Below Zero October Early access debrief
Boff
Sweden Join Date: 2018-08-12 Member: 242804Members
Sweden Join Date: 2018-08-12 Member: 242804Members
So far I have restarted and replayed every Build with a new survival game, October will be my final survival run, from here on in, any update will be played in Story Mode or creative.
Namely because the game feels “complete”, by that I mean there are less-WIP issues or gaps of missing content. Generally, it feels like the devs can usher in the content lock-down for the release candidate and that all the work should now be dedicated to spit, shine, and polish and bug fixing.
Not to say that the game *is* complete, my feedback is always set out to tip the wagon as far as it can go.
So feedback from my final survival game.
Aside from an irritating save game bug (of my sons steam account who borrows my games had access to my save game, allowed me to do the frozen Leviathan plot on his save, and then the next gaming session I continued from after the leviathan completion from my own account - the save location was correct but the achievements were gone, as were the posters, the majority of unlocked PDA, sam’s necklace. Etc etc,)
It might have construed an incomplete ending to the story, but I also suspect fake-VO to hide the ending from playtesters.
Generally, things went well and smoothly, the extra storage space in the sea truck was appreciated, still never enough
one will always want mwoar.
The dialogue is sharp and witty, a bit toooooo jovial(?) but brilliantly sentimental.
Seriously, the Corporate Admin sending a letter about having a distance relationship flawed me, that was brilliant.
The player-death beacon locator was a stroke of genius and I’m upset for not having thought of it myself
I LOOOVE the fact the green precursor facility lighting alters to blue when ALAN is around, can that be a thing? Like Green is low-power standby mode, but when Alan is around it’s all glowy blue and with more bells and whistles?
With that out of the way, here come the bullet-points of nitpicking on technical points, then comes the wall-o-text about Story and gameplay.
In short, the start needs yet some grooming (as usual) to help sell the scenario and player motivation.
’m pretty sure you left fake endings as not to spoil the actual end-game, but generally, the October build feels like the game is the Robin and Alan road-trip, which is totally fine, I love that, but then we have this prickly situation of Sam and Alterra’s story to start and finish on.
1 Technical Nit-picking
1.1 Prawn Suit MK3.2 (or MK4) instead of MK3
The prawn suit has been upgraded and made substantially much more user-friendly and better in BZ (Subnautica: Below Zero) than in OG (Subnautica the original).
But just a matter of book-keeping (yes this means maybe refactoring the code so one can spawn in both versions later on) can we call it the MK4 now? So people aren’t grumpy that MK3 has been changed for BZ thus breaking the canon in OG and now OG needs to be folded down into with BZ’s MK3 Prawn Suit
1.2 Beacon Colour for Sams’s Spy Penguin stash
The locations of resources attainable by the Spy Penguin are marked with a flashing red beacon.
Can we alter the colour of the blinking beacon light to indicate status(?) of material or task is still available
RED COLOURED BEACON - Not Visited
YELLOW COLOURED BEACON - Visited but material/task is yet to be “completed”
GREEN COLOURED BEACON - the stash has been cleaned of tasks
1.3 Player Danger during Spy Penguin usage.
Okay I’m in two minds here.
I hate that the player can be in danger, such as hyperthermia and you can’t tell danger is imminent when in the Spy-penguin view.
However there is a fix that Stalkers wait whilst the Player is no longer in spy-bot mode.
So as the bot, you can remote control yourself back to the operator's body with a full cargo hold, and see a stalker run,attack,circle(spin)and attack the player's body without consequence.
Suggestion: the PDA becomes the nav-screen with the Spy-bot-remote control attached for “controlling”. The player still has peripheral vision, and can see their health-meters and can hear approaching stalkers.
1.4 New Computer voice.
I was upset with this VO back in August’s build, but I knew to let it play out.
It did take me a few days of play to get acclimatized, so, i’m good….
So my feedback boils down to the only line of dialogue that grates my ears is “PARRRRRSSSING 100m”.
There is just something about the LONG AR sound in the middle that my brain just outright rejects.
My Son got freaked out by the change of voice when he watched my playthrough now in but he’s still annoyed months down the line that we don’t use the elegant Alterra’s PDA, so suck it up kid! You work for Xenoworks now!!
1.5 ICE-WORM ATTACK SOUNDS
The attack sound is full volume regardless of the distance of the ICE-WORM to the player.
These attacks are freaking me out, although they are far away. My heart can’t take that kind of stress.
1.6 Prawn suit kicks up sand on the snow
Yeah, it’s probably noted multiple times, but just in case you missed it….it breaks my immersion heater.
1.7 Ice-worm vs Vehicles.
The Prawn-suit Mk4(you see what I did there), dominates the Glacier-basin. We can amble along nicely and get (almost) to most places the player can get to or into and have a nice protective bubble keeping us safe and warm..
The grappling hooks are super limited and don’t like working above ground, so we can’t pull ourselves off the ground as my fantasy of swinging like spiderman above the iceworm was smothered.
The prawn suit is barely attacked despite its big thumpy legs that should draw the ice-worm, to its location.
So I’d hate to say it, but the prawn suit must be knocked down and get mobbed by err...mobs of stalkers, or picked up and tossed into the mouth of the iceworm much like the stalkers. Maybe a second reaction from the iceworm is to toss the prawn suit into a cliff wall because the harder exterior defies its normal food of Stalkers and Pengwings.
Whereas the hover bike’s repulsors should repulse the bike aways from the floor/walls of the Ice-worms jaws, so the hoverbike and the player gets knocked back out of the attack area. It gets damaged yet but does not get turned into a pile of scrap metal
1.8 Quantum Storage containers to have their own beacons.
I keep losing these things, mere meters from where I parked by seatruck.
I learned to store a beacon inside to negate such an issue during augusts playthrough, but still...it happened on this run, twice I might add…..
1.9 PDA Organizer
Can we date stamp and sort the DataLog and messaged by dates? So players have a clean timeline. Also useful ALAN dialogue is stashed in the voice log and not recorded into the PDA DataLog.
It is hard to go off message headings and know afterwards if the message has the data one needs. There isn’t even a sender/receiver in the headings either.
1.10 Large Structure Detected Beacon
It’s sort of weird that the PDA or Alan detects something near-by but does not inform you roughly was (up-down, east/west).
Admittedly, we do have a lot of beacons given to us by the game, and having the game just GIVE you the location of a new area, undermines the “exploration and beacon mapping” gameplay loop.
