Do you think this game should have been scarier then the first?

[Sea Prince Gillywix]

So from what I understand the developers made a statement saying they wanted this game to be more story focused and tone down the horror and terror elements. Most people seem to agree that even if this game had come first its not as scary as Subnautica 1. I have two questions to discuss in this thread:

1. Do you think the devs made the right decision toning down scary elements?

2. What if they had actually done the opposite and made the game lean into horror elements? There was less light, actual blood violence, creatures that are programmed to hunt and ambush the player more akin to the cannibals in the forest games. The game also had a much more outright grim atmosphere and far scarier game overs.

[[ERROR]]

no

[Dirak2012]

Probably, yes. It was so dumbed down that it doesn't even trigger my thalassophobia

[admiral1018]

The devs weren't going to do that. With the console releases, they wanted this game to have a broader appeal, especially to younger users on the Switch. Triggers of common phobias were removed, and many efforts were made for the game to be more accessible. While I don't personally like that direction, I have no idea if it ended up making sense as a business decision for them. I would much rather have preferred options to disable certain elements rather than a global watering-down of the experience.

That's also likely why the writer they ultimately hired didn't have expertise in sci-fi or horror, but wrote YA books (and the scripts for several bad Assassin's Creed games). The interactions between Robin and AL-AN are written as such for a young audience, not a sci-fi fan or hardcore fans of the original.

[moshiwakeda]

Capitalism degenerates design, AGAIN!

[Mynx-In-Match]

Personally, I'm grateful they didn't go full out horror with these games. It's good to have a top tier game set that isn't actively trying to make you side-eye your bathtub. On the other hand, I also would have enjoyed a little more, not horror per say, but thriller so it was on equal standing with the first game's creeping sense of dread in deeper waters.

However, there are plenty of underwater horror games already that will make you so paranoid, you'll never dip your toes in unknown waters again. Here are some examples: Soma, Barotrauma, Iron Lung, Death in the Water, The Shore, Hidden Deep and Nacrosis.

[Catalytic]

Horror is a very specific genre. I don't think SN was ever really intended to be a horror game. The reapers turned out to be scary, as did the stalkers and crabsquids, but I just don't see that it was designed intentionally to be what a lot of people ended up thinking it was.

BZ still has a lot of the same aspects to it when you get attacked, but because you already knew some of those jump scares were coming, it wasn't really scary. People felt let done. There wasn't enough horror for them, but like SN, BZ wasn't really designed to be what people had built up in their imagination.

The survival experience itself has scary aspects to it. I suspect that's what the devs were driving at - just giving people an experience where your survival really was being actively challenged.

[Sea Prince Gillywix]

Originally posted by Catalytic:

Horror is a very specific genre. I don't think SN was ever really intended to be a horror game. The reapers turned out to be scary, as did the stalkers and crabsquids, but I just don't see that it was designed intentionally to be what a lot of people ended up thinking it was.

BZ still has a lot of the same aspects to it when you get attacked, but because you already knew some of those jump scares were coming, it wasn't really scary. People felt let done. There wasn't enough horror for them, but like SN, BZ wasn't really designed to be what people had built up in their imagination.

The survival experience itself has scary aspects to it. I suspect that's what the devs were driving at - just giving people an experience where your survival really was being actively challenged.

I disagree. I think SN was in fact supposed to be scary in many ways. The reason why is because of this voice line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US27Bt3Urcg

They clearly made the Blood kelp reef scary on purpose. It wasn't merely an accident.

[Catalytic]

The game makes a number of references to various emotions. I think you're making more out of that comment than it actually is. Can we say it's a loneliness game too because it comments about that emotion?

There's a big difference from acknowledging an emotional reaction in a game where your character can die and making a game specifically meant to convey that emotion constantly in the game world.

[Sea Prince Gillywix]

Originally posted by Catalytic:

The game makes a number of references to various emotions. I think you're making more out of that comment than it actually is. Can we say it's a loneliness game too because it comments about that emotion?

There's a big difference from acknowledging an emotional reaction in a game where your character can die and making a game specifically meant to convey that emotion constantly in the game world.

Oh come on. You are fooling yourself if you think this wasn't intentional. Just look at the entire Blood Kelp reef. The music literally has heartbeating sounds as it plays. Its very dark with an abundance of hostile creatures. The there is the dunes which is dark even during the day. They didn't have to fill that area with reaper leaviathans. They also could have choosen to most of the areas bright even during night like they did in sub zero. A lot of the music is rather spooky and ominous at times. The aurora can while not as explicitly scary can be unnerving to explore for some. And don't even get me started on the edge of the map. They could have just put up an invisible boundary, but they didn't do that.

[Dirak2012]

Originally posted by Catalytic:

Horror is a very specific genre. I don't think SN was ever really intended to be a horror game. The reapers turned out to be scary, as did the stalkers and crabsquids, but I just don't see that it was designed intentionally to be what a lot of people ended up thinking it was.

