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S2 Ep80: Red Sign Guestisode - Subnautica
67 Plays6 years ago
FULL SPOILERS: Subnautica
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Ian as they dive off the deep end in this week's episode!
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/
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Ian as they dive off the deep end in this week's episode!
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/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:05
Speaker
you have suffered minor head trauma this is considered an optimal outcome this pda has now rebooted in emergency mode with one directive to keep you alive on an alien world please refer to the databank for detailed survival advice good luck
00:00:31
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 tonight, Dave? I am Dave, and I'm joined as always by my co-host, Ian. How's it going tonight, Ian? It's going well tonight, Dave. How are you doing?
00:00:45
Speaker
It's going all right. How's it going, Jake? We're going to turn this back on, Dave, somewhere.
Humorous Banter and Guest Introduction
00:00:52
Speaker
So the observant among our listeners, it may have picked up that there's an extra presence in the room. I feel the presence. I'd like to sound the presence now to speak to us. Ian, are you there?
00:01:06
Speaker
I am, as if from a great distance. Or, you know, five feet from you. I was gonna say. I was like, I can probably kick you from here if I needed to. I'd appreciate it if you didn't. You get to... Just because it's your apartment, right? Yeah. You kick me, but I'm here all the time. Well, that's castle doctrine, isn't it? You're in my house, on my land, and if I feel threatened, I can kick you.
00:01:30
Speaker
I think that's law. That's civil law. But like Jake has the shins that are like built up for it now. I used to have shin guards, but now it's just callous skin. So easy peasy.
00:01:43
Speaker
So I was thinking like there has to be a joke there where it's like, you said chin guard. And I imagine like, Oh yeah. Skyrim guard. Okay. Arrow to the knee. Shin joke. Shin injury. It led to nothing. There you go. That's the best word play as he shakes his head. So, uh, we have a guest. So that's, that's new. That is entirely new.
Ian's Gaming History and Discussions
00:02:07
Speaker
How do you feel about that? Ian.
00:02:10
Speaker
feel a certain sense of privilege. I get to be number one. Well, at least at least three. All right. So Ian, tell us a little bit about your background, how you know us and the podcast and a little bit of maybe your history in gaming. Yeah. Show us your massive credential.
00:02:33
Speaker
So I know the soapstone boys, uh, as they are colloquially unknown, uh, from college, um, meeting both of them in, I guess what, my third year or something. So we've known each other for when I met people, I was like, Oh, in college, the better part of a decade now, at least. Um, and in terms of gaming,
00:02:55
Speaker
I mean, you name it all started on the Super Nintendo now we hear so Super Nintendo PlayStation and 64 Xbox PC So I've done everything where I think is most of us have remained for the most part. I mean backwards compared
00:03:13
Speaker
Oh, snap. We have a fourth guest. The fourth guest is rapidly being silenced. This is how Terminator started out. Usually we have that disclaimer at the beginning of the podcast, but I guess it's an old hat for us. So what are you playing these days, Ian?
00:03:35
Speaker
Lately, I mean, besides the Destiny 2 ongoing battle against having free time, it's been Jedi Fallen Order, which is fantastic, as I was talking to Jake today who bought it a week ago and has yet to actually open the game up. Right. Classic Jake. I gotta get through Graveyard Keeper. This is typical. Yeah.
00:03:58
Speaker
Uh, but Jedi Knight Fallen Order is excellent. I mean, you got that EA asterisk on top of any Star Wars title after Battlefront 2.
Introduction to Subnautica: Gameplay and Mechanics
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah. And since this is a single player game with no microtransactions, I failed to see a way for them to screw it up. And so far, they've met my expectations. That's good. I hope it stays that way because it seems like the first promising title in that space. I mean, it's difficult to do with Star Wars because, you know, it's such a big franchise and so,
00:04:28
Speaker
The fan base is very passionate about it, so you cannot make them all happy. Some of them are chronically not happy. They've got pills for that nowadays. I know. Do they? They've got to hook me up. It's called Beth. Oh. Is a mess a pill? It could be. It can be.
00:04:48
Speaker
So anyways, welcome to our podcast about math. Um, no, the math, the math rock. Yeah. We played plenty of games with Ian over the, uh, over the years. Look forward to many more. Yeah. So the TLDR is Ian is qualified to speak about video games with us today. Right. Credenza, as I was saying, but what game are we talking about tonight? Tonight we're going to dive beneath the surface.
00:05:17
Speaker
of a game called Subnautica. It's great because now there's somebody else in the room with me to cringe as well. Yeah. There was some cringe. I don't know how you deal with it. I wanted to say the dive into Subnautica thing too. So I feel like he stole my thunder. Oh my God. I'm surrounded by weirdness. But Subnautica is a exploration game. That's fair. Survival crafty underwater. Right.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, I would say it's a fairly typical survival crafting game, except for its underwater setting. I would say that it kind of follows typical convention of find resource, advance up tech tree, find better resource, advance up tech tree.
Early Experiences and Challenges in Subnautica
00:05:58
Speaker
But instead of going across your horizontal axis, you've got your vertical axis, you're going down over time.
00:06:05
Speaker
Right that's I think one of mine and I think everybody else's biggest concerns with the game because like when you start out The game's fairly shallow and you're like, oh look at these coral and friendly fish as you go deeper down There's less sources of light and there are less pretty fish and coral that might kill you Yeah, the first area is actually named the safe shallows. So very appropriate
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it does have its definite sense of progression in its own way, because a lot of games have that thing where you look back and you're like, man, I hope so much weaker back then, and I can do this so much better. And Subnautica's sense here, one of the first big fish you see in the game is like, it's the one that drops the big fart bubbles. I can't remember the name of it, but it's an herbivore. It doesn't care about you. Gastropods. Yeah. Well, I saw it the first time, and I freaked out, and I stayed away from it, and I wasn't playing that game.
00:06:56
Speaker
I'm like, man, this is a scary fish. And after 20 hours in the game where there's literal nightmare fuel coming out of pitch darkness, I would cuddle up with the gastropod. Like, I'm not afraid anymore. Can't hurt me. They're not too bad. I actually replayed the game because I had the week off. The only death that I suffered was due to a gastropod.
00:07:18
Speaker
Which I find hilarious Like my gameplay ended up with me like in the model of iphone at one point But no the gastropod is what killed me and I think it's because of the poison that it's pustules like when they pop I think it stacks because like and then it persists after the animation fades, so it's like dissipated in the water I'm like, oh, yeah, it's safe. I went there for a second and dead instantly Anyways, you should be scared of this
00:07:46
Speaker
I did not re replay the whole game, but I actually did not even beats with Nautica. That's fair. I think I petered out around where. So throughout the game, you need to kind of like recollect pieces of your broken ship to rescan technology so you can. Oh, I can build a ship to allow me to travel further. I can build certain modules onto a base. There's fucking base building as also a thing, which will come back to more.
00:08:13
Speaker
Um, but there was a point where I just needed more technology or to find something to advance in the game storyline. And I kept building. I had like four different scanning bases and I'm like, I'm getting nothing. So I kind of got frustrated at that point and kind of.
