Pacing on this feels wrong?

[fuggles2k]

Subnautica has that awesome intro where you fall from space, emerge from your pod and boom - there's the aurora, a natural focal point with the direction to stop it exploding.

Here I fell from space, ran to the sea and am now in a pod that exists for reasons? I went to the nearby cache and that did nothing to forward the plot. I have now found something plotish, and this lead me on a quest to scan something, which did nothing.

As such, not really sure what to do. It doesn't help that the plot seems all in PDAs, but if you read them then your vitals don't pause so I have to read and reload. Next time can the menu pause your vitals?

There's a bridge in the arctic I think I need to fix and a last known location of something that is too low to get to as I can't upgrade my seatruck as I haven't found rubies. With no obvious direction to go to progress the game then I'm really cooling on it, especially as navigating the ice is such a pain and there is so much bad weather it's hard to navigate visually.

I assume this is just me? I hope that SB3 has clearly goal direction.

[Ishan451]

Some mild spoilers in this text.

fuggles2k původně napsal:

I assume this is just me? I hope that SB3 has clearly goal direction.

I felt a lot like you too. The intro into the game felt silly, with those strange controls (like why would they look like Wii-Remote?) and from a story perspective 0 preparation. Like, she takes this entire room sized object with her, but doesn't seem to pack any resources into there, without knowing if she will even find edibles in an arctic environment... and all because she once wrote an AI for the Intergalactic Scouts.

Then you get a bunch of stilted emails, in a firehose of exposition. You'd have to wonder if there is only a single person on the Writing Team and if not, then why not go onto a messenger and have a roleplayed conversation with each other... where one is LARPing Sam.. so we get some natural dialogue and back and forth. Even the order of emails seems wrong, because she seems to write an email "in between" feeling silly about the "last email". It is so oddly written. Later PDAs seem fine, but that was such a bad first impression.

Then the game has this strange mix of "here are way points but we also expect you to explore on your own, based on a map, you hopefully scanned".

The "bad weather" that is happening every 30 seconds, is seriously annoying on land, because of how much visibility drops down... and the material to get the cold suit, you can only obtain inside the area you need the coldsuit for... and then you have no more need for it, because you likely already grabbed everything from that base and the circuit you had to walk.... and if you ever go back, you probably go in the prawn. (at least i did)

Then the sounds are all messed up. They ain't bad, but when small, non threatening "predators" make more noise than your big scary ones... then something is seriously off. When the Cryptosuchus is making such a ruckus all the time everywhere, it completely takes off the paranoia of the first game. There is no "oh damn, what was that?!" feeling. Just background noise to be tuned out.

Admittedly, this is just me being 20ish hours in... and the game's story intrigues me enough to continue... but it is clear the Developer has no idea what made the first game good. This new one is all over the place. I didn't have the same "i crashed on an alien planet, wow, this is pretty here" feeling... with betty scaring me as i venture out and it starts talking about leviathans and whatnot.. with sounds that really hit home, between the serene and intense feelings.

The way point system of the first game wasn't optimal, but it was much better paced. This ones relies a lot on you finding Alan and him giving you new way points to look into. (And if you are like me, and do everything else but go to find Alan... you don't get any new way points... i explored all the bases before i even went to Alan)

Unfortunately i think, at this point, the first game was lightning in a bottle. I was already super skeptical after all the reviews and whatnot, which is why i waited for a sale.

A lot of the usual complaints are helplessly overblown and after the first one made the aliens such a big mystery, it is actually interesting me enough to explore them more this time around... but i gotta say that this is also the only reason i keep playing. I wouldn't be playing this game, if it wasn't for the first game. If i had never played the first one, i don't think this one would have excited me as much as the first one did and i do not think i would have stuck with this game.

And worst of all.. there are so much fewer "damn this looks pretty" moments.. the whole allure of the deep is gone with this game.. and that is a shame. I mean they are there... but whoever decided to put Delta in the center and make it a volcanic area,.... That should have been the Anemone place, with its cherry blossom feeling. Not drab vulcano areas with incessantly loud, no threatening monsters. They don't even seem to fit with the rest of the fauna of the planet... just like those strange snow stalkers, that seem to be a Spore Creature that got lost in the wrong game.

To me the game is such a disappointment. Doesn't mean this game is bad... its just... nothing like the first.

[bongerman85]

when you launched from the ship you were towing the pod, there is an icon on your hud during descent, when the incident happens during your descent the lifepod detaches from the ship and deploys its emergency parachute and slowly descends to the planet. meanwhile you crash your ship.

keep an eye out for databoxes and base parts. a map room can help get a quick lay of the land and locate hard to find resources.

yeah i agree the story is hell, and the endgame areas are a confusing maze. there is some good news that a couple base pieces are coming over to subnautica 1. along with game optimizations too. other than that mods can help to ease some of the QoL areas too... its not all a loss, i eventually got a modder to create a new flying seatruck mod, and now the game is far more enjoyable.

[Stupid Sexy Flanders]

Ishan451 původně napsal:

Like, she takes this entire room sized object with her, but doesn't seem to pack any resources into there, without knowing if she will even find edibles in an arctic environment... and all because she once wrote an AI for the Intergalactic Scouts.

Go back to the crash site from the beginning and look behind your crashed pod. You aren't as unprepared as you think.

Ishan451 původně napsal:

And worst of all.. there are so much fewer "damn this looks pretty" moments.. the whole allure of the deep is gone with this game..

Have to wholly disagree here. The environments of this game are absolutely gorgeous. So much so, that I felt this almost detracts from the dread of being so deep in a vast abyss. Except those areas definitely still exist, which perhaps you have not explored yet.

