I finished the game without ever finding the frozen leviathan

[Jennay]

It seemed to be a pretty important part of the story, and there's even an achievement for curing it of the Kharaa Pustules. I never even found the glacial basin. Given how important it seemed to the story as a whole, I'm surprised that there's nothing directing the player there. Exploring the main iceberg that has the worm and Phi Robotics on it (which I assume is the same berg the leviathan is on) was so tedious that as soon as I found the architect remains I left. I even tried using console commands to teleport to the glacial basin but it didn't work (maybe because I was mounted on the snowfox at the time?). Anyway, I'm just annoyed that it was so easy to miss something that was so relevant to the story. :/

[Cat®]

There really should be a lock where Robin says "Before I go I need to figure out what happened to Sam." or something to that effect. It is the reason she came, after all.

[Damage]

Couldn't agree more. The signposting in this game is atrocious, even on my second playthrough I STILL needed to use the Wiki and interactive map. The entire setup of the game is "what happened to Sam", then they make it completely optional, and easy to miss most of. The "cure" quest has zero impetus and even less clues, heck, Maida is hard to find and not required either.

I cannot understand why they'd put in four major storylines and then make three of them optional, the game doesn't care if you even encounter them, let alone complete them.

Phi is easy enough to find, but then you might stumble across Phi Excavation (even if, as the OP says, it's a pain to find) and this renders Zero completely redundant as it skips you straight to the end of Sam's story, which is a massive spoiler.

Maida's base is impossible to find by accident, I was ready for the final biome before I ever found it, and only after I looked it up online. Zero clues to its location, or even that it exists.

As for the cure, at no point does the game actually suggest you should do this, you'd think it'd be tied into the whole AL-AN thing but no, suddenly it's "finish your business". Had to load an earlier save just to hear AL-AN's commentary on doing the cure stuff.

Also, how are you supposed to know where the cure is hidden? There's a vague mention in the Maida PDA, but that's it. Are you supposed to find it by pure luck? By exploring every penguin hole? All this to find a cure which the game doesn't even suggest you actually need.

(TL;DR) This could all have been easily avoided. Lock Phi Excavation behind a key that requires Zero to proceed, so you learn what Sam was up to. Lock getting AL-AN out of your head behind finding a cure, as he won't go without one, and you need his help to make it. Lock finding a cure behind dealing with Maida, using something from her greenhouse to finish it. Then you can sort out AL-AN and head for the gate. Maximum story and dialogue, no spoilers, natural progression, all storylines resolved by the end. It's not rocket science.

[Troubleshooter]

My first playthrough, I didn't find the frozen leviathan, or complete the Sam story. It wasn't on purpose, I just didn't care.

My second playthrough I did that first, and now I have a situation where Robin has closure but no way off the planet and no plan for how to accomplish this.

The narrative falls flat no matter what order you do things in, some of it will just not make sense or be so "side mission" as to be emotionally dead..

Just another way of saying that this element of the game design was a flop. Good intentions aside, still a flop.

[Andreas]

Well, I really, don't like the story and think it's a compete mess. But ...

Maida's base: it's easy enough to find. If you dive down at the "last known position" beacon, you'll find the monkey nests with loot. If you search the caves you will stumble upon light sticks which lead to the base location.

The cure: Sam talks about hiding the cure in a pengling hole in one PDA. I think it's one at Phi Robotics. And there's a map on the wall (that you can scan) which has the specific spot highlighted by a red circle. Despite that, I had a hard time finding it. But it is at least pretty well hinted at.

I still agree that the whole setup is just haphazard.

[Vince]

the map from phi base has a red circle for the antidote location, and also show different point of interest as reference, the cave entrance for the frozen leviathan is next to the big antenna.

once you found the map in front of your sister bedroom in phi base i personnaly find it pretty obvious to investigate all alterra location on the said map, will it be for blueprint, pda entries or whatever.

