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I’m worried it might be a disappointment. The first one was catching lightning in a bottle. Below Zer0 has put some doubts over their ability to do it again.
I dunno, there are plenty of valid criticisms of both games, but they were both great games. I played through both of them more than once and loved them. They were janky, glitchy, and the second game added a lot of new ideas, seemly at the cost of map size and polish.
I’m buying the day it’s available, I know it’ll have an issue or two but I’ll still love it.
I think the reason why the first one was such a great experience for me is that I got it much later after a lot of the issues with the bugs and gameplay were fixed and the story line was completed. I’m glad I did so. I might do the same with that one and wait a year before getting it, if reviews are decent.
I’ll be honest, Below Zero was… mighty fine?
It was super disappointing in many regards, sure. But only compared to the extremely lofty heights of Subnautica. Years later, Below Zero is still easily the second-most-atmospheric survival game I’ve played. It’s huge problem - that the on-land sections don’t work in how they were shown before release and were clearly intended because access to heat is way too readily available and easy to trivialize - cuts deep into it since it takes a huge chunk of atmosphere out (and the on-land part looks pretty bad, it was clearly relying on the terror of having to warm up again quickly). But, even with that, the water parts close the wound up. Deep Arctic is even worse thalassophobia than the crater edge in the first game!
Sure, it’s disappointing and meh compared to the first game, but that’s just a too high bar to clear. I’d advise to not expect this game to clear it, either. Like you said, Subnautica 1 was kinda lightning-in-a-bottle. Compared to a 100/100, even a 98/100 would feel disappointing. 💡
Below Zero…
If I was asked to compile the 10 prettiest screenshots from the two games, at least 7 of them are coming from BZ. The deep twisty bridges, the giant anemone cave, the crystal caverns, the…what’s the thing you go up inside of? Subnautica really hits you with the beauty early on in the safe shallows, and otherwise goes for “cool” rather than “pretty.”
I like both soundtracks. My absolute favorite track comes from Subnautica, which often uses music to establish tension. BZ has an overall nicer soundtrack that has a lot of movements that feel “wondrous,” like our character feels amazed at the environment more than anything.
Subnautica’s story works perfectly. It’s a castaway scenario, and Riley Robinson’s goal, from start to finish, never stops being “survive and escape.” What working toward that goal entails takes a winding and scenic path, but at no point does your overall motivation stray far from “Survive and escape.”
BZ’s story belongs in the square hole. Most of the problem is they had written one story, built a lot of the game’s assets including several setpieces around the map with that story in mind, and then they threw it away and had to come up with something else. You play as an idiot named Robin Ayou, whose goal of finding out what happened to her sister is a minor sidequest because Robin becomes a sidekick to the real main character, Al-An.
Subnautica could sometimes have issues with draw distance and pop-in. BZ solves this problem by making everything murkier so no matter what you can’t see more than a few feet forward.
Subnautica features shallow reefs, flat plains, sloping dunes, abyssal depths, narrow canyons, giant forests, huge caverns, narrow passageways, floating islands, lots of varied terrain that present different challenges and opportunities. BZ is made almost entirely of self-similar confusing twisty turny corridors. The caves below the kelp forests, the twisty bridges, the anemone cave, the icebergs, everywhere on land, there’s nowhere that isn’t a twisty turny self similar corridor.
The Snowfox feels broken. That whole segment of the game, I’m amazed they shipped it.
Below zero was still an excellent game. I don’t think it was as good as the original, mostly due to the stupid snow Fox and must of the on land sections, but it doesn’t deserve anywhere near the level of hate it gets. The story was way better and more interesting than the first, and the world design was a great attempt at a different form of world building. I hope they expand on both and we can get an experience that propels the format further. No other game let’s me engage and chill out to anywhere near the same level.
I’m sure Krafton will mess it up.
One of the things that sets the original apart from a lot of other open world survival craft games is that it was designed to be a single-player experience. Hopefully they can make it work well for both solo and co-op, but that’s a tricky balance.
One thing I’d really like to see is for creatures to be able to damage structures, and to balance that by having defenses to protect those structures. Being able to throw together an invincible fortress in seconds made some of the dangerous areas a lot less threatening.
Yeah I kinda hope they just go for full atmosphere solo, and say “fuck it” if people want to play it MP it’ll ruin the terror anyways.
That is, optimize the mechanics to work both solo and MP, but optimize story and atmosphere solely for solo play.
I do agree that the game’s story/atmosphere should be designed for singleplayer first, since that’s what drew a majority of people to the first game.
However, I think MP could still retain some sense of atmosphere as long as they have a good in game voice chat and keep it proximity based, like in Lethal Company.
It isn’t scary at all for your teammate to tell you exactly where they just died, how, call out the leviathan heading your way, then continue with a joke they were making. But having a friendly conversation over the radio cut off by their violent death to horrors unknown could be scary, even if facing the unknown alone is fundamentally scarier.
I had the same feeling with planet crafter. After a while you learn to run around with just enough materials to build a room and a door and bam, the whole oxygen management mechanic is neutralized.
Not much to go on, but glad to see something about it!
Probably the most exciting part of the trailer is that it all but confirms multiplayer which was probably the biggest missing element of the first game.
Yeah I went through a small emotional rollercoaster! it felt so alone when he was running out of oxygen, then we were safe now that we had a friend.
but then we’re both still way in the deep
The description and comments on the video 100% confirm multiplayer. Honestly I’d be excited for the game either way, but I have a lot of fun playing crafting/survival games with friends so it’s appreciated.
I hope they use the Grounded formula for multiplayer and bases, that was super well integrated!
Reminds me that I still need to play the first one. Tried it in VR and it was a bit iffy but now that I’m aware of a mod that makes it better I need to give it another try.
It was sometimes scary on a screen, I’d still like to try it in wVR if it works.
It works pretty damn well in vr with the mod.
It’s happening!!! 🤩
Trailer looks decent enough. Seems to lean strongly into the horror elements, which might be overdone, but also, it’s kinda what Subnautica 1 made a splash with, how strongly it triggered thalassophobia before munching you as a giant sea snake.
The multiplayer on this looks exciting. That’s one of the features i felt was most lacking in the original
I hope enough people will buy it in EA, so they can get the required money. But I’ll 100% wait til the game is complete for my first run.
Why does Unreal Engine make the guy look like spaghetti? Every UE character looks like Fortnite.
Don’t conflate the art style with the engine
But it’s always UE games having this issue.
put in a bug report.
