Quick Look: Subnautica

That Alien structure gave me Mass Effect: Andromeda flashbacks.

Also the appealing bit of this game for me is venturing as deep as possible, not as much the survival/crafting. I want to explore and be gripped by terror for every minute of it!

It is the act of a group of people remembering with absolute certain things that never happened. It's a lot of fun and a great way to make you feel like you are losing your grip on reality.

Just as fun fact, Vinny dove deeper in this video than any known depth on Earth using just a wetsuit. He'd be totally squished assuming normal physics apply in this game (and I have no reason to believe they don't).

Vinny just casually opens up his blueprints menu, showing the two cyclops pieces I've spent HOURS searching for.

Seems very cool. They kind of got lost in the ocean at the end there but I guess Vinny decided to swim in a rather uneventful direction. I will play this at some point.

@vinny, I hope this becomes a series. Already seen it played all the way through but would watch again

Game has come a long way, even since this Unfinished: https://www.giantbomb.com/videos/unfinished-subnautica-02-06-2015/2300-9928/

This game is such a huge surprise from a gameplay and narrative sense from beginning to end.

You can go on dry land? Everything I’ve ever known is a lie!

@efesell: I know, twas a bad joke based off a new x files episode that kinda centered around that but called it the mengele effect as a sort of meta joke.

I've had this game in my steam library since, I think when that unfinished was put up. My time with it has been the same. 15-20 minutes, quit in frustration, return after months away..repeat.

Those 15-20 minutes go something like this. "Ok so there is a 'don't worry about water/food..but then won't half the unlocks and upgrades be useless? I'll go the full route." Jump into the water swim around. See a half-dozen things that have names, but I can't interact with. But oh hey, there are all these acid fungus..people can eat fungus. This is the only thing I can interact with out here, lets gather it as much as I can. Realize the cool stuff is in a cave, dive down, find a cave..get attacked by exploding fish, doesn't kill me. Find some scarp metal, sulfer, can't go further into the cave without more air. Time to go back to base!

At base what can I make? ok um..an air tank? oh I've doubled my oxygen! That's cool, ok lets see what I can do with all this fungus stuffed in my inventory..nothing..wait what nothing? Ok I'll just..store it, man I picked up a lot of it. Lets go through what I can craft and see what spits out food/water. Oh..nothing. Not a thing. I see upgrades for oxygen, I realize the pod spits out health re-gen..but food/water? Nuh-uh. So it looks like I've got however long the 2 items that the pod starts stocked with gets me too figure out wtf I am suppose to do for that. Game tutorial guiding me? Nope.

Go back to cave with doubled oxogen supply. Die to exploding fish I only understand come out of lootable things -after- they kill me. Wonder allowed why the heck there are fish whose entire life cycle invovles being living homing bombs.

Die and restart in the pod. Oh look, my quickly dwindling food/water meter has reset. I've lost..oh joy some fungus, who cares. Decide the fungus is the games tutorial for learning to look up controls for "how to dump this useless crap out of my inventory". Consider my options...quit game because the mood is gone.

Go online to look up basics. Ok, fungus is for...batteries..for something that lets me move faster. Briefly consider restarting with the 'ignore food/water meters" reminded I would be missing out on half the game, give up. "

I've repeated that -exact- cycle 2 times now. The 2nd two begining with "I wonder why my save file for this game I forget I owned is only 12-20 minutes" ending with "oh, right.."

The game post 'how the heck do I even try and manage these meters!" is likely fantastic. It certainly looks it. But the games tutorial is absolute crap. At least hold my hand through keeping myself alive the hard-way. "Hey you might need a knife to kill fish you can't catch, so upgrade to swim faster. "Here is blue-prints in your vehical for turning sea-water into drinkable water, go find the ingredients for it". Something -anything-.

I wanna fall in love with this game and discover all its secrets and slowly build what I can do from the difficult and hard to the smooth running machine. When I am faced with what feels like a solid hour or two of 'might as well just kill myself so my food/water meters reset while I fumble around in the dark" is just..ugh. This game might be absolutely amazing once you get past that. But for me, that hurtle has been enough to kill my interest in this game, repeatedly.

I just started playing this game, and so far it is really amazing.

Just watching Vinny die of thirst and then swim for 20 minutes really does not do this game justice.

