Reaper and Marguerit. - Spoilers.

[Kain]

So, I`ve spent a lot of time drilling a Reaper with a fully customized Prawn on the OG, and you're telling me she killed one with a knife?

[Jacvk]

Short answer is yes. Long answer is she dug in and let it exhaust itself to death as it crossed the void with her attached on. She apparently survived off its corpse.

[Ebonheart]

Killing it wasn't the achievement.
Riding its carcass across the open ocean, somehow dodging all the other even bigger angrier leviathans, all the way to the Arctic Zone was. And surviving there. Naked.
That and somehow beating Terminal Space Syphilis for a straight decade.

Realistically though? She got a decent grip on its head and stabbed it a bunch praying it wouldn't get smart and dive or ram into rocks. Or at least that was the description of the fight.

[dragonbornzyra]

Such is the power of poor writing. Anything can happen, you don't need to explain it or make it believable or interesting.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Maggie didn't kill the reaper. The writer did. The writer also brought Maggie back to life and teleported her into a tangentially related game without sufficient justification or purpose.

This isn't a good explanation, but it's truer than the in-game one.

[Kain]

Thank you all, still seems a bit far fetched though, I usually don't try to find 'realism' in games and I'm good with suspending my disbelief, but after fighting one with a PRAWN for almost 5 minutes, I just feel it's waaay too forced, why an aquatic creature wouldn't submerge to try to shake off it's assailant is beyond me, unknowingly it would be enough to drown her. Plus, if you want o get realistic using the in game logic, the knife shouldn't even be lenghty enough to pierce its leather skin to cause any serious damage.

[Kain]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Maggie didn't kill the reaper. The writer did. The writer also brought Maggie back to life and teleported her into a tangentially related game without sufficient justification or purpose.

This isn't a good explanation, but it's truer than the in-game one.

But why would the writer do this? Last game they clearly killed her and most of the Degasi, to prove how dangerous the setting was, plus, if not by an animal, she should have died by the Sea Corona, if I remember correctly, they all got sick with it and I don't think the previous protagonist had time to share the cure.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Originally posted by Kain:

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Maggie didn't kill the reaper. The writer did. The writer also brought Maggie back to life and teleported her into a tangentially related game without sufficient justification or purpose.

This isn't a good explanation, but it's truer than the in-game one.

But why would the writer do this? Last game they clearly killed her and most of the Degasi, to prove how dangerous the setting was, plus, if not by an animal, she should have died by the Sea Corona, if I remember correctly, they all got sick with it and I don't think the previous protagonist had time to share the cure.

Who knows? Without any apparent reason behind the decision, I could only speculate (or more likely, unconsciously project) about why it was made.

Her narrative function in the last game was to represent physical prowess to contrast Paul Torgal's intelligence and Bart's insight. None of these attribute allowed them to survive in the face of a higher order of natural forces. Protagonist Ryley, being a David Lister expy with good hair, lacked any of these attributes. He instead survived by connecting with these natural forces and working together with them.

Removed from this narrative context, Marguerit is a meaningless waste of everyone's time.

[RCMidas]

Notably, she was the only one of the Degasi crew to be willing to eat the native sea life on its own merits, as well be exposed to the ocean. Which means that unlike the Torgals, she was also directly exposed to the filtered enzymes carried by peepers, which is more than enough to ensure longevity of infected creatures.

Consider that no megafauna should exist with such a fatal bacterium going around, let alone leviathan-class organisms. Sure, Marguerit was infected. She was therefore likely absorbing plenty of enzymes that kept it under control - even Ryley did not develop the later symptoms until he reached depths at which the infection had been initially released and concentrated.

And regarding killing a reaper with the PRAWN drill - that takes longer than just punching it or slashing it with a knife. At least in real terms, since what makes the latter options take longer is typically the fact that you have to keep switching out to the stasis rifle to hold the damned thing in place.

[Kain]

Storywise though, realistically within the game's universe, a knife shouldn't be as strong a s a drill.... not even in our own universe come to think of it, I don't hear many stories of people hunting White Sharks with knives.

[dragonbornzyra]

Originally posted by Kain:

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Maggie didn't kill the reaper. The writer did. The writer also brought Maggie back to life and teleported her into a tangentially related game without sufficient justification or purpose.

This isn't a good explanation, but it's truer than the in-game one.

But why would the writer do this? Last game they clearly killed her and most of the Degasi, to prove how dangerous the setting was, plus, if not by an animal, she should have died by the Sea Corona, if I remember correctly, they all got sick with it and I don't think the previous protagonist had time to share the cure.