That being said, I lost 2 recently detected structures due to creature attacks. Thankfully I know my way around the game area, and understood what they were in-relation too, so I was an inconvenience, but for new players of the game-area, it must be frustrating.
1.11 Alan’s visions vs beacons.
Alan perfectly gives exact GPS locations, which are hard to know how many “obstacles” are between you and it. Credit given to your map makers have been brilliant in creating Biome spaces within/next-to other biome spaces but have long passages between them
So The big mushroom cave is at the bottom rock formation which houses an altera base, but at the same time, is deep enough to be neighbours of the crystal caves, but they feel so far from each other. So having a Precursor beacon for the mushroom caves mere 100 meters from the player in the crystal caves feels like there should be an opening, but in fact you have to go back out, scoot around, and back down.
Currently (wip) we have a generic Alan VO’s lines of (psuedo remembered)
“Your exploration has reminded me of our explorations and a facility we once had”
When Alan gets a rough idea of memories, like with the snow curved peaks, or with the Mushroom caves, this is interpreted by the humans' neural pathways, endocrine biochemistry of a memory and gut feeling aka an intuition for the player.
We get a vision of what we want, but also a sense of the direction.
So Birds Eye hovering view with establishing shots of the player’s location or just a landmark (such as the mountain peak) and a pan away with camera movement towards the biome in question with a fade to the next establishing vision image of being inside the biome and finally focus shot.
With regards to locations buried below having the camera aim for the ground and having a vision of traversing DOWN through rock AND WATER will be good enough, the player will get a sense that ahhh I need to travel deep, I need a depth module.
So far these GPS beacons are just given at random times, there is little correlation, just ooh another beacon to go to.
Real life Memories are jogged from our current environmental cue’s as our brain constantly tries to map prior experiences onto the current surroundings so we can generate a survival threat/Asset response strategy. In short we have a .20ms lag of our brain asking itself, have I seen this before, does that new thing remind me of this old thing and what happened then and what should I do now.
LandMarks, Logs, sketches from the science team job Alan’s memory, leading to a more natural flow and breadcrumbing of trails of locations leading to locations and not, HERE EXACT GPS BEACON GOOD LUCK GETTING THERE!!
1.12 Audio Cueing System.
Now that we have Voice over is implemented, there were numerous times when important Voiceover lines centered around major discoveries cut off because there were :
-“more lines of dialogue” of something else that was inspected whilst listening to the previous line of dialogue
-Blue-print unlock fanfares
- VO “Signal Location updated to PDA”.
So the cueing system struggled and sometimes the dialogue got drowned out or cut off, depending on how many things need to be played at the same time.
So you open up the PDA, to dig out the latest lines of dialogue but PDA logs are not categorized as transcript logs, and without a way to filter by newest first/by the timestamp of recording, it’s hard to sort and find the line of dialogue you just missed (see PDA Organizer)
.
1.13 Only Scanners Highlight.
I think highlighting the interaction areas should be limited to the scanners.
A Torch modification could also act as a highlight
A possible modification to the normal Torch to make it emit different frequencies, could be used to highlight certain objects.
I did see a sea exploration game, having a standard light which could swap out to a UV light, and an infra-red light, with the gameplay interaction that is “supposed” to help find things that reflect/absorb/react to different wavelengths so things have bioluminescent patterns glow in the UV.
Creature AI could also behave differently to the different light.
In reality, as with most limited game-design, the feature was only present in the limited number of events/encounters that that were designed for, and it wasn’t “part of how the world works”.
To be fair, to do justice to this concept would need to be part of the creature, environmental design from the beginning, as special specular maps, alternative behaviours and alternative textures would need to be blended in with existing models.
Subnautica 3(?)
1.14 “Scanner upgrade” to find ore inside of the outcrop.
Thank you for spawning outcrops in pairs, one has titanium and the other has the real Ore.
On a material HUNT, it would be handy to have an upgrade that ignores the outcrop with titanium.
2.0 Pacing-Story-Driven Gameplay-issue - Robin and Alans Roadtrip
2.1 Repurposing didn’t fix the main issue
Despite brilliant repurposing/retelling of the main story, to take advantage of the assets and gameplay to date, the initial issues we had with the early builds have started to come to light again.
How did Margaret NOT die of the Kaharr bacteria?
Why did Alterra Simultaneously abandon all their bases, the kaharr bacteria and precursor tech of warp gate and eternal life through mind transfer?
Why do all the logs STOP after the same point as Sam’s death.
Which takes a “time” to inform Robin, which takes time for Robin to travel to the planet.
Why do they claim all life on the planet died of the virus/bacteria but life is flourishing and why were some of the animal species not sick in OG but BZ claims the bacteria killed everything. How did the bacteria get down to the planet, was it native or did the precursors infect the planet to find a cure for themselves?
Am I supposed to go to Alan first or the island base Delta or base zero(?)
2.2 Why is Robin is still unprepared yet also prepared?
As forum member (*DenCav*) pointed out, why is Robin not prepared enough, she’s in a wet suit (prepared for water) but she knows she’s looking for her sister in an Arctic Climate (photo of Robin and her spy pengling bot and that the planet was 99.9% water).
Why is the drop-pod not more prepped with survival gear? Why does Sam have to re-scan everything, surely she would have her own “Xeno-works” variation of Alterra’s tech.
This falls into the feedback that playtesters were giving during the original iterations of BZ that Robin (the bio-xeno-contact expert) knew nothing at all of the Alterra activity in the area, and has to scan everything, which made no-sense for an Alterra worker who had been there for some time.
2.3 The Masking and discovery of Delta Base Radio Tower makes no sense
We have a massive tower transmitting a strong radio signal to orbiting ships/satellites, with a big spinning light. This gives us more information about Robin and is easier to get to than Alan who is tucked behind a tech-gating of the “rebreather”.
In reality, the Navigational warning lights on any such modern-day radio tower are very visible in all (almost) all weather conditions (as is their design purpose).
We have a PDA that detects “signals” all the time, but just not from the MASSIVE radio tower that the PDA has a clean line of sight to when the player is near the water’s surface in the bay.
2.4 Lillian’s Base near Alan should be the player's main HUB.
This is personal opinion, but it factors into a gameplay point later in 3.0
One of the scientists tries to make a base near Alan to investigate, but it is abandoned.
And since the June update(?) I have made my main base of operations approximately ABOVE Alan and that abandoned Alterra base. During August Playthrough, I had made a base next to the Alterra base, just on the doorstep of Alan, but it’s also a good launch point to the deeper spiral bridges. This would explain more of why Fred kept losing sea-truck modules “specifically there”.
