So I was watching Markiplier play Subnautica...

[Degrelecence]

... And in episode 17 at about 13:30 he explained what he liked about the game. I don't imagine the same thing is true for everyone, but it was definitely true for me. He said that it felt like he was actually exploring the ocean. He said it "feels real and alive" and "it seems logical [...] like an alien ocean" then talked about finding a heat vent underwater and saying that was what he liked, that was something really in our ocean that he just stumbled upon. It didn't have to be there, it just was. It wasn't a power up or an easter egg. It just made everything feel more real. He then went and looked at all the variety of fish swimming around.

I guess that's what I miss. I am honestly usually just generally hostile when talking about Sub Zero, but that's because I am on the defensive. The few proud fans are so quick to dismiss any criticism that it feels like I have to fight for my right to have an opinion. But all the rage and vitriol aside, the real difference (in my opinion) between SN and BZ is just how it feels.

The heat vents, the lilly zone, the purple vents... Everything just seems copy-pasted. The whales are awesome, right until you see 200x on the screen at once. Same with Jellies. Nothing feels like a real biome. There is nothing for the penguins to eat on land, no fish, no small plants. There are no plants in the vents or the purple vents. Usually one type of small fish and one type of predatory fish in each area, each copy-pasted 100x. It just doesn't feel real. Heat fruit and O2 plants under water all feel like Sonic power ups instead of actual plants that would be growing there. The jellies with one giant eye for a head and slot machine lights don't look like something that would happen in nature. I don't think I realized it at first while playing. I think I just never felt awe, and didn't know why, but Mark nailed it. This game doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel like exploring the ocean. I don't relate to the main char, I don't 'like' Al-an's personality, I don't feel trapped, and it doesn't feel special. It feels like just any other video game.

That's just my opinion. Yours might be different. And if you enjoy this game... Good. I am glad you found something to bring you happiness, but that's why I have such trouble getting in to it.

[Degrelecence]

If TL/DR, then just move on to the next post, you don't have to tell me ;)

[Coops]

Subnautica is a finished product. It was unique and defined a genre. I loved it so much played it through over ten times.

Below Zero is in early access, and the story is totally broken. You have expectations where you had none in the original. But it is not close to being complete.

How do you recreate your first date? You can't. That does not mean you hate the opposite sex after that. You don't then look for people that have not matured and compare them to your first crush who was three years older than you. But maybe in three years they will be amazing.

Can you recreate how you felt the first time you beat your father in chess? No. Does that end all hope for ever having a sense of accomplishment? I would hope not. But you do not start playing with 10 year olds and lament how horrible they play. Wait until their brains are done maturing and then see how good they are.

I submit that when it is released (many months from now) and people play Below Zero for the first time having never played Subnautica first, they will love it. If they then say to themselves, hey that was a cool experience, let me try the original game. They will be disappointed that there are no aliens, no survivors, no dialogue, a vast empty ocean that takes forever to cross, critters that annoy them, etc.

All I am saying is keep an open mind until the game is actually finished. Early access is not meant for your enjoyment, it's for finding bugs.

[Degrelecence]

Originally posted by Coops:

Subnautica is a finished product. It was unique and defined a genre. [...]

I played Subnautica through in early access and that Markiplier vid is from 2016, also a very early access build. I would submit that the developers clearly had different intentions when building the games. Subnautica had the world come first and the story after. Below Zero seems to be a lot of concept art strung together without much effort in to actual world building. Maybe I'm wrong. Doesn't feel that way though.

[Tomas Mac Mordain]

Agree with the OP here. Below Zero has different priorities and will have a different feel as a result. The focus on story is not a detractor as such.

It's the fact that they are not designing a 'place' this time around. They are designing 'levels' and checking necessary boxes for the story beats to happen. The 'levels' are is built so a contrived story can happen in it, making the player go from a to b to c, doing x, y, z in a controlled way, providing distractions or challenges along the way.

Games which want to make you believe you are really there need to feel like plausible places and plausible situations. Everything needs to make sense to be believable. Otherwise the permanent cognitive dissonance between what should happen - like focusing on repairing the starting base, for example - and what the story wants to happen, leads to a feeling like the game is disrespecting your immersive and emotional investment.

It yanks you around intellectually and emotionally to the point where you start to develop an animosity against it, waiting for the next contrived deus-ex-machina event for the sole purpose of accomplishing a story beat that needs to happen.

You can't be 'immersed' and emotionally invested in nonsense happening. The first Subnautica got by splendidly as long as nothing happened. At least nothing you had a part in, like the fate of the ship coming to save you. It was great.

The end-game in Subnautica (lava zones and emperor) feel really bad in comparison with the rest of the game. There's two reasons. The lava biome was treated as a 'level' with 'challenges' to overcome. Look around that place. Flora fauna and spatial design really feel worse than the rest of the game. The other reason was that the player got 'involved' in the story. We got lackluster interactions with the emperor and what amounts to several fetch quests. That whole part was really bad. I maintain that if you had found the eggs, research facilities, research notes, an emperor corpse, and had to piece together the solution to hatching the younglings yourself, it would be a much better experience.

Now. Below Zero takes the worst aspects of Subnautica, i.e. treating biomes as levels to traverse, contrived passive interactions with story actors, and lackluster overland gameplay and makes that the main focus. At the same time it reduces the utility and coolness factor of vehicles, and adds spectacle - like a giant worm chasing you - instead.

If this ever gets polished to a playable degree to be a really good game, it will still not be a game about exploring an alien place on your own terms. It will be a game about listening to your sister well, and mastering environment challenges in a preconceived, developer-approved and guided fashion.

It can still become a good game. But as far as I can tell the developers are not aware that a game like that needs a different design approach.

1. If you want to go with biomes as levels, you need a good set of effective gadgets and techniques for the player to apply to the challenges, such that the solution is your own. Invisibility, teleporting, hiding in flora, decoys, fish bait, holograms of yourself, pipes, building underground tubes, whatever. If the biomes are about challenges, let the players do something clever to overcome them. Not slog through them.

2. If you want story interactions, they need to be active, not merely passive as they were in original subnautica. A dialog system, ability to initiate dialog whenever you want, ability to make meaningful decisions in dialog, or just set the tone. More dialog to establish who is who and what the hell is even going on. Why are we doing what we're doing? What are we trying to accomplish, why do we need the mcguffin and what happens after I get it?

They will re-write the story alright, but it will always feel unsatisfying unless you can interact with it to a reasonabl degree. The way I see it Below Zero will have the story happen 'at' you, just like the characters always seem to talk 'at' you, instead of with you. That's a side-effect of the passive mode of delivery.

We'll see.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Coops:

I submit that when it is released (many months from now) and people play Below Zero for the first time having never played Subnautica first, they will love it. If they then say to themselves, hey that was a cool experience, let me try the original game. They will be disappointed that there are no aliens, no survivors, no dialogue, a vast empty ocean that takes forever to cross, critters that annoy them, etc.

That may well be true but it will just be different people than those who do enjoy Subnautica.