Subnautica plot hole? (SPOILERS INSIDE, OBVIOUSLY)

[rpvarela]

it's in the title but in case you've missed it SPOILERS FOR THE GAME STORY BELOW!!!!






You're still here? Good.
So I've been playing Subnautica and I love it. Beaten the game twice already and I loved finding all the story bits and all that, but there's something that's been bothering me:

So from what I gathered, the Degasi was shot down before the Aurora. 10 Years prior to be exact. And by the time the torgals and marguerit are around, all the events regarding the precursor race have already taken place, right? (The Khaara outbreak, the desperate search for a cure, the Sea Emperor capture and egg experimenting, the sea dragon egg experiment, the disease research facility being attacked, the Khaara being released on the planet and the quarantine protocol active).
All this happened before the Degasi showed up, else why would the big gun shoot them down?
Now, the thing about that protocol is that no one enters and no one leaves the planet and to ensure that they not only devised the giant gun, but also the warpers. The Warpers that were active even before the Degasi crashlanded on the planet.

So, here's the point I'm going to make: Why didn't the warpers attack and kill the Degasi at all? They seemingly survived on the planet for at least a few weeks before succumbing to the predators (and bart to the Khaara later on). So they've been hanging around in the floating island, the jelly cave and thegrand reef without a warper ever finding/murdering them? Cause they seemed PRETTY effective in tracking down, hunting and killing a lot of the Aurora survivors.

Considering you as the protagonist wake up some 3 hours after the crash and by then only Keene and Yu are alive... I mean, I get that some survivors died to other predators (like lifepod 4 guy and the reapers) but it seems weird to me that the Degasi were just hanging around, being in their merry way to build what 3 bases and your sodden crew is just turned into mincemeat by those purple jerks within 3 hours.

Did I miss something, is this a plothole or I just misunderstood something about the story?
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text.

[Phaota]

Yeah, that is very odd and a story flaw.

[Amanoob105]

I see three most likely reasons, though it could be any mix of.

1) Dumb luck. The first area they lived in is on land, we've seen nothing that suggests warps can go onto land and before that they where just in open ocean. As for everywhere after that, that's just your normal levels of dumb luck.

2) They saw these things with tentacles and thought "I should say away from that", much like we the players (respawns aside ) did. The warpers are basically hunter-seeker drones, if you don't go near them or places they 'think' to go near, i.e. wrecks/large foreign objects and places of importance to their creators, they largely leave you alone. They don't seem to be able to 'think' outside of the box they where programed into and even if they could, wouldn't be the first time the aliens tech went wrong .

3) Marguerit Maida. A person that by the sounds of it had more combat expertise than just about anyone that we know has been on the planet before or since (if not combined). She 1v1'ed leviathans and, I would guess, likely had access to real weapons because why have a merc on board and not have options for them to do their job(?).
Even if she herself couldn't deal with the problem she would at least be able to inform the other two of what they would want to avoid to keep living, looping back to number 2.


If you want a story flaw, why do none of their bases have any means of power generation in, on or anywhere near them?

[Ham Walrus]

I think amanoob nailed this one, especially reason 3.

[Demon of Razgriz]

İlk olarak rpvarela tarafından gönderildi:

it's in the title but in case you've missed it SPOILERS FOR THE GAME STORY BELOW!!!!






You're still here? Good.
So I've been playing Subnautica and I love it. Beaten the game twice already and I loved finding all the story bits and all that, but there's something that's been bothering me:

So from what I gathered, the Degasi was shot down before the Aurora. 10 Years prior to be exact. And by the time the torgals and marguerit are around, all the events regarding the precursor race have already taken place, right? (The Khaara outbreak, the desperate search for a cure, the Sea Emperor capture and egg experimenting, the sea dragon egg experiment, the disease research facility being attacked, the Khaara being released on the planet and the quarantine protocol active).
All this happened before the Degasi showed up, else why would the big gun shoot them down?
Now, the thing about that protocol is that no one enters and no one leaves the planet and to ensure that they not only devised the giant gun, but also the warpers. The Warpers that were active even before the Degasi crashlanded on the planet.

So, here's the point I'm going to make: Why didn't the warpers attack and kill the Degasi at all? They seemingly survived on the planet for at least a few weeks before succumbing to the predators (and bart to the Khaara later on). So they've been hanging around in the floating island, the jelly cave and thegrand reef without a warper ever finding/murdering them? Cause they seemed PRETTY effective in tracking down, hunting and killing a lot of the Aurora survivors.

