Why I love Subnautica, dislike Below Zero, and have no interest in the next game.

[dragonbornzyra]

⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟ eredeti hozzászólása:

Whenever i ask why BZ is so "very very bad" i get silence and the negative reviews aren't any insightful either.

Hello Alucard. How's it going? Are you a fan of the original Hellsing, the Ultimate, or both? =) I haven't seen the reboot, can't say if it's good or bad, but then again never interested in it. I adored Hellsing for what it was in all its glory and for all its flaws.

Well, you may have better luck asking those questions on the Below Zero forum, but what I can do for ya, at least, is to answer your question myself here. I can tell you the reasons for me, personally, that drag Below Zero into the category of "very, very bad"

(Potential Spoilers)

Because you see, it isn't like Below Zero disappointed or didn't impress through any innocent fault of its own. It wasn't trying to "break new ground". It wasn't boldly going where no one had gone before. It didn't blindly strike out on its own path only to find itself met with a terrible fate.

It didn't break new ground, because it rode in on Subnautica's coattails, stood on its shoulders, and hoisted up by its praises, mechanics, solid gameplay loop, and established built-in fanbase and community. They already proved proof-of-concept for underwater survival exploration with Subnautica, and survival games, voiced protagonists, and stories, none of which are new or unique. Below Zero does not break any new ground or try to do anything that hasn't been attempted before, and done, better, with more success.

And it wasn't striking out blindly, on its own. It was in Early Access, and had access to the entire communities feedback, through every step of the process. They weren't "blind-sided" by any of the criticism or complaints. They were in fact, made well aware of them the e n t i r e time.

So, Below Zero did not just disappoint while trying its best to give us what we wanted. It disappointed, knowing what we wanted, but instead gave us what it wanted us to have. It knew vast portions if not majority of its community and player fanbase were against such things and choose to go forward and ahead with it anyway. It was their choice. They choose to fight on this hill. I do not pity them for "chosing this hill to die on"

To phrase metaphorically. Let me list off these things for myself and others:
(In no particular order)

*#1*----The map is smaller, horizontally. The map is also more shallow, never going as deep as the first game. And with so much land mass, both land we can traverse upon, and land mass in the form of impassable terrain, on top of a smaller map that is more shallow, there is even LESS "accesssable" volume of water to swim around than it even appears. It's worse than it seems. Because on top of everything being less, smaller, shallower, the limited space we DO have is clustered up with caves, tunnels, debris, terrain, rocks, ice burgs. There is very little space to actually move around. Subnautica made me feel tiny, insignificant, a speck of dust in the way cosmic order of things. Below Zero makes me feel like King of the aquarium and ruler of my domain. I expected more, and got less. Thus, disappointment. They knew about this.

*#2*----This ties into my previous point. The map is smaller. In every concieveable way. Height, width, depth, it's less on every angle. And everything is slower. Robins base swim speed. Robin's swim speed with fins. Lack of Ultraglide Fins. Seaglides speed. Seatruck's non-after burner speed. Seatruck Modules beyond 2nd w/ Horsepower upgrade. Pre Grapple Hook Prawn Suit. I even really, honestly feel like walking on land is slower. And the most egresious offense: They completely knee-capped the Booster tank, it is no longer either practical, nor fun to use. I can only speculate as to "why" I do know know for certain. But I will bet a lot of chips this is to compensate for the smaller map. To make it feel less tiny, player transportation options were nerfed across the board, so as to create some form of artifical depth to the game.

Perhaps players won't realize how small the map is if it takes them so long to go from point A to B. But some will see beyond that and notice how slow they actually are. I wasn't expecting to go f a s t e r in this game. But I certainly didn't expect to be hit with going s l o w e r. Because fast is fun, and slow is boring. This is a disappointment. No one, not one personed asked: Please make us slower in Below Zero. The speed nerf is a net drop to fun in the game.

*#3*----This ties into my previous TWO points, about map size and reduced speed. Both the enjoy from, and the desire to, explore in this game, are hampered and detrimented. Because the world map is so small, so shallow, and the player moves noticably slower than before, we have less to explore, and it takes longer to explore that less. So we get disappointed at seeing less, and we have no fun during this experience because its so slow.

Sure if we were quicker, it'd just mean players would sooner realize how small the map is, explore faster, beat the game faster, but gosh it might come at the consequence of having some more fun. It is a problem that is compounded by the game's other problems. "Ooo what's down this path" Dead end. "Ooo what's in that tunnel" It circles around. "Okay ooo that looks neat" Nothing in there. You start to realize your sense of anticipation and awe for what you find next is either answered with nothing, or, nothing compared to what you were expecting. Or, for me, at least. In a survival/exploration game, when you lose the desire or interest or satisfaction from exploring, there is a serious problem.

*#4*----This ties into the previous three points I've made (Noticing a theme?). This involves both tool/gear usage and vehicle access and performance as one point. And it's due to the map being so small, so shallow, you're so slow, and it's so unfun to go anywhere, and the sense of wonder and joy from exploration is ruined and soured by lack of "content", that there are several pieces of equipment and vehicles that on paper should be by every means fun and delightful to use but just are not. This is all off the top of my head, so I may forget some things and may need to edit this at a later date.
(This is Equipment/Tools/Deployables that are IN the game, not counting cut/missing/removed content)

Equipment:

Booster-Tank: Used to be fun. SO FUN. Used to feel very satisfying and rewarding to use. MUCH YES. MANY TRIUMPH. It made you go FAST. Speed = fun. Slow = boring. Go faster = more fun. More fun = yes. And it made you do a SUPERMAN POSE. Fly through the water! Bonus points! And it made you go faster, at the expense of Oxygen remaining in the tank. Meaning, you were forfeiting the amount of time you could spend underwater without drowning for the ability to go faster. It was a trade off. One that was both fun to use, and when done "properly", felt EXTREMELY rewarding saving yourself from dying, escpaing the maws of a Chelicerate, or rushing back in base in time to grab a snack to prevent death from starvation (however impractical that scenario may be)

However, it was pointed out that you could spam the Booster-Tank infinitely when at the surface of the water. Since the Booster-Tank used Oxygen as fuel to burn to go faster, and at the surface it was constantly "refilling" Players could zoom across on the surface of the water like they were using Jetskis. Now, that was "broken" in the sense it was not the player's intention for the Booster-Tank to function that way. It's intended use and current implimentation were broken. Not like it was OP, or broke the game balance in general. You could still only use it on the water's surface, it was only good for surface horizontal travel. Useless on land and useless underwater, it was more of a convenience than anything.

But this went against UWE's dogma for slowing the player down in every way possible in hopes no one would notice the pathetically small map. Can't let the player go faster. Can't let them have fun. Can't let them find a way to play or enjoy this game other than the one way we intend. So they nerfed the Booster-Tank. Only "works" under water. Burns through oxygen about 3x faster. Provides about 1/10th of the original thrust. It's useless. It is a literal waste of oxygen and might take you 20-40 feet before giving out. It's remarkably bad. Might as well have removed the Booster-Tank for the game as it serves no purpose, has no practiclity, and is no longer fun to use in any capacity. It's a tragedy what they did to this item, and how much FUN was taken from the game by it.

I really mean it. I can't let go how awful I hate the Booster-Tank now.

