Leviathans aren't scary in this game

[Tytonium]

Personal opinion and spoilers if you haven't met the three leviathans in game.

What made the Reaper scary? Well the horrific screaming and the fact that sound was your best ally to averting them. There's nothing like that in this game. All the leviathans sounds to me in this game are kind of generic and don't have that "You know I really shouldn't be here right now let's go back to base" feel to it. The Chelicerate jump scared me the first time I encountered it but after that initial impact I just jumped out of my truck and scanned it like no big deal.
The ice worm had a load of potential and was quite terrifying the first time I encountered it due to not having the snowfox yet. However, after getting it I realized that the ice worm is more annoying than anything. Every time the bastard jumps out of the ice you get thrown off your hover bike (multiple times if you get back on right afterwards). So encounters with him just wind up being annoying while you are trying to get to a destination.
The shadow leviathans have a similar problem. First encounter was terrifying cuz it came out of nowhere to attack me. About 30 seconds later it attacked me again. Then after repairing the truck in a little crevice that it couldn't get to it somehow teleported the truck into its mouth and attacked me. Encounters with him are just annoying because it comes after you way too much to deal 33 or so damage to your vehicle repeatedly. Eventually you realize where you need to go in their area so you say ♥♥♥♥ it and just swim most of the way so that your vehicle doesn't die while you are in the facility. How about making the shadow leviathans quicker, less aggressive, but when they do attack they ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ scream and deal a more respectable 50 damage or so. Cuz right now they are basically just a more annoying version of ghost leviathans.
I dunno I just wish the annoyance of these creatures didn't outweigh their epicness. I don't remember any kind of annoyingness like this in the first game unless you accidentally led a ghost leviathan to your base or something.

[The Big Brzezinski]

It's that classic horror mistake. If you want the monster to be scary, hide it.

Before a Subnautica leviathan attacks, it's a dark shape in a dark void. A crabsquid announces itself by disabling your vessel. A reaper does it by roaring. A juvenile ghost comes at you in a distracting environment. A sea dragon seemingly makes its home in the fires of an underwater hell.

The Zoidberg shark hunts up near the brightly lit surface for all to see. The first shadow you see is fairly well hidden, but the trench the developers placed there to get passed him works so well, you might very miss each other. Then, once you're down in the deep beryl cave, you can basically hide everywhere.

[Tytonium]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

It's that classic horror mistake. If you want the monster to be scary, hide it.

Before a Subnautica leviathan attacks, it's a dark shape in a dark void. A crabsquid announces itself by disabling your vessel. A reaper does it by roaring. A juvenile ghost comes at you in a distracting environment. A sea dragon seemingly makes its home in the fires of an underwater hell.

Exactly. There's no build up or suspension. Instead of there being this horrifying nature-defying creature lurking around in the area causing you to have to seriously plan around its behavior, in this game you just brute force your way through the annoying creature thats most complex behavior is playing a single attack animation on your vehicle repeatedly. And your vehicle returns to its original position after the animation! Remember when the reaper would take your little seamoth and swim away with it with you in it! That stuff was nuts.

[zuniger]

you might just be used to it bro I ran into 2 of em and both were terrifying for me lol.

[VolcanoSheep]

just started up my modded subnautica again today and was floating along in my seamoth through the mushroom forest and looked up to see the shadow of the reapers tail flick around and disappear off into the fog, and I immediately decided to turn around and get the hell out of there.

Cheli's never make me feel like that, in fact when I see them I tend to ram them and honestly the shadow leviathan doesn't make me feel anything either.

[Ninian]

The placement has a lot to do with the issue as well. Chelis aren't always at a consistent depth. There's some near the brightly lit surface. You can't build a sense of dread with a creature that you can't exactly avoid. There's no building tension into entering their hunting grounds just "oh, there's one of those giant shrimps and the stupid thing is in my way."

And their sounds aren't scary, just irritating. GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH is just noise and designed pretty much as the laziest possible jumpscare. The irony is that the ambient roars of the cowardly gators are every bit as unnerving as a classic leviathan's so I have no idea why they and the chelis don't have reversed roles.

There's no dread or build-up or... yeah, as someone said, a strong sense that you're somewhere you don't belong.

The ice worm is legitimately just super annoying and pretty much why I quit entirely. Either I have to keep pumping batteries into some device just to get a temporary reprieve or have this one jerk repeatedly knock me off my snowfox. Like with the chelis, I don't feel suspense or immersion, like I'm entering an alien ecosystem. It feels like "oh, this is a videogame and I just entered the dune/tremors setpiece".

