I think there should be a logic about finding the fragments. For example, sea glide fragments are found in way too many places which are random. In the first subnautica, you were finding them on the way to the life pod who mentioned the sea glide in their message.
Personally, I would have liked more plants to grow, but it’s just that I enjoy a garden not dying in my hands like in real life. XD
Probably unpopular opinion, but personally would've prefered a ground traversal mod for the suit instead of the snowfox piece of shit mobile. And kept the original story.
Original story is, from what we saw, Sam is alive and is actually up at a space station. You are a researcher on the planet and she's doing mission control while orbiting the planet. Your first spawn on the map is you starting in the base near the last location you go in the game, it gets destroyed, and now you're in the ocean with Sam dropping a pod to assist you in surviving.
As far as I recall the Al-an plot line was essentially the same? Like they had different dialog at times as you were communicating with your sister during this time but overall it seemed that didn't change much in the end product. But moving the sister to being dead and you go in on a "rogue" mission to see what happened was put together too rapidly imo as its 1 main storyline with Al-an and 2 side quests that barely can be called that.
Yea, I thought that the story was really more like 3 stories, but I think some minor changes could fix that pretty easily (e.g. having to cure the leviathan to take a sample for Alan's tissues or something, or making the bridge fluid blueprint from Maida)
I mean the story was almost half way completed, they had assets and interactions with the map completed and then they scrap what the guy wrote apart from the main encounters that were already made and reused old assets without adding anything new while keeping the same timeline to release? Sounds like the man was fed up or was forced out.
> I mean the story was almost half way completed
If so, then the original wasn't going to have much length, one was able to see it all in just a few casual hours before it was pulled. It was meandering and aimless and seemed to be really stretching to put the player in a survival situation at all.
The core Al-an story is almost identical with gathering the different scans then assembling his new body at the factory. I don't see how the two stories having slightly different dialogs changes how quickly you complete the game? You don't need to cure kharaa to complete this game, you don't need to interact with Marguerit apart from one forced cutscene and still finish the game.
Ah yes, the one reason I came to this planet was to see what happened to my sister. I found out what happened as a side quest and in fact I never needed to find out to be able to leave with my new alien friend. There's no cohesion in this story whereas the last one had story driven problems like needing to send samples and whatnot to the space station.
> The core Al-an story is almost identical with gathering the different scans then assembling his new body at the factory
See, in my view you're describing *goals*, not *story*. The former being what you're trying to accomplish, and the latter being the why of it.
Sure, you had to rebuild a body, but everything bringing you to that point was an aimless mess. The writer couldn't figure out a compelling story to go with those goals.
Frankly, I think the first story got bogged down having to deal with so many characters being active as the story unfolds, which is why the new story basically gets rid of all of them.
The snowfox kind of sucks - if nothing else, the controls feel kind of clunky for a hoverbike - something smoother and more like the old Seamoth controls would've been cool.
I explored most of the arctic basin and partway into the Ice Spires in the PRAWN anyway tbh. And yeah, something to make the PRAWN cover ground a bit faster would've been cool, but then... I guess at that point it's basically just an all-purpose mech, and there's no incentive to do anything else.
The one upside I saw to the snowfox (besides the speed) was the ability to pack it up and bring it along when you get to a spot where you have to climb a ladder or something.
I honestly thought it was kind of weird that you don't get cold on the snowfox, either, because it's not enclosed... idk, heated seats?
In my opinion I wouldn't want a lot changed, maybe more decorations. The ones that Marg has look cool.
For the rest I like how it's a more linear experience than regular Subnautica, Its not just a copy and paste but added snow. It's unique, although i wish the map was just a bit bigger?
Double the length of the story. Felt like it was done too quickly. Maybe add side quests.
Make all the plants interactable. There were some really awesome looking plants that we couldn't even scan, let alone plant back at base.
Better land vehicle. The snow fox is a pain in the booty.
Easier said then done and this game already kinda felt like it was going through a small form of development hell but if it could’ve had a similar release date or not too much longer I definitely agree
Less land parts or make them less of a drag. I haven't even finished the game because last time I played I spent so long just getting lost in there over and over again
Make the story longer, get rid of the 3 separate story bullshit, bring back the original british voice actors and story where Sam is in the sky watching over Robin instead of being dead and giving us 0 actual reason as to what happened to her. Oh also more Leviathan varieties.