So I’m equidistant to the exterior grow beds, the precursor cabling that goes to the arctic basin, very near the mines, start area, seamonkey caves and Delta dock, and close to the most diverse amount of biomes and resources. I just needed depots at the mercury II wreck, (any of them), in the crystal caves.
2.5 Alan
2.5.1 Alan’s SOS
Okay so the noted plothole has been plugged (just about).
There is an in-game explanation that Alan sends out an SOS to get the attention of the research team. When he “senses” that Lillian’s was getting close to getting the warp-gate facility. So he stops the SOS.
But there is no evidence (in-game) from the Alterra Scientists that the SOS had stopped.
Alan starts to SOS Robin, so when she comes to him, he tells her to stop because he accuses her of being Alterra,
So he senses the shuttle (being different tech), so sends the SOS, but he then senses Altera tech’s on Robin and asks her to leave, but again, there is a little indication about this, especially in the to-and-from explanation at Base-Zero that Alan internationally the SOS but then still has it active for the player.
And this also creates a confusing plothole that if Alan turns on/off the SOS based upon Altera tech/personal is near-by, how does the player then get close to Alan if they make bases, or drives the sea-truck up into his front door.
2.5.2 What are the limits and capability of Alan’s Senses and actions
Alan can sense and do much, despite being in “storage”.
Alan can sense “things” near-by, despite being disconnected from the facility, and put into Robin’s mind. He can only sense what she senses, or do humans in the future have cybernetic wireless implants to their PDA? How can Alan lower the security fields as the player approaches?
2.5.3 Precursor Body tech where’s the DNA?
Bio-mechanical integration and thought transfer are keys to eternal life and a big moneymaker for Alterra and is abandoned for *reasons*.
Despite much emphasis on genetic splicing of DNA from 27 for the biological components, the crafting recipes for Alan seem to be very OG-Cyclops end-game module blueprints.
So far, players we sample and horde stuff back at our bases.
2.5.4 Robin’s Branching dialogue with Alan optional lines of dialogue
During my august playthrough (texted)Alan mentions that MARG did not respond to his SOS’s during the surprise “get off my land” reveal, and the two agree that MARG is the kind of person who looks after themselves and not others.
Octobers playthrough I intentionally triggered this encounter without Alan, and the line of dialogue was appropriately missing,
Sadly, I was then expecting (and it didn’t happen) that the same line of dialogue of Marg ignoring Alan SOS when we met Marg later on her base.
Thus it feels like if you want the WHOLE BZ experience in one sitting Getting Alan first feels like it’s the correct way, as we get a few additional lines of dialogue than if we completed the Sam’s-Kaharr-Quest first without Alan, which I “believe” is entirely possible.
So all the glacier basin dialogue must-have
if (alanIsUploadedToRobin) { playThis()} else {playThat()}
OUCH!!
2.6 Hub like-Fetch-Quest at the end of the gameworld, past multiple bottlenecks and dangers.
If Alan’s Body Quest is split into 3 recipes, which we then need to ferry to the central “rebuild” Hub, then why is that hub at the bottom of the ocean? Multiple Fetch quests for an unlock tends to lead to the “end game” barrier unlock. Tend to have the locked gate next to the Quest hub, and not force the player to make a major U-turn for the player to then survive the Shadow Leviathans again for multiple runs to get materials.
3.0 OKAY THE BIGGEE The priority of Quests and Puzzles
Robin’s hunt for Sam Main Quest vs help Alan get a body Side Quest,
Sam’s death seems to be set aside for the Road-Trip with Alan.
It is hinted at early on that, Sam wouldn’t mind me doing a bit of research on the way.
Why is Sam there again?
To find out what happened to her sister.
We are looking for a dead-sister’s-body(?),
a better explanation of her death(?)
presumable sister in hiding(?),
are we redeeming Sam(?)
are we helping Alan get to his body and learn about the Precursors?
Surely we start on finding Sam and finish on finding SAM and taking her home (body/retribution)
I understand that stories are “separate” and we can explore and discover them at our own pace, but motivational breadcrumb vs blueprint tech gating us from certain areas of the game is a little weak / not very well explained to the player.
Again the PDA doesn’t help us by organizing the clues in a helpful manner, especially when we don’t have an IN-PDA map.
As I stated early due to the extra lines of dialogue that are triggered only if Alan is with Robin, it feels like answer the SOS and getting ALAN is of more importance than getting to Delta Base hence masking it from the player but I just can’t get to grips that such a facility WOULD be hidden, because it should be plainly visible.
Robins Motivation is to find clues about Sam and surely would snap-in and prioritize any indication that she is dead or alive. So a human SOS would be prioritized as Sam could be using it, (in Robin’s mind). And when we appear at a crushed PHI-base, why is Robin so calm? Surely, she should be freaking out that “this” is where Sam got killed/crushed to death.
But she knows this is not the place “ahead” of time.
It feels like we are on a road-trip with Robin and Alan to just get to the bottom of the gaming map with hazards in the way because Alan’s body is the longer story/gameplay loop and not Sam’s
3.1 Monkey Island 2 triple Island Solution.
Gameplay design is tricky. https://grumpygamer.com/ Ron Gilbert proudly explained how in Monkey Island 2 their design philosophy of puzzles and their solutions. Each one had mini-fetch-quests, item unlocks and clues / explanations spread on each of the 3 islands. That meant that EVERY puzzle required a visit to ALL 3 islands to complete it. So players could be engaged in multiple puzzles/story points in parallel, so progress was always on the go and puzzles were getting solved in the traversing of the play area.
Personally it drove me nuts.
The Glacial basin feels disconnected from the water gameplay, the stories 2 branched stories told there are separate from one another.
The tech-tree builds are totally isolated. Which is great. But once completed, you never need to return to either location.
There is little interaction between The Frozen leviathan branch nor the Ice-worm branch, not the Water world.
Returning back to the warp gate facilities at Base Zero, only served as a remind me of how underused the Glacier and the Icebergs Coastline had been in the trip down to the body fabrication facility.
3.2 Are we playing SOMA / Everybody has gone to the Rapture?
Okay, I might be basing my suggestion for the Delta Base’s Island Radio mast navigation light, solely on the Radio mast in Dear-Esther. Which by the way was its design by Dr. Dan Pinchbeck who borrowed the idea from HL2’s Citadel which he interpreted it as both physical landmark and story synopsis && bookmark reference (or am I confusing it with a YouTuber or a commentary node from the game). The player can boot up HL2, and for ⅔ of the game they see the Citadel,. Are we going away, or going towards the citadel.
