*Cool new alien enters your head.*
Me: "Oh cool, wonder if we can be friends, there's so much to learn!"
Main character: *Decides to hate and insult the alien for no reason for the entire game.*
This is exactly why a silent main character is so great. It allows for the player itself to think for everything they see and experience. If Robin in bz found something new and said that it was ugly, stupid or dumb, the player was basically coerced into thinking the same
@@kwad9145
I personally disagree. I've never had my opinions and thoughts overwritten by a voiced protagonist.
@@Couch_Banana of course. who would listen to some lady talking to you through a screen. but i'd rather not hear the opinions of a virtual lady that i will immediately dismiss
Women ☕️
@@lutherloser5122 lmao just so casual about it too.
Fun fact: the first time I beat this game I didn't understand why the hell my character was leaving with Alan when I never uncovered what exactly happened to their sister. I had to look up on the wiki to find out I failed to pick up something at one point and thus completely missed that part of the story but the game still let me beat the game despite never doing the one thing I came to do. To be fair I might have missed it because by that point I had turned voices off in the game because I could not stand the dialogue anymore.
in the base game subnautica all you have to do is one time go to the thermal plant to get blue tablet and ion power then once to primary containment facility and then once to the gun to disable it. No story needed.
Oddly enough, I think that's a good thing to BZ's credit. The game does not create some contrived reason why you have to destroy the Kharaa in the frozen leviathan in order to leave the planet. It's up to you to finish that plot point. Too bad that it's an underwhelming subplot.
@@kuolettavaVids It shouldn't have BEEN a subplot. As it is it's a massive plot hole that the MC goes to the planet specifically to find her sister but will leave without ever finding her and make no mention of that fact whatsoever.
@@Tyekiller115Yeah I was bouta say that too lol. You can completely skip repairing the Aurora and the Degasi story.
@@Hedron1027 Don't you need the neptune recipe from Aurora to beat the game? Ig you don't need to repair the Aurora though so idk
And on top of all that, arguably worst of all, THEY MADE THE PDA VOICE HAVE A FRENCH ACCENT. WHY??! The PDA voice from the first game was perfect.
Indian, actually.
Cause it's not an Alterra PDA it come from another big company where Robin was working for so we they don t have the same voice. But i'm agree with you the voice sound bad. Oh yes : As a french i can confirm it s not a french accent cause PDA sound not that worse lol, if you want it just add more " RRRRRR "
leviathans shoved into tiny caves, and clipping through the walls was the last straw for me.
He forgot to mention all the horrible things on dry land. I could not finish Below Zero but i finished Subnautica like 6 times
Tell me you are gen z without letting me catch you simping on your phone.
@@thatman4752 Sorry, i have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say.
@@thatman4752you are not making sense
@@Noutelus I didn't expect you too.
@@thatman4752what 💀
hopefully they learned everything they did bad in below zero and make subnautica 3 more like the first one
Doubt it.
Except it will be Subnautica 2.
i'm pretty sure they r taking fans input
probably, i mean below zero was planned as a dlc but got too big for it
Hopefully. It's always good to compare to know what the fans want. "Many complained about the land sections in bz so lets cut down on that".
honestly the game wasn't terrible, but it just felt so bad compared to the other one. The desolation and loneliness was part of what i liked about Subnautica, with the only other voice being the pda voice lines and any logs you find. It made them pop more. BZ had so much dialogue and banter that there wasn't any dead space. As long as you were progressing at an even mediocre pace, you'd just constantly get new banter and voice lines. The Degasi story continuation also made very little sense to me, as the explanation just didn't pass the sniff test(she made a fire...while floating on a dead fish, from its fat, on a planet made 90% of water? and she never got washed out by a storm or rains? and the Ghosts left a dead Reaper alone?). Finding out her sister was, in fact, completely incompetent was actually the point where i lost my drive to even finish the story, especially when the MC refused to acknowledge that. How hard would it have been to write a corporate espionage story with the security guard catching her and trying to stop/kill her, thus having her activate it in a "self-sacrifice" instead of by accident? At least she would have died heroically... as it stands, she's a bumbling idiot and a murderer to boot.
