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.
Some configuration file tweaks and an m.2 drive had the first one run great for me. Just had a few areas with clipping issues but no real problems. Some QOL mods definitely made it an awesome game, so yeah; it definitely took some work to polish up, but the mystery and story and exploration is something that I think they could pull off again, and the technical side of things…well, they’ll surely have a bit bigger employee count and can hire some talent.
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.
I think Below Zero was made by a (mostly) different team, which could explain at least some of the differences. I wonder who will be working on this new one.
One thing that is very noticeable is that the sound/music design. The original designer isn’t working at Unknown Worlds anymore after making some very regrettable comments on social media and I’m not expecting him to come back. As a result Below Zer0’s sound design was OK but pales in comparison to the amazing atmosphere that was set in the original game. Unless they manage to find a very talented sound designer it might miss the mark again.
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.
Agreed, I loved Below Zero. It was very much a small step forward from Subnautica, and I think people were expecting a bigger step forward. But it was always a glorified DLC for the original. Knowing that, it’s extremely enjoyable. I’ve played it through twice and I do love it in it’s own right.
This teaser has me hopefully that Subnautica 2 will be a true sequel. More polished, a bigger improvement on the original. Maybe I’m naive, but I’m gonna choose to be hopeful.
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 absolutely LOVE the original Subnautica, but was frustrated with Below Zero. I’ve posted multiple rants about it on Lemmy before.
Already skeptical about this game because it looks like it has
Tap for spoiler
two characters instead of one
.
A big appeal of the first game was the isolation you felt, and the struggle to find life and accomplish gargantuan tasks.
Cautiously optimistic for this installment.
Please don’t have any characters yap & quip throughout this one, god, please!
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.
I hope they use the Grounded formula for multiplayer and bases, that was super well integrated!
cyclops or no buy
Please no. Something faster than a cyclops. I enjoyed cyclops being a mobile base, but my god was it slow. I don’t remember what issues I had with the sea truck but I’d probably still prefer the truck to the cyclops.
The truck was nice, but it felt boring by comparison. It didn’t have that extra oomph that made the cyclops so exciting
You know what my thing is? The Cyclops is huge, and most of what you need it for is exploring a cave network. It would make more gameplay sense if you got a big boat or submarine that acts as a base of operations, and then something a little bit like the Seamoth for deep submergence.