In Ep1, we see the citadel is damaged, and we are moving away. By ep2 it’s a smoldering ruin with a portal forming above it, which comes into the first and final act of Episode 2.
However, at the moment we have all these EMPTY Alterra bases, with custom bedrooms, and voice-logs and at times it feels like I’m playing “Everybody has gone to the rapture” or SOMA. There is no explanation as to WHY such an important facility was abandoned.
Alterra has shields and FTL travel, and are on the verge of cracking Internal Life, mind transfers and warp-gate tech…...asteroids don’t concern them. Having work wrap up over death of employees wouldn’t stop this organisation. Or has everyone gone to the rapture?
Why am I trying to get to grips with the interpersonal relationships of these people again?
We are only missing 2 things here to make a direct copy of a game by The Chinese Room && Frictional Games. Memory loss and graphical effects to show that the player's mental capacity is no longer operating as “normal”.
3.3 Speedy Reminders
Not to stress the players, but another Frictional games trick would be to flash precursors glyphs and techno-static-effects glitching in the player’s field of vision, with an accompanying groan of pain every now and again to remind players to get a move on to get Alan out and save our minds.
OR we get infected by the Altera modified Kaharr virus to Get a hold of Sam’s cure because both you AND Alan’s new body will need it.
4.0 Stitching it all together
4.1 The Easy Fix - Totally stealing Frictional Games Modus Operandi with Amnesia - The Writer’s Cop-out.
Stephen King claimed that when he teaches creative writing, he sets up a scene, an empty room, a dead body, a few personal items, and the protagonist waking up with Amnesia in said room. The students would then have to finish the story within a fixed time limit.
You could start the game with the player waking up after the completion of Alan’s transfer. The players' subsequent lack of Memory would explain a bunch of “why didn’t Robin know about that!). The transfer could burn out Robins Xenoworks equipment in the process) so blueprints need to be re-discovered.
The memory Loss solves issues but to be fair, it’s a cop-out and cheesy, (Stolen identity3 - “I’m not you, you’re me, but I’m a clone, nooo you are the real me”)
4.2 Stitching it all together The harder Fix - Basing the game around a hub fetch quest Gameplay with a 4th Precursor blueprint
4.2.1 Lillian’s Base
(located in the Spiral bridges above Alan) this is a useful location that the player can repair, rebuild, get tech blueprints to the next biome Alan, and deeper spiral bridges where the seatruck components are, which are ALL deeper.
How to get there, maybe Sam cryptically embedded the coordinates and cry for help that only in the sister’s secret language would understand, leading Robin to think Sam needed to be rescued from those coordinates. Thus putting us on a collision course with Lillian’s base and Alan. Despite Delta base’s Radio mask having bright lights and a beacon, there was something DOWN THERE Sam wanted Robin to go to first.
4.2.2 Alan’s Archive location has the body Fabrication facility
So that general area becomes the central hub for the player for all the relevant fetch quests.
4.2.3 Add a fourth blueprint at the bottom of the game-world
Located where the current Fabricator is located, is a rendering of sections of the Precursor Genome and how to replicate sections from the biomass from the local creatures.
4.2.4 Reusing the DNA sampler concept from OG Subnautica
So players now have to gather creature Eggs, plant samples, and sample their DNA from all areas to match the required sections of the genomes that are needed to help construct a new body for Alan.
This also gives an excuse to visit previous areas of the game, albeit being all tooled up and kicking backside.
4.2.5 Damit, plothole detected. in 4.2.2
Alans’ Archive is damaged and losing power, hence the transfer to Robin. So why would the body fabrication not be accessible to Alan, why the need to transfer to Robin, and why does robin just not go to the next room and just transfer Alan back?
We need another Story Gate…..hmmm….
Does Alan have to trust Robing first?
Technically, Precursors like Geothermal energy, right?
We got some explosive lava areas nearby Alan’s Archive offering a second deadlier route to the mines but is a useless bottleneck to trudge through all its volcanic drama so:
The player needs to build the geothermal generators there
or
install a bunch of power-transfer devices to move power from the existing precursor geothermal power generators back to the Archive AND fabrication facility
or
The player must search/scan for precursor tech to generate a shopping list of ingredients to repair the damaged lines of transmissions and get the facility up and running giving us some locations in the PDA
4.2.6 Replace Mercury 2 with the Mecury2 class starship called The Degassi
As noted in a prior post in the spring, creating ANOTHER ship that is shot down, creates more backstory explanation.
Having the mercury2 class ship-wreck be revealed AS the Degassi which was abandoned when shot at (? well it is no for my purpose) tidies up the missing wreckage from OG Subnautica AND creates a reason for Marg to be in the general area.
4.2.5 Replace Marg with Danielle
Keep Margs base, pda, but add a dead body and put Danielle in her place who has appropriated them. Sam convinced her to sabotage her own work. And now out of respect for her lost love, guards the area from anyone coming to look for the bacteria or precursor tech. Of which Alan releases her as he sets up the quarantine defense system again.
This also makes Preston Sam and Danielle’s pet. Preston as a pup/cub? followed the spypengling back to base trying to attack the metal hull in vain. Separated, lost and scared the stalker cub imprints on Sam who needs to fil the Potato shaped hole in her heart, and Danielle inherits him
That should round things off nicely, plenty of reworks, pickups, redesigns to keep the project going for another 3-5 months
Then I will not lose days of real-live being dedicated to long survival playthroughs and even longer posts which my dyslexic brain struggles to sculpt.
But what will my digital ego do in order to feel important post game-release.....it's only option is to keep disrupting the development and pushing back the release date......muwuhahahhah.
Namely because the game feels “complete”, by that I mean there are less-WIP issues or gaps of missing content. Generally, it feels like the devs can usher in the content lock-down for the release candidate and that all the work should now be dedicated to spit, shine, and polish and bug fixing.
Not to say that the game *is* complete, my feedback is always set out to tip the wagon as far as it can go.
So feedback from my final survival game.
Aside from an irritating save game bug (of my sons steam account who borrows my games had access to my save game, allowed me to do the frozen Leviathan plot on his save, and then the next gaming session I continued from after the leviathan completion from my own account - the save location was correct but the achievements were gone, as were the posters, the majority of unlocked PDA, sam’s necklace. Etc etc,)
It might have construed an incomplete ending to the story, but I also suspect fake-VO to hide the ending from playtesters.