It also failed to not softlock you out of certain blueprints, because there do not physically exist enough seamonkey nests for the endgame blueprints to generate within, you will be missing atleast one endgame blueprint per save on average, but I got worse rng than that and was missing like 2 endgame blueprints
Og subnautica had enough redundant blueprint locations that it was not a problem
I went through almost the entirety of subzero without finding the high capacity tank, I only realized this when I found the ultrajigh capacity blueprint and realized I was missing the high capacity tank to craft it. Quick trip to the wiki revealed it only spawned in one specific spot I swam over.
Ghost leviathans are filter feeders (supposedly) and only attack you since you might be a threat
I actually find Below Zero to be more lonely, due to the smallness, snowiness, and the abandoned bases everywhere. Throughout the whole game I felt feelings of abandonment, whereas in subnautica, it's surprisingly happy, despite how much scarier it is
@@cara-seyunbullshit, I could be miles away from them and the smallest creature there but ill still be eaten
@@andyeah3414 well yeah, I’m just talking about the lore and biology
The monsters ai was the worst thing for me.
They just beeline towards you non stop, which not only made them extremely annoying but also predictable, which compared to the first game. The leviathans had super random behavior which increased the anxiety around them.
The dumber ai made it better
Also, you forgot to mention that Sam just straight up cured the kharaa
the soundtrack was fire tho
true that
it was, but I will never forgive the devs for sacking Simon Chylinski, who made the way more iconic first game's OST
@@InitiateDee "Abondon ship" will always be the best end credits music ever made.
Eh, if felt too distracting and loud at points. Less abstract, and more in your face with it. The first game's OST did a way better job with tone and mixing in with the setting imo.
@@guardiandaytona8454 I'm an aesthetic guy. To me this OST fits perfectly with the setting of the game. It's as melodic as the environment is detailed, it's a marriage. It would feel off to listen to haunted tones like the first game with such small and detailed and beautiful places to look at.
The first game's OST also felt fitting, abstract songs for a vast and unknown environment. See?
They had BETTER watch this video while they make Subnautica 2. Literally a walkthrough on what NOT to do.
do you meen 3
@@tarrahinton5280 no it's a sequel to the first game while this isn't
@@tarrahinton5280 The devs have said that below zero isn't subnautica 2. At all. It was a dlc.
@@GameGuy667More of a Spin-Off since its a Standalone Game rather than a DLC for the base game
@@nicz7694 They said its more of a dlc they decided to put as its own seperate game launcher, rather than put it with subnautica.
One of the few youtube videos that can actually be considered perfect, just top to bottom, perfect
Wtf why isn't this a 10 hour long video essay going into extreme detail about how "Below Zero is garbage and here's why"
can you carry on my blood line?????
No he will curse your bloodline with pie msgict
Wdym ?
When I played subnautica for the first time I was taking my time exploring, building my base, and just getting immersed in the world. The story wasn't the focus, it was about the gameplay and the world. BZ wanted to be a story and the gameplay and world suffered, I felt like I was just trying to progress through the game and finish the story rather than taking my time and enjoying the world like in the first one.
The only thing I like about the seatruck was the jukebox
same, especially the part where on pc you can add songs that arent in the game
Fish tanks were dope vewing galleries. 100% Customizable. Can detach and take the first pod only.
Can leave seatruck pods anywhere you want for supplies.
The seatruck had a jukebox????
I only used it in my base
@@hundvd_7 it is in the sleeper module
In the base subnautica update they should’ve added the jukebox just so we could make one in the cyclops and jam out to tunes while doing void dives instead of having to resort to fires to get music
Add the lack of lore on why Sector Zero is able to support life. The Crater could support life because of the whole Sea Emperor + Alien Vents + Enzyme Peeper system. But Sector Zero's ecosystem would have been destroyed by Kharaa just like everywhere else. Sector Zero COULD have been written as the product of an ancient glaciation event, where the planet cooled and polar ice caps formed - and where Sector Zero, despite being in the midst of a massive ice cap, remained warm due to geothermal vents. This event would have isolated the local organisms from their parent populations, allowing their evolution to diverge. The surrounding ice cap would have protected the ecosystem from the later Kharaa outbreak. Infected creatures, like the frozen leviathan, would all succumb to Kharaa before they'd ever be able to cross the expansive ice cap and reach Sector Zero. But instead they decided to write Sector Zero as being open to the rest of the ocean - all to allow the shoehorning in of the Marguerit Maida B-Plot. She had to be able to drift in from The Crater (Kharaa infection and all)...