00:08:30
Speaker
Took a bit of a break for the past two years I think I think we can so I have in my notes here for this episode just in all caps the wall and this is literally what I'm describing with Dave we'll get we'll get into the kind of the the meat and bones I think of what Is one of the few flaws I think the game actually has as far as forward progression and this is basically it
00:08:58
Speaker
But on
Resource Management and Survival Strategies
00:08:59
Speaker
the flip side, usually Subnautica is really good about getting you out of your comfort zone in a game that otherwise wouldn't necessarily motivate you to. Like you start out, you're like on the ship the Aurora, it's like crashing through a planet's atmosphere.
00:09:16
Speaker
Um, you have just your life pod and the safe shallows basic energy, right? Like solar panels on it. Um, and very little in the way of tech. Cause like you said, everything's been like degraded. You don't even have it. Like, um, uh, you don't even have a knife at the beginning. No, I think you have a gun that scans things. I don't even think you have the scanner to start with.
00:09:39
Speaker
you start with very very little and you have to make things i can't remember exactly i think you make the scanner and granted it's been a few months but i think you make the scanner out of like a battery and something else that you can make in the beginning of the game because i remember getting the scanner and being like you can scan yourself and being like oh this is novel i'm going to scan myself all night
00:10:03
Speaker
But what the game does do is periodically you'll get radio signals. And those are your incentives to go out and explore because they'll come from other life pods. I don't know if you guys got this impression when you played, but I was like, all right, next life pod. That's the one where there's going to be other people.
00:10:20
Speaker
No, I always assumed it was just me it's kind of like the radio log was recorded X amount of time ago But I'm like this is my next checkpoint where it's like hey You'd either be able to travel this far in one trip or travel down this far in one trip Yeah, and I was like, okay. Do I have enough stuff to do that? If not, I need to tech up
00:10:42
Speaker
I was sort of on Jake's level there where it's like, I didn't understand the concept that this game has no model for a human yet. So I'm like, okay, this next one is going to be the part where I'm like, I meet someone and they tell me what I'm supposed to do with the story. And every time I show up, it's like five minutes too late.
00:11:04
Speaker
I mean, that's kind of the good thing in blind playthroughs of games like this because you don't know what the games conventions are going to be. You don't know, are things time sensitive? Do I have to get to these people now when they say it's urgent or is this someone in a video game telling me it's urgent but it's on a flag and it's not going to trip for another until an event happens?
00:11:22
Speaker
I'm almost always of the mindset where unless they explicitly say, hey, this is time sensitive, I assume I can spend three hours doing fuck all and then get around to it. Yeah. And I'm sure there are some games that would bite me in the butt for that too.
00:11:36
Speaker
It would not be the first time you've literally gone AFK in a game too to go do something else and just leave it running for six hours. Hey, I've played Binding of Isaac a lot. 3,000 hours, whole time. The game actually hits you with this pretty early. And that the Aurora, the drive core, is leaking radiation. And is your computer, this naturally soothing kind of like British-ish voice, would you say?
00:12:04
Speaker
Cultured definitely definitely cultured the codex basically that tells you that it's going to explode in a few hours And you're like, okay, that sounds bad I've kind of played around with various states of the game because I've played through it like three times and
00:12:21
Speaker
And you can't get to the aurora because of the radiation it's putting off to prevent the explosion or do anything like that. And it's not until after it explodes that the game gives you the radiation suit schematic so that you can then go to the aurora. So there's no reaching it before it explodes state.
00:12:40
Speaker
But it was something that the first time I played I was like concerned. I was like great It's gonna let it like this huge ship that's really close to my life. I was gonna detonate That's bad. Yeah I also felt that concern because as I got close to the Aurora to like explore and find more things I could scan or get resources I noticed like the radiation tick up and I felt like that line for where the radiation started affecting me got further and further out and I was like
00:13:06
Speaker
Don't like where this is going. I have no plans. I'm just collecting fish Like just like hitting limestone. I got you know an entire inventory filled with these acidic mushrooms I don't know what they do, but I can pick them up, so they've got to be useful. Yeah
00:13:22
Speaker
something the game does is there's like resources are very abundant and there's oftentimes many different places you can get resources so yeah so if you are just kind of in the mindset of collect everything that can really work against you at the beginning of Subnautica because the only thing you can make are like these
00:13:41
Speaker
like small lockers you can put in the water when you don't have a base and they only hold like low amounts of anything. It's like igloo beer coolers just floating in the ocean filled with like seven pieces of silver.
00:13:57
Speaker
yeah but it's all it all pushes you to to advance like the first time you get a oxygen tank like that's huge because now you know you have more uh like distance and you get flippers fins not flipper like the dolphin which would have been better actually you ride on a dolphin this is not the minecraft sea expansion pad there's got to be a mod for this
00:14:21
Speaker
If not, you could make one. There's a lot of mods for this, and there's actually... I have a separate kind of section for this for the mods that I used on this playthrough, because I think they make the game way better. But there's caveats to each of them that kind of keeps me from recommending them for someone who's never played through the game. Thankfully, by the end of this, we'll have spoiled everything, so...
00:14:42
Speaker
Then you can just use the mods. There you go, yeah. But you'll go out to these life pods as you're getting radio signals and they'll take you further away from the safe shallows into the game split into like different biomes.
00:14:58
Speaker
And really, you start to pick up more and more pieces about what's happened with the Aurora. You start to get those inclinations that there are no other human models that are ever created. And eventually, it starts to get deeper. And that's one of the gates in the game is how deep can you go?
00:15:22
Speaker
So initially you're just gated by your oxygen. You can only dive so far But also like the further you go down the faster your oxygen depletes. Yeah. Yeah based off your suit So you'll lose efficiency. Yeah, your suit sucks a lot
00:15:39
Speaker
And I did not realize, I actually watched a speedrun of this. Fucker did it in an hour and a half. But you can apparently take additional oxygen tanks down with you. Just in your inventory. And you'd be like, oh, is that low? Let's quick swap that out for a fresh oxygen tank.
00:15:54
Speaker
It feels really good, actually. Well, my mind's blown. See? That's something I never knew. I didn't know about it until my second play, too, but I used it on the third, for sure. It also feels good to go back up to the surface, fill your oxygen tank, then swap out again, be like, shoop, fill up the second one. All right, we're good. Head back down.
00:16:13
Speaker
But you are you're constrained right by how deep you can go until you start getting some of the vehicles. So like the first one that feels really good is the Seaglide. Seaglide, yeah. Which is essentially like a jet pack that you hold in your hands.
00:16:29
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And it's it's noticeably different because it's not like you swim super slow, but you're a person underwater and that's kind of it What a superpower so like when you have like a little little engine that you get to hold It just it feels so much quicker. Like it's a noticeable change in tech
00:16:47
Speaker
Not only that, I mean it's a small thing, but it meant a lot for me. It has a flashlight on it. Oh yeah, that too. It's not as good as the handheld though. Yeah, it's not as good as your handheld, but at the same time you can hold, like you can move in a direction with the flashlight at the same time and not have to constantly worry about your flashlight
Advanced Gameplay: Base Building and Tech Upgrades
00:17:05
Speaker
dying. You just have to worry about the seaglide dying. Right. A lot of these things run on like flashlights, seaglide.