Fins: This is all you get. Unless they added in Ultraglide fins since I last played. You have no "options" between fins(I do not consider Swimcharge fins an option in Below Zero). There is no tactical choice or strategic use. You have one type of fins. You make them and put them on and forget about them because they make so little difference at all. They aren't fun. There's no sense of "Yeah ok I can swim a lil better with these" There's no tactical need or benefit from having them either. Disappointing.

Reinforced-Divesuit: It's "fun" enough in the sense it gives me an extra hit against Void Chelis and lets me experiment a lil further and give me more windows for mistakes or errors. But there's no creature in the game so dangerous, or an environment so hot/hostile/hazardous to warrant the use of the Reinforced Divesuit, so it's disappointing. In Subnautica, putting this on I knew I could avoid Acid Mushroom damage all together, and nullify Tiger Plant damage. Things I used to be terrified of. I could spend more time in the Lava Zone, I could more safely place Thermal Plants in geyser hot spots without fear of being one shot by an eruption. In general I could survive so much more with it on than with it off. I felt clever and wise by wearing this suit. I was giving up Radiation protection (lol) and the free water from the Stillsuit, but I got protection in return. It felt like a fair and good choice. In Below Zero, I feel nothing having it on. It's a let down. It has no special unique use. Or area that demands or warrants its use over any of the other suits.

Plus, NO GLOVES for the suit.

Stillsuit: What used to be an option of choice between valid suits and different gameplay styles, there's no reason to ever wear the still suit. There are many more wild flora and food sources everywhere, you are never at any point in water or on land ever far away from food you can just walk up to and pick and eat or a fish you can't just swipe and nom up. On top of quantity and access to so much food, the new food items offer thirst, hunger, health, and body heat bonuses, making them incredibly effective at over coming ALL survival obstacles, including damage. I feel silly drinking my own body fluids in this suit when there is no practical reason so ever to use the suit at all. When all the food I'd eat to recoup the lost hunger would replenish as much if not MORE thirst than the Still suit anyway, on TOP of giving Health/Body Heat bonuses as well.

Cold Suit: I'd feel good about using this suit, if it weren't for many things. The way of obtaining the resources to make it are abhorrently abritrary and unintuitive. All of my instincts on extracting Snowstalker Fur resulted in failure. Everything my instincts told me, my common sense, my years of video game experience, all let me down. Because I didn't know that ONLY a toy Radio Shack remote control penguin could extract and pluck the fur. Not our hands. Not a knife. Not a prawn suit. No other tool we have. But this robot is the one thing that can pull the fur off. A sucker punch is that you don't even NEED THE SPY PENGLING because later on, deeper in the land areas (where if you got that far congrats you no longer need cold protection) you find Snowstalker fur laying around in caves for you to pick up and use.

So when you finally survive the cold to get the resources to make the suit that lets you survive the cold................you got back to base, out of the cold. Make the suit. Then go back into the cold you were surviving in just fine. And think "Okay now with this suit on I can over come the next obstacle gating my progression" Except you realize theres no area so cold so far removed from any other source of heat that you'd need to use the Cold suit. I feel like a git wearing this thing and thinking about all I had to go through to get it and what very little, say, no good it's done me. Because Hot Peppers are everywhere. Heat you up. Nourish and quinch your thrist.

They are op, grow in clusters of 4-6, and are plentiful to find, and "regrow" fairly quickly. On top of this, they are also often found within the safety of warm caves, meaning you don't use them to save your life, but you pluck them and, since they don't spoil, carry them with you as free sources of portable heat when you get out in the cold. Making your Cold suit worthless. The Snowfox can also be folded up and taken with you, and deployed for an instant accessable source of body heat. Makes your Cold Suit worthless. You can carry as many coffee thermoses with you as you want, and each gives you 2 sips to top off your body heat. Why do you need the Coldsuit? Do you have 4-6 titanium and some quartz? Just drop an I Tube down with a Hatch and step inside to warm up. No need for your Cold suit.

And to top it all off, you just bring your Prawn suit instead. Bypassing any need to huddle in caves, drink coffee, shove Hot Pepper in your mouth, wear a cold suit bring your Snowfox, or build a base or outpost. The Cold Suit is not needed. It is not fun to use. I feel like an idiot for having ever made one. It's very disappointing.

[Dirak2012]

I just call it... bad writing.

[dragonbornzyra]

Nilandros eredeti hozzászólása:

A number of very harmful and unethical medical experiments have been conducted in the past on humans and other animals, including those carried out by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Were the results of these experiments worth the cost?

The Hepatitis B prototype was tested on children in the 1960's and much more recently human embryos have been genetically altered by a Chinese scientist to find an immunity to HIV. Among the set of medical rules outlined in the Nuremburg Code - which was created after said Nazi experiments - is what is known as the Risk vs. Benefits scale. In order for a medical experiment to be considered ethical, the risk needs to be low enough for the benefit to be worth it.

Lots of experiments still fail to meet this criterium but they get away with it because our ethics have not been extended to the test subjects yet. Animals and human embryos have not yet been put on the same level as adult humans. At one time, children were not even on the same level so experiments were done on them in the past without even factoring in whether there would be any benefit to the experiments. Adult humans of other races have also historically been used because they were not "people." They were not equal and so what was done to them was not considered the same as what could be done to those doing the experiments. Medicine has a long history of reducing or removing the rights of some other group of people or some other group of animals so that medical testing can be done on them without breaking any rules.

To put it simply, it is easy to get into the mindset of "Only I matter" and "If it doesn't harm me then it is for the greater benefit" but I think the point that is trying to be made by a lot of activists (though I would still not condone the use of violence) is that we need to get out of that mindset where we only care about ourselves until we are also harmed in the process.

I understand all that, but that's real world now. Subnautica's world takes place in the future with an idealized version of humanity. Super progressive humanity, super progressive rules, cultural mesh. She never enforced a Nuremburg Code, or went through the proper process. She never found evidence or proof, there was no due process, she acted judge jury and executioner and took it all into her hands. And because of her Parvan is dead. It's remarkable how people just seem to be okay with that part and over look the fact she is a murderer. Like some of you are "Yeah that's fine, that's a strong heroine they get like 2 murders, no question"

Like I said, Alterra had a "chance" of hurting someone in the future, Sam killed two people out right. Sam took the potential of Alterra being bad and replaced it with the reality that SHE is bad.

Following that line of reasoning could make the discussion very political so I won't continue but I think you get the point.

As for Below Zero, two things come to mind here:

(1) Neither Sam nor Robin created that risk of spreading the Kharaa. They may have aided in it if the virus was re-released through their activities but Alterra were the ones who obtained samples after the virus was supposed to have been taken care of and their purposes were not proven to have been ethical. When I played Below Zero, I saw a covert incentive for turning the virus into a biological weapon.

Alterra wasn't trying to release the kharaa. So yes, if Sam and Robin spread the kharaa then it's their fault. And there is no PROOF that the current iteration of kharaa they were working on was MORE deadly. It's just SPECULATION. Their purposes were "not proven" to be ethical? So guilty until innocent? They weren't proven innocent so there's no need to prove them guilty right? You "saw a covert incentive for turning the virus into a weapon" Why? Why? When Alterra employees specifically said it was for medicial purposes?