[pocketlint82]

The perimeter defense basically makes the shadow leviathan nothing. Hear it coming, blast a pulse, it leaves you alone as you boost away. I agree there is much less perceived danger. I don't bother trying to avoid. he's just a pushover.

Maybe the problem is the seatruck is too op. It's too strong with too much protection. If I were forced to use only the seaglide, I'd probably be alot more scared.

[RubADuck]

Fun fact, those Cryptosuchus [subnautica-belowzero.fandom.com] are waaaay scarier for me than everything else. Because their scream is the most noticable to me.

[Dampback]

I like they tried to add more enemies to the game but every single one of them are un interesting and not scary at all. I mean that alligator just roars and chomps at you... in a straight, unintelligent line.
The Leviathin looks like a goofy ass shrimp

[Ludivinia V.]

Originally posted by Dampback:

I like they tried to add more enemies to the game but every single one of them are un interesting and not scary at all. I mean that alligator just roars and chomps at you... in a straight, unintelligent line.
The Leviathin looks like a goofy ass shrimp

Agreed. More enemies isn't bad, everyone loved the idea of more leviathans in the first game. The problem here is that...well...predators of all sizes attack the same and are very dumb. No real variety and they saturate the game. There's no mystery or intrigue to something that beelines at you when you get within 10ft. That's not a beautiful animal to be respected, that's a bump on the road. Literally. Fastest way to kill things is run them over with the Seatruck. It's.... just sad. Doesn't take skill to kill leviathans either because the Seatruck is built like a tank.

My favorite review said the new shrimp leviathan looked like fine dining. The other deeper leviathan is a good design, but placed in the wrong biome. Like every other enemy in the game, you'll see it from miles away. No suspense = no terror.

[Catalytic]

Honestly, the cryptosucchus is an incredible missed opportunity here. Not all threats have to be big roaring super eels. The name itself opens the door: "hidden crocodile." Think about all those nature videos you've ever watched of alligators or crocodiles. They're silent, 150 million year old apex predators. They hunt, hidden in the reeds and brush of a shallow body of water, maybe a river, maybe a bayou, or estuary. They sense prey and silently dip below the surface. They tuck in their legs to make themselves hydrodynamic and whip their powerful tail to get incredible acceleration underwater to close distance. Finally, their powerful jaws bring down force like a vice driving the teeth through flesh to clamp on. If the bite doesn't kill, their death roll will. Sounds pretty scary to be on the receiving end of, right?

We have all of these graphics that look like nests in the shallow parts of the thermal spires and purple vents zones. All in shallow water. What a perfect place to put an ambush predator on the ground, defending its nest and eggs, waiting for prey to pass by.

Suggest (yes, I know... "content complete, blah, blah, blah"):
-Change the AI so it leashes to those nests. Keep it on the ground. It's color is natural camouflage.
-Give it a range to attack both fish passing by, and Robins. We should see it ambush fish, so we see what it could do to us. Part of suspense is knowing something big and bad can and will get your.
-NO ROARING! Maybe have it roar after a kill of some passing fish if you want, but honestly, it's not needed. If you feel it absolutely necessary to warn the player, play the roar as it attacks.
-Change the swim animation to what I described above: tuck the feet, swim with the tail like a giant, scaly torpedo with teeth. This dog paddling frenzy is just ridiculous and immersion-breaking.
-Have it bite an arm and clamp on until you kick it free, like with the leviathans. For added flavor, make it drop whatever tool you have in the hand when it does this, because bites hurt. Robin has to go back and pick the tool up afterwards.
-Bonus points to having it ignore Seatrucks because they look nothing like their prey, but willing to attack free swimming, Seaglide, or Robin in a prawn suit which has limbs it can attack.
-Double bonus points if you put some on the beaches of Delta island, feasting on penglings and making the approach outside of the dock much less safe for Robins as well.

Non-combat mechanism (because UWE's anti-violence position):
-Lights on. Thermal spires is a dark zone. Ambushers hide well in the dark. Write it as if they have highly developed light-sensitive eyes. They're more active at night. Avoid by using the flashlight, underwater flares, the Seaglide light, and vehicle lights pointed at the creature.
-Have them still consider attacking from behind (so full-radius lights like flares and light sticks become valuable)
-Let thrown flares scare them out of their nests so you can grab the resources in them.