00:17:12
Speaker
your other tools you have like I'll run on battery power even the scanner yeah all the way down so you can like make more batteries or recharge batteries later when you're starting out you're like I only have so much use for this tool yeah like when I got like the laser cutter to like open a door to explore like some wreckage I was like I can maybe do this three more times
00:17:35
Speaker
I did really like the fact that everything runs off the same batteries. So more than one time in the game, it's like, Oh no, I've run out of, like you said, laser cutter energy. It's like, guess I'm going to pull the battery out of my scanner and put it into the laser cutter for the next 20 minutes. And you know, the, the Subnautica order of needs started to happen where I would cannibalize batteries from everything I had until I caved and made more batteries.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, it is nice that they said like that it is universal and it's not like, well, this needs like heavy ammo and this needs light ammo. Yeah. You can just have one resource for all. And then when you get the tech to recharge them at your base, it's amazing. I really want to talk about the bases. Yeah. The base building aspect is pretty amazing. Yeah. It's like, um, a really good snap technology where it's like, Hey, you place the thing in here and then you can like attach things onto it.
00:18:32
Speaker
It could probably use a little bit of a tutorial or maybe a little bit more conveyance of information. Cause I struggled with it some. Like how do you place vertical base pieces? I stopped trying, never figured it out to begin with. Yeah. Connecting some of those things. I'm like, um, and we'll throw a random ladder here. This is a vertical strut. Can I put something on top of the vert? No, I don't. Maybe.
00:18:59
Speaker
Yeah, the vertical pieces literally only could extend. So you don't need it if you have two pieces right on top of each other of base. I didn't know that initially. But anytime you have to travel through water, you have to use the vertical struts to extend the ladder.
00:19:16
Speaker
There you go. Now the game never tells you that and I had to look it up but the base building is amazing though because it gives you a sense of like I have like I always have an HQ which is like the main base this is where like it's just it looks like a theme park of just aquariums and structures and rooms and things like that and like the moon pool off in the side which is freaking great. The moon pool is so cool. Yeah.
00:19:44
Speaker
And I'll have outposts which are always just like an X room Hatch and a scanner room and then a power source Modular like attach one of them call it a day Yeah, I I like making shit checks because it's like you're basically like little like check-in places, right? Yeah
00:20:04
Speaker
So at the point through the game where I got, I did need to make those locations to scan, but also you need a place that can hold oxygen. So maybe like you're building something deep underwater, like I'll scan deep. Yes, exactly. So you need a power source to be able to keep the oxygen running so you don't die. And also there are nice little stops where if you are just swimming around, you're like, all right, I can check in here quick, refill my air, maybe like stash some supplies from like, I collect all these rocks on all to do with them yet. I'll put them in a locker and come back for them later.
00:20:33
Speaker
base storage is way more efficient than open ice boxes with actual cabinets, which is great. So you mentioned that you need to get power in order to get oxygen. How did you find yourself getting power as you played through the game? What did you use to generate power at your various outposts and shit checks?
00:20:52
Speaker
So for a good long while, I just went crazy ham on the solar power, where I kept attaching every single section that I could. I'm like, panel, panel, panel, panel, panel. And then I eventually got scannics for a biodegradable generator. So I was just throwing seaweed in there. I was like, fuel me.
00:21:17
Speaker
See, I had a slightly unconventional and vastly unethical method of powering my base towards the end, that when I told Jacob he was slightly a scant at me, I had an aquarium that bred stalker fish, the big ones with the soft face, and a bioreactor. And you could put live animals in the bioreactor. So I would raise fish, take them, and just put them directly into the bioreactor.
00:21:46
Speaker
And that kept the base going for a good long while. All I hear is renewable energy. It's ethical. I'm saving the planet. Yeah. Stalker's another fish we didn't mention, but like, they're like long sharks.
00:21:59
Speaker
I think they're the first aggressive species you find in the game, unless you're really unlucky. Crassfish suck. Are they the exploding ones? Yeah, they're the... You hear them before you see them. They scream at you and then they die. And that's what they want to do.
00:22:20
Speaker
They're the worst. We won't give them the time. Stalkers. In terms of aggressive fauna though, I think the initial real terror moment everyone has is when they try to explore the engine of the Aurora for the first time after the nuclear meltdown.
Encountering Game's Challenges and Creatures
00:22:39
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:22:40
Speaker
Because I think the game is designed in such a way, and it's worth noting that they could have taken the option to have a randomly generated map, but they didn't. Right. Resource nodes are random, but the map itself is set in stone. So at some point, everyone, you know, you only see one thing on the surface of the water, it's the ship. The tail of the ship is closer than the front of the ship. So hey, I'm going to go to the only thing I see.
00:23:05
Speaker
And, you know, you dodge some stalkers, you have your sea glide, now you can outrun anything, you're a badass, and you go into, what's that area called, the crater? Yeah. Well, this is, yeah, so technically the whole area you're in is the crater, but there's the dunes behind it. Yeah. And the crash zone in particular is the vietnam where the aurora crashed. And you come to face with your first leviathan-class creature. Maybe second.
00:23:31
Speaker
Maybe second? Oh, there's the giant fowl and it looks like an overlord kind of. Yeah, it's a reefback. It's a whale. Reefbacks are terrifying the first time you see them and then you scan them and then you read your scanner and you're like, oh, they're non-hostile. Yeah. Well, you have to get close to them to scan them though. Yeah. That's your bravery test, as Bob Ross put it.
00:23:52
Speaker
But the reaper leviathans on the back end of the ship are just the pure nightmare fuel for the beginning few hours of the game. Oh my gosh, yeah. It's like a sky dragon of sorts. It is gigantic compared to everything else. And you might have a knife at this point. It's not going to work. Knife doesn't work so well.
00:24:18
Speaker
I mean, it's worth noting as a design decision that the game doesn't really give you a way to kill aggressive species. I mean, even, you know, you get the heat knife later, which is all nifty. But even that, if one of those stalker, which is arguably the first aggressive fish you come across comes at you,
00:24:36
Speaker
You're generally not gonna kill it. You'll drive it away. Yeah, but it's it's not gonna die It'll still be a threat and I think I've seen YouTube videos where people like kill leviathans with the knife But I don't have the patience to sit there and watch 20 minutes When people would try and like kick the last boss and like the original monster hunter to death. It's like why though? Yeah, but I do like how they
00:25:02
Speaker
I don't want to use the term gate because that's always like a negative thing for me, but how like they have Certain checks in where it's like your depth
00:25:12
Speaker
And it's also just like spooky because they say like, Hey, this is out here. Yeah. Do you want to go out there and explore? You're like, no, not really. Thanks. No, no. But they kind of incentivize you to with the radio logs or just, you're like, I don't know what else to do. I have to explore. Yeah. There's, there's two. So like Reapers are terrifying and getting the scan on Reapers basically more or less requires the stasis rifle, which is the only way that you can really kill things with a knife.