So you take all evidence presented before you and decide to arrive at a conclusion you already were bias towards. No dude, that's awful. You're no metter than Sam. Thinking you are doing the right thing while murdering people? That's ...pretty concerning.

And (2) how do we know Sam's activities would've spread the virus in the first place?

And how do we know Alterra's activities would've spread the virus in the first place? You are bending over backwards and somersaulting through hoops lit on fire to defend a murderer and ignoring the evidence THE GAME ITSELF presents you as to Alterra's innocence.

In my previous post, did you read over the part where I mention pretty the first thing you do when you mutate a bacteria or virus is to create a weaker, less virulent strain, or to make it less infectious? Because by doing THAT, it then makes it easier for them to study. They WEAKEN it, or reduce it's ability to SPREAD, so as they mutate it further and study it, it's safer, and if it mutates FURTHER, they have living strains of the weaker version.

Even though, in some cases but not all, as some viruses continue to mutate, they can actually become less virulent without manipulation. Instead of observing and seeing what was happening, you looked and saw what you wanted to. You already had your bias, you went into it already looking for the one thing to confirm what you already believed. Instead of looking at the facts and coming up with an objective conclusion.

And the game itself concludes this. Alterra was NOT weaponizing Kharaa. Alterra did NOT do anything bad to Sam. Alterra is also just as diverse and progressive as anyone would want any place to be. Yet somehow so many people just slump forward and "Alterra bad!" Why? Because a video game character said so? When the game itself presents absolutely no reason to distrust Alterra and even reveals the same character you were rooting for is actually the guilty party?

Alterra had every right to research Kharaa, so that humanity could learn more about the most deadly threat to their entire existence.

You know what I think is worse than scientists putting people at risk to do research? People like you and Sam willing to murder someone just because you "feel" like it.

@Aellen

We see in BZ an incredibly diverse ecosystem populating Sector Zero. There is no way this ecosystem arose in the mere TWO years since the planetary “cure” of Kharaa by the Sea Emperor’s kids.

So we are left with the following facts in BZ:
There is a mature, diverse ecosystem in Sector Zero
There is no feasible source of Enzyme 42 in Sector Zero (other post).

The developers could have put a (now inert) Alien Vent somewhere in BZ and given us the explanation that “very determined Peepers from the Crater traveled here” and that’s why the life in Sector Zero survived, but they didn’t.

Step 1 of fixing bad writing: is you remove the bad writing and replace it with better writing. You don't continue to try to fix the bad writing by keeping it. No, there is no mature, diverse ecosystem in Sector Zero. Subnautica states everything outside the Crater is an ecological deadzone. No, this is poor writing. This is the writers they hired for Below Zero probably not even having read Subnautica, they broke the timeline and canon series of events. Mercury II logs even show up to 30 to 100 years ago there was still life in Sector Zero, which is impossible.

Because Ryley showed up to cure the Kharaa 10-12 years ago. It's bad writing, and you're trying to make sense of it and explain it. Why? If you insist on having this debate so be it.

You openly admit there are very simple and easy ways the devs could have attempt to make things make sense. They did not. But you are. You are going out of your way to try to make this work. You are more qualified to write for Subnautica than anyone they hired for Below Zero.

But even if the devs put a Vent in Sector Zero, in game why would the Architects do that? There'd be no life for them to keep alive. And the distance traveled in a vent the Peepers might come out the other side dead, in an ecological dead zone. They have protals in Sector Zero which shows they have been there. So the fact they've been there but didn't make vents, makes sense. You're trying to have the Architects act out of character in an attempt to explain the garbage writing in Below Zero.

So how do we resolve these two seemingly incongruent plot points without lessening the threat of the Kharaa and contradicting the first game?

Here’s my take: 1) the Kharaa is too good a killer, so much so that it causes its own demise, and 2) the mass extinctions in Sector Zero provided an opportunity for rapid species diversification. Hear me out. While this explanation remains feasible, I think Maida's survival is, too. Her survival is tied to the viability of Sector Zero as a whole, after all.

If Kharaa can wipe itself out than how is it a universal killer? If Maida can survive so easily why can't Ryley or Bart Torgul or the Mercury II crew? Why can't the Architects survive Kharaa? Why is it so hard for you to see how badly UWE wrote Maida? There is.....no concieveable explanation you can come up with and no that isn't a challenge to motivate you to try that's letting you know your attempts have already been made. It's like thinking you can beat Mike Tyson. Ok. You can try but ok.

Your own words is her survival is died to Sector Zero's viability. And Sector Zero is an ecological dead zone until Ryley releases Sea Baby leviathan juice. That happens 10 years after Maida supposed made it to Sector Zero. So keep pulling up magical possibilities I'll calmly keep rationally telling you why you can't write them out of a corner. The process of extinction and "rapid species diversification" takes longer than two years. Get real........do you know how long it takes species to evolve? Two years? W h a t?

A thousand years ago, the Kharaa causes nearly all macroscopic animal life on 4546B to become extinct. I say “macroscopic” because in the original Subnautica, there’s enough microscopic life in the “Ecological Dead Zone” to sustain the massive Ghost Leviathans there, despite being adjacent to the Kharaa-ridden Crater. And I say “animal” because from everything we observe in the original, there’s no indication that the Kharaa is a plant pathogen. You could argue that the absence of plants in the Dead Zone proves that Kharaa is lethal to them also, but its much more likely that plants flourish in the Crater because its much nearer to the light of the surface than the literal bottom of the void.

So across 4546B, Kharaa systematically infects and kills nearly every species outside the Crater. What happens when there are no more animal species to infect? We see this phenomenon here on Earth, too—once the Kharaa has exhausted its supply of living hosts, it must die. There’s nothing else to sustain it. The Kharaa causes mass extinction, and thus nearly causes itself to become extinct.

We run a risk comparing what we know in the game to real world science, when the game itself veers away from real world science and into video game scifi territory. It makes it hard to cherry pick when we step out of fantasy to make sense and when we step into fantasy to make sense. All that does is create a system for cheating criticism, as no matter what how badly you write or what plotholes you make, you can choose from a combination of reality and fantasy to custom tailor your excuse. If Kharaa kills everything on a planet and then dies, leaving said planet "clean" Then why haven't the Architects utulized this behavior? Why don't they just return to a planet clean of Kharaa and be safe?

Because if it was that easy there'd be no conflict in either game. If we just had to isolate Kharaa and let it die out, how does it get to universal threat level? Does the concept of a bacteria that is a threat to all of existence seem too outlandish to even understand? It is for me. But I assume if something is a threat to the entire universe, it's not so easily dealt with by one person's imagination in a few days time of discussion.

Because if so, then we have to admit the Architect, Alterra, and everyone else are idiots. It's far more likely and plausable the Bacterium becomes dormant or inert, since we have evidence of that behavior already as well. If we're going to look towards reality, then let's look in the right directions that make more sense.

Plus, please don't forget about the Frozen Leviathan. It somehow has living samples of Kharaa on and in its body, despite it, the Kharaa's host, being dead/frozen. So the game's in story and what the devs intend is that Kharaa does not need a living host to survive. This is not mine or your speculation. This is fact established by the game.

