What The Hell Went Wrong with Subnautica Below Zero?

What did you think of Subnautica Below Zero?

Their biggest mistake of the developers was to try and make it less scary. The terror and suspense was one of the best thing about subnautica

They seemed to completely forget that subnautica's success was due to how small and alone you felt in a mysterious world, a smaller world with talking characters and constant lore explanation take's away from this, hopefully they learn for their 3rd game

One thing I really liked about the Cyclops was how it really felt like something you were not necessarily equipped to handle. You were basically using a vehicle designed to be operated by three people, and trying to run it all by yourself. You couldn't do two things at once, if you were driving that meant you couldn't repair anything. If you were repairing internal or external damage, you were a sitting duck. It felt overwhelming, and in a good way. I wished they leaned into that and made a ship that was bigger and more complex, to really baffle the mind, and enhance any sense of danger.

My favorite part of Subnautica was quickly discovering a new region or cave, but being too terrified to enter. Progression happened as I learned to face my fears. In BZ I just drove my truck around everywhere looking for stuff and if anything attacked me I just left click and I'm safe.

I think the games biggest problem for me was that the map didn’t have the feeling of vastness that the first game did. In the first game every thing looks the same from above the water but just below is a vast, deep, and unknown word with lots of diverse geography and creatures. In below zero the above water areas made the map restricted making it feel much smaller than in the original game.

For me it was the progression. Subnautica's progression is so smoooth. You just sorta naturally progress in an ever more downward direction with better vehicles, upgrades, and tools.

I mistook the shrimp leviathan for the equivalent of an oversized sand shark when I first played below zero 😭 I practically ignored it, where compared to the reaper leviathan I nearly shit myself

As the player, I was very interested in the precursor race, and wanted to learn everything about them. But whenever Robin and Al talked, it was Al asking about humanity and Robin just telling Al that he's stupid for being the way he is. Despite Robin having a precursor in her head, we didn't get to learn much about them.

I wish they'd stayed with their original plan for Below Zero to be a DLC addition to the original Subnautica. The idea of swimming so far out into Subnautica's ocean that you eventually reach the planet's polar ice caps is really cool - and the same goes for vice versa, swimming so far out past the icebergs in Below Zero that you eventually reach the open ocean and all it's terrors.

The large empty areas really were what made Subnautica for me too. There's a unique sense of uneasiness when you're near the surface and don't know what's lurking right below you.

Another factor is lighting. In the original game the lighting was sparse and highlighted moments like entering the grand reef or seeing the cove tree for the first time. In below zero the whole map is lit up in wierd and sometimes ugly ways, taking the wow out of significant moments.

One of the biggesty problems for me was the fact that the story seemed very disjointed. In the original, there were two simultaneous objectives. You had to build the rocket to get off the planet and you had to find a cure for the disease. The thing that made it so interesting is how intertwined these two story lines are. Even if you get the rocket, you can't leave until the virus is cured and the weapon is shut off. even if you managed to cure the virus and turn the weapon off, you were still stranded until you built the rocket. Both objectives were equally important if you wanted to make it off the planet alive. Below Zero tried to do the same thing with one story line following Sam, and the other following Al-An. The thing is, these two storylines have nothing to do with each other. Even if you never follow the Sam storyline at all never learn what happened to her, you still can just leave with Al-An and get to the credits. it's just two plotlines running next to each other but never converging of culminating in anything meaningful. If Al-An had refused to leave until getting the cure from where Sam had stashed it so he could bring it back to the other architects, then they could have merged the two and pivoted the plot into ultimately saving what was left of the architect race, but that didn't happen.

You pointed out a lot of the story flaws I didn't even realize, but the one part that I did notice that bugs the hell out of me is that Robin's plan was basically suicide as she had no means of escaping a deserted planet.

i finished the game without ever even finding the frozen leviathan. i didnt even know it existed until i found out about it online. i wondered why the sam storyline felt incomplete. the fact that i was allowed to finish the game without wrapping up the main storyline is insane to me

I love how in Subnautica you have to go through massive leviathans, a lost river and literal hell to get to one specific organism that can cure the Kharaa virus, and then in Below Zero you take two plants that are easy to get and you already found the cure

One other thing to note is the color palette. In Subnautica things were far more muted, and if everything was vibrant, it was often either stand alone, or alongside other things akin to it, a few examples being the plants in the Shallows, the grass in the Grassy Plateaus, or the kelp in the Blood Kelp Zone. Then there's also cases where the creatures match the environment, with the Ghost Leviathan and Crab Squid matching either the Blood Kelp or the Grand Reef, the Reapers muted colors with the dusty dunes or crash zones, or the dark with occasionally bright spots that the Sea Dragon and Lava Zones had. What does the Chelicerate go with? It's a giant armored monster that doesn't have any notable camouflage ability, nor does it really fit in with its areas. The Shadow leviathan sort of does, but not quite as well as the leviathans in the previous game. BZ was just too...bright, too vibrant, it was trying to instill urgency, or it was supposed to, but nothing really did. That's another thing "Urgency in the story" in Subnautica, you hear through logs and the scanner about the global infection, what it does, and how it progresses, with effects even visible on the character. Sure, you won't actually die or suffer in any way from it, but it's still the narrative urgency of "Oh god, I need to fix this" that makes it even more interesting. In BZ, Alan mentions that Robins brain will eventually collapse or something from his presence, but we see no actual evidence of that, they just...talk...that's it, there's nothing else to actually MAKE us want to progress, and that's just a crying shame.

In my opinion, the Sea Moth is one of the most enjoyable video game vehicles of all time. It's so quick and zippy, and super easy to control. I always loved going out to search for resources or go exploring, simply because I got to drive around in my Sea Moth.

First issue with BZ I noticed playing was how gamey it felt - in first game, the world was just there, for you to find your way through and figure it out, with the fact it was designed being very effectively hidden from the player. Even all guidance that was done never seemed too obvious - radio signals led you near areas that had resources necessary to progress, while still letting you find those resources on your own. Compared, BZ felt like going through a questlog and checking everything out one by one, with even world having checkpoints in form of breath plants at just the right distance you could go through a cave and never fear drowning.

A large part of it for me was the isolation. In subnautica 1, you were alone at all times. Whenever you got a distress call, a hope of not being all alone but having it be crushed was crucial for the experience. A dread crept in after discovering everyone is gone and the paranoia of what took them also taking you was a big plus for me. Only in the last 30-45 minutes did you have someone, but even that wasn't a true companion. This is a point Bellow Zero missed. Even adding an actual model and character for Maida was a mistake in my opinion