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S2 Ep159: Subnautica: Below Zero
77 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Ian for this week's episode as they dive deeply into a new sea, and its cold this time!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Early Morning Banter
00:00:27
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave?
00:00:35
Speaker
It's going okay, you know, just hanging out. Yeah. Wait, I see a third bar here. How's it going today, Ian? It's going well, Dave. Thanks for asking. And thanks for waking me up. It's such an ungodly hour. Yeah, we record really early. It's like, what is it? Probably like five? Krakadon. Yeah. Yeah, I heard roosters earlier. That's just the normal auditory hallucinations.
00:01:02
Speaker
That's the sound that Ian's film plays whenever I send him dick pics. I don't know how to text specific images, but whatever. I mean, that's a thing, though. I did set the rooster crow as your ringtone and a big bird as your picture that comes up.
Discord's AI and ASCII Art Humor
00:01:24
Speaker
That is apparently a thing in Discord, though. They use image detection AI. I can't remember where we were talking about this recently. But if you try to send somebody a dick pic or something, it'll be like, no. This image is really sus.
00:01:40
Speaker
I feel like that is you trying to trap me because now I'm curious. Well, no, I don't actually please. No one's sitting me anything. But no, like I had the same reaction as Ian. I'm like, I'm glad the technology exists. That's really impressive. But I've never tried it. And I want to verify that it's true. You know, we were talking. It must have been. I think it was Mike. I think we're talking to Mike about this.
00:02:05
Speaker
But yeah, I haven't gotten any messages from him in a bit. That makes sense. Discord is flagging all of Mike's messages, regardless of how, you know, a plane has dick pics. Hey, how's it going? You can rearrange these characters into a penis. We're not even going to try now. Partless conventional dick text.
00:02:24
Speaker
The poor perverts of discord have had to resort to ASCII dicks. Oh my gosh. I mean, original rocket ships and YouTube comments was the start of the space race. Am I right? I'm going to type one out in the chat while you guys think about that.
00:02:43
Speaker
Well, actual, actual typing going on. Don't forget the tillers at the end. Oh, baby. I got your children. There was, there are, I can confirm for the listeners, there are tillers. How many equal signs is that? Is that seven? That's a, that's, that's going to cause. That's average, right?
Subnautica Plushies and Game Introduction
00:03:02
Speaker
Anyway, how many equal signs are you? Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm imagining the internet was wild.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, it still is though. It really is. I was looking at, speaking of current internet, which I started speaking of, I was looking at Plushes for Subnautica. Why? That's it, that's my segue. There's the cool ones. I liked, there was a knitted Reaper Leviathan, which looked pretty cool. And then a bunch of peepers. Bunch of peepers.
00:03:41
Speaker
And so we've gone all the way back to the dick pics. Send peeper. PLZ, please, send peeper. Why in the world would you want a Reaper, Leviathan plushie? That seems like the most horrifying plushie.
00:04:01
Speaker
What you do, you run your lady a bath, you put a bath bomb in it, and one Reaper Leviathan plush, and you see how it goes, you know?
00:04:12
Speaker
It's only moderately horrifying. I'm actually going to post a picture to our Discord chat. Based on how sharply we react, you'll know how scary it is. It's as scary as a plushie can be, right? It looks like shit. It looks like shit. It's knitted. If you sent me this without context, I'd say, what? I mean, I thought you posted the wrong picture at first. I'm like, that's the snake crab or the crab snake.
00:04:42
Speaker
Well, similar color scheme, I guess. You could tell me this was a Rudolph and somebody quote-unquote tried and I would believe you. I could see it from the front. Okay, a little bit more here. Yeah. Maybe it's because that's the view I'm typically associating with my first encounter with the Reaper is about to get eaten by it. First and last view.
00:05:06
Speaker
Anyways, yeah, this is a plushie cast. We talk about plushies, but sometimes Subnautica. In this case, in particular, we're going to talk about Subnautica Below Zero, which I erroneously continue to refer to as Subnautica 2. And we'll try not to for this recording. But I mean, it is the sequel, right?
Subnautica Universe and Epic Exclusivity
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah. Is anything carried over canonically from a story standpoint? Yes, actually.
00:05:36
Speaker
But it's not like I said that with a measure of intrigue. I think Ian could back me up on this. There's not really that much of a measure of intrigue. It's just like it's reference to the events of the first game. I think I referenced a couple of times. There's enough. I would say if you're a fan of Subnautica that it will catch you.
00:05:57
Speaker
It's it's building its sort of mass effect lore database with every Codex entry it adds in that. Oh, there is a wide expanded world, but we're just going to concern ourselves with this planet here. Yeah.
00:06:10
Speaker
They are kind of building out the personality of Altera, like the lore of everything that's going on. But most of it is still, for either game, it's focused particularly on the planet.
00:06:26
Speaker
So developed and published by Unknown Worlds. So still, I guess, relatively, I don't know if you consider them indie or not. At this point, how much money does the company need to make in an epic game store exclusivity deal before they're no longer indie? Well, I mean, technically, Hades is on the epic game store, and I would still consider Supergiant to be an indie studio.
00:06:54
Speaker
So there was, what was it? A spreadsheet was released that listed out. It was particularly for the games that showed up as free on the Epic Games Store. They gave the publishers a lump sum for it to show up for free. And it was a lot of money for Subnautica. I'm trying to find exactly what it was. Here's what I paid for these. Yes, found it.
00:07:24
Speaker
So Subnautica 1, come on screenshot. Subnautica, they're not alphabetical. Someone buy me time. Thank you. Yeah, you can't just heal by time. 1.4 million dollars.
00:07:44
Speaker
It was what Epic Games Store paid Subnautica for the freebie exclusivity deal. It resulted in 800,000 new Epic accounts for an average cost of $1.74 per copy of the game.
00:08:01
Speaker
Hmm. Does it show anything as far as where those accounts go as far as if they're actually spending money or if they're signing up for, yeah, I'll get some free shit. Just sign up. Okay. Um, yeah, I would say at least 50% of those people probably go on to then buy something because usually it's just a get you in the door. Yeah. I mean, that's fair, but at the same time I've bought very few things on Epic and I've redeemed a lot of free games. Um, I guess I'm not a new account though. So I would only have been tracked for one of these.
