My Review of Subnautica : Below Zero and the Story Line

SubNautica: Below Zero

It’s not for the faint of heart

Subnautica even the original isn’t what you would want to give someone who hasn’t ever played the game because there are scare sequences that might not make for the best impression to people who has never played the game.  I’ve played both Subnautica and Below Zero through the whole game and come to realize that that there is something off on the game.   I wanted to talk about it and tell you my thoughts on the whole idea.

The story line

Now Let’s face it if you haven’t played subnautica original or this one and don’t want spoilers, please be warned this is going to have spoilers in it about the story line.

You’ve Been Warned!

The original subnautica, You crash land on the planet in an escape pod.  Then you have to gather resources and get yourself up and about to survive the environment.   Of course you need food and water and even a nice bed to sleep to make it look real and feel like you are actually living it.  The storyline in the game on the original was just really well done and you had to explore and find out how to save yourself from getting even more sick and that didn’t come all at once, you found out over time that you were sick.

Finally once you figured out how to get yourself well you had to help a giant leviathan who was trapped and dying due to be locked up and all she wanted you to do is let her babies go free who will help stop the virus in every plant and fish.   They seem to leak the antidote and it helps to cure  plants and fish.     Finally you do that and the next thing you have to do is create a rocket to launch yourself up and away to go home.     This was the storyline for the original subnautica and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the exploration of it all and being able to go really down deep and to find the resources that I might need to survive.   The Base building was always the fun part, you could make big or small bases when you needed it and also make them however you liked and customized them your way.

Subnautica Below Zero

We find Robin getting off the ship with a drop pod and she wants to find out what happened to her sister(Sam).   The opening sequence was well done but the voice actors were changed, I am not sure why they changed but I was playing this game in beta and I don’t know why they wanted to change the actors but it was really well done.   So we find Robin trying to gather resources first like usual and building a base is something that needs to be done.   You’ll come to a point in the game where you will find a distress call(in morse code)   and find out there is an living entity in a cave who takes over your brain because it needed help to survive.   We’ll come back to him in a second.   You do the things you need to find out what happens to Sam and why she dead.   You explore and find out that Sam has an antidote for the big frozen leviathan and you are to find it and administer it to prevent Alterra from using the Kharaa Bacterium for research or who knows even a weapon.  Along the way you find out what happens to your sister and even some pictures and stuff that helps bond the player to want to know more and more.  Anyway once that storyline is done you have another storyline to complete.

The Talking Entity

So Now you have Alan(or Allen) in your head and there are occasional times where you two are talking to each other.   Either way you develop a need to get him out of your head and put him into a body or container.  He tells you what you might and even shows you where there might be some at.  You’ll definitely need to go deep like the last one.   I figured that I’d need to go deep again, it seems to be a constant with the architects.   They really do love to go deep don’t they.

You’ll get him a body but first you need to build the resources to build be able to build his body.   You’ll want to bring those resources that you gathered with you to the places far down below when you’re ready to make his container or body.   You make his body and he tells you the story of how he got into this predicament.  He tells you he’ll go back to his home world and ask for forgiveness and try to make right what he did wrong.   He offers you to join him and you do since you have no other way off the planet.   I really liked the ending sequence to this because you saw the space outside and it looked really nicely made.

Ending it

I really didn’t like the fact that there were two storylines in the game and the game just felt a little bit off but it might just of been me.   I do hope what we see in the ending sequence is a precursor to another part of Robin’s journey we will get to play.  After all, I am really curious as to what happened to the architects.  Does Robin get to help them or are they dead?  I really think Unknown Worlds is going to continue this game in the coming months.  We’ll probably see another game about the architects and it will hopefully be the one where we are still playing Robin and she has to help this being out to figure out what happened to his people.

Do you think they will create another game to continue off where they left or is this just the end of the game series?  Let me know what you think?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

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