I've always felt like Below Zero is backwards, in which I mean Subnautica 1 ends up feeling like the sequel game where they fix the problems of Below Zero.
Bigger map, better biomes, better sea life, better vehicles, no terrible voice overs, an actual reason for the protagonist to exist besides stupidity and I'm sure there's plenty more. I've never really experienced anything like it before, where the original actually ends up feeling like it was built from the ground up to improve on the sequel, or I guess, where a sequel is built from the ground up to make everything good about the original worse...
I mean technically the smallest leviathan in subnautica is the sea treader, but most people do forget them and they‘re not really present except in a biome at the edge of the crater which has no story importance whatsoever. Better phrasing for the reaper would probably be: „smallest relevant leviathan in subnautica“, but I get how that wouldn‘t really work for such a fast pace video where the text is only there for a few seconds.
The sea treader plays a nice role in resource and bio fuel collection, as well as being a great world building device, it goes toward making the game feel more alive
@@lookatthetree978 yes, obviously, and I love them for it, but I’m just saying that unless you go out of your way to do research or explore the map to it‘s full extend, you probably won‘t run into them on a typical playthrough (depending on where you build your base and do your exploration, obviously)
We love the sea treaders in this house
also them being leviathans kinda doesn't make sense for most people so even those that do remember that they actually exist still don't subconsciously think that they are leviathans
they can also be found in specific paths along the grand reef.
i do think that it was kind of a blunder to give the sparse reef literally 0 importance. the sea treaders and a single life pod (who's real purpose is to lead you to the blood kelp trench) are the only notable part about it, but beyond that it has nothing notable. it has no unique resources, no abundance of resources, no interesting terrain generation, and nothing story-related. and then they stuck it at the far corner of the world so that you dont even need to traverse it to get to anywhere except for the blood kelp trench.
the ONLY thing it does is give a small glimpse into what the kararr does to a place when it takes hold, but that's not nearly enough. the only other places that come close to being this useless and desolate are the crash zone (which, duh), and the very very far end of the bulb zone
I've got over 500 hours in Subnautica, and about 200 in BZ. Still baffles me why they took the sea moth out of BZ, it's the perfect craft for that cramped map. The problem with BZ is mostly that it's not as much fun to just chill out and build bases, you are pushed into following the narrative they put in in order to make progress. Once you've played through BZ and maybe started over a couple of times to try putting bases in different locations there just no pull to get you back in. Seems like they had ideas for making the land areas fun but just couldn't get it to work because the snow fox was such a pain to control, the land areas just end up being a slog, very little enjoyment gained from exploring them.
They made the prawn suit too OP on the land sections, it’s much faster than the snowfox and can reach more places if you use the grapple arm well. Not to mention it makes it so that you can ignore snow stalkers and brush off ice worms.
And by the time you got that snow suit or whatever its called you were done with being on land anyway
They took the sea moth out because nobody would use the truck if it was in. They knew the truck was hot garbage. (speculation)
@@Wren6991 actually pretty spot on. Seamoth was a late removal from the game IIRC
i actually liked the seatruck, purely for the trucking vibes with the jukebox compartment with custom music.
Would've been supercool if you actually had to do some trucking. Like transport large amounts of resources, or large equipment across the map for a huge project.
But as an exploration vehicle it just felt awkward.
Can't you just play music in the background
@@eneco3965 not as authentic, + in the seatruck and bases you get the muffling effect when outside and it quietens when you have distance, 10x more immersive than external music.
it was straight downgrade from the awesome mobile base Cyclops
I'm a huge Subnautica fan, it's first on my list for favorite games and I've replayed it countless times. I felt bad and thought that I wasn't a true fan for not liking Below Zero and not even completing it once, this makes me feel a lot better though. Great video!