00:08:32
Speaker
To their credit, there's been a lot of good games that have been free on Epic Game Store, Hyper Light Drifter, Celeste, Inside, World of Goo. Maybe. Yeah, World of Goo is on the list. Transistor, super liminal. Super Meat Boy, lots of supers. Alan Lake, For Honor. It's not like they don't have good games in their marketplace. It is a decent strategy to get people, like Dave said, in the door.
00:09:00
Speaker
because I know some of their timed exclusives they had, specifically Satisfactory and Hades. Hades was a timed exclusive. They got me to buy it at the store there instead of waiting for Steam.
00:09:18
Speaker
My brain literally, you said satisfactory, and I heard factorial. That's where I'm at right now. But no, you're right. That makes sense. I was going to say, though, keeping it relatively on Subnautica, no game came close to the the number of accounts brought in compared to Subnautica. It was 17 percent new to Epic. The closest thing was Batman Arkham, which was 10 percent. So like Subnautica has a massive following. Obviously, the first game was wildly successful. I believe it was my game of the year.
00:09:48
Speaker
Uh, did we all talk about it with this same group? Yes. Yeah. We did it in person though, in my apartment, however, long ago. Cause remember we had the third mic set up. Yeah. Huh. That's true. Yeah.
00:10:09
Speaker
Are you just realizing that now? I thought that's part of the reason why we had Ian for Below Zero. My memory's not that good. This is completing the trifecta of let's just keep reviewing survival crafting games. Oh yeah. Ian's very niche, he doesn't play anything else, so we grab him for specifically these, you know.
00:10:30
Speaker
Is that true? E&D plays genres other than... No, I know you're playing Mass Effect right now, so that's
Subnautica Below Zero Anticipation and Experience
00:10:35
Speaker
not survival crafting at all. Yes, because he also does factory stuff. He does a whole bunch of things. Well, that's crafting to survive in real life. You're crafting in video games to survive in real life. Still survival crafting. I take my comment back. What about Subnautica?
00:10:56
Speaker
Sure, I would take it back here. The Blow Zero, not a full sequel, but it's priced at $30, which I believe the first one also was. So it's not priced as like a AAA game either. Which I think is fair, because if you're in it looking for a game that's 40 hours long with branching story paths and dialogue trees and big budget anime explosions, you're not going to get that.
00:11:26
Speaker
No. Anime explosions are definitely out for the underwater game. I see. Trying to think of a good underwater anime, but. Yeah. Untapped genre. Draw in a blank. I'll try and get back to you on that. I swear there has to be one. It'll be on Netflix next season. This will not occur. I now want the Hunt for Red October anime edition. Sean Cottery. Oh, yeah.
00:11:56
Speaker
All right. So this was obviously anticipated by I think both of you guys when we were talking about the first one. Yeah. And as we all recall from that episode, I didn't get all the way through Subnautica. I fell off at, Hey, build research stations to find where the fuck to go. And after five hours of that straight, I'm like, peace. Yeah. So how hyped were you guys for this one coming out? And has it met expectations so far?
00:12:27
Speaker
I'm gonna let Ian answer first. So for me, I was in a video game dry spell. There wasn't anything else coming out and Subnautica was on early access. And the difference between its early access release and its final release is that the
00:12:44
Speaker
Penultimate cutscene in the game was missing. It basically invisible walled you at the very end so that nobody was spoiled on the ending. And then when the full game released, that invisible wall came down and you could complete the game. Knowing this and knowing the game was basically in its final playable state, I picked it up about two weeks early before its final release.
00:13:05
Speaker
And that's when I jumped in and I think Jake jumped in like a week before its final release after he'd heard good reviews from me that it was in a playable state.
00:13:16
Speaker
It was like a few days, I think. I had like three or four days. I didn't actually hit the wall at any point. Okay, so you got in just enough so that when you got to endgame, you could actually experience the endgame? Yeah. And to their credit, to Unknown World's credit, they did have a pretty seamless transition between early access and the full release, except
00:13:38
Speaker
They did duplicate all of the, uh, retrievable items in the game as part of the final patch. So if you were like collecting motivational cat posters and things like that, you could grab copies of all of it. That was kind of funny.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, specifically there's one point where you pick up your sister's necklace and you're like, oh, this is very important to me. I should keep this with me. And I'm like, I've got one back at the base. How many necklaces does she have?
00:14:10
Speaker
The second one is just like one of those edible candy necklaces. It's not fancy. It's not jewelry or anything. Nothing like wearing a saliva-ridden string. I think this just kind of concludes that children are really dumb and will wear anything.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah. But I mean, I think the answer is we're both pretty hyped for this, right? Neither of us really waited for the full release. And I think I have thoughts on the game. We should talk about some of them, I suppose.
00:14:51
Speaker
But for people who are completely unfamiliar with Sonotica, the brief overview is it's underwater survival crafting. That's basically the Steam tags. Nothing too exciting or fancy there, except underwater. That's pretty uncommon. But I don't want to retread over everything that was in the first game.
00:15:12
Speaker
I think that you can kind of, and I'm open to disagreement on this, take the shortcut that there's a lot of things in common between Subnautica and Below Zero. I mean, I would assume they'd have to have some common ground. My ongoing theory with any sequel is you have to have enough to be like, oh, this is like that thing that I like, but enough to separate it as like, oh, this is building on and adding new stuff. Ironically, the only thing they don't have in common is the ground.
00:15:44
Speaker
You mean like they don't have islands you can go up on? Well, I guess they have islands, but they don't they don't have like massive land sections. That was supposed to be the joke. But yeah, it was like 50 percent joke power. But if Dave, if that's your criteria, they do mostly succeed. Subnautica Below Zero, which I almost just called Subnautica 2. It's tough. Is basically the first Subnautica almost
00:16:14
Speaker
system for system, game for game, except new story, new location, a few new items added, one or two items removed, and more emphasis placed, and a few tweaks to the formula, which some work out really well for them, and some work out less so in my opinion.