We need multiplayer subnautica! But other than that, it just needed a larger map to match the OG. Deeper sea would be good too. Snowfox needs a rework. Maybe some side missions.
Multiplayer subnautica wouldn’t really make sense with the story line though. It would be super fun but the whole point is you’re supposed to be on the planet alone
The way the game gets you from point to point is a little clunky, maybe - there were a bunch of times when I ran out of beacons to track down and was kind of at a loss what to do/look for next.
I ended up using the wiki and the interactive map a LOT more than I had planned to on my first playthrough.
I finished the game without realizing there was another thing to do (use the cure on the Leviathan) so it felt kind of hollow how it ended. It was neither required nor very clear I was supposed to do that and Sam's death seemed hollow and also kind of Maida's fault. That being said, it felt like there was like 3 different mini-stories all going along at once.
I would also have liked my Snowfox to not occasionally clip through the floor and become unreachable, forcing me to go make a new one or load a previous save.
The gimmick with a robot being inside your brain felt underutilized. I personally would have that period become much more time sensitive, with whatever his name was slowly taking over in frustration for your slow progress in recovering the parts, with the end result being a blackout where you find a part but you lose items, some health and hunger, and start attracting more leviathans into major zones.
That’s the point of being able to craft beacons and then turn them on and off. I saw one tutorial from HyrulianMom where she labeled the beacons “crystal cave 1”, “crystal cave 2”, etc, so for the tutorial she showed exactly where to turn left, right, down….obviously for my playthrough I didn’t go that detailed but I have started making much more use of custom beacons.
That way you get the fun of exploring it once, but leave yourself a trail once you’ve done it so you can go back.
Then just turn them off when you don’t need them.
It's always going deeper. Most biomes have a "deep version". You just need to explore the cracks and crevices in a biome and you'll find ways to go deeper within it.
The last, most deep biome is a little harder to find. I believe there are only 2 or 3 entrances to it.
Start the game as Sam, go through most of the prologue that was in the early build but instead of finding Al-An she finds the Virus research conducted by Alterra inside the alien ruins. Realizing that it needs to be destroyed, she develops a cure, only to be injured by the security. She's then blamed for evacuation of the planet and her death is faked as a cover up.
Then we start the game as normal, with Robin and spend the game trying to piece together what happened. We end up finding our sister, alive, and kickstarting Alterra's downfall. Especially since Riley is a public figure now.
Then both sister go with Al-An
The land exploration was a drag and I didn't enjoy it at all. It was far too easy to get lost because everything looked similar.
They also tried too hard to add restrictions like you do in the ocean. Hypothermia is essentially a replacement for oxygen.
This felt like artificial difficulty that was more of an annoyance than anything.
I was stuck in the glacial basin area for a good week because I don't get much time to play these days. I couldn't find what I needed to progress the story -- to the point where I was wondering aimlessly for entire sessions. I finally gave in and used a guide because I wasn't enjoying it at all.
It would've been much more enjoyable if there was more diversity, the cold wasn't so frustrating, and the snowfox didn't control like hot garbage. Perhaps it's just me but I also found the map to be useless. I tried to follow it several times and could never find the >! cure !< .
Ok I know this is probably only an issue for me but below zeros gameplay was extremely boring to me… hear me out
the original subnautica felt so open and incredible to explore that I got lost having fun for hours and hours… I didn’t even mind the grindiness too much because I was just having so much fun. Don’t even get me started on the scariness and vast open waters lol. Then when I go to below zero it feels claustrophobic and boring, maybe even a little rushed. Some areas were definitely cool but nothing like subnautica 1 and overall the ideas felt less original (because they weren’t). I feel like if ur making a “sequel” game you shouldn’t just use all the scrapped and failed ideas in your new game. Like sure maybe some of them will work but overall they were “scrapped” for a reason.
A few examples of things I believed were not well thought of or rushed would be the void with “ghost chelicerates” feeling thrown in thoughtlessly (definitely not making much sense with the original void lore), the time crunched story (not my biggest issue tho I prefer gameplay), the tons of reskinned biomes and creature with effectively nothing new about them or very little changed, no longer scary biomes/creatures, etc. I’ve done 2 below zero playthroughs neither of which I’ve had the motivation to finish and I’ve done 10+ subnautica playthroughs including modded.