This way, the predator takes on a much more believable and credible behavior befitting its name. It will have an AI that reflects an ambush predator, and will present real danger, especially if you're swimming at night. And in addition, it'll be consistent with UWE's game design goal.

[Catalytic]

How to improve Brute Sharks

These are the entry level predators in the game, found in well-lit, bioluminescent zones. They're in a much better place than the cryptosucchus. Their AI is ok. It attacks fish. It can be eaten by the chelis. Cool. What's missing is the non-combat mechanism for handling it. Since it's the first predator most players will experience, it's AI should reflect that.

Non-combat mechanism:
-Trap it with the Grav Trap. Right now, there's very little use for this item. I frankly have yet to ever make one and actually use it for anything other than testing. Farming is easy enough without it. So, make Grav Traps hold it and scare it. Show them wiggling with the aggressive swim animation, but held in place by the trap for 1.5-2 seconds, then let it break free and retreat as if you had hit it with a knife. The player can pick up the trap and leave before it comes back, or use it as a screen to harvest resources.
-Feed it. Like any shark, let it seek out its natural prey: highly bioluminescent fish like the Arctic Peeper or hoopfish. If you drop one in the water, the shark should disengage the player and eat the fish, then retreat with a happy, full belly.

Don't forget to tell the player in the PDA somewhere that this stuff works, of course.

[Weaver]

The Reaper became very non scary in short order. You can swim/pilot circles around. It. The only reason it was scary is you didn't expect anything that size or able to toss around your craft the first time you encountered it (unless you spoiled things with video playthoughs). It was the unknown. By the end of the game I was actively assaulting reapers and ghost leviathans who wouldn't bugger off in my prawn suit. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Because you knew there could be things that massive and powerful from the first game, nothing was going to be a shock in the 2nd game. How it looks or acts or announces itself or anything else doesn't matter as you can't top it in any meaningful way.
Horror movies encounter this same issue. Alien for example. To try to make things scary for the sequel they had to introduce uh...lots of Aliens! And a bigger Alien! And then things went downhill. But that initial reveal can't be undone.
Once you've seen the big scary monster and expect it, it's lost its impact. Making it look different, jump out of different shadows, give it a different name, it's all window dressing. You know the big scary exist so its no long the unknown.

[Dampback]

Nothing can be worse than the terrible design of a sand shark they threw in one. that thing was so special it couldnt hit ya. I think the aligator is just an update of what the sandshark should have been

[Tytonium]

Originally posted by Weaver:

The Reaper became very non scary in short order. You can swim/pilot circles around. It. The only reason it was scary is you didn't expect anything that size or able to toss around your craft the first time you encountered it (unless you spoiled things with video playthoughs). It was the unknown. By the end of the game I was actively assaulting reapers and ghost leviathans who wouldn't bugger off in my prawn suit. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

It's true that having played the original game has made us somewhat conditioned to the horrors that lurk below. However, as I am playing through the original again after getting to the end of below zero, the Reapers and ghost leviathans still genuinely unnerve me. I know there's no danger and I know exactly what to do to avoid their attacks, but I still don't want to be in their area for longer than necessary.
I don't feel the same about any creature in below zero. I just want to leave their territory cuz they are freaking annoying, and not because they are terrifying.

Originally posted by Meana V.:

My favorite review said the new shrimp leviathan looked like fine dining. The other deeper leviathan is a good design, but placed in the wrong biome. Like every other enemy in the game, you'll see it from miles away. No suspense = no terror.

My God could you imagine how horrifying the Shadow Leviathans would be if they were...encased in shadows? Like in an area similar to the blood kelp zones in the OG game. Maybe make them come out at night in certain places. So much potential but they are currently just an annoying roadblock for end game areas. No clue what to do about the shrimp things.

[Ninian]

Personally I think the Shadow Leviathan should've been exclusively patrolling the void. The name pretty much implies it. You'd hear it from a distance when you got to the world edge but it wouldn't come for you until you actually crossed over into the void/dead zone. This fan soundpack would've been perfect for it too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2vGOGIcQVU

I can tell you hearing that at the world border would get me the hell back into the playzone.

And... yeah. The chelicerate will never be dread-inspiring, just jumpscare-y and irritating which isn't the same thing. When I look at it I'm not sure if I should be readying the perimeter defense system or a bowl of cocktail sauce.