00:16:40
Speaker
I think I do need to establish with you guys. Perhaps I should have asked this beforehand. How far do you want to go on spoilers for this? Because intrinsically Subnautica is an exploration game. And I can update. I'll put the description for the podcast with the spoiler alert level. But you literally can't talk about anything without considering it spoilers. And I'd rather talk about something.
00:17:03
Speaker
some middle or high tier spoilers. Are we talking about how King Bowser is the final antagonist? I was going to say, let's leave that all probably full end game stuff.
Solitude vs. Interaction in Gameplay
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah. I'll leave it up to you guys. You guys have actually played it. I mean, I've got zero opinions on that right now because I would like to talk about spoiler things, but I would understand if Dave wants to remain fresh and unspoilt.
00:17:33
Speaker
I don't think there's too much of a risk of Dave spoiling himself through normal gameplay later. We are saying spoiling myself, right? But maybe let's cut it off. Let's not talk about the in-game plot lines or anything like that. But we can talk about new modules, new gear, stuff like that you can find.
00:17:55
Speaker
OK, good sidebar. Let's go on pause the recording. Let's go back to it. Thank you, everyone, for stepping away while we had that internal discussion for the logistics of the podcast. So one of the big changes, Dave, that I'm on the table for, like it's it's on the fence on the table. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm on the fence about this post on table is that
00:18:22
Speaker
Subnautica 1 was a very lonely experience. You basically never speak to another human being. You have a telepathic communication with a few fish, and you get radio messages from people who are already dead. At no point, actually, one telepathic fish is your only sapient communication throughout the entire game.
00:18:52
Speaker
Subnautica Below Zero is a much livelier game in this regard. There is at least two different entities you speak with throughout the game in real time. And they play a much larger part of the story so that you're interacting with them and your character is no longer a silent protagonist. They have an actual character with hopes and dreams and narration.
00:19:22
Speaker
So the game feels much less lonely, but at the same time, it is a welcome addition to have some other voices. Right.
00:19:31
Speaker
I was just going to ask if that was something you preferred of the two, but it sounds like it was like, as you said, welcome edition. I mean, I would, I would say it's kind of a trade off because I actually, so Subnautica had this loop of get a distress signal, go out and investigate. And the distress signal was always someone's voice, but it was like, okay, now it's reached like your pod or whatever. Um, and the first couple of times you're like,
00:20:00
Speaker
Maybe this is it. Maybe this is where I can go find somebody. And the answer is no. And the answer is almost always no. That person is dead. And so it kind of built this.
00:20:14
Speaker
atmosphere, like oppressive atmosphere in subnautica one, which like, yes, it's oppressive, but it's also atmospheric. That's the second word in what I said. Right. And that doesn't exist in below zero, like to the same extent, at least, because you're like, oh, the world feels much more populated and lived in. And it's not just like
00:20:39
Speaker
you're in the ruins of this forgotten planet. It's like, oh no, people were like literally right here and they're cooking marshmallows right over there. So let's just go talk to them. Yeah, let's hop in the vehicle and take a trip and we will go find someone. And if we press the A button, they will say something back to us. Yeah. Quit talking to me. This is my dialogue. Tell me, do you get to cloud district very often?
00:21:07
Speaker
What am I saying? Of course you don't. Zeme shows up everywhere. Yeah. Even on planet 4546B. But would you say like the loneliness from Subnautica 1 kind of, I mean, obviously with the atmosphere of fear and exploration, do you think it kind of resists?
00:21:30
Speaker
I feel like the word is retards. Do you think it actually retards you from going out and kind of like the gameplay? Yeah. Or does it kind of encourage you like, hey, nobody else is here. Nobody else is going to help me out. I have to do the exploration stuff on my own. It kind of drives you forward. Inhibits. That's the word. Inhibits is better. Yeah, there we go. So they have the same thing.
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah, you have the technical meaning. I just, yeah, this, yeah. Personally, I enjoyed the first game storytelling approach a little bit better. I enjoyed this moody atmospheric. I'm all alone. It reminds me of games like Bioshock or System Shock or Prey, which might as well be Bioshock. All of these sort of
00:22:22
Speaker
I don't know, loneliness simulators where you are the lone person. You are getting to the event after the event has happened and you're facing together the story posthumously. You're the catastrophic investigator or catastrophe investigator. What happened here? Right. The Overdinn. Yeah. Literally that game. Literally that.
00:22:45
Speaker
Uh, not just like I said, it's a, it's a trade-off subnautica that below zero has a more lived in world, but because of it, they get to do more world building. True.
Exploration Guidance and Player Experience
00:22:54
Speaker
And I think it's fair if we're going to talk about, you know, spoiler related things to say what these two people we interact with the most are. Uh, one of them is an alien subconscious that hitches a ride inside your brain. Hmm.
00:23:14
Speaker
And you have conversations, and I would say this is the most, if of the two people you do meet, this is the one that I mind the least as it, he, because it's a masculine voice it uses, sort of acts as a knowledgeable foil to your ignorance of the situation.
00:23:35
Speaker
Right. He's the tutorial guide. Sensei. Notice me, please. But he will chime in on things that you find or make remarks on. Hey,
00:23:58
Speaker
You've spent a lot of time not doing anything productive. I have a big tugging in this in this direction. And it does offer a slightly more guided experience, which might have prevented you from getting bored with this game because he actually does sort of point you in the right direction on occasion. I think I think I agree with everything you said, and I was disappointed when the like more guided
00:24:27
Speaker
advice he was presenting was no longer like applicable to the game and they went back to the drop a scanner room somewhere like Dave was explaining like creating research stations all over the place like the game does return to that and I didn't feel it was an improvement necessarily like by comparison
00:24:49
Speaker
I really liked, Oh, you've gotten close to something. There's something interesting over in this area. Right. It's like, I think that subnautica, like one sort of used the, um, your AI, your like system AI and like a similar like approach where it's just like, uh, multiple Leviathan class life forms detected in this region. And you're like.
00:25:18
Speaker
What if I didn't? What if we just back up? Yeah, just hold the S key and remove ourselves from the situation. It's the same reason when we're playing tabletop games. Sometimes I'm just like, hey, there's an NPC with the group. So that NPC can just sit there, hands on hips, watching you guys make decisions. And then if it's like, you're aimless, completely aimless. You have no idea what to proceed with.