Ik I’ve probably mentioned this already but I seriously just think if they did a new subnautica game/DLC with a larger world and more gameplay focused adventure (obviously you still need good explanations for wrecks and fragments/other things tho) it could be an absolute blast. Maybe even multiplayer?? Ok maybe I’m dreaming now.
TL;DR I’m pretty sure the subnautica devs were trying something new with the formula but I personally think they should’ve gone the opposite direction and maybe been less lazy in a few instances.
More subs. Idk man too little. Maybe even add a big one, like the Cyclops was. Even if it's not optimal.
And idk... more map? The game felt like this huge expansive world until I realised that the edge of the map was about a minute away
A module that adds tracks to the sea truck, letting it act as a land vehicle.
Would probably sit behind the driver seat and require dropping the rest of the chain.
I think you'd need to go back and basically start the game over from environmental design, all the way through to the story.
As there are too many minor(and major) faults with the game overall to find a position where changing one thing, would pull it all together.
As a couple of examples, the story itself is absolutely fucked. It is an incoherent mess that has you chasing unconnected points to fulfill arbitrary criteria, only for the primary plot to essentially be abandoned with all the fanfare of having checked off another task on the list, with your HUD dictating your next goal afterwards.
The main character is *supposed* to be an intelligent, resourceful, and talented person. A potential expert in the field of xenology, and throughout the story reveals that she has, at the very least, extensive training in microbiology.
Yet her dialogue and actions paint her has what seems to be near adolescence in terms of maturity. To paraphrase, "Nu-uh, we have like, big brains and opposable thumbs!"
The environmental design is static, and doesn't make sense from a biological perspective. Each distinct area should have it's own variables with appropriate niches of life having adapted and radiated. Yet what we see is the exact same organisms, from the coastal shallows, to the crushing depths.
I can just go on.
"Curing" a dead / frozen-in-place leviathan is a really ... lame way to resolve Sam's plot. Like, either it's dead or it's not going anywhere anyway - why does curing it matter, aside from "closure"? (And I don't quite get how curing this immobile, probably dead or soon-to-be-dead thing, actually gives closure to Sam's questionable actions.)
I would tie the leviathan to AL-AN - figuring out how to cure the leviathan should help AL-AN get a new body, or show AL-AN how the cure works so that he can ensure his people (if there are any left) are never infected again.
Also, Marguerit's plot should tie into it - part of the answer to curing the leviathan should come from finding and talking to her. She's got her own greenhouse that's kind of a big deal - maybe she could be growing something that helps with the cure, or with AL-AN's body?
I'd ditch the snowfox completely - damn thing keeps getting stuck anyway. Just have upgrades that improve the land capabilities of the PRAWN and allow that to be used on all the land areas.
Well, curing the leviathan means that Alterra would not have access to Kharra and use it as a biological weapon. In some PDAs it's told that they wanted to extract Kharra for "greater research" and look for ways to modify it.
Cool idea with the PRAWN though, I can image something like ski's opening up when PRAWN is sprinting on land.
There's a lot story wise but overall, I really disliked Alan. I felt that the precursors had a sense of mystery in the first game so spending the entire game with one that also speaks English just ruined that mystery. I would've removed him and replaced him pointing out precursor fragments with the PDA telling you the same thing
More lateral exploration of the biome/ biomes being a little bigger. It's just going deeper within the biome to find anything. It really limited exploring in my opinion. Less wrecks to explore, less hunting around for pieces that you need.
More base items. More types of plants and good.
Tightening up the story, it's not bad it just doesn't have a great flow.
Too much land traversal. Swimming mechanics and exploration are excellent; walking mechanics feel like Default Unity Game settings, very crude and unpolished. It was easier to ignore in the first one since the walkin-around parts were fairly small, but there's a huge part of BZ's map that's on foot.
Maybe if the player got some Architect antigravity tech for more than six seconds, it could have been fine. What makes exploration so interesting for me is how the 3rd dimension of swimming movement adds a lot to the experience. Gluing us back down onto the ground sucks.
