I have a theory about the ending of Subnautica... (SPOILER ALERT)

[contrail]

So, about a week ago, I was playing Subnautica when a thought popped into my head. At the time, I had realized something that seemed like no big deal: I had not repaired or rebuilt my radio. At this point, I was towards the end of the game, and was finishing up some farming in the lost river. I had a base in the inactive lava zone, and I was pretty much prepared to march down to the sea emperor and cure the virus, deactivate the gun, and fly home on my neptune rocket. But a few things followed that, and I could trace them all back to not repairing my radio. First of all, I never got the transmission from Alterra HQ to pick up the rocket plans. If you have played through Subnautica, you will know that once the Sunbeam gets shot down, you get a radio call from Alterra telling you to get the rocket plans. But thats the thing: I never repaired my radio. And since I never repaired my radio, I never sent out a distress call. This means that the radio calls to the Sunbeam never happened, which means it never triggered. Since the Sunbeam never came to 4546B, its still out there, waiting to be triggered.

So here is my theory: If you wait long enough, and don't use your radio until AFTER you have cured the virus, released the sea emperor babies, and deactivated the gun... can you call the Sunbeam to pick you up? Since it never triggered (and therefore did not explode), it seems viable to still be able to call the Sunbeam to come and get you. Since the gun is deactivated, and the virus is cured, there is nothing to shoot the Sunbeam down. If the Sunbeam cannot be destroyed, then it should be able to get to you. I also vaguely remember hearing about the dev's saying something about being able to escape the planet without using the rocket. Hope to hear some good feedback from people on this theory.

[The Big Brzezinski]

What's supposed to happen is the Sunbeam can't get through the debris field the Aurora left in orbit as it crashed (the escape rocket uses the Cyclops shield to get around the problem). Bugs usually cause the enforcement platform to active and fire anyway. Oh well.

Most likely epilogue? Riley got an agent, did a bunch of paid talk show interviews, ghost wrote a book of his experience, got his own brand of camping and outdoor sporting gear, paid off his debt to Alterra with plenty left over, and spent the rest of his life contentedly as a D-list celebrity. Probably did a reality series with Craig Mcgill at some point, too.

[JuvenileMacropus]

What I'd like to think is that Riley got promoted to the Alterra board of directors because of his discoveries and PDA scan data (if the inventor of the seamoth got to the board of directors, why not the guy who discovered an alien civilization?) and has paid off his debts from his vey high salary. He probably also wrote a book about his experiences too as the comment above mine said.

[MrPurple]

Well qmodmanager is broken right now but i actually made this months ago and once qmod works again you can find it on nexusmods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX3RRNEYSP4&t=38s

[Xautos]

Originally posted by contrail200:

So, about a week ago, I was playing Subnautica when a thought popped into my head. At the time, I had realized something that seemed like no big deal: I had not repaired or rebuilt my radio. At this point, I was towards the end of the game, and was finishing up some farming in the lost river. I had a base in the inactive lava zone, and I was pretty much prepared to march down to the sea emperor and cure the virus, deactivate the gun, and fly home on my neptune rocket. But a few things followed that, and I could trace them all back to not repairing my radio. First of all, I never got the transmission from Alterra HQ to pick up the rocket plans. If you have played through Subnautica, you will know that once the Sunbeam gets shot down, you get a radio call from Alterra telling you to get the rocket plans. But thats the thing: I never repaired my radio. And since I never repaired my radio, I never sent out a distress call. This means that the radio calls to the Sunbeam never happened, which means it never triggered. Since the Sunbeam never came to 4546B, its still out there, waiting to be triggered.

So here is my theory: If you wait long enough, and don't use your radio until AFTER you have cured the virus, released the sea emperor babies, and deactivated the gun... can you call the Sunbeam to pick you up? Since it never triggered (and therefore did not explode), it seems viable to still be able to call the Sunbeam to come and get you. Since the gun is deactivated, and the virus is cured, there is nothing to shoot the Sunbeam down. If the Sunbeam cannot be destroyed, then it should be able to get to you. I also vaguely remember hearing about the dev's saying something about being able to escape the planet without using the rocket. Hope to hear some good feedback from people on this theory.

I tried it like that earlier in the year, i waited and the sunbeam was destroyed by the QEP anyway, like it was always meant to be destroyed no matter what.

back in beta the sunbeam would come down when the QEP was deactivated and then mention there was nowhere to land but they would contact alterra about the situation and fly off.

BZ added more to the situation (but the current storyline is going to be rebuilt, unknown if the backstory is going with it). The sunbeam did send a communication to Alterra about the Aurora but it wasn't heard of again, which suggests it was destroyed in that instance.

[Freedom Manager]

Originally posted by MrPurple:

Well qmodmanager is broken right now but i actually made this months ago and once qmod works again you can find it on nexusmods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX3RRNEYSP4&t=38s

This is so outrageously fake... I know I'm late... BUT IT'S SO FAKE!!!

[AgarthanTerrorist]

MASSIVE SPOILERS

No. short answer, they will just say the debri feeld is to big and they cant get through.
long answer, i tried it in creative, and no, even if you deactivate it it will still say no, you have to go to the aurora and get the escape rocket blueprints to escape.

[Freedom Manager]

YES