You have some valid criticisms otherwise, but none of which I see as anything that qualifies the game as a disappointment. Everyone seems to be sad that this game isn't a perfect replica of the first game but somehow with a new story, which is a bit ridiculous. I'm currently 33 hours into the game, and I've felt they have captured the magic of the first quite well. It's not quite as good as the first, but that's usually the case with sequels. It's still a fantastic game in its own right, and even as a sequel, it stands up pretty well to the first. The hyperbole about it being nothing like the original makes me wonder if we're playing the same game; it's basically the exact same formula as the first.
I do miss the Cyclops though.

[Dmitriy]

I agree that pacing is wrong. Several times I found myself thinking about what am I supposed to do next.

One possible reason is that the habitat builder tool is very easy to miss. Which I did. Not sure why, may be because it's often either too dark or the snow is too dense.
So after 6 hours I had 10+ waterproof lockers floating with stuff. Until I decided to finally google its location.
Then I had trouble finding parts for the seatruck or the station that builds it, don't remember. Had to google that too.
One of the first objectives was ~300 meters underwater. Had to build air pipeline to get there. Was it intended?
Then I got to a vast open land ice areas where I traveled on foot for about an hour almost freezing to death several times and wondering if I even supposed to go there.

There's this often feeling of not knowing what to do next. This was not the case with the first part where the game had this "flow" where you always had something to do.

Not saying the game is bad overall, but I agree with OP.

[Andreas]

Dmitriy původně napsal:

One possible reason is that the habitat builder tool is very easy to miss. Which I did. Not sure why, may be because it's often either too dark or the snow is too dense.

Well, it's just plain stupid to make such an essential item something you can only find in three exact spots. Without any specific hint that you can find it there to boot.

And there are many other equally stupid things (mechanics, environment, creatures, story, etc. pp.) throughout the game. The most infuriating about it is, that almost all those things were criticized during early access, but the developers ignored nearly all of it.

[Cyiel]

I liked both so i guess i got twice the fun.

[Jimbo_The_Mofo]

The whole game is beyond broken, here's my first experience with below zero playing via family share;

Escape pod falls to planet surface but it bugs and all I can see is space and stars, my character climbs out of the pod into the void of space. Few seconds later the world suddenly appears. After 20 mins of playing I drown and die, except I don't die, I'm left in some ethereal state where I can move around but can't interact with anything in the game whatsoever, console commands won't work.

Guys this is basic stuff, I found other people with the same bug YEARS ago. Glad I never bought it LOL

[Meowish]

Agreed with the OP that this sequel has its problem. First of all, this game is much much smaller than the 1st one in explore-able areas. It's much compacted and more maze like than a wide open area we used to get in S1. So you will find yourself going around the same area over and over again which can feel repetitive and boring. And due to its small size, sooner or later you will stumble upon some of the plots, and if you are unlucky, you might stumble on some of the spoiler before you get on the right track. Luckily enough, the dev had some(not all) of that covered and actually added a few more dialog in case you play it out of order. But that's just it. In terms of exploration, the 1st game is way better imo. BZ gameplay is just looking for the PDA to gather some none plot stories that most will even skip to read or just skim through. While the main plot you stumble upon are all "Play fetch quests"... yes, after all that trouble we went through to trigger and find them, all the npcs want you to do is play fetch, like those boring online rpgs... and to top it up, it's way tooo short, even my ramblings here is longer than all the plot story put together... and most of the story plot line can just stop halfway in a weird way where we, the players are expecting more, the npc just gone into that classic rpg repeat routine, hinting that there will be no more than that, hello, meet me here, meet me there, and suddenly all quiet and even ignores you until you came up with a plot way way later in the game, so yes, the pacing is not planned correctly imo... and honestly I am not too happy when the ending turned out to be as disappointing as Relicta, one that doesn't satisfy or even justify the effort the players put into the game. BZ is nowhere near as good as S1 even though it turns out to be more complex, with more toys to play with and we get to do land exploring more than diving.. this simply felt like a walking simulator to me in the end, it felt a lot like Relicta, just without the puzzle but replaced with survival mechanism.

Human met alien, Alien goes into the human head, human travel with alien in exploring, Alien want to go home/escape planet, human help Alien, then human suddenly decides to follow Alien, with no explanation at all behind that logic.. the end.<- Exact same story from Relicta.

This is a sci-fi survival game no? The protagonist never put survival into calculation going to an unknown world of Alien, volunteer to become their Lab mice? They even showed how inconsiderable the Alien is with the G-force during take off, and we expect him to take care of our protagonist? Heck, the story is even too short for them to form a friendship... and suddenly our protagonist is so trustful? <- I asked these exact same questions at the end of Relicta... sigh...

[bongerman85]

robin came to 4546b with the knowledge that her sister provided her, the information she gleened from her own company sources, in addition to the public release of the loss of the aurora, which happened some time before alterra had a reason to return to 4546b for an actual purpose, instead of just a slingshot manuever for the aurora. the problem with below zero, is that the studio lost its lead story director part way through development, and the idea of us receiving prize related items, and the fact that there is an operating space station in orbit, that just wont or cant help you really held the story back. since then the story was a mess...

she knew enough to be prepared and ready to handle an arctic enviornment, as well as understanding that quite a bit of the area was water... aside from losing our landing craft everything else unfolded exactly to robin's plan. she landed on the planet, with simply no means of getting back off. the real problem i feel is with the games ending... it feels lackluster and unfulfilling compared to the way subnautica 1 ends, which is an amazing end game sequence that gives the feeling of the way the game started.

[bongerman85]

btw the flying seatruck mod restored my faith in the game, a modder made a new version for me because the original was out of date since many updates ago in EA. the fact that the seatruck can fly and can bring the prawn along for the surface exploration made it feel a lot better for me, and gave it a bit of a snowpiercer feeling for me.