For me its just that it didn't feel as desolate it actually felt more lively and friendly you actually get to meet someone and talk to em your not completely alone so that drives the fear factor down a ton
Plus not many moments where you feel as terrified like when you gotta go to the Aurora and swim by the leviathans or just swimming in open water till yah hit an island or the cramped feeling of traveling through the biomes till you reach the lost river etc
That true empty and on edge feeling is what made og submautica so horrifying but subzero is genuinely comforting and i even feel cozy at times and you dont feel as in danger
Earlier yesterday I played below zero, and it was below average. I watched a 60 minute video that explains most of the points urs does, but you do it in a fraction of the time. Just like a compliment idk
Same. I made this video because I was playing Below Zero again and got irritated by the fact that every video on its failures spent way too long explaining things that the target audience already knew and restating their points a dozen times.
You’ll notice, for instance, that I never actually explain who AL-AN is in this video, nor what the Seamoth is, who Sam is, what Kharaa is, who Marguerit is, who Alterra are, etc.
Seatruck has no cameras or free look or at least a rearview mirror
Its like trying to drive a tank but with no tank commanders
For people who don't know tank drivers can only see what's in front of them that's why they have tank commanders or anyone to look at the surroundings
Sea truck used to have a read end camera
@@Mroziukz yeah I saw that in older videos.
But why did they remove it?
@@salvadorsanone5181 It was buggy and screwed with the game's optimization.
One of my biggest issues that turned me away in like 2 hours after spending SO MUCH time in the first game was the fact that the protagonist was voiced. The almost constant silence in regard to communication in the first game really helped sell the atmosphere for me. You were truly alone, with the only spoken words you ever really heard until the end came from the radio. It meant the players voice was the characters, how you reacted when entering a new area, or seeing a new leviathan was truly YOUR reaction, it wasn’t spoon fed to you by a poorly voice acted character that felt difficult to relate too.
^^^^^ this is why a silent protag is a must for me in rpgs. How can you call it role playing if someone else is talking for you?
@@archiveacc3248 You will be a quippy marvel chick and like it.
@@gavinpowell4607 "NO! YOU CANNOT MAKE ME!"
@@gavinpowell4607 NOOOOOOOOO
I honestly couldn't relate. I could, sometimes, understand her but never relate.
Robin: "lets go to a planet with nothing but our clothes, rations for a day and an empty survival pod!"
Me: "What?"
Me: "When are we going to find out what happened to Sam, your sister?"
Robin: "Who? Lol this alien planet is so beautiful!"
Robin: "Awesome! An alien is in my head! I can talk up so much artsy things while talking down his sciency things!"
Me: "Where is the nearest wild crashfish? I feel compelled to hug it."
If you step out of the seatruck control seat you become completely invisible and leviathans literally phase through you without attacking
The only change I would make to the seatruck is to add an engine module, 2 extra engines and 2 extra battery slots, and a Flexor Module, so it can bend like a bending bus. That way you could add enough storage to ACTUALLY HAVE ENOUGH RESOURCES transported at a reasonable rate to make a cool base. Presently, the lategame of base-building is hellishly slow despite the abundance of cool set pieces to build in.
I was wondering why it never hit the same way as the first
This explains it
I love below zero but i just wish it could be so much more. I think crunch really hit this game hard and causes most issues especially when it comes to story. I really hope they give Subnautica 2 more time to take shape
That's exactly what I expect happened. Both pandemic and desire to get started on the sequel probably led to parts that weren't as great as they could've been. Also it's a "spinoff" as some have said. Not the true sequel we were hopping for.
I heard there was a different team or at least a different director from the first game.
If only they didnt fire the good half of the staff from the first game...
they had a really interesting story untill about the half way point where they hired a new director so time was a HUGE problem and they just took some story elements from the first half and smashed them together with a half done new story and the result was kinda bad
The early access story was much more interesting imo
The only reason i prefer 1st subnautica is:
1. The map is much bigger
2. The leviathans are also much bigger and scarier + the biomes they're in are much more creepy e.g The Dunes and The Purple Vents
I feel like the ice worm had way more fear potential. I mean something so big and deadly tunneling beneath you popping out whenever sounds spooky, but it ended up being an annoyance basically the whole time.
