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She survived because she ate leviathan meat/blubber, and leviathans are somewhat immune to Khaara.
Alterra tolerates her because she is a survivor of the other corporation that crashed on the planet and when Alterra first came after the events in Subnautica she contacted her headquarters. probably tying up ownership of the planet in court, Alterra can't get rid of her but if she dies due to no supplies then it's not their fault. Alterra keeps track of her with the radio tower in order to have evidence of their non involvement in her death. she can't destroy it for the same reason Alterra can't touch her, to avoid corporate hostilities.
If you get the tower report after you built a base and seatruck you can see that Alterra was going to send people to stop your illegal use of Alterra technology, Maida wanted the tower stopped so she could use you to do what she legally can't, just as she used your sister. As long as any investigation shows she didn't do anything directly to Alterra's interests the she's in the clear.
For everyone who didn't participate in BZ's Early Access from the start: The original writer of the story quit in the middle of development. Marge was already done but the story apparently was not. And since (some) players liked the character UWE decided to keep her, even though they had no idea what the new story was going to be. So the new writer had to come up with a story that somehow included Marge (and almost everything else that was already done).
We can all see how that turned out.
"The Aliens (also known as Kharaa) and the subspecies that make up its hostile presence on various human installations are the product of a previously unknown Bacteria-like growth that rapidly evolves and directly sets in motion the events that lead up to the hostile encounters with humans, and was accordingly termed by TSF scientists as Bacterium. The Bacterium is the basic building block of the Kharaa and is responsible for the evolution and aggressive behavior of the Kharaa lifeforms. The creatures and structures that the Kharaa have at their disposal were previously not associated with the Bacterium whatsoever but were separate species that were infested and incorporated into the Kharaa gene pool (including structures such as the Harvester). Once assimilated, these species would be regularly reproduced, albeit re-purposed to better suit their role in the Kharaa, such as carapace and the razor sharp blades that Skulks and Fades evolved."
Marguerit has been in kharaa-contaminated water of 4546B since the Degasi crash. Kharaa infection killed Bart Torgal. It would have killed Paul Torgal had he also survived the attack on their 500m habitat. It should have killed Maida, but it didn't. Something else happened instead. Something else that explains her antipathy, her violent attitude, her desire to destroy Alterra's kharaa research. The bacteria didn't kill her. It mutated her. It's rewriting her DNA, assimilating her into a new hive.
She's one of them now.
I ignored a lot of Marg's self-told story of survival. It's a "tall tale," which fits with her accent and attitude as a character out of a Spaghetti western. That's ok. Having a character that exaggerates and has a big personality is interesting. Typically, it's a male, but UWE would never have written a male into this role, and despite her voice, she's Mongolian.
But yeah, she's supposed to be long dead and got Jesus'd back into existence. If we accept that, then eating the natural wildlife would've exposed her to enzyme-42 from SN1 and cured her along with everything else. The NS2 retcon doesn't work on a 4546b with enzyme-42. And her personality was hardly "changed" from the story in SN1.
What gets me is the idle threats. She tells you to get off her land. You don't, so she shows up in the prawn suit to tell you, but doesn't make you leave. I've been caught trespassing before (TPing houses as a prank as a kid). If you get caught, they don't turn their backs and leave. They stand there and make you leave after cleaning up the mess and if you come back, they call the cops. But Big Bad Marguerite threatens and runs. Then you trespass on her base itself, and she does the same thing. She yells at you, turns her back, and doesn't do anything. No real fighter turns their back to something they perceive as dangerous. You can't suspend disbelief through the digital equivalent of terrible screenwriting and worse acting. Either she's capable of doing what she claims and worth respecting, or she's not. I think the intent is that we take her seriously.
When I play, I have to ignore the story. I've read better writing peer-reviewing stories in 8th grade English class honestly. There's simply no coherent vision. It's a bunch of ideas jumbled together whether they work or not, tied together with a shoe string, Elmer's glue, a few staples, and a bunch of scotch tape.
When I first played the game I was like:
Soooo... You just decided to crash land into that hostile planet, half naked without bothering to grab any kind of supply? Ok, I'm playing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Great.