Nearly, of course, because in the Crater, the Sea Emperor is keeping the ecosystem alive. In providing Enzyme 42 life support to the creatures there, the Emperor is also providing life support to the Kharaa. Thus, when Ryley arrives after a thousand years, he has very unluckily landed in the only part of the planet with 1) a surviving, matured, and diverse ecosystem and 2) the Kharaa.

This is rubbish, absurdity. So the Crater is the ONLY part of the planet with Kharaa........so why isn't life returning to the rest of the planet? Did you actually think any of this through? Ok let's pretend you are right (lol?) Sector Zero is wiped out of life, but somehow Kharaa is also gone from Sector Zero.

How is new life supposed to get to Sector Zero to start populating it? I'm sure you've got some fantastical reasoning ready to share with me and I'm willing to hear it.

But we learned in BZ that there’s another ecosystem in Sector Zero! Enter: rapid speciation.

I think it's just bad writing.

Again, we return to a thousand years ago, when Al-An’s mistake damned the planet. There’s no Enzyme life support in this arctic. Thus, nearly all animal species in Sector Zero must have been wiped out when the Kharaa traveled there (maybe even brought by Al-An when he sought refuge). They have no cure.

Yet in the Mercury II PDA Logs, they describe not only seeing HEALTHY wildlife, but they mention SOME of the wildlife is "infected" Mercury II logs established 30 to up to 100 years ago, there was an existing ecosystem in Sector Zero of both healthy and kharaa infected specimens. I think both of us can agree, based on our own beliefs, that this is not POSSIBLE. This is bad writing, this is UWE hiring writers to write for them that didn't even understand the story they were ADDING to.

It's like they were just told to "write about this" and weren't made to go back and play or read Subnautica's story. It's called a plothole, and sometimes we can fix and fill plotholes if we are creative enough. But when you write so badly even the most creative artistic minds alive today can't fix it......it's time to stop and admit just how bad it is.

[dragonbornzyra]

The fish die, the leviathans die (or are trapped in ice). However, at least one species does NOT die. Why? There are several explanations us boring Earth ecologists could use. Maybe it lacks a viable infection route for the bacterium to enter its body. Maybe it doesn’t produce a key element that the Kharaa needs to survive within its host. Maybe it has its own digestive enzyme that has a similar action mechanism to Enzyme 42. Maybe the Kharaa, while altering the DNA of its host during its advanced infection stage, ended up (in one of those ironic genetic mishaps observed through natural history) causing a mutation that made its host unviable. All possible, especially on a planet that already has evolved a leviathan-class species capable of resisting the Kharaa's infection.

So how do you know about this magical species but Architects never discovered it? Don't you think the Architects would have experimented and researched that species? Don't you think experimenting on Sea Dragon eggs was a dangerous, last ditch attempt of desperation? Do you A: Think the Architects are stupid and somehow failed to discover this species or do you B : Think that the Architects would have discovered this species and if so, why didn't they do anything about it? What species are you even talking about?

If we are speculating this species exists, we have to speculate why no one knew about it. Can you provide reasonable explanations as to why?

Whatever the cause, this lucky animal species does NOT die from the Kharaa. They’re our single common ancestral species (SCAS).

Now the Kharaa have thoroughly infected the waters of Sector Zero. All of the animal life (except our SCAS) eventually succumbs to infection during the planet-wide extinction event. So now in Sector Zero, we have:
Residual Kharaa literally everywhere throughout the water and decaying animal life
A vibrant, nutrient-rich environment supported by the ample light, warm thermal vents, and nutrients released by the decaying animals… in other words, the plants are thriving
Our SCAS, the species that does not die from Kharaa infection

You bring up "residual kharaa" in the water, but earlier weren't you talking about how the Kharaa dies out without a host? How would there be residual Kharaa just left over? Unless you concede one of your points from earlier.

The importance of such a significant species you are describing simply would not have went unnoticed by the Architects.

Our SCAS has an abundance of resources and food supplies available. There’s no pressure from predation now that everything else that could eat it is dead. The only (very strong) selective pressure is from the Kharaa left in the water, which would swiftly kill any offspring that lacked the Kharaa-resistance genes. These are the perfect conditions for rapid speciation.

As hundreds of years go by, our SCAS diverges into the wide-open ecological niches left in Sector Zero by the Kharaa. Initially, offspring that lacked the Kharaa-resistance genes would die off quickly when the bacteria infected them. But as the years go by, how long can the Kharaa remain in Sector Zero without any viable hosts? Hundreds of years pass with an explosion of new biodiversity in Sector Zero, all tracing their lineages back to the single common ancestral species that conferred resistance. And the Kharaa is nowhere to be found. Eradicated from the water, its only remnants are frozen in ice with the infected leviathan.

So you took the most deadly bacteria in the Universe that the most advanced race of Alien life cannot defeat, and you wrote up a way for it magically be defeated, naturally, on its own, through no outside intervention. That's pretty bleak, concerning Subnautica's lore in its entirety. Sure Aellen. Great idea. I'm sure everyone would prefer that over what we got.

Knowing in both games as well all we had to do was nothing, literally nothing, and Kharaa would just die out on its own. I wanna play that game. I hope Subnautica 3 just has us sitting on top of our life pod eating Nutrient Blocks and sipping pee pee water for seven in game days, then our PDA says "Okay, Kharaa bacterium is dead, you can go home now"

You took the primary leading force of conflict in the story, the MAIN DRIVING antagonist, and reduced it to absolutely zero significance. I guess the Fellowship of the Rings could have beaten Sauron if they just isolated Mordor and left them alone right? No need to actually confront or deal with our problems, let's just write up some magical reasoning that problems resolve themselves.

Sir, what kind of game is even left? What kind of game are you even describing?

If letting the Kharaa kill everything including itself was the solution, why didn’t the Architects just allow that? There are a few voice lines in the game files about the large number of species that the Architects drew upon genetically to synthesize their bodies, which would have enabled them to carry the Kharaa to several disparate planets. If they used this tactic, they would have razed many planetary ecosystems and still have been susceptible to infection themselves.

This doesn't even make sense. What are you even trying to say? What does the Architects having various species dna spliced into their bodies have to do with stopping them letting Kharaa wipe it out on a planet, then return to the planet and be safe? What does their bodies have to do with anything? Are their bodies infected? Okay let Kharaa kill itself on a planet, then they make a new body for themselves, clear of Kharaa, and go to the clean planet. Problem solved.

You tried to offer an explanation for why a very simple and basic logical solution wasn't used, and you came up with an obtuse, convoluted reasoning that doesn't make sense. Occam's Razor sir......

Back to why I wrote this out in the first place. To sum up my thesis: For the diverse life we observe in Sector Zero to exist at the time of BZ when this region is devoid of any source of Enzyme 42, the Kharaa must have caused a mass extinction event, followed by the rapid speciation of a single common ancestral species resistant to the Kharaa. As the resistant species diverged into the biodiversity exhibited in BZ, all of the active Kharaa must have died in Sector Zero over the thousand-year period.