So with a better biome and mechanics, maybe borrowing elements from tremors, it could have been as close to the scariness of reapers in my opinion.
uhm ackshually, these are 2 reasons, not the only reason
Don't you think BZ is annoying and tedious? Especially the PDA, horrid and forced story, and lack of a real feeling of isolation.
@@AzazelTV18 shush
@@simula152 To be honest, the last time I fully played the game was when it was still fairly new. The dialogue was quite bugged as there was no sound from the people talking. And there wasn't an ending to the story or at least thats what it seemed to be for me as it got to a point where I had nothing else to do.
I do agree with you about the lack of a feeling of isolation though. In the first game, you crash landed on an alien planet realising that you could be the only survivor. In the second, your character travels back to 4546B on an escape pod trying to investigate the 'death' of your sister which could turn out not to be. You also meet Marguerit which throws the whole idea of being alone out the window.
Something I appreciated about Subnautica was that the ecosystem felt very intentionally laid out. As an example, what do the Sea Dragons actually eat to survive? The answer is Reaper Leviathans! There’s actually a massive hole leading up from the Inactive Lava Zone to the Aurora Crash Site, which was covered up by the crash debris. Sea Dragons, when hungry, would use this tunnel to go into the area that’s now the Crash Zone, and drag Reaper Leviathans down into the Inactive Lava Zone to be eaten. This is why there are Reaper Leviathans skeletons down there despite none actually appearing anywhere nearby.
Below Zero on the other hand completely dodges these kinds of details. It feels like very little thought was put into the overall construction of the ecosystem and how the creatures interact with each other, in favor of “let’s just make whatever’s cool”. Which isn’t to say the creatures suck, independent of the gameplay I think it’s fairly unarguable that the fauna are very cool, but they don’t fit together in the same way Subnautica’s do.
Really, that's how the Sea Dragons get up there? Shewt, that means they'll hafta claw their way out now cause their old tunnel is crushed. Or they'll just wiggle out through the caves, but that seems like a hassle...
@@haydrionslaughter3747 More likely they'll just die. The PDA estimates the species was close to extinction even before the Aurora's crash, so that likely will just speed things up a bit.
@@Wildcat12 Ah... Bummer. The optimist in me hopes Alterra sees profit in reclaiming the Aurora's wreckage, so the hole is opened again.
... Yes, that's the headcanon I'm goin with. 😅
The dialogue was the worst part for me.
I remember the original had a PDA line that went something like, ‘Rationing the daily water portions will help protect against dehydration, and eventual death.’, with how dry the PDA is with its humor in the original, that one always gets a good laugh out of me. It’s so blunt.
But the PDA in BZ? Perhaps the most painful line is something about the control room analyzing structural integrity, but not the integrity of societal power structures. I actually mute the audio whenever that line plays. It’s THAT bad.
Don't forget the BZ PDA also goes on its own unhinged monologue about societal power structures, separate from that one line.
I liked Robin's old voice
Didn't she used to sound a bit like Tracer?
I think
@@TaitLawrence-xl2xbthat’s called the British accent
Oh what Below Zero could have been…
The plot of this game could have been significantly improved with one thing. Alterra actually intending to turn Kharra into a bio weapon, instead of the vague, morally gray but still reasonable “we’re just studying it”. Adding that definate risk, and enforcing the need to finish the sister’s work and neutralise the virus would have helped a lot IMO.
That would be blandening of Alterra image. They aren't "evil corp" and never were. Alterra is just doing business. Understanding that their routine studies may or may not cause many to suffer depending on the numbers in a annual report is the most dreadful thought about Alterra.
@@legolegs87 But Alterra is "evil" if you think about it. When Riley comes back home in Subnautica the PDA says that he CANNOT land until he has paid off the 1 TRILLION credits debt and the PDA line that says "Anything you discover is property of the Alterra" so yeah they seem like a pretty greedy and evil company to me...