00:25:46
Speaker
And that's the designer's fault as far as information conveyance. You can use that AI to pick up the slack. And I think that would have been amazing for Dave, for Sonotica 1. And not even just Dave. I had the same issue toward the end game of Sonotica 1.
00:26:05
Speaker
Basically like somebody to point and say, hey, this over here. Right. You tilt the camera a little bit, a little bit. You're just like, or maybe it is the internal dialogue of there's a puzzle I can solve.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's nice to have some type of indication, not something that's completely handhold of go here. Here's the exact spot. But like you kind of mentioned with like the brief camera tilt or just kind of a thought like, maybe we should come back here. There's like a loose marker on the map.
00:26:38
Speaker
just so you're not fiddling with your fish sticks all day. Hey, how do you feel about that trade-off, Ian, for this? Because this Below Zero is definitely a game that has the guided sections and the completely unguided sections. And then there's also vague guidance in the middle where it's like, oh, yeah, it's 500 meters west of my location. OK. So there was some guidance that was really appreciated
00:27:09
Speaker
specifically towards the mid game you're told that hey I'm looking to for three specific recipes and you have to find the station that has that recipe location in it somewhere right and
00:27:27
Speaker
The first one, he's like, oh, yeah, it's it's here. It's straight here. Here's a way point. Yeah, I've marked it on your marks on the map. Yeah. But by the second and the third one, he's like, I don't have an exact location, but I got a general feeling. And he's like, I think the first hint you're given is a flat location with spires of ice. And you're like, OK, that's less useful, but now I can sort of wander. And when I see that, I know I'm in the right area.
00:27:57
Speaker
And the third hint is an area surrounded by crystal, which since there's only one area in the game that fits that description, was a useful pointer in the right direction.
00:28:08
Speaker
I mean, it kind of was because it was also like that area is so out of the way without mentioning exactly where it is. It's like I would have known I found something important as soon as the like surroundings became that interesting and diverse. Right. You're like, I have arrived somewhere. It's probably important. I would argue with you slightly because there is another point of interest down there.
00:28:35
Speaker
which I found that point of interest long before I found the recipe. And then I'm like, I had to have missed something. And had it not been for this message, I would have not known to look farther because draw distance in that area is dog. Yeah, it's it's definitely a tightrope. I don't feel like they really have come to a.
00:29:00
Speaker
like a consensus for their own writing and world building about how guided the experience in Subnautica should be because I feel like what they're going for is like have some portion of the game
00:29:15
Speaker
that you can kind of be guided through and then hope that you catch on for the unguided sections. But it hasn't quite met equilibrium for me. I'm like, this guided portion is real nice. And then it ends and I'm like, I have no idea where to go. I'm just going to start slapping bases down in the ecological dead zone.
00:29:36
Speaker
Do you think the experience would be improved, and I guess this kind of drifts towards Dave as well, if they had a slider in the beginning of the game that's like, hey, how guided of an experience would you like? And then depending on where that slider is placed, different auditory or even waypoint clues as to like, oh, this is this isn't a location of interest for something story related or progression gated.
00:30:07
Speaker
That way, people like me, who enjoy wandering around lost and stumbling on the MacGuffin, can compete with people like Dave, who are like, I've spent my four years wandering looking for this.
00:30:23
Speaker
Would you please just tell me where it is now? I was desperately trying not to make that joke. I was going to make a reference to it if somebody didn't. Yeah, I would like something because I think from my specific case, it was literally I needed a certain type of material to make another type of submersible that could go deeper and I could explore further. I was fine with the exploration.
00:30:48
Speaker
But it was trying to specifically find one fucking thing that my four scanner rooms that I like spaced out pretty decently weren't able to find. So if they were just to give me any type of indication as far as roughly here, I would spend another two hours looking for something in a rough location. Right. So if I could bump that up like, hey, I'm finding fuck all, give me a little hint, that would be useful. I like being able to opt into hints instead of
00:31:18
Speaker
them forcing them upon you. Even with puzzle games, you're like, man, I'm fucked here. Maybe they just rephrased the question slightly and you're like, okay, that's not a piece of information for me to work with. I'll go off of that and come back versus either getting fully stopped or having it explained to you. I like that idea. I think even just having vague, you mentioned points of interest in
00:31:42
Speaker
even just having vague points of interest like these are locations you can't investigate and maybe it's sort of like draw some inspiration from metroidvania where it's like you can't go that deep that one's all the way out there there's like leviathan swimming above it that's scary your own fear will present will prevent you from reaching this one like um maybe that pushes you to investigate other points first
00:32:06
Speaker
And you don't know necessarily what you will find there. So you still have that joy of exploration and discovery. I think that would be a happy middle ground for a game like Subnautica. And then you don't have people that need to search up rough hints for the late game. Right. Yeah. If you have to go to the wiki to find out where to get something, the game has probably failed at some point.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah, there's make a really shitty analogy. One of the old Dragon Ball Z Buddha guy games for PS2 had a thing in the story mode where you could search for Dragon Balls and you'd find Dragon Balls by going over that exact location on the world map.
00:32:48
Speaker
There wasn't any indicator at all. So what you do is you'd put your left analog stick straight forward and angle it ever so slightly in one direction so that you covered every square inch of the world map until you found them. You're just making like time zone lines across the world. Yes.
New Features and Challenges in Below Zero
00:33:08
Speaker
This sounds vaguely familiar to me and rage inducing.
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah, it wasn't a fun experience, but it was very much side content. It was an optional thing you could do versus obviously mandatory for progression. Yeah.
00:33:24
Speaker
I think, like, I don't think Subnautica is that bad. I don't think it's literally like explore every little thing. There's still like a couple things that are useful, such as like if you do use the scanner room, the same strats from the first game work in this game, like kind of just across the board. If you've solved some of those problems or you know how to solve those problems, you can jump into below zero much more rapidly. Like scanner room, max range, searching for fragments.
00:33:53
Speaker
Good call. That's how you find new things. And that hasn't really changed, I guess. But I don't know if it needed to. I think they introduced some new concepts, new terrain, like a cold meter for one year. I didn't realize this until we were talking about it. I think Ian hit me with the realization that it's oxygen for the surface.