So, rather than just chalk it up to bad writing, you attempt to make sense of it all by writing yourself into new and even more fascinating corners? Like, if you're writing all of this, in the vein of "it could have been/should have been" like this, then somebody give Aellen a box of cudlefish eggs, a nobel prize, and a pat on the back. Because every day of the week I'll take the more thought out version you set forth. Because if we retcon Below Zero completely to allow for your ideas (and not assume BZ is canon)

Then we get a better product, a better story. My responses were under the impression you were trying to make sense of Below Zero's story, trying to explain and preserve it with your additions. But if your ideas are meant to replace and overshadow parts of Below Zero then I can see at least a few of your ideas doing remarkably well.

Dirak2012 eredeti hozzászólása:

I just call it... bad writing.

Sweet and simple.

[Schrödinger's psycho]

Or it could've been like that: kharaa (and enzyme42) can't reach sector Zero because of the ocean currents and the 'ecological dead zone' serving as a buffer - so the Sector Zero stays clean, Mercury II just gets blown up by BigGun(tm), Maida is dead as she should have been all along, there is no Frozen Leviathan but one more Alterra lab with samples and maybe some infected 'lab rats'.

That way you can make the Alterra seem evil - for introducing risk of kharaa escaping to the unprepared (no enzyme can reach here, remember?) environment.

[Drizzt]

surely there should be a minimum character limit for posts here? ;-)

[Schrödinger's psycho]

I'm just going to leave this here, basically tl;dr
https://youtu.be/uGC2HxpjwSY

[Drizzt]

Schrödinger's psycho eredeti hozzászólása:

I'm just going to leave this here, basically tl;dr
https://youtu.be/uGC2HxpjwSY

saved to my watch later list - first i promised the OP that i would read at least all of their initial posts and add my take - since i am a fellow essay writer and respect the art form :-)

but currently am distracted by the Planet Crafter demo - apart from the floating buildings it's looking good so far

coincidentally it would probably benefit from Subnautica's strut spawning technique
(EDIT - just realized it has foundation blocks - my bad lol)

anyway - i shall return with my own 28 page essay in the near future

bye for now :-)

[Zemecon]

Obviously UWE didn't do a good enough job at villainizing Alterra if you love it so much. You do know that Charlie Cleveland (a.k.a. "Flayra") based a lot of his vision for Subnautica on James Cameron's first Avatar film, right? Big corporations like Alterra are supposed to be evil in the lore of Subnautica and I am sorry to have to tell you that most Progressives aren't all that fond of large-scale capitalism. That's why I - as a player who is trying to get a grasp of what UWE was aiming for with these games - went to the conclusion that Alterra must be up to something sinister with their acquisition and use of the Kharaa virus. Maybe you think Sam and Robin are the real villains in all of this. Fair enough, but shouldn't you instead be criticizing how UWE designed the concept of Alterra rather than hating those who are trying to go with that intended vision?

So, alright then, maybe Alterra might have had benign intentions for the virus. That doesn't escape the fact that if they'd really cared about the planet and its ecosystem then they should've left everything alone. Below Zero takes place years after the first game did. That is enough time to notice that things were a lot better when Alterra tried to acquire the virus than they were when Alterra first heard word of what was going on there.

Plus, Alterra didn't get their viral samples from living fauna. They got it from a dead leviathan. So where do you get this idea that it was good for them to obtain the virus in the first place and risk re-releasing it when they could've just left it alone and everything would've been fine? Would you say the benefit of finding a vaccine for a virus that was already dead was greater than the risk of re-contaminating an entire planet all over again?

As for Sam and Robin, I think you will find their characters to be a good exercise in moral relativity. They were only human. Just like the folks in Alterra were. Their intentions - whether good or bad - will always be flawed in some way. As players who are looking at these characters from an outside perspective, I think it would be good to remember that no one's perfect.

Now I am curious, since you seem to love big corporations so much: What do you think of Umbrella Corp in the Resident Evil franchise? Do you think they were good or bad?

[Dirak2012]

Nilandros eredeti hozzászólása:

Obviously UWE didn't do a good enough job at villainizing Alterra if you love it so much. You do know that Charlie Cleveland (a.k.a. "Flayra") based a lot of his vision for Subnautica on James Cameron's first Avatar film, right? Big corporations like Alterra are supposed to be evil in the lore of Subnautica and I am sorry to have to tell you that most Progressives aren't all that fond of large-scale capitalism. That's why I - as a player who is trying to get a grasp of what UWE was aiming for with these games - went to the conclusion that Alterra must be up to something sinister with their acquisition and use of the Kharaa virus. Maybe you think Sam and Robin are the real villains in all of this. Fair enough, but shouldn't you instead be criticizing how UWE designed the concept of Alterra rather than hating those who are trying to go with that intended vision?

So, alright then, maybe Alterra might have had benign intentions for the virus. That doesn't escape the fact that if they'd really cared about the planet and its ecosystem then they should've left everything alone. Below Zero takes place years after the first game did. That is enough time to notice that things were a lot better when Alterra tried to acquire the virus than they were when Alterra first heard word of what was going on there.

Plus, Alterra didn't get their viral samples from living fauna. They got it from a dead leviathan. So where do you get this idea that it was good for them to obtain the virus in the first place and risk re-releasing it when they could've just left it alone and everything would've been fine? Would you say the benefit of finding a vaccine for a virus that was already dead was greater than the risk of re-contaminating an entire planet all over again?

As for Sam and Robin, I think you will find their characters to be a good exercise in moral relativity. They were only human. Just like the folks in Alterra were. Their intentions - whether good or bad - will always be flawed in some way. As players who are looking at these characters from an outside perspective, I think it would be good to remember that no one's perfect.

Now I am curious, since you seem to love big corporations so much: What do you think of Umbrella Corp in the Resident Evil franchise? Do you think they were good or bad?

Alterra is just too comically inept to be an "evil corporation", reading the logs you will see just an bunch of paper pushers, and bumbling idiots.

[Zemecon]

You may be right. It is pretty difficult to hate fools for anything other than their foolishness.

[aellen]

I’m going to reply again @dragonbornzyra to clarify a few points. My writing style is cumulative, so it may be clearer at the end of my post. I’d completely forgotten to mention how the Mercury II fits in, so I’m discussing that here. And to be explicitly clear, rather than alter the writing of the two games, I’m thinking through theory that would allow the two to work plot-wise.

dragonbornzyra eredeti hozzászólása:

Step 1 of fixing bad writing: is you remove the bad writing and replace it with better writing. You don't continue to try to fix the bad writing by keeping it. No, there is no mature, diverse ecosystem in Sector Zero. Subnautica states everything outside the Crater is an ecological deadzone. No, this is poor writing. This is the writers they hired for Below Zero probably not even having read Subnautica, they broke the timeline and canon series of events. Mercury II logs even show up to 30 to 100 years ago there was still life in Sector Zero, which is impossible. Because Ryley showed up to cure the Kharaa 10-12 years ago. It's bad writing, and you're trying to make sense of it and explain it.

So, my understanding of the 4546B timeline is as follows prior to BZ.

• >1000 years ago, the Kharaa was being studied in the Architect DRF and was not released into the ecosystems of 4546B.
  
• ~1000 years ago, Al-An’s mistake releases Kharaa, causing the planetwide infection and mass extinction events.
  
• ~30-100 years ago, the Mercury II makes their observations of life in Sector Zero
  
• ~10 years ago, the Degasi crashes and Maida travels to Sector Zero.
  