00:25:40
Speaker
freakin stasis a guy i will say i never made the stasis rifle and i scanned everything yeah ultimate bravery mode i just went in i was like i don't care if i die we're getting this info so the mechanics on the stasis rifle is you charge up a shot and the longer you hold it the more energy you're contributing to the shot it releases and then as soon as it contacts the surface be that a creature in the water or a wall or anything
00:26:06
Speaker
It creates a stasis bubble where time is stopped for anything inside of it or they're frozen essentially, but you can move through it freely. So almost all of the leviathans will charge at you at some point to eat you more or less. And that's a great time to get one shot up to hit it, freeze it. As long as any part of it is touching the bubble, the whole creature is frozen. You can just walk up and like take out your little scanner and be like, selfie. Yeah, exactly.
00:26:35
Speaker
Some of them take longer than one stasis rotation to get that scan in. So you're sitting there, 25%, 26%, 27%. The thing starts moving again. You're like, oh God. What have I done? But yeah, that's your, that's the only thing that allows you to kill like smaller fauna is stasis them and then knife them.
00:26:55
Speaker
But yeah, Reapers are great. So how long does it take you guys to get past the Reaper part? Like when were you like, hey, fuck it.
Exploration and Story Twists
00:27:05
Speaker
I don't care. I'm a big boy I'm gonna explore past this part where I know they are spawned 40 hours into the game Yeah, I never got the hood spa up to try and get past it until I had nothing else to do. Yeah, I I
00:27:20
Speaker
I checked out the opposite side of the Aurora, the crash zone, exactly after I beat the game. I reloaded and I was like, I think I can just do this now because of some technology we haven't really gone into and just went past all of them and checked out the area.
00:27:41
Speaker
The thing that sells Subnautica, I think more than anything else, is just the sense of exploration and the what-is-that-edness of like discovering new things. Like you learn a lot about what's going on, what the planet has going on, the creatures like through the course of playing the game.
00:27:58
Speaker
And one of the things that really surprised me, so one of my favorite outpost locations, is right up next to the aurora near the sandbar. Because the solar panels generate the most energy, the lower the depth they're at. So closest to the surface, most energy. That was contradictory. Yeah, that was the opposite we said. Close to the sun, better. Yes, yes. Closer to the sun, more energy.
00:28:24
Speaker
So you're like, yeah, I'll like have these for you can breach the water then and just have them on the top and I set up my little scanner which is amazing because it can tell you where you have fragments of information like Things to scan that you haven't discovered yet or black boxes which are full-on upgrades that you basically have to get But I looked on the other side of the Aurora because I started pumping some range upgrades into this thing like I'm gonna find all the fragments I'm like
00:28:51
Speaker
There's a massive depression that's shaped like a man-made rectangle in the sandbar on the opposite side of the aurora. And it just looks like an underground complex.
00:29:07
Speaker
This is the beginning of the quest. The beginning of the mental quest in my head. To disappoint everyone, it's literally nothing. But even if it was nothing, it is fun to have those things where you're like, maybe. We've heard like, piece things together, even if initially and correctly you don't know that yet. Yeah.
00:29:26
Speaker
Like I spent a lot of time around that first one island that's exposed that has headcrabs and such. And I was like, I can like, uh, beat up these trees to like eat the fruit. Oh my God. It gets so much, uh, health and nutrients back to that. That's awesome. So I made an outpost there and I explored around there a lot. I was like, there's gotta be more stuff. So I went down under it and I was like, what have I got myself into?
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah, but the exploration of it is really great. I also really like the immersion Thank you for cringing Was that was that island the enforcement platform or was it the tropical island that was the enforcement platform? I thought that was the floating island. Never mind me. I
00:30:13
Speaker
That's the other one that you take through the magic portal. That's one way to get there. There's a life pod. I believe that's out by there that specifically mentions that they found land. Again, this is the kind of audio logs pointing you in your points of interest.
00:30:34
Speaker
Although my favorite kind of audio log that starts off is when you finally get transmission from someone who's off world. Which is, I believe, what's the name of that ship? The Sunbeam? The Sunbeam quest or event log?
00:30:48
Speaker
Because that really kicks off the actual story of the game, which, astoundingly enough, this survival crafting game has a good story. Yeah. Suck it, Minecraft. It's this and the forest. Or the two with actual stories. Yeah. I need to play the forest. You should. You can listen to it. Did you play that with us back in the day? No. No, Dan played with us. I could've sworn we had like four or five people playing. I know we at least had three, but maybe possibly AJ. Possibly.
00:31:18
Speaker
So straight up, promise you right now, on recording, would play it again with you and not spoil anything. It's really good. I'll broach it after the holidays. Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Sunbeam, that's your escape option, basically. Yeah, they're saying, hey, we're going to be here in like three days. If you can hold tight, we'll meet you at this point and we'll pick you up. And you're like, well, that was easy. Game one, I'm the best. Speed run complete.
00:31:47
Speaker
Sitting on top of a life pod, kicking my flippers, eating some raw fish. Yeah, things are good. I don't need to leave the safe shallows. And you actually get to after a few updates. Well, first, the sunbeams really dismissive of your situation. He's just like these freaking ulterra.
00:32:03
Speaker
like, ships, always calling for the stupidest things. And then he finally realizes that the entire ship is down on this planet and he's like, oh. Oh, that's on me. We'll pick you up, yeah. We'll be there in like a few days. Tops.
00:32:21
Speaker
but he, you actually get a unique kind of piece of UI that's not like reused anywhere else. Your ship tells you when the sunbeam starts to descend and you get like a 30 minute countdown, something like that, a real time countdown. And you go like, oh crap, I need to make it to the drop location. Which if you hadn't discovered it by this point is the enforcement platform. Yeah, and they actually do give you a way point, I believe saying, hey, be here at this time.
00:32:51
Speaker
for cutscene, but not really. It's modern day cutscene where you have free movement. So did you make it to the platform when? Oh, yeah. As soon as I saw, like I said, if I'm constrained by actual time in game, I feel that there's actually an obligation to go. So I was like, all right, I'll make sure I have some stuff, I'll have some supplies, whatever, just in case. And I see glowed, glidded? I got over there. Right, use the C-glide. The C-gloater.
00:33:20
Speaker
And I think I was exploring on the beach, killing some headcrabs at the time. I was like, alright, it's coming down, we're good. And then it got blown out of the fucking sky.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, I see my reaction was I got there with like 10 minutes to spare or something because you know early bird gets the worm. You never know what's going to happen. Yeah. And it has to be designed this way. Props to all these little design notes. Because if you come on a direct beeline from your pod to this island, you do not see the enforcement platform on the island until you make the final turn around the island. It is obscured by the mountain. And then all of a sudden you see this giant
00:34:01
Speaker
alien construction of a building. Yeah. And, you know, the first thought that goes through my mind is, oh, and then followed by that can't be good. So, Jake, you saw the cutscene as well, right? Yeah.
00:34:16
Speaker
So, you know, you come around this Island, the time ticks down, you start getting rapid radio messages from the captain of the sunbeam. I think I see you down there. We're coming through the atmosphere now as this, this, uh, alien structures are roughly sky shaper, sky scape, sky scraver shaped. And it sort of lifts up a little bit and then tilts on an axis to be unmistakably a gun shape or a turret shape.
00:34:44
Speaker
Well, you get like a Silent Hill Siren kind of blaring out. It begins to track through the sky and you're like, oh, no, oh, no. And just with a great green flash, I believe it just blows the sunbeam out of the sky. And, you know, so long rescue.