[TurielD]

The story is definitely a mess. With what you learn about how Marguerit basically got Sam killed for nothing at the Leviathan... if I'd have been emotionally invested in the story I'd probably have wanted to kill her. I half-heartedly slashed her with a survival knife, expecting something to happen with the stalker. But nothing happened at all.
But Robin just reads the PDA, while Marguerit has her back turned, and is like 'oh, well OK then, guess she died a failed eco-terrorist. I'm gonna go hang out with my alien AI buddy'.

I had no idea you could 'cure' the *already dead* leviathan until I went reading about it, to find if I'd missed something important.

Heck, I carried that cure with me through to the end with AL-AN, in case he was still infected or something.

[Vince]

Originally posted by TurielD:

I had no idea you could 'cure' the *already dead* leviathan until I went reading about it, to find if I'd missed something important.

Heck, I carried that cure with me through to the end with AL-AN, in case he was still infected or something.

when you meet marg' in her greenhouse she hint/suggest you that you could pursue what your sister started with the antidote and cure the leviathan.

[TurielD]

> when you meet marg' in her greenhouse she hint/suggest you that you could pursue what your sister started with the antidote and cure the leviathan.

Whut? All she says is 'hey there's a PDA over there, it'll point you in the right direction'. The PDA is them arguing, that Robin has developed a cure, and Marguerit convinces her that that's not enough, she needs to blow up the cave so no more samples can be taken.

That rather suggests that the 'cure' is not sufficient to do any good, no?

[Vince]

also at some point i had the antidote in one of my base locker and each time i loaded the game robin said something like "i should use/do something with this antidote"

edit:(i don't remind exactly the line from robin)

[Vince]

Originally posted by TurielD:

> when you meet marg' in her greenhouse she hint/suggest you that you could pursue what your sister started with the antidote and cure the leviathan.

Whut? All she says is 'hey there's a PDA over there, it'll point you in the right direction'. The PDA is them arguing, that Robin has developed a cure, and Marguerit convinces her that that's not enough, she needs to blow up the cave so no more samples can be taken.

That rather suggests that the 'cure' is not sufficient to do any good, no?

my bad that's a line from robin (probably when you found the antidote)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2496659151

robin: " she intended to use this bacterial agent to neutralize the bacteria " wich conflict with the pda entries (frank discussion between friends) you found in the greenhouse where margerite convince sam that she will blow everithing instead of using the antidote as sam wanted to do

[TurielD]

Ah gotcha, thanks for checking :)

[Shahadem]

How do you cure a dead rotting corpse?

For that matter how is it that the humans managed to create a bundled cure for the Kharaa virus when the aliens who were more advanced in every way could not despite devoting the entirety of their resources to finding a cure and still completely failing?

For that matter all the life in the Artic should have been killed by the Kharaa virus already because it was a planet wide extinction event. The fauna in the first game only managed to exist because the alien was pumping out small amounts of the cure into the water of a closed habitat.

That and I cannot stand Margarit's character and I agree that the game's story is a mess. The game needed to maintain a lazer focus on the impetus for Sam's journey, finding her sister. The entire Al-An story has no emotional weight and never should have been added to the game as it shatters apart the story by devoting too much time to something that doesn't matter and thereby taking time away from the story about Sam. Likewise Margarit should never have been created. She's a terrible and completely pointless character who detracts rather than adds. The story should have concluded with Robin finding Sam and the rest of the survivors who would have been herded into a containment cage as a result of having arrived before the Kharaa virus had been distributed into the Artic.

[TyresTyco]

Marg is some old remnant of the past .. for some reason they didnt want to remove her. So thats why they did some barebones story to at least letting her in.

Anthomnia uploaded a pretty interesting BZ video where he shows parts of the ending that was supposed to ship with the first story before the rewrite

Long story short. Altera was supposed to stop alan and robin.. while marg tried to save them by punching the altera ship with her prawn suit.

1000000 times a better ending than what we have here. Far more interesting than JUST alan taking us to his alien home.

[NotSoAlien]

Same bro. After i finished the game i asked myself about the initial goal of the game, discovering what happened to Sam. Then i found out about this quest. I never heard of it, i never got clues about it. I got pissed off cause i missed a important part of the story.

[Seraph]

I agree. The story is very obviously meant to be unraveled in a specific order, but they don't force you to unravel it in that order. Big oversight imo.