• ~2 years prior to BZ, Ryley releases the Sea Emperor’s children, causing Kharaa to be eliminated from the Crater.

Yes, in the original Subnautica, we are told that outside the Crater is an Ecological Dead Zone. However, within that same game, we observe evidence to the contrary: we have insight on the lifecycles and feeding habits of Ghost Leviathans, so we know at the very least that the region around the Crater is teeming with enough microscopic life to keep the three massive void Leviathans alive. Thus, the original Subnautica’s “ecological dead zone” is a loose designation.

Furthermore, there’s no reason that Ryley’s personal PDA would have the ability to perform long-range scans that reach the other side of the planet where Sector Zero resides. We can infer that the PDA finds no significant lifeforms beyond the Crater and extrapolates this to the rest of the planet. I don’t see an issue here, since the PDA’s directive was just keeping Ryley alive and not doing planet-scale ecological research. So, again, the "ecological dead zone" is shown to be not so in the original Subnautica.

dragonbornzyra eredeti hozzászólása:

Your own words is her survival is died to Sector Zero's viability. And Sector Zero is an ecological dead zone until Ryley releases Sea Baby leviathan juice. That happens 10 years after Maida supposed made it to Sector Zero. So keep pulling up magical possibilities I'll calmly keep rationally telling you why you can't write them out of a corner. The process of extinction and "rapid species diversification" takes longer than two years. Get real........do you know how long it takes species to evolve? Two years? W h a t?

aellen eredeti hozzászólása:

We see in BZ an incredibly diverse ecosystem populating Sector Zero. There is no way this ecosystem arose in the mere TWO years since the planetary “cure” of Kharaa by the Sea Emperor’s kids.

I do specifically say that the foundation of my reasoning is that two years is an insufficient time period. We know from the Mercury II that there was life in Sector Zero prior to when Ryley cured the planet, which lends support to the mass extinction-rapid speciation (over one thousand years, not two) theory.

dragonbornzyra eredeti hozzászólása:

Then why haven't the Architects utulized this behavior? Why don't they just return to a planet clean of Kharaa and be safe? Because if it was that easy there'd be no conflict in either game. If we just had to isolate Kharaa and let it die out, how does it get to universal threat level?

The cost! My friend, the cost of a pathogen killing all its hosts upon a planet’s surface is the loss of millennia, no, eons of ecological and evolutionary history! Wiped out without hope of recovery! We know from the voice files between Robin and Al-An of one Architect festival among their scientists that revolves around the migration of a certain species on their homeworld (I don’t recall its name). But this gives us a glimpse of how the Architects interact with ecological systems—they research, they interact, they celebrate them, they raise them as pets, just as we do.

A simple solution? If all animal life on Earth was wiped out with no hope of recovery, can you even fathom the immense loss of information? All of those species that had adapted for thousands upon thousands of years gone without a trace? And that’s just one planet! The Architects were possible vectors of the Kharaa on to all the planets they sourced genetic material from. Can you really not imagine the pressure of those quadrillion deaths, all of those unique planetary ecological histories spanning eons being wiped out? Do you think that this alien, digital-organic race would simply accept this unparalleled level of destruction?

dragonbornzyra eredeti hozzászólása:

So you took the most deadly bacteria in the Universe that the most advanced race of Alien life cannot defeat, and you wrote up a way for it magically be defeated, naturally, on its own, through no outside intervention. That's pretty bleak, concerning Subnautica's lore in its entirety. Sure Aellen. Great idea. I'm sure everyone would prefer that over what we got.

Knowing in both games as well all we had to do was nothing, literally nothing, and Kharaa would just die out on its own. I wanna play that game. I hope Subnautica 3 just has us sitting on top of our life pod eating Nutrient Blocks and sipping pee pee water for seven in game days, then our PDA says "Okay, Kharaa bacterium is dead, you can go home now"
You took the primary leading force of conflict in the story, the MAIN DRIVING antagonist, and reduced it to absolutely zero significance. I guess the Fellowship of the Rings could have beaten Sauron if they just isolated Mordor and left them alone right? No need to actually confront or deal with our problems, let's just write up some magical reasoning that problems resolve themselves.

Perhaps it's because biology is my field that I can simply not comprehend this stance. Magically defeated? It’s the universal genocide of all of the planetary ecosystems the Architects have genetic relationships with. This is an immense pressure, marked in the blood of eons of evolutionary history. If the Architects did not research a cure, ALL LIFE on those planets WOULD END.

dragonbornzyra eredeti hozzászólása:

Are their bodies infected? Okay let Kharaa kill itself on a planet, then they make a new body for themselves, clear of Kharaa, and go to the clean planet. Problem solved.

Oh, certainly, after the Kharaa had razed every animal lifeform off a planet and wiped its genetic record clean, could the Architects return? Yes. But they would bear the weight of an entire world-history erased by their vector spread of Kharaa. And if the Architects were originally driven to seek out new planets for their involved ecological research and genetic sampling (which we get a glimpse of through the game files from Al-An) returning to such a planet would be like inhabiting a graveyard.

You do bring up a necessary point here. Neither games have expounded on the half-life of the Kharaa bacterium without a host. After destroying a planet, we have no concept of how long the Kharaa would survive without new hosts. But before you focus on that and ask if I’m contradicting an earlier point, let me finish.

dragonbornzyra eredeti hozzászólása:

You bring up "residual kharaa" in the water, but earlier weren't you talking about how the Kharaa dies out without a host? How would there be residual Kharaa just left over? Unless you concede one of your points from earlier.

Eventually, most any pathogen will perish without a host. I was speaking of residual Kharaa in that context because we know from the original game that Kharaa can dwell in the water for at least limited time periods….recall the initial PDA scans telling of “statistically significant levels of bacteria in the water”. However, I did forget to mention how Mercury II’s observations of infected organisms factors into the mass extinction-mass speciation theory.

dragonbornzyra eredeti hozzászólása:

Yet in the Mercury II PDA Logs, they describe not only seeing HEALTHY wildlife, but they mention SOME of the wildlife is "infected" Mercury II logs established 30 to up to 100 years ago, there was an existing ecosystem in Sector Zero of both healthy and kharaa infected specimens.

aellen eredeti hozzászólása:

As hundreds of years go by, our SCAS diverges into the wide-open ecological niches left in Sector Zero by the Kharaa. Initially, offspring that lacked the Kharaa-resistance genes would die off quickly when the bacteria infected them. But as the years go by, how long can the Kharaa remain in Sector Zero without any viable hosts? Hundreds of years pass with an explosion of new biodiversity in Sector Zero, all tracing their lineages back to the single common ancestral species that conferred resistance. And the Kharaa is nowhere to be found. Eradicated from the water, its only remnants are frozen in ice with the infected leviathan.

This was my oversight, but the overall mechanism remains unchanged. From the single common ancestral species, we have mass speciation that strongly selects for the Kharaa resistance genes. However, we must now assume that the Kharaa can remain active in the water for longer than anticipated. Because there are Earth bacteria capable of entering stasis in cold conditions, this isn’t unreasonable. As hundreds of years go by, we see a vast array of new (and “old” by convergent evolution) species emerge in Sector Zero. However, with the Kharaa population declining with a lack of hosts, its selective evolutionary pressure begins to abate. Therefore, new generations of individuals within species are born WITHOUT the resistance genes, and are susceptible to infection. The Kharaa, which must still dwell in the water (whether in stasis, hibernation, or just an ungodly alien bacterial half-life), then infects these individuals. However, it is unable to wipe out the entire region because most of the lifeforms possess resistance. The Kharaa-infected are exceptions, not the rule in Sector Zero. When the Mercury II arrives, they are able to observe both healthy and infected individuals.