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's in Subnautica below zero, you've got four meters instead of three, the fourth being your temperature gauge. And the game kind of waves its hands. It's like, yeah, as long as you're underwater, you're warm enough because the suit insulates. I'm like, all right, whatever. Let's hand wave that. But it's like, yeah, as soon as you're above ground, though, your heat meter starts to go down as you catch hypothermia.
00:34:48
Speaker
And it dawned on me really quick that I'm like, OK, so we just introduced a meter above ground that wants to make me go below water to go along with the meter below water that makes me want to surface for air occasionally. You have this sinusoidal path as you leap like a dolphin. It's really trying to tell me philosophically that no matter where I am in life, I'll be unhappy.
00:35:17
Speaker
You just gotta do a dead man float. There's like really freaking early. It's like the first fauna or flora I guess you'd run into in the game. They're like these heat like pads, like lily, not lily pads, they're like sunflowers. They're like alien sunflowers. And literally like if you walk close to them, they turn and face you instead of the sun. I guess you are the sun in this situation.
00:35:46
Speaker
and they just radiate heat on land. So you can just stand there and like warm up. And I was thinking about it when I encountered this. I was like, this doesn't make any sense. Like why would a plant generate all of the heat? Like just radiate heat into the environment. That's gotta be tremendously inefficient. It's doing its best. Evolution's a crapshoot. Sometimes you don't come out on top of the Darwin Award.
00:36:14
Speaker
Sometimes you just exist to keep player characters warm. Yeah, and it is nice for that. There's also some like hot springs, things like that. Little pocket, just like there's pockets you can get air from underwater if there's similar things above. I did have like one story I wanted to say real quick. I have some combo in here and I don't want to combo too much, but I was on an ice float, just like this frozen iceberg, basically.
00:36:42
Speaker
And technically it was above land, so I was getting really cold, justifiable because it's literally made of ice. But I found this tiny little section that was below the sea level where there had been some water flow in or whatever, just a pond, basically, right? And it's sitting literally in ice. It's surrounded by ice. I'm like, oh, thank God.
00:37:02
Speaker
And then I just found the deepest point, barely got my head under it or whatever. So I was submerged in below water and then watched my heat gauge refill because I was now swimming in this ice below. In my game logic, I'm warm. Yep. Although you did kind of stumble into one of my favorite additions to Subnautica Below Zero.
00:37:28
Speaker
You mentioned pockets of air. So in the first Subnautica, your depth was always confined by either your personal oxygen tank or your vehicle's crush depth and some combination of them. Subnautica Below Zero has something interesting where they have oxygen plants, which are big balloons of oxygen that you can tap
00:37:55
Speaker
to gain like a 30 seconds of oxygen boost and then the plants sort of shrivel up for a minute or two before they refill. And it's really interesting because the time that they are shriveled is longer than the oxygen they provide.
00:38:12
Speaker
which means that they can chain these plants to take you in directions and undersea caves or to sort of guide you towards objectives with no guarantee that on your return trip, the plants will be available. And I know that sort of I remember specifically the depths we're talking about, because since Subnautica won 200 meters down was the purple jelly shrimp caves.
00:38:41
Speaker
And without any sort of upgrades or vehicles, that's about as far down as you can get in a single like gulp of air. And so you really couldn't explore that area. That area was gated off until you had a vehicle. Yeah.
00:38:53
Speaker
But in the deep twisty bridges of Subnautica below zero, there's all these little oxygen bubbles constantly leading you deeper and deeper. So you managed to get deeper and into more confined spaces earlier in the game without being gated by equipment. And I actually really enjoyed that because it felt like a good way of really cranking the anxiety up.
00:39:22
Speaker
without gating me behind, oh, you haven't found 12 titanium and one copper yet. Yeah, I do smart on game design. Yeah. Because in the first one, I think it was probably more so in the shallow area, but they did have oxygen plants that would kind of give off an air bubble every 10 seconds. But you could just camp with that and be fine. Yeah, that gave you net oxygen. You could refill your oxygen whenever you found one of those. So they had to be rare.
00:39:51
Speaker
Right. But with what Ian's talking about, actually being able to lead a player and feeling like it's natural gameplay versus we actually do want to lead you over here for that reason. And you're only doing it because of survival. Yeah. Yeah. It very much was a trail of breadcrumbs.
00:40:08
Speaker
And I did fall into that trap a little bit. I was just like, there's plenty of these plants out here. I'll be absolutely fine. And then I was like, you know, oh, oxygen starting to run out. Look back. Don't remember the exact path back to the vehicle. I was just I think I got within like, like they buffed the air bladder.
00:40:28
Speaker
which I know you didn't use on this one, but it's actually really good in Subnautica one and below zero. It's just like your escape button to the surface, it inflates and you just, whoop, it's just elevator to the safe. It's like 150 meters to the top in like three seconds. It's crazy.
00:40:44
Speaker
But in this one, you can also get 10 seconds of oxygen out of it. You basically just suck the air from the air bladder. And that literally kept me from dying. It was just like the screen starts to go dark and in both subnautica one and below zero. If the screen starts to go dark because you run out of oxygen, you have like three seconds until you die. It's not like your health starts to tick down. It's just like,
00:41:10
Speaker
three seconds and then everything's dark. 10 seconds safety. But I really enjoyed that change. Another of the changes that I really enjoyed and I think Dave would have enjoyed was that they got rid of the cyclops, which was anyone who listened to our previous subnautica podcast would understand was a large portion of Jake and I's enjoyment.
00:41:40
Speaker
TGM. Yeah, because it's basically the mobile base at that point. It's absolutely gigantic. You hop in it, you drive everywhere. You're unafraid of everything because nothing could straight up kill you in one hit. And they had silent running. It's a yeah. And it's stealth mode.
00:42:00
Speaker
Unless you literally touched Leviathan's, they wouldn't agree. In sort of a ways, it was kind of cheap by Subnautica below zero standards of, well, I'm safe forever now. And in Subnautica below zero, they axed it. They got rid of it entirely in exchange for the C truck, which is the first vehicle you get the game.