Wait my friends from above are sending supplies. Things don't look that grim anym... One ration and two bottles of water? Are you kidding me? Ok I'm playing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and everyone hate her.
I was thinking: That's just so stupid, I understand why they wanted to revamp the whole story. I hope the new one will be better. Obviously it will because it couldn't be wors... Wait that's the revamped new story?
Marg? Marg is a drop of water in the ocean and sadly in subnautica that means a lot.
@ Andreas - That explains just about everything I think.
@ The Big Brzezinski - I like this, but UWE would never do it due to their *aversion* to violence. I figured the names and posters were just like....Fromsoft and their insistence on sticking the Moonlight Greatsword into their games. It's just a fun easter egg, nothing more. Her personality has always been psycho, this game toned that down if anything and tried to humanize the cartoon character. Plus there's been zero build-up to this, no mentions of wars, etc. Same names different universes.
@ Catalytic - The idea of a character that not only lies, but lies to herself is the beginnings of a story! However, like you said, we are supposed to take everything she says and does at face value. I just can't take her seriously, she's all bark and no bite. We bully her if anything lol.
@ Huillam - Yep. I go out for dayhikes with more supplies than Robin does for trips to underwater, freezing, predator-riddled planets she knows nearly nothing about. Three protein bars and three bottles of water. Oh and flares. For some reason. If you listen to what she says, this isn't the first time she's done something that reckless. It's just bad storytelling that makes her look dumb to give players the...build-your-way-up experience. Having a meteor blow up the supply drop would have been an easy way to close the plothole.
Maida is a tumor. She's sitting in the story, taking up a lot of resources without performing any useful function. She is the only other human seen in the game, and thus the only character with facial animation. The first three times you speak with her, she has cutscenes you have to sit through. Her mechanical functions boil down to pointing you at a quest objective, giving you a lore entry, and nullifying most of the survival gameplay with her preston plants. Her narrative functions, while far more significant, all happen before the game begins. Indeed, Maida basically starts off the plot by talking Sam into committing arson, even providing her with the explosives. Maida is the one truly responsible for Sam's and Parvan's deaths. She gave Robin a recording of the conversation proving it. Robin does not react to this. I wonder how Adeline, Parvan's widow, and Rosita, his child, would react to this recording. I don't wonder how a police officer would react. Or a prosecutor. Or a judge. Or a jury.
The assimilation theory is just that, but it's also an attempt to give the BZ writing the benefit of the doubt. It assumes she's here for an important narrative purpose that will blow all our minds when revealed. Everything Maida does fits a villain role. It's the only answer that makes any sense at all. And, not gonna lie, keeping Maida in as a supporting character for a year only to have her turn heel at the end would be a severely baller feat of early access storytelling. So likely or not, it's fun to think about.
The only likely alternative is that the BZ writer rejects the very thesis of Subnautica's story (different beings must connect with each other to survive), and decided to sabotage it by retconning that their pet renegade sociopath was just too alpha for nature to handle. It's a very harsh assessment, and not one I'm prepared to advance while the incomplete story leaves other possibilities.
Do we know where Below Zero is in relation to where the original is? Some planets can have a narrow range of tropical areas and rest of the planet in extremes. If I recall correctly this planet is rather small so ...
Maida being alone for so long and having to bury her employer and son might make her a bit jaded. And wasn't she a pirate and enemy of Altera even before she got stranded here? I understood from this forum that Sam was in a hostile work environment anyway and got "punished" prior to her death/murder by Altera?? employees??
Only the new story will say. Played the "old" one until the current ending so nothing is the same I understand. Going to wait until the ending is released to play again for the most part.
Bart Torgal, who died of kharaa on the floating island in Subnautica, was Paul Torgal's son, not hers. Maida was a bodyguard Paul hired because she was cheap. Her recklessness eventually caused a reaper leviathan to attack their habitat. She killed it, but Paul perished in the attack. That's the reaper she rode to the BZ area. Its skull hangs on her wall.