Now onto the next point, the existence of a single common ancestral species (SCAS).

dragonbornzyra eredeti hozzászólása:

So how do you know about this magical species but Architects never discovered it? Don't you think the Architects would have experimented and researched that species? Don't you think experimenting on Sea Dragon eggs was a dangerous, last ditch attempt of desperation? Do you A: Think the Architects are stupid and somehow failed to discover this species or do you B : Think that the Architects would have discovered this species and if so, why didn't they do anything about it? What species are you even talking about?
… The importance of such a significant species you are describing simply would not have went unnoticed by the Architects….
If we are speculating this species exists, we have to speculate why no one knew about it. Can you provide reasonable explanations as to why?

I will attempt to do so now. We don’t know how the Architects came to know of Enzyme 42 and its anti-Kharaa properties. Perhaps they were scanning for certain structures and came across it released in the waters of 4546B. I won’t speculate on that. My point with the SCAS is that it only “arises” AFTER Kharaa is released planet-wide. Yes, the Architects were researching 4546B’s ecosystems in attempt to procure Enzyme 42. However, does that necessitate they survey and test every single living organism upon its surface?

I’m not trying to belittle the Architects at all. We see that they did in fact bring in organisms into the DRF and test their survivability to the Kharaa. Perhaps they conducted the same experiments in Sector Zero (prior to the Kharaa outbreak, with the original wildlife) where Al-An’s sanctuary is. Let’s say for argument’s sake that the Architects, though under immense pressure with the Enzyme 42 cure at their fingertips, decided to continue testing every single organismal type on the surface of 4546B. Some billion, likely. I did include the option for the SCAS to emerge AFTER/DURING the planetary Kharaa outbreak.

aellen eredeti hozzászólása:

Maybe the Kharaa, while altering the DNA of its host during its advanced infection stage, ended up (in one of those ironic genetic mishaps observed through natural history) causing a mutation that made its host unviable.

With this, the mass extinction-mass speciation theory has just enough lore support to remain a possible explanation. At the very least, there is nothing that actively denies this theory such that the two games are incongruent plot-wise… and don’t you dare repeat the “ecological dead zone” @dragonbornzyra, I’m looking at you, see my first paragraph.

Now, I should return to Maida. Since the Mercury II crew observed infected individuals, I must revise my previous theory that there was no Kharaa present at the time. Thus, Maida would have entered a Sector Zero with the pathogen dwindling in number but active nonetheless.

The only remaining way I can see the developers keeping her alive would be exposition on the half-life of Enzyme 42. We know she consumes a Reaper Leviathan, which likely contained Enzyme 42 from predation because they do not become infected with the Kharaa.

How did the Reaper Leviathan remain unaffected by the Kharaa despite only having access to the weakened Enzyme 42? Here we can apply the ecological concept of biomagnification, “the process by which a compound increases its concentration in the tissues of organisms as it travels up the food chain” (Merriam Webster’s definition). The Reaper Leviathan is an apex predator and thus likely contains the highest concentrations of weakened Enzyme 42 in the entire Crater within its body. And this is what Maida consumes.

If this enzyme has a half-life longer than the lifetime of a human being, its possible that the alien enzyme she ingested remained in her body, keeping her alive, just as it did for the Reaper Leviathans. Humans may not have a mechanism to break down and pass on such a complex structure.

My point in discussing this is not to revise the plot, but to theorize about plot-acceptable ways this gap (Maida’s survival) may be explained. I believe everything I’ve discussed here, while theoretical, is not outright DENIED by the current BZ plotline.

dragonbornzyra eredeti hozzászólása:

But if your ideas are meant to replace and overshadow parts of Below Zero then I can see at least a few of your ideas doing remarkably well.

That is my objective in my other thread; I do appreciate this message. Admittedly, it seems I’ve spent too much time thinking about this. Too much love for this series.

[Dirak2012]

aellen eredeti hozzászólása:

Admittedly, it seems I’ve spent too much time thinking about this. Too much love for this series.

Too much time trying to justify a bad writer/story.

[AndyH]

Probably a lot of truth in that, Dirak. But stimulating thought, creativity and healthy discussion is not a bad thing. And can show how inexcusable such writing can be.

I know I for one am tired of big wigs saying "Welp, we blew $18 million on CGI cutscenes. What can we con the writers into doing for $1.98?"

[Jon the VGNerd]

TL;DR

[dragonbornzyra]

Schrödinger's psycho eredeti hozzászólása:

Or it could've been like that: kharaa (and enzyme42) can't reach sector Zero because of the ocean currents and the 'ecological dead zone' serving as a buffer - so the Sector Zero stays clean, Mercury II just gets blown up by BigGun(tm), Maida is dead as she should have been all along, there is no Frozen Leviathan but one more Alterra lab with samples and maybe some infected 'lab rats'.

That way you can make the Alterra seem evil - for introducing risk of kharaa escaping to the unprepared (no enzyme can reach here, remember?) environment.

I will take both your's and Aellen's ideas over what we got. Both of your ideas fit so much better into the existing framework Subnautica laid out, and I would enjoy either of them more.

Drizzt eredeti hozzászólása:

Schrödinger's psycho eredeti hozzászólása:

I'm just going to leave this here, basically tl;dr
https://youtu.be/uGC2HxpjwSY

saved to my watch later list - first i promised the OP that i would read at least all of their initial posts and add my take - since i am a fellow essay writer and respect the art form :-)

but currently am distracted by the Planet Crafter demo - apart from the floating buildings it's looking good so far

coincidentally it would probably benefit from Subnautica's strut spawning technique
(EDIT - just realized it has foundation blocks - my bad lol)

anyway - i shall return with my own 28 page essay in the near future

bye for now :-)

Can't rush a good meal. Take your time and thanks for keeping in touch.

Nilandros eredeti hozzászólása:

Obviously UWE didn't do a good enough job at villainizing Alterra if you love it so much. You do know that Charlie Cleveland (a.k.a. "Flayra") based a lot of his vision for Subnautica on James Cameron's first Avatar film, right? Big corporations like Alterra are supposed to be evil in the lore of Subnautica and I am sorry to have to tell you that most Progressives aren't all that fond of large-scale capitalism. That's why I - as a player who is trying to get a grasp of what UWE was aiming for with these games - went to the conclusion that Alterra must be up to something sinister with their acquisition and use of the Kharaa virus. Maybe you think Sam and Robin are the real villains in all of this. Fair enough, but shouldn't you instead be criticizing how UWE designed the concept of Alterra rather than hating those who are trying to go with that intended vision?

I understand their intentions, but the writers they hired didn't end up pulling it off. I understand I'm supposed to sympathize with Robin and Sam, and I could. But because of how they are written, and what happens, I can't.