00:42:23
Speaker
But it's 100% modular in the sense that, oh, I got the C truck. Well, later on down the line, I found the storage cabin and I can dock that onto the back of the C truck to make a larger, more utility vehicle. And you could keep docking additional modules onto the truck until you eventually had your own little submarine.
00:42:45
Speaker
Yeah. So you're constantly just appending to it. Yeah. Oh, my God. It has like a horsepower mechanic. So like they're literally one of the upgrades you can get increases the horsepower so that you can like move fast with more modules. But if you want to just be chonk, like an absolute unit of a seat truck, you're just like, I'm going to throw like four storage modules on here. We're going to throw like the prong one on the back and we got all of this like and then just move it like
00:43:16
Speaker
just like wave pace basically through the camp. I still think it's faster than the Cyclops was though. Does it actually swim through or does it, because it's a truck, fall to whatever's ground towards? It swims. Okay. It swims. It's basically, if you imagine like, it's, it's like more like a train. It's you have your locomotive unit at the front and you just chain cars to it.
00:43:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lot like a train. It's it's fairly fantastic in its implementation, in my opinion, because. Well, the Cyclops was broken, you can grow food in the Cyclops, you can. Live in the Cyclops, pretty no problem. Rent free. Yeah, it empowered itself. Like once you got the geothermal thing, you just park it next to an event and hey, look, it's it's my base forever.
00:44:14
Speaker
But the C truck was more along the lines of, OK, so I unlocked the C truck after an hour and a half of playing and it's still going to be relevant up until the last hour I'm playing. Yeah, they never make it depreciated. They never make it outdated or replace it with just a straight, better upgrade.
00:44:37
Speaker
And it has some real big benefits. I know, Dave, you unlocked the prawn suit in Subnautica Prime, right? I think so. Basically, it's your mech warrior suit that you can run around drilling or punching fish to death with. Has a great voice. Yeah.
00:45:00
Speaker
And I didn't use the prawn suit in Subnautica 1 nearly as much as nearly everyone else I talked with. Because I was constantly under the fear that, oh, as something that walks along the ground, it is going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. And I'm never going to get it back again or get it up to the shallows again. But in Subnautica below zero, there's a module for your truck that you could just dock a prawn suit on the back of it.
00:45:29
Speaker
Which means, hey, I can now take it with me wherever I need and then suddenly if I see a mining deposit or if I reach the crush depth for the truck and I need to go deeper, I could just pop off the back of it in my mech warrior suit and go fight some shrimp.
00:45:47
Speaker
Oh, prawn suit, I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, that was a bad joke. So what additions with the endemic life have you guys liked or disliked? Or is it roughly the same cast, oh, fish? I have, I think my thoughts are more negative based off early discussion. For how much Jake is smiling, I believe in. Ian, what about you? What did you like? Let's play good cop, bad cop. All right.
00:46:16
Speaker
I really liked some of the fish design and the biome design because I guess biomes count for endemic life. It felt fresh. If you kind of just look at everything visually, everything is starkly different and stands out as new.
00:46:37
Speaker
Right. Specifically, I like that there's a class of small predator that is unpredictable. Like if you look at it, you're like, oh, you don't look that scary. And then, oh, God, it's scary because it's a fish. That's the entire purpose of life. It's a super cool brine in its stomach.
00:46:55
Speaker
And when you approach it, it shoots it out at you and freezes you into a block of ice and does zero damage to you, but sinks you to the bottom of the ocean as you desperately button mash, trying to break out of the ice before you suffocate. Oh, I didn't get frozen by that. I saw it freeze other fish and I was just like, I'm going to run you over. And I just said it with the chat. And that was the first predator in the game I found. I'm like, oh, look at you, cute fish. How are you doing? And then I'm with an oxygen meter of 60 seconds.
00:47:21
Speaker
30 seconds of exploration, and now I'm on the bottom of the ocean floor frozen in a block of ice. I'm like, okay, you're cute and all, but could I please not drown? Air bladder, I'm just saying. It's really freaking good. And I think some of the new Leviathan designs are really, really good. Unfortunately, they have moved away from an easy naming scheme.
00:47:48
Speaker
Because there it used to be like, oh, what's this? It's the Reaper Leviathan. What's that? It's the Ghost Leviathan. What's that? It's the Sea Treader Leviathan. I know the names of all these things. I don't know the name of like, what is this? It's the Cryptosuchus. Why? And that's not even. And then there's one, the chalacerate. That was the one I was just trying to think of.
00:48:12
Speaker
I'll never remember that name. I'll just remember the feelings inspired the first time I saw it in the maximum draw distance. And I was like, I'm not going over into that area. That's larger than I am. But I would specifically say,
00:48:29
Speaker
I don't think it's it's spoiler to to name it as long as we don't talk about what it looks like. The Shadow Leviathan, like the Shadow Leviathan. Shadow. Shadow. The Shadow. Yeah. Shadow. Heard you heard your first
Critiques and Innovations in Below Zero
00:48:42
Speaker
time. Which is like. The final aggressive creature you find in the game, probably is absolutely phenomenal looking, in my opinion, and the sound design, the area design, it speaks to me.
00:49:00
Speaker
And now for the negative opinion on it. I think for the most part, I actually, I agree, but with the caveat that like nothing here is really, it's not terribly different if you played Subnautica 1. They're different Leviathans, different models, but the aggressive ones are kind of aggressive in mostly the same way.
00:49:24
Speaker
And the passive ones are mostly passive in the same way. A slight difference is a lot of it's just like, that looks really cool. And there's no substitute for seeing it the first time and being like, oh, I hope that doesn't want to kill me because it will succeed, it looks like.
00:49:47
Speaker
But I think overall, like, I'm going to go into sound design on the creatures a little bit. I think sound design in Subnautica is absolutely important, like splashing in the water, hearing the sound of all these creatures. It's like your awareness where you don't have, like, always the best awareness in these, like, really deep areas. And there's one particular cryptosuchus was mentioned. It's just the loudest thing.