BZ still has a lot of the same aspects to it when you get attacked, but because you already knew some of those jump scares were coming, it wasn't really scary. People felt let done. There wasn't enough horror for them, but like SN, BZ wasn't really designed to be what people had built up in their imagination.

The survival experience itself has scary aspects to it. I suspect that's what the devs were driving at - just giving people an experience where your survival really was being actively challenged.

Even after replaying Subnautica several times, it still scares me, despite me knowing every single twist and turn of the story and its creatures.
Below zero, was never scary, even in the first playthrough.

[Sea Prince Gillywix]

Originally posted by Dirak2012:

Originally posted by Catalytic:

Horror is a very specific genre. I don't think SN was ever really intended to be a horror game. The reapers turned out to be scary, as did the stalkers and crabsquids, but I just don't see that it was designed intentionally to be what a lot of people ended up thinking it was.

BZ still has a lot of the same aspects to it when you get attacked, but because you already knew some of those jump scares were coming, it wasn't really scary. People felt let done. There wasn't enough horror for them, but like SN, BZ wasn't really designed to be what people had built up in their imagination.

The survival experience itself has scary aspects to it. I suspect that's what the devs were driving at - just giving people an experience where your survival really was being actively challenged.

Even after replaying Subnautica several times, it still scares me, despite me knowing every single twist and turn of the story and its creatures.
Below zero, was never scary, even in the first playthrough.

I think the Deep trench was scary and getting attacked by those electric sharks can be a pretty terrifying experience. But it definitely doesn't compare to the scariness of the first.

[Catalytic]

Again, I'm not arguing that SN isn't scary or that it doesn't have scary parts. What I'm saying is that it isn't an explicitly horror game. I don't think it was build as a platform to scare you like a real horror game is. That's what I'm saying. I think it was intended to be an open world survival game. The focus is on the survival and exploration, not on the experience of fear. Fear is a part of the survival experience. Any proper survival game will put you in positions where you may not survive and that will cause some fear, but it's not the same as explicitly designing a game to scare you, which is what the horror genre is.

And no, I didn't find BZ to be scary either. The shadow leviathan was probably supposed to be scary. It was mainly just annoying. Same with the ice worm. But this also illustrates what I was saying about SN. BZ's difficulty was scaled way back. It doesn't threaten your survival very often. You don't get scared because things really don't threaten to end your survival much. That distinction makes it clear what drives the fear experience: the difficulty of the survival aspects of the game.

[Dirak2012]

Originally posted by Catalytic:

Again, I'm not arguing that SN isn't scary or that it doesn't have scary parts. What I'm saying is that it isn't an explicitly horror game. I don't think it was build as a platform to scare you like a real horror game is. That's what I'm saying. I think it was intended to be an open world survival game. The focus is on the survival and exploration, not on the experience of fear. Fear is a part of the survival experience. Any proper survival game will put you in positions where you may not survive and that will cause some fear, but it's not the same as explicitly designing a game to scare you, which is what the horror genre is.

And no, I didn't find BZ to be scary either. The shadow leviathan was probably supposed to be scary. It was mainly just annoying. Same with the ice worm. But this also illustrates what I was saying about SN. BZ's difficulty was scaled way back. It doesn't threaten your survival very often. You don't get scared because things really don't threaten to end your survival much. That distinction makes it clear what drives the fear experience: the difficulty of the survival aspects of the game.

Making bigger open spaces, reducing the ambiental light, not making all biomes narrow corridors, all that would have helped enormously to make the game more scary.

[Sea Prince Gillywix]

Originally posted by Catalytic:

Again, I'm not arguing that SN isn't scary or that it doesn't have scary parts. What I'm saying is that it isn't an explicitly horror game. I don't think it was build as a platform to scare you like a real horror game is. That's what I'm saying. I think it was intended to be an open world survival game. The focus is on the survival and exploration, not on the experience of fear. Fear is a part of the survival experience. Any proper survival game will put you in positions where you may not survive and that will cause some fear, but it's not the same as explicitly designing a game to scare you, which is what the horror genre is.

And no, I didn't find BZ to be scary either. The shadow leviathan was probably supposed to be scary. It was mainly just annoying. Same with the ice worm. But this also illustrates what I was saying about SN. BZ's difficulty was scaled way back. It doesn't threaten your survival very often. You don't get scared because things really don't threaten to end your survival much. That distinction makes it clear what drives the fear experience: the difficulty of the survival aspects of the game.

No its not explicitly a horror game, but it is clear that the Devs intended the original Subnautica to be scary to a certain degree. One of the scariest experiences I've had in gaming was when I first encountered the dunes at night. I remember my first time runnning into the dunes. I got the message"Multiple leviathan Class life forms detected. Are you sure whatever you are doing is worth it?" However I was already a bit far in and got my seamoth grabbed by a reaper leviathan. It was absolutely terrifying, but made for a great game experience I will ever forget.

[Shift]

I think it should. Being less scarier made the experience less worth it IMO.