Why Al An is an evil character **spoilers**

[Coops]

The first time you encounter Al An, he talks to you from his containment box. The facility tells you that power is failing and the mind transfer has to happen right away. "Please hurry" he says. Yet if you scan the storage device and walk out of the facility it stays powered indefinitely, just like all the other alien facilities. He lied.
He tricks you into providing your brain as his receptacle making you think he wants to use your PDA.
Lets look at his past history, which you learn near the end of the game.
He was in charge of the Architect presence on the planet and was directly responsible for the Kharaa bacterium being released into the environment. This happened because he was experimenting on the unborn offspring of the gentle and majestic Emperor Leviathan which he imprisoned for over a thousand years. The Nazis would have been proud.
Once the contagion got out, he fled to the pole and saved himself while his coworkers died.
Inside Robin's mind, he used her to loot the bodies of his former associates to build himself a new body.
He does not tell Robin the whole story until he was safe in a new body because he feared she might sacrifice herself for the good of the galaxy and kill them both.
Nothing he did was good for anyone but himself and some of it was downright evil.

[ParrotLord]

The game should have had a plot twist. How the alien becomes "human" at the end is downright BS: maybe not make him the utterly bad dude, but let him just stay himself according to all we know up to this point.

1. They experiment with lower life forms, or abuse them.
2. Humans are lower life forms.
3. The are so advanced that a human simply has nothing to offer by any means. Other then being abused as a potential storage device when in need.
4. The kind of race that has no problem whatsoever just constructing a teleporting killer machine to end the life of everything that is ill by some random bacteria.

im sorry but all those are really drastic actions. Even humans would not invent and factory-build a freekin killer machine just to eliminate an illness.
He should have simply either tried to kill her/make her a pet, or give her treats and leave her alone, minding his own business. How they "buddy up" and he suddenly becomes like a human at the end is sweet, romantic... and also really stupid and lame. But it fits in the quality of the overall story, so, guess i didnt expect anything less.

[admiral1018]

Exactly. You don't have to make the alien evil, just extend his logical behavior to the point where any human is completely expendable if it increases the chance of salvation for his species at all. Lying and manipulating Robin can also be rationalized logically. AL-AN is already voiced and written in such a way where this wouldn't have been a leap. He's not being cruel or sadistic, but the value of a few human lives is nothing when he's weighing it against billions of his own species. That is, oddly enough, the product of a being that makes decisions based on pure logic.

Also, lets keep in mind that the precursor alien base in the first had a "Doomsday Device," which is capable of destroying not just an entire planet, but large portions of a solar system. The precursors weren't exactly established as having great discretion when it came to mass destruction.

[Just Chill]

Amber Heard is far more evil.

[ParrotLord]

yes to both lol

[Bassilth]

His storage medium was the one on critical power levels. Once you transfer him to your brain, you will see the structure he was stored in almost immediately lose power and collapse. He would have died if you did not pick him up in time.

But I do agree that there was something fishy about it and I was baffled how Robin didnt question him more. Instead, after she found out he manipulated her, she still goes with him merrily because she has nowhere else to go.

I have thought as well that he might turn out to be the villain of the next game once some explanation is given but now that I studied him and Architects in general, including some of the cut dialogues, I realized the probability of him turning out to be a villain might be too low.

The reason why Architects were looking for a cure wasnt just for them but for the creatures that exist within the universe, which is a very noble and selfless behavior. They can -in lower numbers- escape the bacterium and live somewhere else but they decided to find a cure.

I guess this stems from their advanced state compared to humans. The humans -even in Subnautica- are just at the dawn of making their own space empire. They have to learn that environment is not to be exploited and morphed to their will but they have to adapt to every environment if they want to survive. The Architects learned this lesson sometime in their past and adapted their bodies to survive in most environments instead of shaping said environment to their needs. They preserve nature as much as they can. See how they didnt destroy 4546B during their stay, while humans are quick to exploit everything and kill things they see as useless to their existence on sight.

Sure, the bit we see of Al-An's homeworld seems to be a planet made of structures and machines but we dont see everything and Al-An talks about creatures living there and how they are part of his culture.

The other reason why I dont think Al-An would turn on Robin is because the Architects dont seem aggressive at all. We saw him behave cautiously before but he never expressed hatred or anger. This comes from the fact that Architects expand their civilization but are not conquerors and dont war with others. They seem like a peaceful, overly curious, research-oriented race who strive for immortality and strive to improve their existence.

How are they not conquerors?
Because they visited Earth at least once -as shown in Subnautica- and yet they did not take the planet for themselves. They collected what they needed, even influenced their language, their culture, apparently helping them achieve some of their miletstones in civilization, and then left them to live their own lives in peace.

Though, there is indeed a question that might end up shaping the next game. How could Robin even help Al-An? He is an advanced alien who can do everything ten times faster than her, doesnt need much maintenance, doesnt need sustenance, so as it seems she is a dead-weight and I see her more as a pet to Al-An than an assistant. I dont think any of them thought this through before and she might get that wakeup call when she realizes she is useless and cant help with anything at all.

So test subject might be her future career, after all.