00:50:13
Speaker
And it sounds so angry and so aggressive all the time. And it's not that threatening. You know, like, see, I'm on the flip side of the coin here because I love the design of the crypto suckers because it's you get to a new area. And I would say it's the first large aggressive fauna you find. I don't think there's anything before the crypto suckers that is big enough to theoretically harm you.
00:50:44
Speaker
Besides the fish that freezes you to the bottom of the ocean depths. So you come into this area and this thing's like, it's almost quadrupedal. It's got these four big arms or fins and this long derpy neck with a head on it. And it just thrashes through the wall. There's nothing graceful about this thing. It's the derp fish. It's very large, aggressive and dumb. And it's loud. You can hear it from miles away. So you see it and you're like, oh, it's big and scary.
00:51:14
Speaker
But if you actually like go up and manage to get a scan of it, your entire PDA entries like, yeah, this thing is all for show. Like it just puts on this real big act because it's a real big pussy.
00:51:26
Speaker
And if you get close enough to it and it like thrashes out at you, if you just stick it with the knife once, it runs away. It's all bargain zero fight. And I sort of enjoy that kind of reward for understanding. Like, OK, you took the risk to get close to this big scary creature. Congratulations. Here's the secret. It's not so scary.
00:51:48
Speaker
It is very much an evolutionary dead end. Everything about that creature is just this. Although that reminds me of one of the best journal entries in the game, which is literally an evolutionary dead end, which is the Titan Wholefish. Oh, yeah. Rapidly Googles. I am, because it has, in my opinion, the funniest
00:52:17
Speaker
line of text in possibly the entire game. The Titan Holefish has evolved entirely beyond basic survival mechanisms like speed, intelligence, or hunting. It exists in a semi-permanent state of unreflective calm, swimming forward on impulse, fully trusting the complex ecosystem that supports it. And never in my life have I felt more in tune with a fake animal.
00:52:46
Speaker
It is good, though. I think it's hard to say too much. That's not like, I guess, spoilery about the creatures, but also like expect more of subnautica. Yeah, this is it comes back to that, right? Like. I guess that's that that's kind of the core. So one of the things that I think we should discuss, because we're kind of coming up on time,
00:53:15
Speaker
is there is an almost universal, among our friend group, a universal complaint with Subnautica below zero. And that is the story and the developers have kind of started to push towards more land-based exploration. In Subnautica 1, you'd go up on one of the two islands and walk around. There's not platforming really or anything there. It's just follow paths, find things, scan things.
00:53:45
Speaker
And Subnautica Below Zero has much more explorable landmass and much more incentive to explore these landmasses. Main plot. Yeah, main plot, basically. But it would have really been nice if it was in a game that didn't have the land control physics of the earliest PlayStation 1 games. You jump approximately six inches in the air,
00:54:16
Speaker
If you land on any piece of terrain incorrectly, good luck, you're probably stuck there forever. The game will try to shake you loose after about 10 seconds, but if it can't manage it, I hope you die quickly, because it could take some time to starve to death.
00:54:34
Speaker
You'll freeze, probably. Oh yeah, you'll freeze. Yeah, you'll freeze. That's why the mechanic was introduced, actually. It's to cover up any terrain bugs. We should just kill them over time in case they get stuck. Yeah, in a game where the controls underwater are so good, your startlingly poor land controls just shine through like a big scar.
00:54:59
Speaker
Yeah. So Nautica One got by because when you were on land, islands were super interesting. They were like really worth discovering, not that big, and then had massive advancement, usually, right? Like first time you get to an island, you're like, huge tech advancement. I'm scanning all the things. I can now make a full base. You spend a lot more time on land in Below Zero, and they built support systems, vehicles, things like that around,
00:55:28
Speaker
The time you're spending on land None of the time spent on land was better than time spent in the water in my opinion Yeah, there's there's incentives and like tech trees around it like okay So I'm freezing to death and my PDA has alerted me that there is weather that will make me freeze to death faster gotta seek shelter and there's like caves and Buildings that you could hop into to or even you know thermal plants to huddle around to keep your heat up and
00:55:57
Speaker
But visibility will drop at night to like zero below zero. And eventually you do find like upgrades for like, oh, this is my my my warm suit to keep me insulated. And I didn't find it. Yeah, Jake didn't find it. Jake suffered in silence.
00:56:19
Speaker
I ate so many like icy peppers. It's just like eating the food. Well, Jake was always a fan of the coffee maker and Subnautica one. So of course it needed a reason to have it in Subnautica below zero.
00:56:33
Speaker
Well, they nerfed it massively. I knew you would bring it up. Oh, my gosh. That and the Cyclops, they're attacking me specifically. For the uninitiated, in Subnautica 1, you could build coffee makers in your base, which was like a cosmetic item. It was intended to be cosmetic in that you built it on the wall. You can click on it. It will take like three or four seconds and it will make a coffee, not as an item.
00:57:03
Speaker
But when you clicked on it, it would restore, what, five points of hydration? Yeah, it wasn't a lot. But it didn't consume electricity or resources or anything. It was just a little novel thing that you could click on to have a coffee and restore hydration. Jake took this to the logical extreme by building a room that was just coffee makers. So whenever he needed to increase his hydration, he'd just go around the loop clicking on coffee makers to have unlimited free hydration. You look like you could use some coffee. I'll take your entire stock!
00:57:33
Speaker
Uh, the difference in subnautica below zero is it is now an interactable item that you insert coffee mug into it. Five seconds goes by and it changes the empty coffee mug item for a full coffee or the thermos or a full thermos item. And the thermos actually reduces your hydration, but gives you a huge heaping portion of heat if you're above ground and freezing. So Jake's glitch for unlimited free water was put out to pasture.
00:58:05
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was unfortunate, but I don't know. It was a minor thing compared to some of the other grapes. I don't know why they nerfed it, but you know, I don't care. Food's still overpowered. It's ridiculously good. And you only need one good type of food and you're done. So they didn't really play with the survival balance compared to like other games where you do need to care about basic needs for longer.
Final Opinions and Future Prospects
00:58:35
Speaker
I would say base building is basically the same. There's a few expanded modules. Control room is kind of nice because it lets you actually customize your base, like color on the outside. You can name it. And it lets you control which modules inside your base, which rooms are drawing power and how to change. Like, oh, I'm not using the scanning room. I'll turn the scanning room off. Or I'm not using the moon pool. I'll turn the moon pool off. It's kind of a nice little quality of life thing.