00:35:06
Speaker
Yeah, this is how you know the game is not done. Yeah. But at that point, you're now incentivized to be like, I got to explore what the fuck that was. Yeah. And you start to explore this alien-esque base and the surrounding island. And then do not text me. I won't.
00:35:28
Speaker
I feel like I explored the initial gun area first because I saw there's a kind of like an underwater passage. Yeah. I went inside and you find like the room was like, hey, interact with this. I'm like, OK. Yeah. And it's like, staff, you're infected and you're considered hostile on this life form. Yeah.
00:35:49
Speaker
It's worth noting here that they actually have foreshadowed this for quite some time in-game. If you read the scans and the audio logs or the data logs, which I'm a complete wimp for, I love lord richness. So I'm reading it and it specifically calls out. They scanned the planet before they touched down or got close to it and found it was
00:36:11
Speaker
high in some sort of bacteria and when you land you notice that all the fauna and all the flora is rich with this infection and it mentions like don't hang out in the water too long and you look around like are you fucking with bishop it's also like don't don't eat the wildlife or whatever and you're like but food
00:36:31
Speaker
I love the one audio log the ship gives you where it's like you have exceeded your or you have met your swimming quota for the month After being on the planet for something like a day But it hits you all the time and in fact it prompts you to use the scanner when you first get it and you actually show up as clean and then I think it's actually after the Aurora detonates that you get another thing from the ship saying scan yourself again and you see you're infected and
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah. And it doesn't matter. At this point in the game, you don't know the implications of that. So you're like, maybe it's a stamina or an oxygen debuff, or you think it's a debuff or something, and you don't realize this is implicitly a story thing. Yeah. And then like you say, you invade the alien stronghold and a computer stabs you and tells you you're infected and you can't leave. And you're like, oh, no. Yeah.
00:37:24
Speaker
There's actually, so I played around with this because I wanted to see if there was a way to save the Sunbeam. And there is, but not the way that I tried. And I was like, all right, I know where the enforcement platform is, which is what it's called. We keep calling it that because it shoots things out of the sky.
00:37:40
Speaker
It enforces. And I was like, oh, I'll just beeline there. There's a radius around the enforcement platform where if you breach that radius, the game's just like, hey, scan yourself. I'm like, oh, really? Really, though? And you're infected. I mean, it's clever. Like, how many times of play testing did they have to go through before someone was smart enough to make the beeline? And they're like, all right, here comes the death ring. Yeah.
00:38:10
Speaker
But there actually is a way to save the Sunbeam. Because as soon as the Sunbeam gets shot down and you get stabbed by the machine, you have the main quest to complete the game. That's it. You need to find a way to cure yourself so that you can interface with the enforcement platform.
00:38:31
Speaker
and it will disable itself and you can leave the planet.
Endgame Goals and Strategies
00:38:38
Speaker
But the way you can do it to save the Sunbeam and the most roundabout and unsatisfying way is never respond to the radio when it calls in, in which case it'll never say that it identifies with you, that it's gonna come land. Complete literally the entire game
00:38:57
Speaker
disable the enforcement platform by being cured. Um, then talk to the sunbeam and it'll be like, Hey, uh, we called you like seven weeks ago. What's up? But there's a voice line for it where it's like, there's too much debris in the atmosphere. So we can't attempt the landing. And so they don't try to come by to, uh, to save you in that case. That seems like a cop out. It is a cop out. Yeah. But at that point, you probably already have the technology to leave on your own. Right.
00:39:22
Speaker
Well, that's the other half of the end game is not only do you have to shut off the quarantine platform, you also have to construct yourself a ship to escape the planet. The Neptune One. Which it's important to note, you must turn off the quarantine platform or else the Neptune One won't launch. Yeah. The AI will yell at you and tell you, are you stupid? It's just like trying to get shot.
00:39:48
Speaker
And the resources for that are or the schematics for the Neptune are in the captain's quarters of the Aurora Which I think you get by you get the key code for the door by investigating and it like in-game life pod. Mm-hmm Which is really really cool. It takes a lot of resources to build it obviously and it is gigantic in my I made a mistake in my most recent playthrough when I was building the launch pad because it's literally just this massive Oh, yeah drops in the ocean
00:40:18
Speaker
I was like, great, first part's done. I just open it again and I hit it again. And it just dropped another launch pad like on top of the previous. But these things are gigantic and I can't possibly get up to the second launch pad to actually build the rocket up there. So I pick up my little mobile vehicle van and I like swim over here to an open space of water, drop it again.
00:40:39
Speaker
third launch pad that was the that's the expression right third launch pad's the charm it was everyone knows that not my finest moment
00:40:50
Speaker
Um, so what did you guys do as far as sustainability? I know that we're talking about like, uh, murdering fishes. Cause there's like a fish that you can kill that is essentially water. Yeah. Yeah. So you can hydrate yourself. Yeah. And then if you like heat knife any fish, it's like immediately cooked. Heat knife was the end game for eating or second to end game. Final end game where those trees you were talking about where you just raise them in your own little, uh, yeah.
00:41:18
Speaker
Food box flowerpot And just a little mini for eat the hell out of those trees morning day and night. Yeah, that is your endgame because you can just They replenish if you have like four three or four of them They replenish faster than your hunger and thirst do and it feels hunger and thirst. So yeah, you just do cut ends I had that on all of my endgame locations until I finally get the Cyclops, which is God mode the endgame of end game ist
00:41:47
Speaker
Yeah. The Cyclops, I didn't get that far. That's a super submarine. Is that correct? It is gigantic. It is about the size of a around the size of a Reaper Leviathan, a little bit smaller, but around the size of it. That sounds like some Pacific Rim shit right there. Yeah. And it has amazing attributes that I would be reluctant to put into a game unless I want to do a bunch of QA. You can build storage on it.
00:42:15
Speaker
you can build planters on it. So you can literally just grow a bulbo on it. You can technically have power cell chargers on it, but it is powered by power cells in the back. I think the rule, the general rule was anything that could be constructed in a base that wasn't a room could be built on there.
00:42:37
Speaker
The only thing they I think they eventually disabled because it was enabled in the early versions But you used to be able to put solar panels on it But they're like now we want you to go deep So they took that out but it basically becomes a mobile base once you get that the first time I played through I moved all my resources into the Cyclops just had a
00:43:00
Speaker
Lockers lining the wall the entire length of it and I was like I'm home Which is great because the thing can Not not go to toe-to-toe with but deal with leviathans it can get you past aggressive leviathans Does that like a stronger hole or does that like a weapon system or it has? Kind of all of the above it has a decoy pod where you can put one of the decoys like load it in and
00:43:27
Speaker
Rule of cool note here. It actually is like a torpedo tube. So you go and you load the torpedo into it. Yeah. And then when you're in the captain's chair, there's the button you can press to fire it. So it honestly has the moment. It's, Jay can talk about what it can and can't do. Yeah. But I'm going to talk about how it feels. Cause I think that's,
00:43:50
Speaker
It's a key part of the game is how it feels. So with the Seamoth, which for anyone listening is your next, your intermediate form of transportation, faster and deeper than the Sea Glide, but not up to the standards of having your own submarine. It's like a little capsule Corp pod. Yeah, almost exactly. You're flying little UFO in the ocean. Yeah.