Sam objected to Alterra's research into the kharaa preserved in the frozen creature. Everyone she worked with disagreed. Eventually she was reassigned to maintenance. That was when she decided to take matters into her own hands, and synthesized an antidote to destroy the preserved kharaa. Maida convinced her that this was not enough, and that she would have to destroy the lab and the creature. Maida destroys the Omega lab herself and provides Sam with explosives to handle the creature. However, Sam is interrupted by the security officer, Parvan Ivanov. She accidentally detonates the explosives, killing her and Parvan. Not understanding how she could have gone so astray, her superiors assume the deaths and damage to the cave containing the creature were the result of negligence.
I'm sure a scientist Robbin with hunter instinct as in my game would make something much better.
Maybe they could add as special upgrade unlocked after killing at least 2 leviathans. Peacefull players would never see it on upgrade list, while the hunter players would have more and more deadly upgrades, lol.
That's something else that's never clearly explained. It would've been so easy to provide some video or a recording to find out what happened exactly. All we know is Sam blew herself up and took someone with her, and it wasn't the plan.
To be honest Alterra is being very, very lenient towards Sam. If we can piece together everything with data logs just hanging out everywhere, the investigator could too. Best guess is they wanted to avoid publicity and attention to an engineer going psycho.
It annoys me that Sam just conveniently synthesized an antidote. She's not qualified or trained in the slightest, she's not a microbiologist or a pharmacologist. She's the person that makes robot penguins using a fabricator. Why Alterra was interested in derpy robot penguins will never make sense. They were working on advanced alien tech, superpowered bacteria...and robot penguins.
The cherry on top is that Sam herself thought she'd get a slap on the wrist and just sent home for blowing up company property. You rig a fryer with explosives to blow up at a McDonalds, you are going away for a very long time.
Now if Maida blew up Sam on purpose....that would be pretty great. It would give a reason for her to exist.
It's really not all that big of a stretch for Sam to make a bactericidal agent. It was probably just a big tube of the same synthetic enzyme-42 derivative Alterra inoculated all their staff with. I imagine all personnel would get a big lecture about kharaa on 4546B and what to do to stay safe from it. For liability purposes, of course. If she hadn't run into Maida, Sam probably would have injected the bactericidal agent into the frozen leviathan right before transferring off planet.
I think the overarching reason why Sam's death was ruled a accident resulting from negligence comes from one of the few consistent bits of world building between the two games. Alterra citizens are highly litigious, but they are not at all comfortable with violence. Contracts govern everything, even personal relationships. If there's a dispute, you settle it in court. Attack someone physically? Are you crazy? They'll sue the pants off you! All the Alterra crash survivor recordings reveal people who are shellshocked and confused that rescue hasn't yet come. None of them even consider trying to harm hostile wildlife. The same goes from the Alterra staff in the BZ area. Jeremiah Murgle may hate the skyrays with the passion of a thousand angry technicians, but he's not considering a shotgun vigil to finally deal with them.
Contrast this with Maida, who is not native to Alterra space. She's from a mining colony in the Mongolian States. She's been a mercenary since she left home at sixteen. She is very comfortable with violence. Her successful attack on the Omega Lab demonstrates her skill, as she achieved her objective without collateral damage. I imagine this was mainly because, while Alterra might tolerate a squatter pinching a few resources here and there without getting in their way, the outright murder of their people would be answered with beExosuited justice. Had the plan to destroy excavation site succeeded, Maida would probably have encouraged Sam to stay and join her.
It is, though. If it's just a tube of enzyme-42, she didn't synthesize anything. How do you apply such a thing to frozen leviathan? Can't do it topically because frozen. Can't inject it internally because frozen - the creature is a solid, not a liquid. There's no pathway for it to move. Let's be optimistic and say it's blood acts like antifreeze - okay, now there's no working heart to circulate it. Beyond all that, how would she have known how much enzyme the leviathan needed at all? These problems don't occur to most people because they don't know they are problems to start with. That's the crux of the main problem. She's an engineer, she knows nothing about biological systems. It's lazy writing again.
I appreciate you filling in the gaps to the poor story. It's a good effort. You put in more work to your theories than the writing staff did, and if they had your input the story would be much improved and smoothed over.