Generally, things went well and smoothly, the extra storage space in the sea truck was appreciated, still never enough
one will always want mwoar.The dialogue is sharp and witty, a bit toooooo jovial(?) but brilliantly sentimental.
The love story got my white-middle-age-male-y-fronts into a twist. I'm have Gay, lesbian and transexual friends and colleagues but I apparently got all Maga’d up “why do ALL the Cool alternative (none-fps) games I play, have to be obliged to expand into such areas, encroaching into my insecure man-cave. area”, but then I just consoled myself for having good taste in games and generally converted my feelings into feeling sorry for my former HR in my old software team, who has had to deal with modern-day workplace flirting.
“Yes, it’s sexual harassment!! Why did the flirting go on for so long? No i wasn’t flirting!!! Whatdoyoumean i was teasing and leading them on!??!? I didn’t think that they might be trying to pick me up!! I thought that because we were the same sex, they just wanted to make new friends at their new job!! What do you mean they are obviously gay? (looks over) Oh damn, you’re right, how the heck did I NOT see that! What do you mean everyone else knew? Seriously? Am I really the last to know? Well, OBVIOUSLY I didn’t know!! What do you mean? How AND why the heck should “I know” that they were gay...What do you mean everyone here thought I was gay as well??? But we've been working together for years how can you not know I'm heterosexual? no I'm not simply bi-curious? Stuck in closest? Repressing who I am?? WHAT THE F---”
ahhh happy days
“Yes, it’s sexual harassment!! Why did the flirting go on for so long? No i wasn’t flirting!!! Whatdoyoumean i was teasing and leading them on!??!? I didn’t think that they might be trying to pick me up!! I thought that because we were the same sex, they just wanted to make new friends at their new job!! What do you mean they are obviously gay? (looks over) Oh damn, you’re right, how the heck did I NOT see that! What do you mean everyone else knew? Seriously? Am I really the last to know? Well, OBVIOUSLY I didn’t know!! What do you mean? How AND why the heck should “I know” that they were gay...What do you mean everyone here thought I was gay as well??? But we've been working together for years how can you not know I'm heterosexual? no I'm not simply bi-curious? Stuck in closest? Repressing who I am?? WHAT THE F---”
ahhh happy days
Seriously, the Corporate Admin sending a letter about having a distance relationship flawed me, that was brilliant.
The player-death beacon locator was a stroke of genius and I’m upset for not having thought of it myself
I LOOOVE the fact the green precursor facility lighting alters to blue when ALAN is around, can that be a thing? Like Green is low-power standby mode, but when Alan is around it’s all glowy blue and with more bells and whistles?
With that out of the way, here come the bullet-points of nitpicking on technical points, then comes the wall-o-text about Story and gameplay.
In short, the start needs yet some grooming (as usual) to help sell the scenario and player motivation.
’m pretty sure you left fake endings as not to spoil the actual end-game, but generally, the October build feels like the game is the Robin and Alan road-trip, which is totally fine, I love that, but then we have this prickly situation of Sam and Alterra’s story to start and finish on.
1 Technical Nit-picking
1.1 Prawn Suit MK3.2 (or MK4) instead of MK3
The prawn suit has been upgraded and made substantially much more user-friendly and better in BZ (Subnautica: Below Zero) than in OG (Subnautica the original).
But just a matter of book-keeping (yes this means maybe refactoring the code so one can spawn in both versions later on) can we call it the MK4 now? So people aren’t grumpy that MK3 has been changed for BZ thus breaking the canon in OG and now OG needs to be folded down into with BZ’s MK3 Prawn Suit
1.2 Beacon Colour for Sams’s Spy Penguin stash
The locations of resources attainable by the Spy Penguin are marked with a flashing red beacon.
Can we alter the colour of the blinking beacon light to indicate status(?) of material or task is still available
RED COLOURED BEACON - Not Visited
YELLOW COLOURED BEACON - Visited but material/task is yet to be “completed”
GREEN COLOURED BEACON - the stash has been cleaned of tasks
1.3 Player Danger during Spy Penguin usage.
Okay I’m in two minds here.
I hate that the player can be in danger, such as hyperthermia and you can’t tell danger is imminent when in the Spy-penguin view.
However there is a fix that Stalkers wait whilst the Player is no longer in spy-bot mode.
So as the bot, you can remote control yourself back to the operator's body with a full cargo hold, and see a stalker run,attack,circle(spin)and attack the player's body without consequence.
Suggestion: the PDA becomes the nav-screen with the Spy-bot-remote control attached for “controlling”. The player still has peripheral vision, and can see their health-meters and can hear approaching stalkers.
1.4 New Computer voice.
I was upset with this VO back in August’s build, but I knew to let it play out.
It did take me a few days of play to get acclimatized, so, i’m good….
So my feedback boils down to the only line of dialogue that grates my ears is “PARRRRRSSSING 100m”.
There is just something about the LONG AR sound in the middle that my brain just outright rejects.
My Son got freaked out by the change of voice when he watched my playthrough now in but he’s still annoyed months down the line that we don’t use the elegant Alterra’s PDA, so suck it up kid! You work for Xenoworks now!!
1.5 ICE-WORM ATTACK SOUNDS
The attack sound is full volume regardless of the distance of the ICE-WORM to the player.
These attacks are freaking me out, although they are far away. My heart can’t take that kind of stress.
1.6 Prawn suit kicks up sand on the snow
Yeah, it’s probably noted multiple times, but just in case you missed it….it breaks my immersion heater.
1.7 Ice-worm vs Vehicles.
The Prawn-suit Mk4(you see what I did there), dominates the Glacier-basin. We can amble along nicely and get (almost) to most places the player can get to or into and have a nice protective bubble keeping us safe and warm..
The grappling hooks are super limited and don’t like working above ground, so we can’t pull ourselves off the ground as my fantasy of swinging like spiderman above the iceworm was smothered.
The prawn suit is barely attacked despite its big thumpy legs that should draw the ice-worm, to its location.
So I’d hate to say it, but the prawn suit must be knocked down and get mobbed by err...mobs of stalkers, or picked up and tossed into the mouth of the iceworm much like the stalkers. Maybe a second reaction from the iceworm is to toss the prawn suit into a cliff wall because the harder exterior defies its normal food of Stalkers and Pengwings.
Whereas the hover bike’s repulsors should repulse the bike aways from the floor/walls of the Ice-worms jaws, so the hoverbike and the player gets knocked back out of the attack area. It gets damaged yet but does not get turned into a pile of scrap metal
1.8 Quantum Storage containers to have their own beacons.
I keep losing these things, mere meters from where I parked by seatruck.
