S:BZ Oct 2020 Story Feedback
AzraelWalker
Australia Join Date: 2020-11-06 Member: 265279Members
Australia Join Date: 2020-11-06 Member: 265279Members
I’m starting a couple of threads today, one with feedback about what is currently in the game and one about my thoughts on the story so far.
Just for some background: I played the original Subnautica beta as well as completing that game fully (it’s the only game in my steam library I have got 100% achievements on as a matter of fact) and I have been playing the BZ beta on and off for a while now. This feedback is based on the current October 2020 build of which I have been playing for about 30 hours according to my fresh save.
So, I have some fairly major feedback and criticism on the story so far. I am fully aware that it just got a revamp and that its not fully released, and considering how good and how tightly contained the original Subnautica’s story was I have confidence that a lot of this has been identified already, but some key things I feel that need addressing are:
Just for some background: I played the original Subnautica beta as well as completing that game fully (it’s the only game in my steam library I have got 100% achievements on as a matter of fact) and I have been playing the BZ beta on and off for a while now. This feedback is based on the current October 2020 build of which I have been playing for about 30 hours according to my fresh save.
So, I have some fairly major feedback and criticism on the story so far. I am fully aware that it just got a revamp and that its not fully released, and considering how good and how tightly contained the original Subnautica’s story was I have confidence that a lot of this has been identified already, but some key things I feel that need addressing are:
- How the blazes is Marguerit Maida alive?! She crashed ten years before Ryley Robinson did on a planet literally swimming with Kharaa Bacterium, a bacterium that killed billions and apparently has about a two-week incubation period. It would be nice to have a PDA entry lying about somewhere that addresses this. If nothing has been thought up might I suggest making her an Asymptomatic carrier? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptomatic_carrier) Considering how Kharaa mutes the victims DNA you could say that it deliberately does not kill a small portion of those it infects so that they continue to spread it and that Marguerit was one of these unlucky individuals.
- Following on from that, how did the cure reach this area from The Crater? I can’t see Peepers swimming all that way, and the arrival of a Sea Emperor Leviathan into the area would I feel be noteworthy either by Alterra or Marguerit.
- As for the overall story as it stands right now it lacks a hell of a lot of urgency and investment. Half the story is following after Sam and seeing what she has done rather then being involved in it yourself, and the other half is trying to build a new body for your AI friend who isn’t hostile, isn’t threatening her into doing it and isn’t having any adverse effects on Robyn. Quite the opposite what with him allowing her to access the Architect areas and making Seamonkys friendly to you, and the fact that Robyn freaks out just because he is in her head seems slightly out of character for a Xenobiologist who has just made contact for the first time with a sentient alien species. A couple of suggestions I would like to make here:
- Make it so that Sam gets removed from the planet earlier in the backstory, specifically before she gets a chance to destroy the Kharaa samples in the Alterra bases. Leave it up to us as the player to destroy them. You could then tie this back to Marguerit with her giving the player directions on what to do and why Kharaa is so bad since she has seen personally what it did to the Degasi survivors and wouldn’t want Alterra releasing it on other people.
- Make AL-AN’s presence in Robyn’s head lethal. You could say something along the vein of Architect software running on Human hardware is causing it to breakdown violently, and that whatever the implants AL-AN has installed himself into are vital to Robyn’s life. Similar to how being infected with Kharaa in the first game gave the player a sense of urgency to finding a cure this would give players a more pressing reason to build Al-Ans body. This would be purely a story detail, like how Kharaa didn’t actually kill the player in the first Subnautica no matter how long you were infected with it for.
Comments
Take Fallout 4 as an example. The 'urge' to find your daughter didn't improve the game (IMO). And in the original Subnautica, I didn't really care about the Kharaa (nor the reactor explosion countdown).
Point is, there's a 'hierarchy of needs' that can be used to define human motivation. This hierarchy however, is just one implementation of a general 5-step process.
Right away, survival will be your main motivation. No other challenges are needed. Put into a more generic, non-threatening context, it's your initial experience to a new task. In Stardew Valley f.e., you wouldn't starve if you don't do anything at all, but it's still the phase in which you learn all the fundamentals.
The next step is about safety, i.e. the stabilization of your situation. In a broader context, it's about verification / predictability / repeatability. It's realization what the fundamentals and the relations / connections between things are.
The third step - belongings & love - is usually represented in survival games by exploration & individualization. E.g. make it your farm/base/home/castle/realm. More generally, it's the moment you start to make arbitrary or independent choices.
The fourth step - esteem - is achieved by completing the main story, dominating your environment, applying a process automization... or the fact that the individual choices you've made earlier turn out to define you.
The last step - self-actualization - would be the phase in which the system can't offer you anything of significance anymore. Like a player completing every achievement, exploring every part of the world, retrying previous missions in a different way, or limiting yourself somehow (doing speed runs, no-damage runs, etc.).
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To make the search for AL-ANs body lethal wouldn't achieve that much. If it's only a cosmetic / story-telling aspect, it could lead to more interesting conversation options, or maybe help a bit with the overall world-building, but that's it. If there would really be a count down timer, you might risk to destroy the game experience for the players.
Just think about how a player failing to complete the first time-critical mission in Ori and the Blind Forest wouldn't be able to see the rest of the game... or how mission to properly steer a carriage around in Assassin Creed can disconnect the player from the game he thought he would get.
The lack of such an aspect is typically also the fact that separates open-world games from the rest.
Whilst I find the current story beyond poor with more holes than a sieve - Marg's backstory is filled in pretty fully if you listen to all the PDA's she has. She's probably the most coherantly fleshed-out character in the game as it stands.