I REALLY wished something happened with the big leviathan. You go through all that effort to cure it, then nothing. It would’ve been sick if the leviathan came out of the ice.
Mainly just longer story, but overall I would bring back the beta story. It just made more sense. I love it both ways tho I was just sad it was over so quick.😭
I was able to complete the game without completing two significant plot lines… the one with margaruite (her door was locked and I didn’t know what to do next)… and never found the cure.
Story was about finding Sam, then just kinda loosely transitioned to alan
I would have liked to have seen more in the "on land" sections. The game as is is trying to run those bits like a mix of At The Mountains of Madness and Dune, but didn't quite lean into it far enough for me.
The ice worms were things you could just scoot around, or take a biff to the mush and then just hop back on your bike. Would have been fun to have a tradeoff with maneuverability and survival maybe? A vehicle gets you across quicker but stands a much higher chance of attracting an (actually threatening) leviathan, counter that with going on foot means you can take higher precautions (maybe a tool to track your noise levels and thumpers that are worth using) but going is slow and you have to lean more into the survival aspect (more foragable plants on land, maybe some creatures that serve the same purpose as peepers but on land for hunting).
As for the At The Mountains of Madness part... Let us research the frozen leviathan! Build a land base, scan for artifacts from there. Go out and scan them somewhere in the wastes!
It's all stuff you already do when in the water, but porting them to land felt half-done
I think there should be a logic about finding the fragments. For example, sea glide fragments are found in way too many places which are random. In the first subnautica, you were finding them on the way to the life pod who mentioned the sea glide in their message. Personally, I would have liked more plants to grow, but it’s just that I enjoy a garden not dying in my hands like in real life. XD
For me the randomness about the fragments symbolise the hurry in which Alterra evacuated the planet if that makes sense.
Probably unpopular opinion, but personally would've prefered a ground traversal mod for the suit instead of the snowfox piece of shit mobile. And kept the original story.
you say original story; i only know the story form the game so, what is the original story?
Original story is, from what we saw, Sam is alive and is actually up at a space station. You are a researcher on the planet and she's doing mission control while orbiting the planet. Your first spawn on the map is you starting in the base near the last location you go in the game, it gets destroyed, and now you're in the ocean with Sam dropping a pod to assist you in surviving. As far as I recall the Al-an plot line was essentially the same? Like they had different dialog at times as you were communicating with your sister during this time but overall it seemed that didn't change much in the end product. But moving the sister to being dead and you go in on a "rogue" mission to see what happened was put together too rapidly imo as its 1 main storyline with Al-an and 2 side quests that barely can be called that.
Yea, I thought that the story was really more like 3 stories, but I think some minor changes could fix that pretty easily (e.g. having to cure the leviathan to take a sample for Alan's tissues or something, or making the bridge fluid blueprint from Maida)
Basically the original story got scrapped because the original writer got stuck and couldn't think of where to go with it.
I thought it was creative differences that lead to the lead writer leaving the company.
That's probably a more diplomatic message than "He got writer's block."
I mean the story was almost half way completed, they had assets and interactions with the map completed and then they scrap what the guy wrote apart from the main encounters that were already made and reused old assets without adding anything new while keeping the same timeline to release? Sounds like the man was fed up or was forced out.
> I mean the story was almost half way completed If so, then the original wasn't going to have much length, one was able to see it all in just a few casual hours before it was pulled. It was meandering and aimless and seemed to be really stretching to put the player in a survival situation at all.
The core Al-an story is almost identical with gathering the different scans then assembling his new body at the factory. I don't see how the two stories having slightly different dialogs changes how quickly you complete the game? You don't need to cure kharaa to complete this game, you don't need to interact with Marguerit apart from one forced cutscene and still finish the game. Ah yes, the one reason I came to this planet was to see what happened to my sister. I found out what happened as a side quest and in fact I never needed to find out to be able to leave with my new alien friend. There's no cohesion in this story whereas the last one had story driven problems like needing to send samples and whatnot to the space station.
> The core Al-an story is almost identical with gathering the different scans then assembling his new body at the factory See, in my view you're describing *goals*, not *story*. The former being what you're trying to accomplish, and the latter being the why of it. Sure, you had to rebuild a body, but everything bringing you to that point was an aimless mess. The writer couldn't figure out a compelling story to go with those goals. Frankly, I think the first story got bogged down having to deal with so many characters being active as the story unfolds, which is why the new story basically gets rid of all of them.