I learned to store a beacon inside to negate such an issue during augusts playthrough, but still...it happened on this run, twice I might add…..
1.9 PDA Organizer
Can we date stamp and sort the DataLog and messaged by dates? So players have a clean timeline. Also useful ALAN dialogue is stashed in the voice log and not recorded into the PDA DataLog.
It is hard to go off message headings and know afterwards if the message has the data one needs. There isn’t even a sender/receiver in the headings either.
1.10 Large Structure Detected Beacon
It’s sort of weird that the PDA or Alan detects something near-by but does not inform you roughly was (up-down, east/west).
Admittedly, we do have a lot of beacons given to us by the game, and having the game just GIVE you the location of a new area, undermines the “exploration and beacon mapping” gameplay loop.
That being said, I lost 2 recently detected structures due to creature attacks. Thankfully I know my way around the game area, and understood what they were in-relation too, so I was an inconvenience, but for new players of the game-area, it must be frustrating.
1.11 Alan’s visions vs beacons.
Alan perfectly gives exact GPS locations, which are hard to know how many “obstacles” are between you and it. Credit given to your map makers have been brilliant in creating Biome spaces within/next-to other biome spaces but have long passages between them
So The big mushroom cave is at the bottom rock formation which houses an altera base, but at the same time, is deep enough to be neighbours of the crystal caves, but they feel so far from each other. So having a Precursor beacon for the mushroom caves mere 100 meters from the player in the crystal caves feels like there should be an opening, but in fact you have to go back out, scoot around, and back down.Currently (wip) we have a generic Alan VO’s lines of (psuedo remembered)
“Your exploration has reminded me of our explorations and a facility we once had”
When Alan gets a rough idea of memories, like with the snow curved peaks, or with the Mushroom caves, this is interpreted by the humans' neural pathways, endocrine biochemistry of a memory and gut feeling aka an intuition for the player.
We get a vision of what we want, but also a sense of the direction.
So Birds Eye hovering view with establishing shots of the player’s location or just a landmark (such as the mountain peak) and a pan away with camera movement towards the biome in question with a fade to the next establishing vision image of being inside the biome and finally focus shot.
With regards to locations buried below having the camera aim for the ground and having a vision of traversing DOWN through rock AND WATER will be good enough, the player will get a sense that ahhh I need to travel deep, I need a depth module.
So far these GPS beacons are just given at random times, there is little correlation, just ooh another beacon to go to.
Real life Memories are jogged from our current environmental cue’s as our brain constantly tries to map prior experiences onto the current surroundings so we can generate a survival threat/Asset response strategy. In short we have a .20ms lag of our brain asking itself, have I seen this before, does that new thing remind me of this old thing and what happened then and what should I do now.
LandMarks, Logs, sketches from the science team job Alan’s memory, leading to a more natural flow and breadcrumbing of trails of locations leading to locations and not, HERE EXACT GPS BEACON GOOD LUCK GETTING THERE!!
1.12 Audio Cueing System.
Now that we have Voice over is implemented, there were numerous times when important Voiceover lines centered around major discoveries cut off because there were :
-“more lines of dialogue” of something else that was inspected whilst listening to the previous line of dialogue
-Blue-print unlock fanfares
- VO “Signal Location updated to PDA”.
So the cueing system struggled and sometimes the dialogue got drowned out or cut off, depending on how many things need to be played at the same time.
So you open up the PDA, to dig out the latest lines of dialogue but PDA logs are not categorized as transcript logs, and without a way to filter by newest first/by the timestamp of recording, it’s hard to sort and find the line of dialogue you just missed (see PDA Organizer)
.
1.13 Only Scanners Highlight.
I think highlighting the interaction areas should be limited to the scanners.
A Torch modification could also act as a highlight
A possible modification to the normal Torch to make it emit different frequencies, could be used to highlight certain objects.
I did see a sea exploration game, having a standard light which could swap out to a UV light, and an infra-red light, with the gameplay interaction that is “supposed” to help find things that reflect/absorb/react to different wavelengths so things have bioluminescent patterns glow in the UV.
Creature AI could also behave differently to the different light.
In reality, as with most limited game-design, the feature was only present in the limited number of events/encounters that that were designed for, and it wasn’t “part of how the world works”.
To be fair, to do justice to this concept would need to be part of the creature, environmental design from the beginning, as special specular maps, alternative behaviours and alternative textures would need to be blended in with existing models.
Subnautica 3(?)
1.14 “Scanner upgrade” to find ore inside of the outcrop.
Thank you for spawning outcrops in pairs, one has titanium and the other has the real Ore.
On a material HUNT, it would be handy to have an upgrade that ignores the outcrop with titanium.
2.0 Pacing-Story-Driven Gameplay-issue - Robin and Alans Roadtrip
2.1 Repurposing didn’t fix the main issue
Despite brilliant repurposing/retelling of the main story, to take advantage of the assets and gameplay to date, the initial issues we had with the early builds have started to come to light again.
How did Margaret NOT die of the Kaharr bacteria?
Why did Alterra Simultaneously abandon all their bases, the kaharr bacteria and precursor tech of warp gate and eternal life through mind transfer?
Why do all the logs STOP after the same point as Sam’s death.
Which takes a “time” to inform Robin, which takes time for Robin to travel to the planet.
Why do they claim all life on the planet died of the virus/bacteria but life is flourishing and why were some of the animal species not sick in OG but BZ claims the bacteria killed everything. How did the bacteria get down to the planet, was it native or did the precursors infect the planet to find a cure for themselves?
Am I supposed to go to Alan first or the island base Delta or base zero(?)
2.2 Why is Robin is still unprepared yet also prepared?
As forum member (*DenCav*) pointed out, why is Robin not prepared enough, she’s in a wet suit (prepared for water) but she knows she’s looking for her sister in an Arctic Climate (photo of Robin and her spy pengling bot and that the planet was 99.9% water).
Why is the drop-pod not more prepped with survival gear? Why does Sam have to re-scan everything, surely she would have her own “Xeno-works” variation of Alterra’s tech.
This falls into the feedback that playtesters were giving during the original iterations of BZ that Robin (the bio-xeno-contact expert) knew nothing at all of the Alterra activity in the area, and has to scan everything, which made no-sense for an Alterra worker who had been there for some time.
2.3 The Masking and discovery of Delta Base Radio Tower makes no sense
We have a massive tower transmitting a strong radio signal to orbiting ships/satellites, with a big spinning light. This gives us more information about Robin and is easier to get to than Alan who is tucked behind a tech-gating of the “rebreather”.