@@Tombrisque tbh that felt more like a joke about "big company bad" rather than trying to sell alterra as the main villain of the series
@@fyreblazters I haven't played BZ but I think that Alterra had come to 4546B already? I'm sorry if my argument is not well- formed :D
@@Tombrisque before Subnautica? No. There were only two instances of humans visiting 4546b before the Aurora. The Mercury from the Sol Transgov which appears in below zero and the Degasi, from the Mongolians in Subnautica. None of them belonged to Alterra and the only reason the company went to 4546b initially was to find out whatever happened to the Degasi and their crew
At least I wouldnt call that evil
Tbf, the prawn sounds are probably a hydraulic pump or somethin
I had 100+ hours in Su nautica, but didn't even finished Below Zero...
I really enjoyed BZ but yeah, you are absolutely right about everything! "Writing: screenshot not found" 😂👌 right on the money. I got disappointed when I found out they removed the Cyclops, got a bit more disappointed when I found out they also removed the Seamoth and then got thoroughly disappointed when I entered the SeaTruck. However worst part by far was listening going through the PDA entries searching for clues, oh boy it was rough, sometimes I would just want to turn of the PDA entry that I was listening to from cringe but then I knew I would have to listen to it from the beginning... It was hard it was really hard, harder than evading leviathans, which have amazing design but are as dangerous as a water puddle on the street... while flying an aircraft. Great video tho, make some more Subnautica content
Bro fr the giant shrimp don't give 2 shits about you and the only thing that actively attacks you are the glowing sea dogs who don't shut the fuck up but they're so slow you can outrun them with a seaglide or heck even the flippers alone and only do like 25 damage on top of that IF they bit you they do it once and stop for fat minute
Also, the statics defense system basically made you untouchable in below zero.
When the shadow leviathan attacks you, pressing the button that activates the electric shield cancels the animation and you barely get a scratch, losing that sense of mortality and danger. Feels cool at first, but then just too easy finishing the game.
Exactly, at least in Subnautica you had to charge up the perimeter defense for it to work on a reaper.
I didn't find that blueprint so just suffered getting eaten by shadow leviathans and repairing my seatruck after every bite
@@TheBubblegumgirl14 you dont need BP, there is one built in Marges seabase ... which you can get to the moment you build the truck. Kinda hard to miss to be frank, its literally right next to stuff she tells you to pick up.
That is like the problems that BZ has. The biomes is just so colorful and unrealistic, I'm pretty sure people playing Subnautica is because we trying to enjoy the ocean's terror and excitement, BZ just have more land and land vehicles, Which is completely unnecessary. And the creatures more like cartoon forms instead of practical and real like old Subnautica. BZ just make me doesn't feels like a underwater game anymore.
Every time I think about going back to play a bit of it, I remember 40% of the game is on land and I just boot up Subnautica instead.
Keep in mind, the devs never intended the first game to be scary. Its a happy accident. I think the bigget issue is just how much land is in BZ and how much it sucks to be on. In the first game it was an interesting "safe zone". In BZ its just a chore the plot forces you to go through.
@@Troublechutor To be fair, that wouldn't be such a big deal wasnt the land in BZ a 50/50 of tedious and boring.
@@eightcoins4401 the first game was origionally built from the ground up to not really have land segments then the islands came along but they are so small that they didn't need much change even then you could tell the graphics and movement on them was tricky at times. Then you have that same foundation of course with changes being applied to the "sequel" which I think origionally started life as a more dlc type of deal but the scope got too large oh and all the land is in the arctic so no cool lush forests like the first game and limited other possible land biomes
@@eightcoins4401 I didn't feel like the plot was a chore, any more than the plot of dark souls is... its just the story that glues the game elements together. The plot of BZ isn't even bad on paper, its just that the game it serves isn't worthy of a lot more effort, so the plot is forgettable and feels "thin" as a result.
also the reaper roar is a fucking ambient sound that plays every 30 seconds
I dont really like how they added npcs and dialogue to the game. The sense of loneliness is what made the first one so good.