00:44:09
Speaker
But the Cyclops, it has its own UI. You sit in the seat, you can look to the left and right and see through this sort of dome with a HUD projected on it for all the Cyclops' buttons and stats. You can't even run it until you hit the start engine button. And then there's a horn and lights and different periscopes you can flip through. It honestly does feel like you're at the helm of this great vessel.
00:44:41
Speaker
It leads to being a very endearing machine. It also happens to have its own voice like all the other vehicles. And it's like this deep, slightly modulated robotic thing that says, welcome aboard, Captain. And it's like, you're damn right on the Captain.
00:44:56
Speaker
I I really like the sound of that I like because this point in the game It's like you probably invested a lot of time. So getting that next rank of like power up as your progression Sounds pretty hefty There's a stupid amount of work that went into the I was trying to find a picture of the helm. Unfortunately, it couldn't There's one from the outside but you can see
00:45:21
Speaker
tons of use space and there's subsystems on this freaking cyclops so if it takes significant amount of damage there'll be breaches on the outside that you have to exit the ship and use your repair gun to repair to actually repair the hole the cyclops itself is awesome i can't say that enough and it will repair itself
00:45:41
Speaker
from minor damage. It sustains. But major attacks can cause these breaches, which can cause water to flood in. And you can have fires that break the water. Run literally to the side of the inside the halls of this cyclops. Grab a fire extinguisher, run back to the engine bay, like, like, put out all these fires until you get the fire suppression system, which is a mod for it.
00:46:07
Speaker
which gives you a button off to the right of your UI where you can just be like, oh, I'm on fire because I'm being ripped in half by Leviathan. Let me just leave the helm for a second here, match this fire suppression system button, regain helm, all of the doors close, the lights turn low as it's in fire suppression mode, and the ship takes care of putting all of the fires for you while you manage to get this thing out of whatever clause you're in. I love it so much.
00:46:34
Speaker
It's also worth noting that damage is not the only way to set the ship on fire. It has three speeds. It has like a full head slow, which is just kind of, it's also worth noting it is the slowest vehicle in the game. The Seamoth cooks. This thing even, I don't think it has speed upgrades. It has efficiency upgrades, but no speed.
00:46:56
Speaker
and it on it's slow it's probably about as fast as you are swimming normally but of course you're taking your base with you so benefits can't complain too much yeah it has a and at the the size of this thing and moving it around it's like moving an rv through a walmart parking lot
00:47:13
Speaker
Like you're trying to go through crevices and it's giving you warnings that you're so close to the walls and you're like, I know. There's proximity alerts for every part of the show. Yeah, it'll tell you if you're like, it'll actually have a little hologram that comes up and says, here's the object you're about to hit. Here's you. Don't move that way.
00:47:32
Speaker
But there's a slow speed, and each speed has a different engine efficiency, which is the most efficient in terms of using your energy. It has a higher speed, a full head that is much more reasonable for open water and will get you from point A to point B. And it also has what it calls flank speed, which someone could tell me later on what that actually means, but it basically means you're cooking it, you're moving.
00:48:02
Speaker
Well, I want to go, I want to get there fast. I'm impatient. I'm a video gamer. I was raised in 2018. I'll do what I want. So I throw it on max speed and I start moving and the voice comes on. Your engines are overheating. Nonsense. You don't know what you're talking about your computer.
00:48:20
Speaker
Your engines are overheating. Stop now. No. So I keep going and it's like fire is broken out. I'm like, why would you do this? Exactly. I was thinking of the meme where he shoots the guy. How could you do this?
00:48:37
Speaker
the other thing i love about the cyclops it's like half of the game i love the cyclops so much is i'm noticing when you go flank speed your computer says warning vessel captivating because of the amount of noise it makes so this is a mechanic that's kind of unique to the cyclops but basically you're so big that most leviathans don't care about you
00:49:02
Speaker
as food depending on like how much noise you make. So there's a silent running toggle which just drains your energy like nothing. But no matter what your speed is, while that silent running is active, it masks your sound and you can just go past
00:49:21
Speaker
almost all of the leviathans in the game and they won't aggress you because they're just like huh that's weird but it's real quiet and that's how i investigated the opposite side of the aurora is i got in-game alien power cells cells with tons of charge
00:49:35
Speaker
turned on silent running, and I'm just like, go. And I just went past all of the Reapers. I almost hit one of them. I was just like, huh, we'll just go a little bit to the right. I will say one of the drawbacks to this point in the game for me, and I'm not sure if this is just a localized thing for me or if this is sort of a global problem for people.
00:49:55
Speaker
especially in survival crafting games, I get to the point where the equipment I have on me is more valuable than the exploration. So I've now become protective of it, and despite how useful it is, I can't take it out of the protective shallows. So it was like...
00:50:13
Speaker
I built this Cyclops. It took me hours and hours and hours. I can't take this anywhere near Leviathan. And that actually stymied me in the game for a while until Jake eventually just caved and he's like, I'm not going to spoil anything for you. Don't worry about it. If something attacks, you just turn off your engine. I'm like, that's dumb. And then it works because you don't make any noise. The Leviathan hits you like once, maybe twice, and then gives up.
00:50:37
Speaker
It's like, ah, this doesn't look like food. It's not moving. It can't be food. It's too big. I'm going to leave.
00:50:44
Speaker
One of the scariest moments I had in the game, there's a lot of them. There's a lot, but one of the scariest moments is I was sitting in my cyclops near the steering wheel. I was like looking through my database entries or whatever. I'm just like, huh, you know, seems to be a lot going on. And then I like put my data pad down, looked up at the window out into the deep ocean. And there is a ghost alive and just staring in the window at me and I'm like,
00:51:11
Speaker
Got?
Glitches, Creatures, and Game's Immersive Aspects
00:51:14
Speaker
Is that you? Eventually I like lost interest and it left but I was like every part of me is that this is bad. One story I want to share is not Cyclops related unfortunately um this was of work Justin's yeah story
00:51:34
Speaker
so basically the sea moth which is the in between between the sea glide and Cyclops is a Travel vehicle. I think it goes down like 300 depth before it starts taking like hull damage. You can mod it. Yeah. Yeah, it's about 300 So Justin's like well, I need to go down to explore so he dropped it around like 295 he's like 300 obviously start taking whole damage and
00:51:57
Speaker
Not gonna risk it. So he's getting out. He's like collecting some resources I feel like a some type of larger aggressive fish came by and Bumps his ship down into the water further down and it starts to like compress and then breaks Yeah, so he then comes back up to his ship like I'm gonna stop for oxygen and then drive back home and it wasn't there Yeah
00:52:22
Speaker
I used that story as motivation for this last gameplay playthrough because I was like, wait, I remember this. And so I always parked my ship just 10 meters higher than I would have. You park it where you think you should park it and then you go 10 meters up from that. Exactly.
00:52:39
Speaker
You park in the back on Black Friday. Play it safe. This sort of leads into the only glitch I've ever had with the game. One game breaking bug and it kind of bummed me out but I recovered from it quickly. I can't remember which if it was a Leviathan or a large creature or what.