Correct. The entire Degassi crew died ten years before Ryley even showed up on 4546B. Maida would have had to survive for over ten years until Subnautica 1 events occur for her to recieve a cure for the Sea Corona. Maida doesn't make sense because one single flaw or plothole, but she doesn't make sense because of over a dozen flaws and plotholes.

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Notably, she was the only one of the Degasi crew to be willing to eat the native sea life on its own merits, as well be exposed to the ocean. Which means that unlike the Torgals, she was also directly exposed to the filtered enzymes carried by peepers, which is more than enough to ensure longevity of infected creatures.

Consider that no megafauna should exist with such a fatal bacterium going around, let alone leviathan-class organisms. Sure, Marguerit was infected. She was therefore likely absorbing plenty of enzymes that kept it under control - even Ryley did not develop the later symptoms until he reached depths at which the infection had been initially released and concentrated.

And regarding killing a reaper with the PRAWN drill - that takes longer than just punching it or slashing it with a knife. At least in real terms, since what makes the latter options take longer is typically the fact that you have to keep switching out to the stasis rifle to hold the damned thing in place.

The weakened Enzyme 42 from the Peeper delivery system staved off the infection. The second Maida entered into the Void she was cut off from this hypothetical remedy. Note none of the Degassi had went deep enough or far out enough to discover the Enzyme 42 peeper. I doubt Maida would have found and seen and killed a Golden Peeper without mentioning it.

And if Maida was eating Enzyme 42 peepers (She was not) then she would not have been showing late stage symptoms of Khaara infection (Read Degassi PDAs again, she has the same boils and symptoms as the others)

I've discussed this subject before months ago, and other people bring up Enzyme 42 peepers to try to justify Maida's existance, and I tell you the same thing I told them back then. It's a nice idea and more effort than Jill Murray made, but it fails to explain or make sense in the game lore without retconning the game even further.

You have to find a solution that justifies Maida's existance without stepping on the events of the first game.

I talk about Maida and her plot line inconsistencies in one of my Let's Talk video series for Below Zero. Feel free to check that out.

[Kain]

Yes, the lore clearly states that the enzymes from the old Dragon could put the infection in check, but it wasn't a cure and even then you could die from it, as stated the Degasi crew died and they also consumed fish and other life forms.

Her whole story makes no sense, from killing a Reaper with a knife to surviving the virus, IF anything she could have infected the whole other region. That said, is it possible that the cold slows down and kill the bactery? Maybe, but I don't think I read it anywhere.

[The Big Brzezinski]

I keep coming back to that April 17 2020 post.

"Marg. It wouldn’t be Subnautica: Below Zero without her, as far as we’re concerned. We love her and she’s staying. We’re hoping to connect her to the story more. She’ll still be her wild self though. No plot can fully contain her."

None of this is true. She's hardly even here. The plot barely acknowledges her. She's a pet scrappy character filled with useless, nonsensical ideas that are foreign to everything that made Subnautica so moving.

It's Mass Effect 2,3 all over again.

[RCMidas]

This is what happens when you change writers.

[Kain]

That is the problem, when you make a sequel, where a dead character is essential. I mean, barely ANY character matters in the OG, sure, I love them, they serve their purpose well, but the game works with no story, but what is there is incredibly well done.

Originally posted by RCMidas:

This is what happens when you change writers.

Oh.... so this is what happened.

[Ebonheart]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

I keep coming back to that April 17 2020 post.

Killing the reaper with a butter knife is tropey but believable.
Surviving the voyage to the Arctic and living there is also believable. She was the jarheaded survivalist mercenary trope.
But Kharaa is a hard stop. Its literally a galactic empire killer. It was the literal endgame villain of the previous game.
We need some explanation for her decade long survival of Space Syphilis.
Its not even that hard to write in a "plausible" deus ex machina for it: a 42 Peeper farm, a peeper vent by her arctic base, a bathtub of the stuff inside the reapers spleen, anything.

Instead we have a revenant cult leader who sweet talked a Techie into being an Antivaxx Isis Bride Bomber. Which is a whole other plot black hole that makes no sense.
She the does the same to the sister and promptly sits in a corner silently forevermore.

Mostly because UWE cannot be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to actually add the plot mortar needed to, at the very least, ensure we are playing a heroine.
Because as it stands? Robin and Sam are Fruitcake Antivaxx Terrorist Bombers.