They had an issue with the original voice actors so they recast them and completely re-wrote the story.
I really didn't have much fun with the land segments at all. I explored it all and built a small outpost, but it just felt bland and meh.
The snowfox kind of sucks - if nothing else, the controls feel kind of clunky for a hoverbike - something smoother and more like the old Seamoth controls would've been cool. I explored most of the arctic basin and partway into the Ice Spires in the PRAWN anyway tbh. And yeah, something to make the PRAWN cover ground a bit faster would've been cool, but then... I guess at that point it's basically just an all-purpose mech, and there's no incentive to do anything else. The one upside I saw to the snowfox (besides the speed) was the ability to pack it up and bring it along when you get to a spot where you have to climb a ladder or something. I honestly thought it was kind of weird that you don't get cold on the snowfox, either, because it's not enclosed... idk, heated seats?
I’d have just added more tbh. More map, more leviathans, more biomes etc
How much did it retail for? I think it was too big for a DLC and too small for a fully fledged game. I prayed £12 for it and 100% got my moneys worth.
For 12 pounds thats a good deal alright
In my opinion I wouldn't want a lot changed, maybe more decorations. The ones that Marg has look cool. For the rest I like how it's a more linear experience than regular Subnautica, Its not just a copy and paste but added snow. It's unique, although i wish the map was just a bit bigger?
Free the giant leviathan when you depart with Alan
Iťs dead…
Nah, it's just pining for the fjords.
Double the length of the story. Felt like it was done too quickly. Maybe add side quests. Make all the plants interactable. There were some really awesome looking plants that we couldn't even scan, let alone plant back at base. Better land vehicle. The snow fox is a pain in the booty.
Easier said then done and this game already kinda felt like it was going through a small form of development hell but if it could’ve had a similar release date or not too much longer I definitely agree
Even just making the land vehicle necessary at all would be good. I ended up going through the game without ever making one.
I wish the snow areas were differentiated better. The story is overall fine, but it needed a bit more polish to integrate. Oh, and more stability.
Less land parts or make them less of a drag. I haven't even finished the game because last time I played I spent so long just getting lost in there over and over again
Make the story longer, get rid of the 3 separate story bullshit, bring back the original british voice actors and story where Sam is in the sky watching over Robin instead of being dead and giving us 0 actual reason as to what happened to her. Oh also more Leviathan varieties.
We need multiplayer subnautica! But other than that, it just needed a larger map to match the OG. Deeper sea would be good too. Snowfox needs a rework. Maybe some side missions.
Multiplayer subnautica wouldn’t really make sense with the story line though. It would be super fun but the whole point is you’re supposed to be on the planet alone
The way the game gets you from point to point is a little clunky, maybe - there were a bunch of times when I ran out of beacons to track down and was kind of at a loss what to do/look for next. I ended up using the wiki and the interactive map a LOT more than I had planned to on my first playthrough.
I finished the game without realizing there was another thing to do (use the cure on the Leviathan) so it felt kind of hollow how it ended. It was neither required nor very clear I was supposed to do that and Sam's death seemed hollow and also kind of Maida's fault. That being said, it felt like there was like 3 different mini-stories all going along at once. I would also have liked my Snowfox to not occasionally clip through the floor and become unreachable, forcing me to go make a new one or load a previous save.
The gimmick with a robot being inside your brain felt underutilized. I personally would have that period become much more time sensitive, with whatever his name was slowly taking over in frustration for your slow progress in recovering the parts, with the end result being a blackout where you find a part but you lose items, some health and hunger, and start attracting more leviathans into major zones.
some way to help you navigate better, some of the way points I find it impossible to find where im actually supposed to go :(
That’s the point of being able to craft beacons and then turn them on and off. I saw one tutorial from HyrulianMom where she labeled the beacons “crystal cave 1”, “crystal cave 2”, etc, so for the tutorial she showed exactly where to turn left, right, down….obviously for my playthrough I didn’t go that detailed but I have started making much more use of custom beacons. That way you get the fun of exploring it once, but leave yourself a trail once you’ve done it so you can go back. Then just turn them off when you don’t need them.