00:52:58
Speaker
and it hit my ship while I was in it. And it instantly killed me, which was, you know, dismay, but whatever, I respawn and do what I have to. But my ship was no longer there. And this was a maxed out modified Seamoth. So I'm close to it at this point. And after looking around for it, I kind of came to the conclusion, oh, I had you could, uh,
00:53:21
Speaker
Waypoint, waypoint your ships. So I put it on the waypoint, it was in the environment, it was underground. So it clipped through, it hit something so hard that it clipped through and then stayed on the other side. So this was my foray into how to turn on no clip, clip through the wall, grab my ship, fly it out, and then turn off no clip and disable the ship.
00:53:46
Speaker
Command mode. Yeah. But at the same time, like this is an immersion breaking moment. And I was kind of bummed by that. But I think that's the only technical hiccup I've had in the entire game. I feel like I might have had a little bit of the graphical banding where like a texture might get stretched over something. Right.
00:54:07
Speaker
but it might've been like once and for like half a second. I didn't really run into any issues throughout the game, I would think. I had like a few. I had, so my first playthrough, the iconic one was, sometimes when I was in the Cyclops, it would be like, hey, how would you like to be, instead of in the Cyclops, standing on top of the Cyclops? I was like, but I'm underwater. And it's like, no, that's fine.
00:54:33
Speaker
And the way the game handles whether you're underwater or not is just like a toggle. So I was on top of the Cyclops, but not underwater, quote unquote. So I could fall off of it, take full damage on the ground, which is the seabed. And if that didn't kill me, then as soon as I made contact, it's like, oh, you touched the bottom of the seabed. You should be underwater, right? Yeah, you're underwater. Bit flipped, and then I could swim back up to the Cyclops.
00:55:00
Speaker
I didn't die thankfully but it was really obnoxious and then at my most recent playthrough the final facility that holds the Empress Leviathan has a Sea Dragon Leviathan which is just like this kind of derpy fire breathing thing outside of it and it clipped into the facility I needed to go into
00:55:24
Speaker
So I was sitting here in my prawn, which is basically a mech suit with little punchy arms. And I had to go into the facility and then take cover behind pillars while inside the facility, because the Sea Dragon Leviathan would be breathing fire into it, clipping through the walls. And I'm like, nope, not having this. That sounds like working as intended to me, because that sounds like emergent gameplay.
00:55:48
Speaker
It kept like, it's like tentacles and stuff would keep clipping through the wall and I'm just like, what is going on? What are you even doing here? So this kind of led me into something I've been meaning to ask you guys. What is both your favorite designed and arguably the most terrifying fish in the game? Like what, what fish do you find most fascinating? And that could be like a Leviathan or like even some of the smaller ones.
00:56:14
Speaker
I know exactly what you're thinking for a smaller one. I know 100% what I'm thinking because if it doesn't get brought up, I'm going to bring it up. I'll let you go first because you have a more recent recollection of the game. I'll let you talk about Mesmer. Oh, it wasn't the Mesmer. Well, I'll talk about Mesmer. So Mesmer is a small fish that has a very unique property and as soon as you see it,
00:56:37
Speaker
and you get within a certain range, your codex voice comes on and it's like you must swim closer to that beautiful creature and the voice stretches and kind of dilates
00:56:52
Speaker
and you start to lose control of your inputs and you start moving closer to what is this kind of like small kind of like a jellyfish looking creature um like a flower really and if you get close enough it'll like bite you not for a lot of damage but i'll do a little bite then it swims off um but its entire thing is it's trying to pull you in through like
00:57:15
Speaker
telepathic suggestion and it uses your computer voice to convince you to do it. And if you actually scan it and look at the data pad or its entry, it starts off really scientific and technical. And then towards the end, it's just like, this is the most beautiful creature like you've ever seen. It's like, you must swim closer. And I love it. Mesmer.
00:57:37
Speaker
No, the fish I was going to talk about, it's not Leviathan class, but it is a hostile organism. The crab squid, which is the unholy fusion of a crab and a squid, believe it or not. It sort of looks like a big black balloon.
00:57:56
Speaker
with eight eyes, because of course it can't have enough eyes, and these giant crab-like appendages on the bottom of it, and it just flies through the ocean, minding its own business, until it sees you. It will let out a scream, which is probably, in my opinion, the most nightmarish out of anything in the game. I'm not going to try and make it on camera or on microphone. That's good. You get to come. Thank you.
00:58:23
Speaker
But it has a unique attack. And again, I think this is something in the game that is a rather unique effect. It lets out a radial EMP blast. This knocks out vehicles.
00:58:35
Speaker
and tools. So, hey, I'm using my C-glide to get around. I'll escape it on the C-glide. No, you're not. I'll use my stasis gun. No, you won't. It EMPs everything. And for like five seconds, you are just thinking to yourself, this is how I die. In the dark. Yeah. And then power starts to come back on. My gripe with this creature is if the EMP effect lasts three seconds, it might fire off an EMP every four seconds.
00:59:02
Speaker
So it's like, oh God, get away, get away, get away in that one second of I have electricity. You know what the trick though is, Ian? Those ones are attracted by light. So if you turn off all of your lights, they don't care. Two playthroughs and I never noticed because I avoided them like the plague. I think they're only really in one area of the game too. Although I think that is a choke point.
00:59:24
Speaker
There's the degasi deep base. Yeah, I think that yeah, yeah exactly Which I we didn't even talk about the degasi. It's fine. It's a side plot But again, it's one of those side plot that forces you deeper into the planet though. It's true. Yeah 300 down or further that's 300 was the first to gossi base you find the second one I think is
00:59:47
Speaker
Because there's one in jellyfish fields, probably the one you found. There's another one. They went from jellyfish fields to the top of Portal Island, Tropical Island. And then from there down to their 350, I think, base, which is really a bad spot. Yeah. But that's where you can find a cuttlefish. Oh, yeah, the cuttlefish, the rare fish in the game. Looks adorable.
01:00:14
Speaker
but that answer your question though. That was a question. No, this is the best fish question. Yeah. What's the, what's the scariest fish you encounter?
01:00:22
Speaker
The one that is not necessarily a fish but it is psychic and it starts speaking through your headset and then teleports you places Oh the warper. Yeah, and I didn't know what was going on, but I knew I wanted none of that Yeah, and you don't really get a good view of it. At least I didn't initially it kind of reminds me of spectre from Dota 2. Mm-hmm. It's kind of like Very dark and like sighs. Yeah praying mantis II. Yeah and very shadowy and
01:00:49
Speaker
It can fire what, like, psionic blasts at you too? It has a ranged attack which is obnoxious. Most commonly it'll teleport you first or close on you and do an attack. I mean, it's, again, I have to, who developed this game? I can't remember. You usually write it down. Somebody deep. Great, great. Great, yeah. Great deep. While I look this up, my favorite thing about the Warper for scary abilities, it can teleport you out of your Seamoth.
01:01:15
Speaker
Yeah. Or Cyclops. I think I actually did encounter that once with the, the Sea Moth. Now I remember. Yeah. It's like, you know what? You're safe inside of a vehicle that you can breathe in. Not anymore. You're 10 feet away. Yeah.