In reality, the Navigational warning lights on any such modern-day radio tower are very visible in all (almost) all weather conditions (as is their design purpose).
We have a PDA that detects “signals” all the time, but just not from the MASSIVE radio tower that the PDA has a clean line of sight to when the player is near the water’s surface in the bay.
2.4 Lillian’s Base near Alan should be the player's main HUB.
This is personal opinion, but it factors into a gameplay point later in 3.0
One of the scientists tries to make a base near Alan to investigate, but it is abandoned.
And since the June update(?) I have made my main base of operations approximately ABOVE Alan and that abandoned Alterra base. During August Playthrough, I had made a base next to the Alterra base, just on the doorstep of Alan, but it’s also a good launch point to the deeper spiral bridges. This would explain more of why Fred kept losing sea-truck modules “specifically there”.
So I’m equidistant to the exterior grow beds, the precursor cabling that goes to the arctic basin, very near the mines, start area, seamonkey caves and Delta dock, and close to the most diverse amount of biomes and resources. I just needed depots at the mercury II wreck, (any of them), in the crystal caves.
2.5 Alan
2.5.1 Alan’s SOS
Okay so the noted plothole has been plugged (just about).
There is an in-game explanation that Alan sends out an SOS to get the attention of the research team. When he “senses” that Lillian’s was getting close to getting the warp-gate facility. So he stops the SOS.
But there is no evidence (in-game) from the Alterra Scientists that the SOS had stopped.
Alan starts to SOS Robin, so when she comes to him, he tells her to stop because he accuses her of being Alterra,
So he senses the shuttle (being different tech), so sends the SOS, but he then senses Altera tech’s on Robin and asks her to leave, but again, there is a little indication about this, especially in the to-and-from explanation at Base-Zero that Alan internationally the SOS but then still has it active for the player.
And this also creates a confusing plothole that if Alan turns on/off the SOS based upon Altera tech/personal is near-by, how does the player then get close to Alan if they make bases, or drives the sea-truck up into his front door.
2.5.2 What are the limits and capability of Alan’s Senses and actions
Alan can sense and do much, despite being in “storage”.
Alan can sense “things” near-by, despite being disconnected from the facility, and put into Robin’s mind. He can only sense what she senses, or do humans in the future have cybernetic wireless implants to their PDA? How can Alan lower the security fields as the player approaches?
2.5.3 Precursor Body tech where’s the DNA?
Bio-mechanical integration and thought transfer are keys to eternal life and a big moneymaker for Alterra and is abandoned for *reasons*.
Despite much emphasis on genetic splicing of DNA from 27 for the biological components, the crafting recipes for Alan seem to be very OG-Cyclops end-game module blueprints.
So far, players we sample and horde stuff back at our bases.
2.5.4 Robin’s Branching dialogue with Alan optional lines of dialogue
During my august playthrough (texted)Alan mentions that MARG did not respond to his SOS’s during the surprise “get off my land” reveal, and the two agree that MARG is the kind of person who looks after themselves and not others.
Octobers playthrough I intentionally triggered this encounter without Alan, and the line of dialogue was appropriately missing,
Sadly, I was then expecting (and it didn’t happen) that the same line of dialogue of Marg ignoring Alan SOS when we met Marg later on her base.
Thus it feels like if you want the WHOLE BZ experience in one sitting Getting Alan first feels like it’s the correct way, as we get a few additional lines of dialogue than if we completed the Sam’s-Kaharr-Quest first without Alan, which I “believe” is entirely possible.
So all the glacier basin dialogue must-have
if (alanIsUploadedToRobin) { playThis()} else {playThat()}
OUCH!!
2.6 Hub like-Fetch-Quest at the end of the gameworld, past multiple bottlenecks and dangers.
If Alan’s Body Quest is split into 3 recipes, which we then need to ferry to the central “rebuild” Hub, then why is that hub at the bottom of the ocean? Multiple Fetch quests for an unlock tends to lead to the “end game” barrier unlock. Tend to have the locked gate next to the Quest hub, and not force the player to make a major U-turn for the player to then survive the Shadow Leviathans again for multiple runs to get materials.
3.0 OKAY THE BIGGEE The priority of Quests and Puzzles
Robin’s hunt for Sam Main Quest vs help Alan get a body Side Quest,
Sam’s death seems to be set aside for the Road-Trip with Alan.
It is hinted at early on that, Sam wouldn’t mind me doing a bit of research on the way.
Why is Sam there again?
To find out what happened to her sister.
We are looking for a dead-sister’s-body(?),
a better explanation of her death(?)
presumable sister in hiding(?),
are we redeeming Sam(?)
are we helping Alan get to his body and learn about the Precursors?
Surely we start on finding Sam and finish on finding SAM and taking her home (body/retribution)
I understand that stories are “separate” and we can explore and discover them at our own pace, but motivational breadcrumb vs blueprint tech gating us from certain areas of the game is a little weak / not very well explained to the player.
Again the PDA doesn’t help us by organizing the clues in a helpful manner, especially when we don’t have an IN-PDA map.
As I stated early due to the extra lines of dialogue that are triggered only if Alan is with Robin, it feels like answer the SOS and getting ALAN is of more importance than getting to Delta Base hence masking it from the player but I just can’t get to grips that such a facility WOULD be hidden, because it should be plainly visible.
Robins Motivation is to find clues about Sam and surely would snap-in and prioritize any indication that she is dead or alive. So a human SOS would be prioritized as Sam could be using it, (in Robin’s mind). And when we appear at a crushed PHI-base, why is Robin so calm? Surely, she should be freaking out that “this” is where Sam got killed/crushed to death.
But she knows this is not the place “ahead” of time.
It feels like we are on a road-trip with Robin and Alan to just get to the bottom of the gaming map with hazards in the way because Alan’s body is the longer story/gameplay loop and not Sam’s
3.1 Monkey Island 2 triple Island Solution.
Gameplay design is tricky. https://grumpygamer.com/ Ron Gilbert proudly explained how in Monkey Island 2 their design philosophy of puzzles and their solutions. Each one had mini-fetch-quests, item unlocks and clues / explanations spread on each of the 3 islands. That meant that EVERY puzzle required a visit to ALL 3 islands to complete it. So players could be engaged in multiple puzzles/story points in parallel, so progress was always on the go and puzzles were getting solved in the traversing of the play area.
Personally it drove me nuts.
The Glacial basin feels disconnected from the water gameplay, the stories 2 branched stories told there are separate from one another.
