Subnautica Below Zero Review - Why doesn't it hold up?

Hey folks - this is a reupload from my other channel Ceronesthes, so if you feel like you've seen this video before under a different name, you have! Sorry for any confusion, thanks for bearing with me as I move stuff around.

I like how Subnautica 1 really enforced the illusion that you weren't supposed to survive. The only difference between Riley and the other passengers was where their life pods landed. It felt like you were beating the odds with every breath

i still prefer how Sam was in orbit helping Robin in Early Access. Gives you a reason to actually care about her.

I am astounded to hear that the developers were INTENTIONALLY trying to move away from the horror element. That was probably the most important ingredient to the first game's success! Baffling decision.

A perfect way of forcing the player to complete sam's story would just be for Alan to say "I must see my people again, but I cannot show my face again before I fix the mistake I made" and then force the player to cure the frozen leviathan, completing Sam's story, proving that the antidote works, then make the antidote again (which should have had a peeper in the recipe) and bring it with you to end of the game. It really wasn't that difficult.

You know....listening to this made me realize that Below Zeros plot sounds like one big fanfiction

Reposting the spoiler of all dialog between Robin and Al-an: Al-an: You humans do a thing. We don't do that. It's stupid. Robin: It is in fact very, very good that humans do that thing! Al-an: I do not understand. Robin: Then maybe you are wrong for not doing that thing you don't do. or: Al-an: That thing that just happened. I will re-state that it happened. Robin: Yes.

I will always consider Below Zero as the Arctic DLC. It just makes sense. Also, I think Riley and Al-An would have a MUCH more interesting dynamic: The one who failed to cure the bacterium and the one who succeeded. A lowly technician and a high xeno-biologist.

The first game was not angry. It was not aggressive and it did not hate you. The first game was indifferent, and that's scarier still. It gives a sense of scale, because you're tiny and not meant to be there; the whole game leaves you with the feeling that you're not welcome in a way that even a map full of enemies, placed there especially for you, just can't. The second game is story driven, and the devs want you to get through it. There may be hazards around, but the game itself is far more... welcoming. In Subnautica you're out of place. In Below Zero, you're on a ride.

Honestly, I feel like this game was lacking any events. Like when the Aurora explodes or the Sunbeam is shot down. Big stuff like that stuck with me and made me feel small and alone within the world of subnautica

The interactions between Robin and Alan are something straight out of a children's animated movie.

Only thing I'd point out is that the Ghost Leviathans are apparently filter feeders, but are highly highly territorial, so no they wouldn't have tried to eat the dead reaper, but if Margeruit tried going into the water they would've tried to maul her

My favorite Al-An inconsistency is when he says he doesn’t know what music is and Robin has to explain it to him and then like 30 Minutes later he explains that the Precursors are a hive mind using a musical analogy (strings in search of harmony). A+ writing there

One thing about the subnautica leviathans is your first encounter with a Reaper, and leviathans in general, was probably around the Aurora where the waters are murky, visibility is extremely low. You'd hear their terrifying roar and have no clue where it came from. You don't even know where to look for it because it could literally be anywhere around you. It very quickly sets the realization that the world WILL kill you and you need to respect it. Reapers are also found in the Dunes which is another pretty low visibility biome and there's warpers in there. And frequently that's what they did with enemies in subnautica. You'd hear warpers coming in from nowhere and would have to try to sneak around terrified of if they saw you or not. For the most part, the game provided a feeling of powerlessness You slowly get used to some of the early biome stuff as you play the game but past a certain depth, everything is just scary. People talk about how they don't want to go to certain biomes in Subnautica. And it's not horror in the classical horror sense, it's terror. It's that visceral knowledge that you can't do anything about your situation. Meanwhile SBV is waxing about high school philosophy with not that many predators and casual free diving down 200m without a rebreather.

The original writing for Al-An and Robin was so much better, he was sparky, rude, and even threatened Robin, telling her if she didnt leave she would die. When he got transfered to her brain he groans about it being uncomfortable and begs her to put him back. Robin's origional voice actor was SO much better, and her character was written better. My first playthrough of below zero on the full release I literally never did anything related to Sam, I completely forgot about that I was supposed to be working on her. The origional story to below zero was just superior in every way to the re-write. On top of that, while the game is focused on being less horror based, all of the fauna is all designed to be extremely aggressive looking, meaning the extensive and believable evolution tree from the first game is completely thrown out. While the fauna in the first game were designed to fit into their environment, and their designs made sense evolutionary, the animals in the second make NO sense for their environment, all of the animals being plated instead of fatty means that they would have evolved in a rough, likely warm environment and wouldn't be able to survive in the Arctic waters. It's sad to see such a promising premise flop so hard.

having to hear Robin eat food during my playthroughs were the worst, you described the pain perfectly

I was once walking on the ground then picked up a databox. A bug occured (I guess) and the PDA started to talk with its old voice and said « New blueprint acquired ». That blink from the old game just made me realise how much I disliked playing Below Zero and that I was actually forcing me to play it, always expecting something good to happen. I think one of the major issues with this game is indeed the lack of tension but also Robin itself. She. Talks. Every. Time. She comments everything and it snuffs out my own thoughts about a discovery. In the old game, the character didn’t said a single word so I was completely identifying to him and I really got that sensation than it was me being on the planet. Without internet, I would never have known the character had an actual identity.

The main character not beeing able to shut up is pretty much my biggest complain. The constant talking completely destroyed any immersion for me.

I think one of the best things to note on the topic of the empty biomes is I NEVER went into the area with the jellyfish because I thought they were the games way of telling me "this is the edge of the map, just void down there" and the fact the entire area looked smoothed over and empty just convinced me that was a map edge. I'm also glad to hear I'm not the only one that didn't understand the "B-Plot" story with her sister and why she's blowing up everything. She just sounds like a complete nutter. She heard 1 time that her company was using her to make a bio weapon and instead of writing poetry like her sister or Openheimer she decided to kill all her friends who 100% were not in on the scheme. She's clearly the villain of the story!

I'll say basically what I said in the original upload: The most infuriating part of this game, for me at least, third to the lack of anything remotely scary, and second to the plot in general is the writing. Just as you pointed out, both Robin and Al-An are both high ranking scientists, both are xeno-biologists, they're the ideal people to speak to each other in this situation...and yet they are some of the most illogical and poorly written characters I've seen. Al-An can barely remain consistent on whether or not he's an individual or a collective or emotional or emotionless, and Robin just vomits unfunny quips and cliché pieces of dialogue constantly. Basically, Al-An feels like a human poorly imitating an AI and Robin sounds like a child trying to act like a philosopher, neither remotely sounding like xeno-biologists let alone any kind of scientist. If Al-An was, say, a guard at one of the alien facilities and Robin was an Alterra dock worker or something, I'd be way more forgiving, but when you put these characters on such a high pedestal, you need the writing to back it up. Overall, I just feel like Subnautica was a very fortunate accident now. The devs' true vision of the game they wanted seemingly went against almost everything that made the 1st game beloved: crushing isolation, fear of the unknown, a focus on deep diving, and being immersed in the game world. I know I might sound like I'm mad, but I'm mostly just disappointed. The devs obviously have the potential to make another amazing game like Subnautica, and they know what people loved about it, but they intentionally ignored what fans liked to follow their original vision for the game. Usually I'd respect a creator sticking to their guns and making what they truly want to make, it's just unfortunate that what these creators wanted to make was this. I should probably end this wall of text on a high note, and that would be how well made this video is. Like, literally, it's the most well written video on the game that I've seen and I'm glad it's here, even if it needed to be reuploaded.