[Halliwax]

Disagree completely.

Originally posted by Coops:

The first time you encounter Al An, he talks to you from his containment box. The facility tells you that power is failing and the mind transfer has to happen right away. "Please hurry" he says. Yet if you scan the storage device and walk out of the facility it stays powered indefinitely, just like all the other alien facilities. He lied.

Not a lie. "Imminent" power failure does not have to mean in the next few hours. He's been there for what, hundreds, thousands of years? Relative to that, if he had a few years of power left, that's imminent danger of failure. Robin shows up and he can't take the chance of waiting for another way out.

Originally posted by Coops:

He tricks you into providing your brain as his receptacle making you think he wants to use your PDA.

Again, no. He doesn't trick you. It's a misunderstanding. They have this discussion literally right afterward. Al-An is surprised to learn that humans perceive a boundary between biological and electronic parts, that's not how their civilization sees things.

Originally posted by Coops:

This happened because he was experimenting on the unborn offspring of the gentle and majestic Emperor Leviathan which he imprisoned for over a thousand years. The Nazis would have been proud.

Actually it was experimenting on the Sea Dragon eggs that caused the accident, not the Emperor. But more importantly, they didn't intend to trap the Emperor for a thousand years, that was a mistake when they suddenly had to abandon the site. And they didn't know it was sentient. The Sea Emperor says that she tried to communicate with them but for whatever reason they couldn't hear her.

Originally posted by Coops:

He does not tell Robin the whole story until he was safe in a new body because he feared she might sacrifice herself for the good of the galaxy and kill them both.
Nothing he did was good for anyone but himself and some of it was downright evil.

This also isn't manipulative. Robin and Al-An agree on the goal of getting a new body for him, and he tells her how to do that. The parts of his past he decides not to share have no bearing on that. They were in agreement about what to do and why.

[Coops]

Originally posted by Halliwax:

Disagree completely.

Not a lie. "Imminent" power failure does not have to mean in the next few hours. He's been there for what, hundreds, thousands of years? Relative to that, if he had a few years of power left, that's imminent danger of failure. Robin shows up and he can't take the chance of waiting for another way out.

He makes it seem like it's seconds from failure if she does not act immediately. She even comments on it, like, "alright I'm coming".

Originally posted by Halliwax:

Again, no. He doesn't trick you. It's a misunderstanding. They have this discussion literally right afterward. Al-An is surprised to learn that humans perceive a boundary between biological and electronic parts, that's not how their civilization sees things.

Misunderstanding is being extremely forgiving. She actually says "Oh, you want my PDA", he changes the subject and says please hurry.
She then holds it up for him to use. At that point he should have said, oh, that's too small, I need space in your brain. What he did was brain rape. Being a xenobiologist, she would have likely consented but he gave her no choice.
I saw his response to her protest as snarky. Like, Oh, you didn't want me inside you? Again, brain rape and unapologetic.

Originally posted by Halliwax:

Actually it was experimenting on the Sea Dragon eggs that caused the accident, not the Emperor. But more importantly, they didn't intend to trap the Emperor for a thousand years, that was a mistake when they suddenly had to abandon the site. And they didn't know it was sentient. The Sea Emperor says that she tried to communicate with them but for whatever reason they couldn't hear her.

I actually did said the offspring of the Emperor.
They didn't know it was sentient when both species are telepathic? More likely they didn't care.
When they abandoned the site, why not let her go? Her mate destroyed the other facility so they got the message there was a bond of some sort. Who abandons an experiment with living beings, sentient or not, by simply leaving then in a cage to rot? You would not do that to a mouse. Either let it go or euthanize it.

Originally posted by Halliwax:

This also isn't manipulative. Robin and Al-An agree on the goal of getting a new body for him, and he tells her how to do that. The parts of his past he decides not to share have no bearing on that. They were in agreement about what to do and why.

Robin agrees like she would agree with a rapist that he move out. She has no choice, either help him or die.
The parts of his past condemn him as a reckless, if not evil entity. He fears she would not help him if he told her who he was. He later says, "You still want to help me after I deceived you"?

Al An: "BTW, I'm the one responsible for the infection"
Robin to herself": "Arrogant, superior being who screwed up and likely killed billions wants me to help him regain power. Sam was brave enough to die for a cause and I always wanted to be like her. Here's my chance to do something good for the universe. I'll go find a Shadow leviathan and offer myself up.

You are being very trusting of this alien and are interpreting his words and actions as if you were his press agent. He did nothing good and everything he did was selfish at the expense of every living thing around him. Even the Seamonkeys are afraid of him, they try to placate him with gifts. An action that must have been ingrained in their DNA after millennia.

[Bassilth]

If Al-An was aware or not that Robin wasnt as advanced as having her PDA be a part of her and her processing power/general storage, we dont know for now. All we have is what he said. Considering he asked all kinds of basic questions about humans, it seems like he wasnt aware of how how limited humans are integrated with their technology.

As for the Emperor, you have to understand that they tried getting those eggs to hatch until the very end. They didnt just have that incident and left everything to rot, while they died. They even took one of the eggs and out of desperation they pried the shell open to see if they could get just a tiny hint of the enzyme from its gut even if the baby died. They perished trying to finish their work. Some made it to storage, some did not.

