No Story Mode

[Mr. Shaggnificent]

Is there a mod that lets you disable the story, like creative mode, but keep all the rest of the survival stuff? I like the finding food/water, building bases, exploring to find blueprints and all the other gameplay stuff, but I don't care about the story at all. I don't want to "finish" the game, I just want to screw around.

[Cougarific]

Subnautica was specifically designed to allow you to *either* follow the story or just ignore it and do your own thing.

You can't "disable" it, but you can safely ignore it as long as you want.

[Jac]

Nice question. I want the same. But like Cougarific said, you can ignore it and just play for fun. Is what I do ^^

[Mr. Shaggnificent]

What about the aurora exploding and the disease/infection and that crap? What triggers the events; is it time, action, location? If say I never fix the radio in the pod, and/or never pick up the data pads, will those events not happen? What about going to the island to scan the base pieces and collect plants, or going to/near the aurora?

[Cougarific]

Story progress is linked to locations. But seriously, don't worry about any of that stuff.

Again, you can safely ignore all story elements and play it as an open-world survival sandbox.

Nothing will be locked or inaccessible due to story progression (or the lack thereof).

[KromeHWI]

you dont die of the infection (it just keeps you from leaving the planet).

the aurora explodes early on and floods radiation (but you can take care of that easy enough).

everything else "story related" is just found through exploring anyway. pick up and read things if you want (or dont). there is not a lot of involved story, but just enough that there is a mystery to solve if you want to have more "direction." i finished the story, but stayed on the planet rather than leaving, so as to keep exploring and building. honestly why would you even want to leave? to go back to your job? why not enjoy an endless paradice vacation instead?

this is one of the things i most like about this game. its basically i giant survival sandbox. do what you want, how you want.

[fluffy]

Also, if the waypoints disturb you, you can turn them off from the PDA.

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Mr. Shaggnificent:

What about the aurora exploding and the disease/infection and that crap? What triggers the events; is it time, action, location? If say I never fix the radio in the pod, and/or never pick up the data pads, will those events not happen? What about going to the island to scan the base pieces and collect plants, or going to/near the aurora?

The ship blows up about four hours into the game, no matter what you do.

The sunbeam only shows up if you both repair the radio and keep answering it, anything less and those little events will just never happen.

The virus only gets worse when you find certain alien base locations, namely the big ones. And even then it makes no difference if you do go to them at any point as the virus itself can't kill you.
And if it does get to the "walking nightlight" stage of infection, just put on some gloves.

The data pads only make any difference if you read/listen to them and even then the only real difference they make is to how much of the games lore you know of not how much its story progresses. Just don't look at the 'codes and clues' section of your PDA.

The same about the PDAs laying about the map is also true of the floating island and the Aurora, going to them doesn't force the story to go forward. If you don't want to know where the next degasi base is just don't pick up any of the PDAs and you'll never know (or pick them up anyway and then turn off any beacons they give you). Going to either of these places doesn't do much to the story as much as it's just a pair of places to get some cool stuff to have fun with.
Also the ship gives you the option to make a way for you to be able to take off the rad suit so you can wear one of the others full time.


To try and give an idea of what I mean;
The last time I played this game through it took me three and a half days of total playtime, over three days of which was spent messing about not following the story even though I knew exactly what I needed to do and where to go.
In that time I never went below 900 meters, never progressed the infection beyond "you might be infected with something" levels and built a huge base partly inside an equally huge cave the went from 20-30 meters above the water live to about 250 meters below it in said cave. I made a bar down there.
Then I watched the sunbeam blow up for giggles because I was a little bored at the time and got on with the story for the last few hours I played it.

[darkdisciple1313]

I recommend playing through the story just once, to get a sense of what all is going on around you. Finish, then do a second playthrough doing whatever you want, even while events play out without your participation (at the highest difficulty level, if you'd like more of a challenge). Your on-board computer in your suit might gripe a few times, but that's easily ignored as well.

[Techno Spice]

ROFL. The replies in this thread are priceless. "You can do that if you just ignore all the stressful things that would bother your gameplay session" as if that isn't exactly what they're trying to get away from. Completely went over a lot of people's heads.

Also the radio in my pod repaired itself when I repaired the pod even though I didn't repair the radio. I intentionally didn't based on this thread and came back after a log out for food to find it was repaired.

Psychologically it's very difficult to ignore all the story prompts. That's why people are asking for a no-story mode. A genuine survival mode with no story even silently nagging
you would be very nice.

[KippenKaasBaas]

Originally posted by Techno Spice:

ROFL. The replies in this thread are priceless. "You can do that if you just ignore all the stressful things that would bother your gameplay session" as if that isn't exactly what they're trying to get away from. Completely went over a lot of people's heads.

Also the radio in my pod repaired itself when I repaired the pod even though I didn't repair the radio. I intentionally didn't based on this thread and came back after a log out for food to find it was repaired.

Psychologically it's very difficult to ignore all the story prompts. That's why people are asking for a no-story mode. A genuine survival mode with no story even silently nagging
you would be very nice.

Right. So your point is that you can't ''not repair'' the radio because yours magically repaired itself?
You can very well ''not repair'' the radio. Many people have played that way.
It's even the preferred method of saving the Sunbeam.
And if you don't repair the radio there are no story prompts to distract you.