Considering you as the protagonist wake up some 3 hours after the crash and by then only Keene and Yu are alive... I mean, I get that some survivors died to other predators (like lifepod 4 guy and the reapers) but it seems weird to me that the Degasi were just hanging around, being in their merry way to build what 3 bases and your sodden crew is just turned into mincemeat by those purple jerks within 3 hours.

Did I miss something, is this a plothole or I just misunderstood something about the story?
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text.

Wait? Someone else who realized that Keene and Yu are still alive when you wake up? Yay, I am not crazy. :)

[NowtButGaming]

I think most of the Aurora survivors died soon after crashing. Granted the warpers knew of them, but you don't see any warpers around until you get to the much deeper areas. There were certainly none that I saw near Degasi base 2 for instance
But when the Degasi crashes, the three of them make straight for the floating island and I suspect they spent a long while there eating plants whereas we spend most of our time in the water eating fish
It's a while before we notice our own symptoms and it's not until they're at their last base before they notice they're infected, by which time it's too late anyway as Paul and Marguerit get killed during a Leviathan attack soon after Bart mentions the problem. Bart of course manages to get back to the floating island but succumbs to the virus
I don't think the warpers targeted them because as I show in my playthrough, they only target those who are infected
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR0nl9XtuPs

[rpvarela]

İlk olarak NowtButGaming tarafından gönderildi:

it's not until they're at their last base before they notice they're infected, by which time it's too late anyway as Paul and Marguerit get killed by a Leviathan. Bart of course manages to get back to the floating island but succumbs to the virus

That's something I didn't consider. By the time they are showing symptoms, Bart flees the base and establishes himself back at their first base, and geographically speaking, bases 1 and 3 are very close together, so Bart probably made a run for it before any warpers could even get there. And even if they did, bart was probably outside of their reach (on land).

Now the last question is why we intercept those warper messages talking about tracking down the survivors to deal with them (when there's a whole environment of infected life just around them)... but I'd assume the reason for this is that warpers figure out that they are intelligent life (Therefore more likely to leave the planet and spread the contageon) and must be dealt with first.

[Harry Willy]

İlk olarak Amanoob105 tarafından gönderildi:

If you want a story flaw, why do none of their bases have any means of power generation in, on or anywhere near them?

Oh Snap

[Stormbringer]

İlk olarak Ham Walrus tarafından gönderildi:

I think amanoob nailed this one, especially reason 3.

I disagree. The Dagasi would mentioned the warpers in their audio logs.

[Amanoob105]

İlk olarak Stormbringer tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Ham Walrus tarafından gönderildi:

I think amanoob nailed this one, especially reason 3.

I disagree. The Dagasi would mentioned the warpers in their audio logs.

Then we're back to option 1) dumb luck, both the good and bad types.

On the one hand they, somehow, never came across any warpers despite living in an area we now know to be full of them but, on the other hand, despite how long they where on that island for never once found the alien arch on the same island.
And we know they walked past where it is because even ten years on the paths they made are still there to show how much of it they explored. I.e. all of it except for that one cave.

[MartyS]

Nice catch on the lack of power for the Degasi bases, I hadn't thought about that. Now that I think about their bases they are all kind of small for 3 people, maybe the first 2 were partially deconstructed as they moved on to build the next one but the last one should have had more living space. Their bases in general seem too small, if they salvaged their entire ship they should have had enough raw materials to build more than they did.

Seems they didn't travel much so no surprise they didn't mention running into any warpers, there is no warper activity at the first 2 locations they built bases. If you only travel between the safe shallows and the floating island you won't see a warper. The fact that there are zones with no warper activity could be considered a plot hole, they should be searching everywhere for the infection, but it would make the game way too annoying if they were all over the map.

There is a crafting issue I thought of recently, the plans for the Neptune rocket that are sent from HQ use ion power cells, but the information on how to make them wasn't available when the distress signal and information on the planet was sent back to HQ during the crash.

[Demon of Razgriz]

İlk olarak MartyS tarafından gönderildi:

Nice catch on the lack of power for the Degasi bases, I hadn't thought about that. Now that I think about their bases they are all kind of small for 3 people, maybe the first 2 were partially deconstructed as they moved on to build the next one but the last one should have had more living space. Their bases in general seem too small, if they salvaged their entire ship they should have had enough raw materials to build more than they did.

Seems they didn't travel much so no surprise they didn't mention running into any warpers, there is no warper activity at the first 2 locations they built bases. If you only travel between the safe shallows and the floating island you won't see a warper. The fact that there are zones with no warper activity could be considered a plot hole, they should be searching everywhere for the infection, but it would make the game way too annoying if they were all over the map.