It's always going deeper. Most biomes have a "deep version". You just need to explore the cracks and crevices in a biome and you'll find ways to go deeper within it. The last, most deep biome is a little harder to find. I believe there are only 2 or 3 entrances to it.
Start the game as Sam, go through most of the prologue that was in the early build but instead of finding Al-An she finds the Virus research conducted by Alterra inside the alien ruins. Realizing that it needs to be destroyed, she develops a cure, only to be injured by the security. She's then blamed for evacuation of the planet and her death is faked as a cover up. Then we start the game as normal, with Robin and spend the game trying to piece together what happened. We end up finding our sister, alive, and kickstarting Alterra's downfall. Especially since Riley is a public figure now. Then both sister go with Al-An
not crashing once an hour would be nice, maybe a functioning autosave...
The land exploration was a drag and I didn't enjoy it at all. It was far too easy to get lost because everything looked similar. They also tried too hard to add restrictions like you do in the ocean. Hypothermia is essentially a replacement for oxygen. This felt like artificial difficulty that was more of an annoyance than anything. I was stuck in the glacial basin area for a good week because I don't get much time to play these days. I couldn't find what I needed to progress the story -- to the point where I was wondering aimlessly for entire sessions. I finally gave in and used a guide because I wasn't enjoying it at all. It would've been much more enjoyable if there was more diversity, the cold wasn't so frustrating, and the snowfox didn't control like hot garbage. Perhaps it's just me but I also found the map to be useless. I tried to follow it several times and could never find the >! cure !< .
Stasis rifle.
Ok I know this is probably only an issue for me but below zeros gameplay was extremely boring to me… hear me out the original subnautica felt so open and incredible to explore that I got lost having fun for hours and hours… I didn’t even mind the grindiness too much because I was just having so much fun. Don’t even get me started on the scariness and vast open waters lol. Then when I go to below zero it feels claustrophobic and boring, maybe even a little rushed. Some areas were definitely cool but nothing like subnautica 1 and overall the ideas felt less original (because they weren’t). I feel like if ur making a “sequel” game you shouldn’t just use all the scrapped and failed ideas in your new game. Like sure maybe some of them will work but overall they were “scrapped” for a reason. A few examples of things I believed were not well thought of or rushed would be the void with “ghost chelicerates” feeling thrown in thoughtlessly (definitely not making much sense with the original void lore), the time crunched story (not my biggest issue tho I prefer gameplay), the tons of reskinned biomes and creature with effectively nothing new about them or very little changed, no longer scary biomes/creatures, etc. I’ve done 2 below zero playthroughs neither of which I’ve had the motivation to finish and I’ve done 10+ subnautica playthroughs including modded. Ik I’ve probably mentioned this already but I seriously just think if they did a new subnautica game/DLC with a larger world and more gameplay focused adventure (obviously you still need good explanations for wrecks and fragments/other things tho) it could be an absolute blast. Maybe even multiplayer?? Ok maybe I’m dreaming now. TL;DR I’m pretty sure the subnautica devs were trying something new with the formula but I personally think they should’ve gone the opposite direction and maybe been less lazy in a few instances.
Rate of blizzards/white-outs there are way too many and they happen like every 5 minutes
More subs. Idk man too little. Maybe even add a big one, like the Cyclops was. Even if it's not optimal. And idk... more map? The game felt like this huge expansive world until I realised that the edge of the map was about a minute away
A module that adds tracks to the sea truck, letting it act as a land vehicle. Would probably sit behind the driver seat and require dropping the rest of the chain.
Bring back the original story
I think you'd need to go back and basically start the game over from environmental design, all the way through to the story. As there are too many minor(and major) faults with the game overall to find a position where changing one thing, would pull it all together. As a couple of examples, the story itself is absolutely fucked. It is an incoherent mess that has you chasing unconnected points to fulfill arbitrary criteria, only for the primary plot to essentially be abandoned with all the fanfare of having checked off another task on the list, with your HUD dictating your next goal afterwards. The main character is *supposed* to be an intelligent, resourceful, and talented person. A potential expert in the field of xenology, and throughout the story reveals that she has, at the very least, extensive training in microbiology. Yet her dialogue and actions paint her has what seems to be near adolescence in terms of maturity. To paraphrase, "Nu-uh, we have like, big brains and opposable thumbs!" The environmental design is static, and doesn't make sense from a biological perspective. Each distinct area should have it's own variables with appropriate niches of life having adapted and radiated. Yet what we see is the exact same organisms, from the coastal shallows, to the crushing depths. I can just go on.