The tech-tree builds are totally isolated. Which is great. But once completed, you never need to return to either location.
There is little interaction between The Frozen leviathan branch nor the Ice-worm branch, not the Water world.
Returning back to the warp gate facilities at Base Zero, only served as a remind me of how underused the Glacier and the Icebergs Coastline had been in the trip down to the body fabrication facility.
3.2 Are we playing SOMA / Everybody has gone to the Rapture?
Okay, I might be basing my suggestion for the Delta Base’s Island Radio mast navigation light, solely on the Radio mast in Dear-Esther. Which by the way was its design by Dr. Dan Pinchbeck who borrowed the idea from HL2’s Citadel which he interpreted it as both physical landmark and story synopsis && bookmark reference (or am I confusing it with a YouTuber or a commentary node from the game). The player can boot up HL2, and for ⅔ of the game they see the Citadel,. Are we going away, or going towards the citadel.
In Ep1, we see the citadel is damaged, and we are moving away. By ep2 it’s a smoldering ruin with a portal forming above it, which comes into the first and final act of Episode 2.
However, at the moment we have all these EMPTY Alterra bases, with custom bedrooms, and voice-logs and at times it feels like I’m playing “Everybody has gone to the rapture” or SOMA. There is no explanation as to WHY such an important facility was abandoned.
Alterra has shields and FTL travel, and are on the verge of cracking Internal Life, mind transfers and warp-gate tech…...asteroids don’t concern them. Having work wrap up over death of employees wouldn’t stop this organisation. Or has everyone gone to the rapture?
Why am I trying to get to grips with the interpersonal relationships of these people again?
We are only missing 2 things here to make a direct copy of a game by The Chinese Room && Frictional Games. Memory loss and graphical effects to show that the player's mental capacity is no longer operating as “normal”.
3.3 Speedy Reminders
Not to stress the players, but another Frictional games trick would be to flash precursors glyphs and techno-static-effects glitching in the player’s field of vision, with an accompanying groan of pain every now and again to remind players to get a move on to get Alan out and save our minds.
OR we get infected by the Altera modified Kaharr virus to Get a hold of Sam’s cure because both you AND Alan’s new body will need it.
4.0 Stitching it all together
4.1 The Easy Fix - Totally stealing Frictional Games Modus Operandi with Amnesia - The Writer’s Cop-out.
Stephen King claimed that when he teaches creative writing, he sets up a scene, an empty room, a dead body, a few personal items, and the protagonist waking up with Amnesia in said room. The students would then have to finish the story within a fixed time limit.
You could start the game with the player waking up after the completion of Alan’s transfer. The players' subsequent lack of Memory would explain a bunch of “why didn’t Robin know about that!). The transfer could burn out Robins Xenoworks equipment in the process) so blueprints need to be re-discovered.
The memory Loss solves issues but to be fair, it’s a cop-out and cheesy, (Stolen identity3 - “I’m not you, you’re me, but I’m a clone, nooo you are the real me”)
4.2 Stitching it all together The harder Fix - Basing the game around a hub fetch quest Gameplay with a 4th Precursor blueprint
4.2.1 Lillian’s Base
(located in the Spiral bridges above Alan) this is a useful location that the player can repair, rebuild, get tech blueprints to the next biome Alan, and deeper spiral bridges where the seatruck components are, which are ALL deeper.
How to get there, maybe Sam cryptically embedded the coordinates and cry for help that only in the sister’s secret language would understand, leading Robin to think Sam needed to be rescued from those coordinates. Thus putting us on a collision course with Lillian’s base and Alan. Despite Delta base’s Radio mask having bright lights and a beacon, there was something DOWN THERE Sam wanted Robin to go to first.
4.2.2 Alan’s Archive location has the body Fabrication facility
So that general area becomes the central hub for the player for all the relevant fetch quests.
4.2.3 Add a fourth blueprint at the bottom of the game-world
Located where the current Fabricator is located, is a rendering of sections of the Precursor Genome and how to replicate sections from the biomass from the local creatures.
4.2.4 Reusing the DNA sampler concept from OG Subnautica
So players now have to gather creature Eggs, plant samples, and sample their DNA from all areas to match the required sections of the genomes that are needed to help construct a new body for Alan.
This also gives an excuse to visit previous areas of the game, albeit being all tooled up and kicking backside.
4.2.5 Damit, plothole detected. in 4.2.2
Alans’ Archive is damaged and losing power, hence the transfer to Robin. So why would the body fabrication not be accessible to Alan, why the need to transfer to Robin, and why does robin just not go to the next room and just transfer Alan back?
We need another Story Gate…..hmmm….
Does Alan have to trust Robing first?
Technically, Precursors like Geothermal energy, right?
We got some explosive lava areas nearby Alan’s Archive offering a second deadlier route to the mines but is a useless bottleneck to trudge through all its volcanic drama so:
The player needs to build the geothermal generators there
or
install a bunch of power-transfer devices to move power from the existing precursor geothermal power generators back to the Archive AND fabrication facility
or
The player must search/scan for precursor tech to generate a shopping list of ingredients to repair the damaged lines of transmissions and get the facility up and running giving us some locations in the PDA
4.2.6 Replace Mercury 2 with the Mecury2 class starship called The Degassi
As noted in a prior post in the spring, creating ANOTHER ship that is shot down, creates more backstory explanation.
Having the mercury2 class ship-wreck be revealed AS the Degassi which was abandoned when shot at (? well it is no for my purpose) tidies up the missing wreckage from OG Subnautica AND creates a reason for Marg to be in the general area.
4.2.5 Replace Marg with Danielle
Keep Margs base, pda, but add a dead body and put Danielle in her place who has appropriated them. Sam convinced her to sabotage her own work. And now out of respect for her lost love, guards the area from anyone coming to look for the bacteria or precursor tech. Of which Alan releases her as he sets up the quarantine defense system again.
This also makes Preston Sam and Danielle’s pet. Preston as a pup/cub? followed the spypengling back to base trying to attack the metal hull in vain. Separated, lost and scared the stalker cub imprints on Sam who needs to fil the Potato shaped hole in her heart, and Danielle inherits him
That should round things off nicely, plenty of reworks, pickups, redesigns to keep the project going for another 3-5 months
Then I will not lose days of real-live being dedicated to long survival playthroughs and even longer posts which my dyslexic brain struggles to sculpt.
But what will my digital ego do in order to feel important post game-release.....it's only option is to keep disrupting the development and pushing back the release date......muwuhahahhah.