01:01:32
Speaker
Also, a little more lore on those guys. Oh, Unknown Worlds is the developer of Subnautica. But they're also artificially created. They're created as the guards of the planet, basically, to help eradicate Kara infected life, which is much like Undertale. Always a bad thing. Kara is the infection, the virus here.
01:01:56
Speaker
It's worth noting, Jake, you were actually the one that told me this little nifty factoid. You don't really run into the devourer, not devourer. You don't run into the Warpers very early into the game. You can kind of come across them by accident, but it's...
01:02:13
Speaker
There's the way the game's laid out and how it's breadcrumbing you around. You're not gonna cross their path. If you do go out of your way knowing where to go or you stumble upon them before you're infected, they don't care. They're completely non-aggressive to you. Only once you get the notice that you're infected do they like, you know, turn on protocol fuck shit up mode and hunt you down. And leave you threatening voicemails on your radio.
01:02:41
Speaker
That's true. That's actually, that was one of the things I wish they would have followed up with a little bit more. Cause you get one radio message where it's like nine targets identified. It's just like four eliminated or something like that. Like searching for the rest, beginning like hunter killer protocol or whatever, something like that. But it's literally from the warper and it doesn't make any sense actually. Yeah. The warper from what I understand they're cause they're partially machine.
01:03:10
Speaker
that you find in one of the, I can't remember if it has a name for the previous alien race, but you do find them and you see an assembly line where they're building them. It's some sort of bio cyborg where they're using bits and pieces of living material, grafting cyber or not a cyber, not cybernetic enhancements onto it to create these hunter killers.
01:03:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really cool end game facility. That's after the wall though, which is the big, this is the thing that I think Dave got stuck on. Yeah, I might need to continue my play through and actually check out more of this. Yeah, this is, so the point most people stop playing is where they stop giving you life pods and you know you need to explore somewhere you haven't been, but you don't know exactly what. And there's a couple hints. One of them is in the enforcement platform. It says, Hey, there's a deep,
01:04:04
Speaker
See research facility southeast of this or yeah southeast of this position, but you're like, okay great And but basically your goal is to get to the Lost River and as soon as you get there Just exploring that out location, which is below everything else will take you through the rest of the game And there's like three entrances
01:04:24
Speaker
but like two of them have leviathans right outside and one of them well around right outside and one of them is past all of those crab squids actually so no good entrances yeah and the game doesn't give you any more bad commas past that part it's just like figure out a way to go deeper
01:04:46
Speaker
And it wasn't until my most recent game that I actually got a voice message from my computer saying like, hey, a skeletal remains detected like 200 meters below you or something like that while I was in one area. And I was like, oh, that's a hint that would have been useful when I first played through. But I actually chalked that up to a downside to the game. We've been like circle joking about like how great everything is.
01:05:14
Speaker
As soon as the bread comes to stop, it becomes really easy to waste a lot of time not accomplishing anything as far as exploitation is concerned. Yeah, because it's still like a, while it is like a limited map size, it is still fairly large. And if you don't know where to go, you kind of keep doing circular loops around the places you've been, maybe a little bit deeper, but it becomes very tedious. Yeah. But that's really my only gripe with the game so far because it was very immersive. Shut up again.
01:05:43
Speaker
Like it looks gorgeous as far as the graphic. It's nothing like over the top. It's just enough to make me feel, to make it feel believable. And then I'm underwater. And then they have like really chill background music, except when shit gets real and then it's horrifying music. But all in all, the whole thing for what I play, I still sunk about 30 to 40 hours into it.
Endgame Critique and Future Expansions Discussion
01:06:08
Speaker
Every time I hear one of these words. Every time.
01:06:11
Speaker
and no regrets honestly it was solid um i think jake and i had one big gripe because we agreed once we beat the game and could talk about it freely spoiler free with each other we agreed we both did the same thing yeah um you know this is the soapstone so as usual spoilers are out the window yeah we put that into the description for this one so but for every game that's on people um towards the end of the game you get sent on your
01:06:38
Speaker
fetch quest or victory lap whatever you want to call it where it's like you need to go get one of each sample of different plants in each biome.
01:06:50
Speaker
After spending 40 hours on this game, I said, no, used the control panel or the, I can't remember what the proper term is for a dev console, gave myself those items and turned it in at that very moment. Because I couldn't be asked to walk around the world collecting these again. And that kind of hearkens back to Legend of Zelda Wind Waker, if you ever played it where it's like, hey, go on the Triforce hunt, no.
01:07:14
Speaker
No, what is it about water games making me go all over the world getting these things that we don't want to get? No. So, I mean, and after I said I admitted to Jake that yeah, I've logged in and just gave myself the items. He's like, oh, I did too. Yeah, I looked it all up on the wiki. I found it. I don't think I don't think I use console command. Oh, nevermind. I did look up all of the locations and just grabbed it.
01:07:36
Speaker
Because the games, once you get to the home run phase, don't transition out of the home run phase. Like, everyone knows they get that home run feeling where it's like, we are accelerating to credits, and I just want to sit back and feel good about my accomplishments. And it's like, gather an item from each location around every biome. And you're like, no, though. Counter argument. What if I didn't? So yeah, that was kind of unfortunate they put that at the end.
01:08:06
Speaker
Otherwise, it's a very, very solid underwater sandbox. Have you guys checked out the expansion or do you plan to at some point?
01:08:15
Speaker
I specifically have been keeping myself in the dark spoiler wise about it. I'm a big spoilers type of guy. So this is kind of me mentally reserving space in my brain saying that while I don't have a definite decision to pick it up. You have an interest. I have an interest and I'm avoiding any information about it so that, you know, maybe if it hits a release state or if I lack anything else to play, I will pick it up and give it a shot.
01:08:42
Speaker
Also, regarding the one to come out, it's called below zero. And that's a huge shame because it was right there, right there in the name could have just been subnautica subzero would have been easy as pie. But I guess. Who is who owns Mortal Kombat? Damn, you never realms like Capcom. I don't know if it's never. It's definitely not Capcom who owns Mortal Kombat.
01:09:07
Speaker
Is it not Capcom? It's not Capcom. Really? Capcom as Street Fighter. Oh, okay, that's what I was thinking of. Whoever owns them, they'll get to me. I think it's Nether Realms. That's a joke. Is it Nether Realms? It might be. They might have named their own company because of the lore of the in-game universe. Didn't they make Tony Hawk? No. Although now I'm thinking of this really good crossover, guys.
01:09:30
Speaker
All right. Well, as always, uh, thank you guys for listening. Um, thank you, Ian, for stopping by just to record this episode and for nothing else. And don't win out for dinner. Um, hopefully we can do more things like this in the future. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how Dave feels about
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:09:49
Speaker
it. Once you stop recording, if he beats me, that's how I know it's a bad idea. But as always, you can send in your feedback, uh, to soapstone podcast.
01:10:00
Speaker
at gmail.com or join the discussion on facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast Where hopefully We get some good subnautica discussion going on because it's a great game and it's a contender for my game of the year this year But you'll have to listen to future episodes find out if that holds true Huh
01:10:26
Speaker
I don't have much to add, so thank you every for listening. Have a good night. You got any closing thoughts? None whatsoever. Alright, alright. Here's your games. Bye. See you in the next one.
01:11:05
Speaker
Yeah.