I felt like the fact that BZ had way more dialogue in it sorta removed the feeling of isolation that the original had. In the original, the dialogue was in PDAs and was optional. In BZ, there's lots of mandatory dialogue and I often found it distracting from the gameplay. Also, there was just something about the way the original Subnautica was designed that BZ didn't have which kinda made it not feel like Subnautica to me.
To me, there were only three main things that made me enjoy BZ less.
1. The story. The main problem is how they basically shoved the story of Sam to the side in favour of Al-An. They either should have gotten rid of Sam's story altogether or found some way to intertwine the stories. Like maybe Sam interacted with Al-An at one point and Al-Al learned of Alterra's plan to weaponize the virus but then Al-An showed Sam how dangerous the Kharra virus is by showing what it did to the Precursor race and that's what pushes Sam to cure the virus. And then Al-An insists that we cure the Leviathan before we leave to force us to resolve the sister storyline. Not saying that's what should have happened but its already better and makes the stories feel more intertwined.
2. The more cramped environment. This is the main thing that seperates the original and BZ for me. The original was vast, open, and even if it was mostly open water, the Leviathans often made you wish it wasn't. In BZ, everything is so cramped which makes exploring less fun. There are exceptions like the Lily Pad biome and the Tree Spires. But in general, the more cramped environment made it less enjoyable as the original.
3. The Seatruck and the Hover bike. Yeah, completely agree. I dislike the sea truck and much favour the Seamoth. I also miss the Cyclops but again, the Cyclops wouldn't have worked with the more cramped environment. And I don't think I need to explain why the hoverbike sucks.
Everything else, I did kinda like. I did enjoy the land sections, interacting with Al-An. Didn't really mind the new Leviathans, and I did enjoy the game overall. But it was mainly those three things that made it way inferior to the original.
now that you point it out the fact you dont have to resolve the sisters story line especially after yiu think alterra is trying to weaponise the virus i such a big flaw. its like if you saw in the first game that the sunbeam got shot down and the game allowed you to just build the rocket and launch without deactivating the gun.
I love the visual aesthetic of the game, but that's probably its strongest suit. Had the rest of the game been cohesive, and biomes been placed in more realistic (or at least believable) areas with more thought given to the biodiversity and the ecosystem's interactions with itself, I would probably like it more than the first game. The concepts are so fucking good, they just dropped the ball with actually putting them in practice. God I hope Subnautica 3 is good.
The characters have the forspoken dynamic
... Oh Blight, they really do.
Main issue: story. It was supposed to be the selling point but it's disappointing, and the small map means that it's easy to go to places out of order, breaking any immersion.
I think you summed up my gripes with the game pretty well. I still enjoyed BZ quite a bit, but it was certainly a noticeable step down from the original.
biggest issue with the truck for me is the length, you need to do most things, so you get stuck like I did, you have to take it apart piece by piece to turn it around and get out.
Almost like a small single section sub would work better
"I can't wait for Subnautica 2!"
"Wait, but what about Subnautica Below Ze-"
*_"No."_*
The single issue is that it's to bright and "happy" where as subnautica was, and still is on subsequent play throughs, scary. The sound design, the darkness, the fog, the deep, the freaky looking creatures is what made subnautica one the better game.
0:24 Reaper isn't the smallest leviathan as that belongs to treaders.
I think he means the smallest Aggressive Leviathan.
And the shadow leviathan isn't the largest below zero, that would go to the ice worm, or the frozen leviathan if you count that. But I do overall think the leviathans aren't as cool in BZ
Ice worm is an environmental hazard. Blah
To be frank below zero was theoreticaly supposed to be a dlc instead of a full game so lack of finish is some what explained by it.
It's not a full game though, it's an expansion
@@eneco3965 well yeah I meant that its a separate game instead of a dlc that you can buy for the game. I agree it is an expansion of the story but I wouldn't Say it's an expansion of the base game
@@Miq1906 Standalone expansions are a thing
@@eneco3965anyway it doesnt matter it was rushed to become a standalone thing instead of a normal dlc
No they're released it as a separate game that means it's expected to have a certain level of quality
This is a REALLY good video. Like, you literally summed up all of my complaints better that I myself could have in 2 hours
Gentle story time for anyone reading this,
I had to make TWO snowfoxes in my first (and only) playthrough because when I parked one and came back for it later, it had reloaded UNDER the ground and was floating on water INSIDE the land, basically noclipped. I tried commands to teleport to it / it to me, but it didn't work. I ended up making another one and turning off the tracking for the first one.