I understand that Alterra is supposed to be the big bad, and I do understand the big powerful company gets too big one day and is so large it now has spots it can't "see" and we get "over sight" and errors and mistakes and flaws happens and then we end up with bad things on purpose.

But the way the game plays out, from an objective stand point and a neutral party, we have Robin and Sam's suspicions at the start of Alterra, and that has us (or at least me) on edge the rest of the game vigilant for clues and evidence to prove it's Alterra. And we never get it. If anything, the game events, dialogue, and canon lore exonerates Alterra.

So the writers kind of let UWE down on that one, since I agree it seems we're "supposed" to sympathize with a "this" group, but the writing ends up making the antagonists seem far more relatable (For one thing: not killing people. Hard to sympathethize when your actions rip apart a family and in the end don't even achieve your desired results)

So I wouldn't blame UWE for this so much as the writers. Because I feel like the story they wanted to tell could be told. I just didn't think the state it was in was healthy for it to ship. And well that's the way it shipped.

So, alright then, maybe Alterra might have had benign intentions for the virus. That doesn't escape the fact that if they'd really cared about the planet and its ecosystem then they should've left everything alone. Below Zero takes place years after the first game did. That is enough time to notice that things were a lot better when Alterra tried to acquire the virus than they were when Alterra first heard word of what was going on there.

Scientists have a right to study things. In some cases they have a duty to. do so We are in feelings territory. They cared about 4546B's because of its value as a safe environment to contain and study the Kharaa due to Enzyme 42's presence. They study the virus to learn more about it, so they don't end up like the architects. When you weigh the survival of your entire species over basic moral dilemmas that's how extinction because less risk and threat and more possibility.

It's not a scientists job to do what they think it's right. It's their job to learn about the thing. And I think the risk of learning about this thing that is the single most dangerous threat to life in the universe out weighs ....... everything else. Because how selfish it is it? To put the entirety of existance in all of the universe at risk, because you don't think we should study the very same thing that's put it at risk. Is that fair? Why is it Robin gets to decide wether Parvan lives or dies? Gets to decide wether Alterra gets to research Kharaa or not?

Because the game plays out and Robin discovers Alterra PDA logs that basically say they aren't even sure if Sam did it on purpose or as they say "negligence" they don't even accuse Sam of being the one to do it on purpose. In the game Alterra is even ignorant and unaware of the Sam's true motives and the extent she played in Parvan and her own death.

So why does Sam get away with killing herself and someone else and doing all these morally reprehensible things and is seen as a hero for justice when she was wrong all along? And everything she went through and did, she had the "cure" and instead of using it herself she hid it in a cave (this is more along the lines of having a mcguffin thing to find in game, but it could have been written better into the story)

Plus, Alterra didn't get their viral samples from living fauna. They got it from a dead leviathan. So where do you get this idea that it was good for them to obtain the virus in the first place and risk re-releasing it when they could've just left it alone and everything would've been fine? Would you say the benefit of finding a vaccine for a virus that was already dead was greater than the risk of re-contaminating an entire planet all over again?

It seems you are unaware that Kharaa's infection is NOT isolated to 4546B. If you read all the PDA logs and found everything, you will read and learn countless planets that belong to the Architects have been infected and wiped out. The Kharaa has already spread out into the universe. It's already there. And Enzyme 42 has far been the ONLY thing found to stop it. And it's ONLY found on 4546B.

So you wanna ignore this planet, which contains the ONLY environment in the entire universe that is safe to study the bacteria, and just turn a blind eye to every other corner of the universe where all life, sentient or not, is being obliterated by the Kharaa? How's that work for humanity? How do we stop the Kharaa that's everywhere else? Did you even think about that? Did you even know about that?

As for Sam and Robin, I think you will find their characters to be a good exercise in moral relativity. They were only human. Just like the folks in Alterra were. Their intentions - whether good or bad - will always be flawed in some way. As players who are looking at these characters from an outside perspective, I think it would be good to remember that no one's perfect.

There's no excuse or justifications for their actions and I'm not going to root for or sympathize with the bad guys, those do that do evil, or morally bankrupt vile people that do terrible and awful things.

Now I am curious, since you seem to love big corporations so much: What do you think of Umbrella Corp in the Resident Evil franchise? Do you think they were good or bad?

They did bad tings that you can point to.

Point to the bad things Alterra did that compare to Umbrella's actions.

Name some Alterra employees that murdered people.

Name which strain of the mutated Kharaa they used to created bioweapons with?

Let's compare the evil company no one in good faith can say isn't the evil company because that's how they are written and the actions in the game reflect that to a game where the evil company is evil only in 2 character's suspicions and have no crimes or body counts or acts of genocide to their name.

Next.

Dirak2012 eredeti hozzászólása:

Nilandros eredeti hozzászólása:

Obviously UWE didn't do a good enough job at villainizing Alterra if you love it so much. You do know that Charlie Cleveland (a.k.a. "Flayra") based a lot of his vision for Subnautica on James Cameron's first Avatar film, right? Big corporations like Alterra are supposed to be evil in the lore of Subnautica and I am sorry to have to tell you that most Progressives aren't all that fond of large-scale capitalism. That's why I - as a player who is trying to get a grasp of what UWE was aiming for with these games - went to the conclusion that Alterra must be up to something sinister with their acquisition and use of the Kharaa virus. Maybe you think Sam and Robin are the real villains in all of this. Fair enough, but shouldn't you instead be criticizing how UWE designed the concept of Alterra rather than hating those who are trying to go with that intended vision?

So, alright then, maybe Alterra might have had benign intentions for the virus. That doesn't escape the fact that if they'd really cared about the planet and its ecosystem then they should've left everything alone. Below Zero takes place years after the first game did. That is enough time to notice that things were a lot better when Alterra tried to acquire the virus than they were when Alterra first heard word of what was going on there.

Plus, Alterra didn't get their viral samples from living fauna. They got it from a dead leviathan. So where do you get this idea that it was good for them to obtain the virus in the first place and risk re-releasing it when they could've just left it alone and everything would've been fine? Would you say the benefit of finding a vaccine for a virus that was already dead was greater than the risk of re-contaminating an entire planet all over again?

As for Sam and Robin, I think you will find their characters to be a good exercise in moral relativity. They were only human. Just like the folks in Alterra were. Their intentions - whether good or bad - will always be flawed in some way. As players who are looking at these characters from an outside perspective, I think it would be good to remember that no one's perfect.

Now I am curious, since you seem to love big corporations so much: What do you think of Umbrella Corp in the Resident Evil franchise? Do you think they were good or bad?

Alterra is just too comically inept to be an "evil corporation", reading the logs you will see just an bunch of paper pushers, and bumbling idiots.

The Below Zero Sector Zero Alterra crew are like you said a buncha goofy bumbling push overs. If anything they are pityable and loveable, how you can look at Fred and go "Man that guy's just pure evil" is beyond me.

Like, they had a chance to make Alterra the perfect strawman to argue why capitalism is bad and evil, and yet they didn't! Alterra did nothing wrong! Lol and it's their story! They could have written Alterra and have them do the worst things! But that's not what we got.

aellen eredeti hozzászólása:

gnarly incredible post that I've snipped

I think we can both agree, Subnautica sure is an incredible game, ain't it? I love it so much. And it's nice to share that love with other's.