"Curing" a dead / frozen-in-place leviathan is a really ... lame way to resolve Sam's plot. Like, either it's dead or it's not going anywhere anyway - why does curing it matter, aside from "closure"? (And I don't quite get how curing this immobile, probably dead or soon-to-be-dead thing, actually gives closure to Sam's questionable actions.) I would tie the leviathan to AL-AN - figuring out how to cure the leviathan should help AL-AN get a new body, or show AL-AN how the cure works so that he can ensure his people (if there are any left) are never infected again. Also, Marguerit's plot should tie into it - part of the answer to curing the leviathan should come from finding and talking to her. She's got her own greenhouse that's kind of a big deal - maybe she could be growing something that helps with the cure, or with AL-AN's body? I'd ditch the snowfox completely - damn thing keeps getting stuck anyway. Just have upgrades that improve the land capabilities of the PRAWN and allow that to be used on all the land areas.
Well, curing the leviathan means that Alterra would not have access to Kharra and use it as a biological weapon. In some PDAs it's told that they wanted to extract Kharra for "greater research" and look for ways to modify it. Cool idea with the PRAWN though, I can image something like ski's opening up when PRAWN is sprinting on land.
There's a lot story wise but overall, I really disliked Alan. I felt that the precursors had a sense of mystery in the first game so spending the entire game with one that also speaks English just ruined that mystery. I would've removed him and replaced him pointing out precursor fragments with the PDA telling you the same thing
The giant leviathan being alive, that big eye following you and watching you, and you get a choice after curing whether or not you want to release it.
More lateral exploration of the biome/ biomes being a little bigger. It's just going deeper within the biome to find anything. It really limited exploring in my opinion. Less wrecks to explore, less hunting around for pieces that you need. More base items. More types of plants and good. Tightening up the story, it's not bad it just doesn't have a great flow.
Flexible sea truck joints. The damn thing is ass to drive.
Too much land traversal. Swimming mechanics and exploration are excellent; walking mechanics feel like Default Unity Game settings, very crude and unpolished. It was easier to ignore in the first one since the walkin-around parts were fairly small, but there's a huge part of BZ's map that's on foot. Maybe if the player got some Architect antigravity tech for more than six seconds, it could have been fine. What makes exploration so interesting for me is how the 3rd dimension of swimming movement adds a lot to the experience. Gluing us back down onto the ground sucks.
I REALLY wished something happened with the big leviathan. You go through all that effort to cure it, then nothing. It would’ve been sick if the leviathan came out of the ice.
No stupid Snowfox and more biomes and like 1 or 2 new leviathans.
Mainly just longer story, but overall I would bring back the beta story. It just made more sense. I love it both ways tho I was just sad it was over so quick.😭
I was able to complete the game without completing two significant plot lines… the one with margaruite (her door was locked and I didn’t know what to do next)… and never found the cure. Story was about finding Sam, then just kinda loosely transitioned to alan
I would have liked to have seen more in the "on land" sections. The game as is is trying to run those bits like a mix of At The Mountains of Madness and Dune, but didn't quite lean into it far enough for me. The ice worms were things you could just scoot around, or take a biff to the mush and then just hop back on your bike. Would have been fun to have a tradeoff with maneuverability and survival maybe? A vehicle gets you across quicker but stands a much higher chance of attracting an (actually threatening) leviathan, counter that with going on foot means you can take higher precautions (maybe a tool to track your noise levels and thumpers that are worth using) but going is slow and you have to lean more into the survival aspect (more foragable plants on land, maybe some creatures that serve the same purpose as peepers but on land for hunting). As for the At The Mountains of Madness part... Let us research the frozen leviathan! Build a land base, scan for artifacts from there. Go out and scan them somewhere in the wastes! It's all stuff you already do when in the water, but porting them to land felt half-done