Subnautica's very own Mammoth Cave
Rezca
United States Join Date: 2016-04-28 Member: 216078Members
United States Join Date: 2016-04-28 Member: 216078Members
I was just browsing around on another website when they made mention of a game that took inspiration from the real life Mammoth Caves, and it reminded me of my fascination of them when I was younger. So I went looking it up again and was in awe at how massive it was, far larger than I remembered it being. I mean, I was remembering it as little more than just a pretty big cave, not one that stretched out so far and to so many areas, and still being 'largely unknown'.
Looking at this image and reading about it made me think actually to Subnautica's own massive cave system, which while cropped down somewhat with the removals of three of its ILZ routes (and addition of one more, though it's less a route/corridor as it is a Lost River one), is still pretty darn big and still stretches out across the map and reaches into many portions of the game. While today there's two less surface-level entrances into the depths of those systems, it still made me think about, like the Mammoth Cave IRL, "How much more is there we just haven't found yet?". This also happens to be how new monsters are added into existing areas in the Monster Hunter games; it's explained off in-universe as just not having been noticed before or something similar.
So it got me thinking about Subnautica's current cave network, and when I began comparing it to the Mammoth Caves I began loving it all that much more, and I already loved them as they are! (As some folks may have guessed already~).
I even saw one part of it being dubbed The Lost River
Call me biased, but I think our Lost River is so much cooler than that one
We're still working towards a 1.0 release right now, and while I know The Arctic is still a thing being considered as a "Some time in the future maybe..." sort of thing, I'd love to see the cave network be expanded as well. There's a lot of surface areas that would be cool, like a honest and true abyssal seafloor surface biome that's 1,000+ meters, but there's a lot more that can be done with the caves too outside of the current ones.
There could be a whole separate set of Extended Universe story material that could be uncovered not pertaining to the main story even. Maybe there's a passage that delves close to or reaching the maximum depth of our subs even with those old depth upgrades that never made it into the game. There could also be a cave section that's sort of like the Lost River in appearance, but it'd be a former surface-biome that was forced underground somehow in the past....
There's a lot that can be done with the underground portions of Subnautica in the far future, what sort of mysteries lie in wait beneath the surface of not only the ocean waves, but the seafloor itself?
Looking at this image and reading about it made me think actually to Subnautica's own massive cave system, which while cropped down somewhat with the removals of three of its ILZ routes (and addition of one more, though it's less a route/corridor as it is a Lost River one), is still pretty darn big and still stretches out across the map and reaches into many portions of the game. While today there's two less surface-level entrances into the depths of those systems, it still made me think about, like the Mammoth Cave IRL, "How much more is there we just haven't found yet?". This also happens to be how new monsters are added into existing areas in the Monster Hunter games; it's explained off in-universe as just not having been noticed before or something similar.
So it got me thinking about Subnautica's current cave network, and when I began comparing it to the Mammoth Caves I began loving it all that much more, and I already loved them as they are! (As some folks may have guessed already~).
I even saw one part of it being dubbed The Lost River
Call me biased, but I think our Lost River is so much cooler than that one
We're still working towards a 1.0 release right now, and while I know The Arctic is still a thing being considered as a "Some time in the future maybe..." sort of thing, I'd love to see the cave network be expanded as well. There's a lot of surface areas that would be cool, like a honest and true abyssal seafloor surface biome that's 1,000+ meters, but there's a lot more that can be done with the caves too outside of the current ones.
There could be a whole separate set of Extended Universe story material that could be uncovered not pertaining to the main story even. Maybe there's a passage that delves close to or reaching the maximum depth of our subs even with those old depth upgrades that never made it into the game. There could also be a cave section that's sort of like the Lost River in appearance, but it'd be a former surface-biome that was forced underground somehow in the past....
There's a lot that can be done with the underground portions of Subnautica in the far future, what sort of mysteries lie in wait beneath the surface of not only the ocean waves, but the seafloor itself?
Comments
When it all goes wrong.
You tit, that is Aliens with a twist
What did you have in mind with improving the current cave systems?
Similarly, it'd be nice if there was more of a point to the mountain caves or the dunes (they feel a bit neglected).
Or Jurassic Park with a twist, or a combo of both.
Well there used to be an entrance to the ILZ in the Dunes and it was close enough that it could have linked up with a Lost River junction, but they plopped a mundane meteor and a
The Mountains do have a LostRiver/ILZ entrance that's unmarked, but the cave systems proper don't really have any point to them besides Reaper-free collecting of resources. They're too small to really build much of note inside, so the thermal vents feel more for decoration than anything.
I'd love more entrances to the LR/ILZ peppered around the place for more freedom of exploration and movement, something that makes the Open World genre thrive, but we all know it's not gonna happen. Nothing short of a Map Editor of some sort being implemented would bring something like that into the game
Shame since I always thought it'd be cool to see what the old old old old draft of the Mushroom Forest - Lost River connection would have looked like, gets the imagination flowing it does. Similarly, how the Dunes Corridor would have looked like.