Not to mention...I 100% the game (all achievements) in ONE playthrough. It took me 3 on the first Subnautica (granted, one was first time & before most Steam achievements, second was a year or two ago, and third was nitty-gritty out-of-the-way things.)
TLDR: if people remember ONLY the stressful times they went through in a game, that's not a good sign.
my favorite thing about the games development is how the snowfox segment was originally fun, and then they intentionally made it a frustrating mess
The pda sounds like the adults from the peanuts talking to me.
And now that the QoL has been added to the first game, I have no reason to come back
2 minutes video and only 1 inhale in the middle in 1:00 🫡
I largely agree with this video though I didn't necessarily mind Marguerit being alive. I wanted to know what she actually saw within the void.
My snow fox fell into the snow when I set it down and immediately dissapeared... apparantly never to appear again? I spent 15 minutes trying to locate it before giving up and closing and reopening the game. I also fell through the snow once and got stuck both in-and-not-in water that did not/should not have existed in the game.
Also the snowfox got caught on snow that it wasn't even touching and half the time I tried to board it, I ended up accidentally picking it up (this killed me more than once).
Half the leviathans and threats I physically ran into didn't even notice me. I repeatedly walked into a snow stalker and... nothing. It didn't even see me. Everything was messy.
I started skipping all the dialogue parts. It felt like it was written by Chat GPT and like even I could write better dialogue. The plot felt so unedited and yet so easily fixable that it became more and more frustrating.
That being said I liked some of the new creatures and, while I wanted there to be more, I did like the design of many of the biomes. I also enjoyed being able to keep random aquatic creatures in my home.
I hope Subnautica 2 is better.
What I don't see people mentioning is enemy critters. BZ has such generic hostile creatures that I just don't care about them. That giant fish? Not only is it's spastic movement immersion breaker, what made Reaper Leaviathan so creepy was it's face. It's deep in the uncanny valley territory where you can see it's not human, but it reminds of you one.
Pulling up your middle school Astroneer fanfic is devious
I didn't really have a problem when they announced that the protagonist would speak, in the early alpha she had a different voice actress and the story itself was quite a bit more interesting. If I remember correctly the sister was still alive in a space station and would converse with the player, creating a decent sister dynamic. I imagine this was cut because it took away the original games sense of loneliness, but then you have ALAN the Alien chatting to you constantly anyway...
(Still enjoyed the DLC but it had issues, wish they kept to the original script)
To me it felt like a DLC to subnautica.
You'll be amused to hear that is exactly what it was planned to be.
You didn't mention the annoying new pda accent
I like it better, has more personality.
@@ZoofyZoof I'd disagree, there was a charm to the old one, and i don't remember any lines from the new PDA while I'll remember some from the first game to my dying breath. "Detecting multiple leviathan class life-forms in the area. Are you certain whatever you are doing is worth it?" or "this biome displays 7 of the 9 attributes that cause fear in humans." Its almost like a snarky robot. The accent on the new one jest felt too thick. Maybe if you had something like "I picked it because it reminds me of a friend" or something to give a reason for it being non-standard, but they didnt.
@@mattvoelker241 Sorry bud, you're not going to change my opinion that I like it more and think that it has more personality.
Tell me you're indian without telling me you're indian@@ZoofyZoof
@@SMGA14 I'm American.
I remember finally finding main characters sister and spending the rest of the game feeling like I was missing some important part of the story that would make it make sense but nope. that's just how the story is.
I agree with most of this, but the map size itself isn't really an issue. With the massive size of the Crater I always ended up spending most of my time in only two or three biomes except when actively seeking certain resources or trying to find certain places. Overall, I do think a smaller map can work... but it was done poorly in Below Zero.