I just hope we will get some explanations and more fleshing out of Al-An's personality in the next game. We dont know much about him, to begin with.

[Cougarific]

I'm all in favor of immersing oneself in lore and having civil debates about it but with a character this poorly-written and contradictory on so many levels IMHO why even bother?

It's just really bad writing with zero thought put into creating believable characters or dialogue. 'Nuff said.

Compare it to the first game - the voice recording of the envoy who burned up in his lifepod for example - Tom Jubert was able to pack more viscerally believable character development into 24 lines of monologue than this game has in its entire script.

[admiral1018]

Originally posted by Bassilth:

I just hope we will get some explanations and more fleshing out of Al-An's personality in the next game. We dont know much about him, to begin with.

I honestly hope we never hear about him again. The character was pretty terrible.

There's no shortage of extremely talented sci-fi writers who could have been brought in as at least consultants for the script. It's so obviously clear that the writers didn't have a real background in that medium. AL-AN getting emotional about "hope" or seeming like an idiot when it came to grasping basic human nature a la Data from Star Trek made him seem pathetic, quite frankly. His species clearly did not evolve completely integrated with their technology, so him behaving like anything else was unfathomable doesn't come across like something you'd expect from a hyper-intelligent being.

[Bassilth]

But that is the thing. Al-An was part of a network of digitalized beings who existed more as walking computers than living creatures. For example, they use highly technical, computer-themed terms to describe everything.

They used to be fully organic but they shed that existence to exchange it for immortality and advanced bodies.

So Al-An asking about human biology and behavior is not that strange, considering they studied mainly animals who they could not interact with too well. Wouldnt you ask all kinds of questions, no matter how basic to your dog if he suddenly began to talk?

But I agree. He became a big softy really quickly and shed his technical terms quite quick as well. Yeah, he is a researcher and probably just tried to get down onto Robin's level so he could talk to her but he should have been more technical still. I also cringed at the last thing he said to Robin. Dude... wtf... Couldnt you be anymore human??? Where does this trust come from? Is he that lonely? Or maybe he is just employing her as his emotional support human now that he is alone. Just to have someone to talk to?

[admiral1018]

Originally posted by Bassilth:

But that is the thing. Al-An was part of a network of digitalized beings who existed more as walking computers than living creatures. For example, they use highly technical, computer-themed terms to describe everything.

They used to be fully organic but they shed that existence to exchange it for immortality and advanced bodies.

So Al-An asking about human biology and behavior is not that strange, considering they studied mainly animals who they could not interact with too well. Wouldnt you ask all kinds of questions, no matter how basic to your dog if he suddenly began to talk?

It's not human biology he's asking about, it's things like how humans can exist as individuals and how humanity can simply tolerate memories disappearing when someone dies. Even if his species has evolved beyond that point due to technology, it's almost certainly how they used to be. Hence, it should not be this amazing mystery to him. Modern humans wouldn't act this way if we met someone who had never used computers or electricity or other technology we're so integrated with, so it's laughable that he comes across as so dumb.

He also said his DNA is the combination of 27 other species, most of which are almost certainly not bio-mechanical or hive-minded. And the precursors also have extensive contact with other intelligent species, as we saw from their collection in the PCF in the original Subnautica. Again, for a lead researcher, these things should not be so confusing to him.

If anything, the amazement and awe should have been from Robin in attempting to comprehend how a superior being like AL-AN thinks and functions. She's a scientist after all, where is the scientific inquiry? Having him being the fish out of water who learns life lessons from her is utterly ridiculous.

[Bassilth]

Well, the human civilization is what... five thousand years old and we already forgot many of the past technologies and methods our ancestors used. Some methods more advanced and more efficient than what we have today yet we have to rediscover them. The Architects had probably about 1 million or at least 500.000 years of evolution ahead of us, so in their case, forgetting redundant information to concentrate on a more efficient and advanced way of life isnt that surprising. They probably didnt always have a network, since the way they communicate clearly needs a more digitalized mind to connect to said network wirelessly.

Thus, whatever their biological ancestors did was not recorded or stored.

Also, do not forget that Al-An mainly asked Robin about her thoughts. Which means he was interested about her way of thought, her opinion, and the thought process of a human. Every civilization they met had their own mindsets and their own opinion about life and their own biology. Not all of these creatures will have the same biological processes and the same culture. Maybe some things Al-An was puzzled about was new to Architects and entirely unique to humans.

Like... music and dreaming.

When it came to the human body, he clearly wanted to know her point of view. He knew the body was inefficient and poorly designed by evolution compared to his manufactured vessel. He wanted to know what allowed humans to survive in this and why they did not yet exchange it. Basically, he wanted to know how evolved humans are.

But yes, I agree here as well. Robin should have shown more curiosity than she has. Then again, she did ask her own questions from time to time. Not nearly enough, though.

[10 THE BEAST]

You can't even use spoilers properly thx ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!

[Atomsk]

This is a joke right? I know BZ missed the mark but this is just projecting.