There is a crafting issue I thought of recently, the plans for the Neptune rocket that are sent from HQ use ion power cells, but the information on how to make them wasn't available when the distress signal and information on the planet was sent back to HQ during the crash.

I always considered the Ion Cell thing as the plans actually called for another power supply, but the Ion Power cells were the only equivalent the player had access to. There should have been a line or something about that though.

[MartyS]

İlk olarak Demon_of_Razgriz tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak MartyS tarafından gönderildi:

Nice catch on the lack of power for the Degasi bases, I hadn't thought about that. Now that I think about their bases they are all kind of small for 3 people, maybe the first 2 were partially deconstructed as they moved on to build the next one but the last one should have had more living space. Their bases in general seem too small, if they salvaged their entire ship they should have had enough raw materials to build more than they did.

Seems they didn't travel much so no surprise they didn't mention running into any warpers, there is no warper activity at the first 2 locations they built bases. If you only travel between the safe shallows and the floating island you won't see a warper. The fact that there are zones with no warper activity could be considered a plot hole, they should be searching everywhere for the infection, but it would make the game way too annoying if they were all over the map.

There is a crafting issue I thought of recently, the plans for the Neptune rocket that are sent from HQ use ion power cells, but the information on how to make them wasn't available when the distress signal and information on the planet was sent back to HQ during the crash.

I always considered the Ion Cell thing as the plans actually called for another power supply, but the Ion Power cells were the only equivalent the player had access to. There should have been a line or something about that though.

I guess it makes sense the local AI would modify the plans to what was available locally. Two ion cells instead of 10 normal cells would be an easy change.

[Amanoob105]

İlk olarak MartyS tarafından gönderildi:

Nice catch on the lack of power for the Degasi bases, I hadn't thought about that. Now that I think about their bases they are all kind of small for 3 people, maybe the first 2 were partially deconstructed as they moved on to build the next one but the last one should have had more living space. Their bases in general seem too small, if they salvaged their entire ship they should have had enough raw materials to build more than they did.

Seems they didn't travel much so no surprise they didn't mention running into any warpers, there is no warper activity at the first 2 locations they built bases. If you only travel between the safe shallows and the floating island you won't see a warper. The fact that there are zones with no warper activity could be considered a plot hole, they should be searching everywhere for the infection, but it would make the game way too annoying if they were all over the map.

There is a crafting issue I thought of recently, the plans for the Neptune rocket that are sent from HQ use ion power cells, but the information on how to make them wasn't available when the distress signal and information on the planet was sent back to HQ during the crash.

Yeah, I've always loved base building so when I saw their's for the first time, all the way back when in EA, I immediately started looking them over for ideas. And then had the thought "hold on a sec. Where's the....".

The lack of base size could be explained by a lack of resources to build it with. We know, thanks to one video (that, yes, I'm taking as cannon), that they could build seamoths but we don't know if they could make prawns and/or it's drill. Plus unlike us there isn't any metal from a giant wrecked ship just lying about.
Though there is once again the possibility that they just didn't explore a whole lot and stuck to building the very minimum that they could need to live.

As to the beds, they could well have done their sleeping in shifts, so as to save on space and make sure there was always someone awake 'just in case'. Something I could easily see the merc insisting on (the same merc that failed to explore a cave on the island they made home on 'just in case' there was something dangerous in it ).

Another option with the beds is I think we can safely guess they had a cyclops, both because they needed a way to transport the things needed to make the later bases and seamoths don't have a lot of storage without the moonpools that they lacked and I just can't see a way to get an unconscious leviathan anywhere with just a seamoth.
Anyway, there's enough room in one for at least another bed and because we know they can make the double beds that's more than enough room for three.
(Btw, I was totally shipping (or should that be 'subbing'?) the son and the merc all the way to the third base, bud-um tish.)

Though I do agree that the first base is way to small and I like the idea that they might have scrapped a part of it to make the next. Maybe leaving what we found partly because one bit of it was somewhat underground and the rest because it gave a place to fall back to should they ever need it.
It could also be that the parts on the mountain tops might have been made after the events of the third base by the son, as they are made from parts that they had yet to find the resources to make such things when they first landed. It would also explain why one of them has what I am convinced is a shrine made of plants in it.

*Edit* A lot of spelling mistakes.

[miklkit]

I just visited the 250m base and there is part of a nuclear reactor lying next to it, so perhaps they did have power.

Also, there is Maida's PDA where she talks about scrounging material to build a seamoth so she can take off on her own, so it seems materials were scarce. So the story isn't too inconsistent.