00:59:04
Speaker
I will say the biggest base building components that I enjoyed were the jukebox, which is a really dumb thing. It's the meta breaker. But you could build a jukebox with speakers throughout the base and then just play music. And it's kind of a nice little thing and you can collect music discs in the game. All of Minecraft.
00:59:27
Speaker
Yeah. The other stupid, the stupid thing about it is most of the songs like reference subnautica, a few of them named subnautica because they're like songs that were produced for subnautica. And so it's like one of the songs is like diving deep in subnautica. And I'm like listening to it while playing subnautica. Yeah. These aren't like atmospheric instrumental songs. These are fully vocalized
00:59:56
Speaker
songs by I would assume indie artists that are that unknown worlds is like, hey, do you want to make a sabbatical song? And we'll put it in a game. Talk about sabbatical and rap about it. Yeah. The thing is, they're not bad songs. I enjoyed them. Some of them are pretty good. Other ones I skipped. As the kids would say, they slap.
01:00:21
Speaker
One of my favorite rooms they added was they added the large base room, which is a big honking room that you could put a bunch of stuff in and glass ceilings. Unbreakable. Yeah, I was like, how do I make this offensive? And then my brain kicked in.
01:00:43
Speaker
But you could put like big glass ceilings on top of your bases, which really made it cool because you could just walk around and then look up and see, you know, the surface 100 meters above you or fish swimming above you and felt really cool in my opinion. It definitely was useful for League game stuff. I think
01:01:04
Speaker
So all of the things you've described for base building Subnautica expanded the cosmetics a lot, but they did not add much for like
01:01:15
Speaker
What's the word, pragmatic? Functional. Yeah, like functional things. And this is one of the reasons, this is kind of part of the core of ultimately why I don't suggest Subnautica for Dave, who is actually still on the call, believe it or not, he's still here, is the thing that they really focus on is just more, if you really like Subnautica,
01:01:42
Speaker
This is more Subnautica. They're not changing anything core. They're adding a bit to it. Some of the good, some of the bad. But fundamentally, nothing massively changed, which I was going to ding the game a lot for until I remembered it's $30. And I was like, okay, this is still a pretty good deal for a $30 game.
01:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, the way, from what I understand, the way it was initially positioned from the game developers was it's an expansion to Subnautica. At first it was downloadable content, and then when it was too big for downloadable content, they're like, it's an expansion. And then it was a standalone game, but it sort of reminds me of Fallout New Vegas compared to Fallout 3. We're using the same engine,
01:02:28
Speaker
to give you a very similar experience, but we've added a few bells and whistles and changed up the story. The difference being having literally just played Fallout 3 and now playing New Vegas. New Vegas is way better than Fallout 3, and Below Zero is not way better than Subtotica.
01:02:45
Speaker
Where where do you and since we're we're kind of wrapping and you brought it up braiding Where do you rate subnautica below zero in terms of subnautica the original subnautica? Is it slightly better slightly worse way worse way better? Comparable if subnautica The first was like a nine. I think it was for me. I think below zero is probably an eight. I
01:03:12
Speaker
Not because it's worse, but because it doesn't improve, which is also a deficiency in a follow-up game. It improves in a few points, but not enough for me to also be excellent by comparison. Yeah, I'm very much in the same camp. If Subnautica 1 wasn't such a good game,
01:03:36
Speaker
fence of nautical below zero would definitely be one of like, I would say subnautica below zero is a very good game. But subnautica one was damn near perfect in a lot of respects. Yeah, it's hard to top it. Big first step. So would you recommend one over the other to somebody who's interested in water exploration? Or would you say they get both over time?
01:04:03
Speaker
I mean, play one of them first because that's really going to tell you whether you enjoy the other one.
01:04:08
Speaker
But Subnautica 2 or Subnautica Below Zero, I made it the whole episode without doing it until like literally the end. Not the way I'm going to edit it here. Not the way I'm going to edit it. Below Zero, you could play it and there's no massive leap over Subnautica to the point where like you're like, oh no, like don't play the older one. That one's going to feel really dated. It'll still feel good. Different story, different place.
01:04:36
Speaker
Yeah. I would say if you've played through Subnautica 1 and you're like, I really liked that game and I can go for another, I can go for seconds of Subnautica, then Subnautica Below Zero is good. But don't expect it to be as big or as long or as much as Subnautica 1. It's a good dessert. Maybe not so much as good of a main course. Yeah.
01:05:05
Speaker
That's it. That's the game. That's Subnautica. Below zero. I'd like to thank our special guest, Dave, for attending and being here. Sorry we didn't call on you more. Now, thank you, Ian, for dropping by. Always good to talk about the latest entry in the Subnautica series. Yeah, catch me back when Subnautica above zero comes out and we play the game.
01:05:35
Speaker
Actually, at the rate the video game industry is going, the remaster of Subnautica ought to be coming out any year now, so hit me up then. Remake, and then it'll just be Nautica. It'll be like a beach episode and you'll go into the water to cool off. That's good. That's innovation right there. We've teamed up with Sony Computer Entertainment and Square Enix to produce Subnautica.
01:06:01
Speaker
ReZero integrate with Cloud from Final Fantasy 7. Dante from the Devil May Cry series. Cloud, how do you enjoy being on the beach? I don't care. Oh my god, it's just like the original game. All right, well, thank you guys for listening. Hopefully this has been something.
01:06:28
Speaker
That's it. It's just something. We got strong clothes. Hopefully it's been entertaining. And if you're on the fence about Subnautica, it helps you push you one way or the other. I personally still recommend it. But I'm a sucker for exploration games, even though it doesn't sound like it when I'm complaining, when it's too freeform.
01:06:47
Speaker
But if you have ideas for other games that you'd like to send in, perhaps other exploration games or games that we can get Dave to play, then send those in to stopesomepodcast.gmail.com. Or you could join the discussion on Facebook, which I presume is still ongoing, at facebook.com slash stopesomepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:07:13
Speaker
you