Not to mention, it opens up with what I think is a fairly big spoiler. This is unfortunately one of the worst quick looks I've seen to date.

didnt Jim Cameron go like 10km deep?

This seems like one of those games where you have the game on one monitor and a wiki page open on the other, like Terraria and Don't Starve. I love these types of games.

Just finished it. I really enjoyed it. Loved the low-key story telling. It gives you just enough to know what's going on and not leave you asking too many questions.

This game looks pretty neat as it is, but as I have more of a sci-fi bend I think out of the resource gathering and crafting games I'll wait for Astroneer to hopefully go 1.0 this year.

Looks fun, and I like the aesthetic.

No. Nope. Nuh uh. This seems terrifying.

Hey Gamers, have you ever explored a lush coral reef, rich in sea life and mystery and then felt your stomach drop as your craft coasts off the edge of a precipice and the tapestry bright coral gives way to a pure black void from which no light escapes, the only sounds being the moan of some unknown behemoth.

No? Would you like to?

No Man's Ocean.

Heads up for those getting ready to watch who are at least mildly interested in the story, most of this quick look takes place around a fairly significant story spoiler.

I'm not easily frazzled. Though deep water does generally freak me out, as it does most people. I shit you not, this game is responsible for some of the most terrifying, nerve-wracking moments I've ever had in a game. This quick look makes it seem downright peaceful.

No offense meant at all but if your first survival instinct is to eat some random mushrooms, you won't make it very far. At least it'll be an entertaining, possibly terrifying short life. If you somehow make it past that and your next call is "oh, hey, the cool stuff is in caves" without a weapon, light, or quick way out, you won't make it much farther than that.

To anyone else having some initial trouble:

Fish.

People eat fish.

Start with the easy ones and work your way to the harder-to-catch ones. The game will recommend you cook the fish in your fabricator. The game will also point out different fish provide different amounts of food and hydration. Bladder fish can even provide purified water for a straight up hydration boost. Feel free to browse what else the fabricator can magically fabricate to get an idea of the kinds of ingredients to look out for.

As long as you aren't playing like Giant Bomb staff, ignoring every bit of info the game is trying to share with you while rushing through for 'entertainment purposes,' the game does a decent job of holding your hand where necessary and explaining the world as well as it can be explained at different points, while leaving just enough of a mystery to be intriguing.

But yes if you don't feel like reading any of those database entries, most of which are quite brief, you'll be in the same figurative boat as Vinny where it's "Easy to not know what the hell you're doing."

Vinny was pressing right click on the mouse when interacting with that data download interface in the alien base while the prompt was saying to press left mouse button.

@thomascro: I don't think so. He did correctly download the data on first click. There's nothing you can do with the terminal afterwards even though the prompt stays.

I laughed so hard when Vinny ran over that fish. The ocean is the scariest thing ever, but also the most beautiful and fascinating.

If you like survival/crafting games at all, this one is the king. It's the best, and most polished. I have played Rust, Ark, The Forest, The Long Dark, Osiris, Don't Starve, etc, and Subnautica is the most polished, and matured. Also, they have probably managed to make the coolest video game vehicle ever made, the Cyclops submarine.

I was playing during the early access period and was under the impression that they had yet to implement any hostile large creatures. So it was pretty chill to explore peacefully. Decided to explore the aurora wreckage since I just got my radiation suit and see what new tech is scattered about there. Hear a deep loud roar. It scared me, but didn't deter me from exploring. Then boom, reaper leviathan grabbed my seamoth and I was face to face with a huge sharp toothed monstrosity. Scariest thing to ever happen to me in a videogame ever.

Thanks for the responses telling me to give it another try. I may just turn off food and water so i can focus on expkoration. I think they really blew it by not making the bottom of the ocean a giant set of gaping teeth like Alex mentioned. I cant spoiler tag but Is there any insanely huge sea monsters in this game?

@steveurkel: I am early early on but there has already been mention of the panet supporting "Leviathans" so chances seem high.

Not insanely huge but quite large.

Man this QL starts out so Vinny so fast

I am probably the biggest supporter of these early access survival games. I love them. Subnautica, Rust, DayZ, Ark, etc etc. These are the games I enjoy more than anything. Some people like fightin games, some people like weird dating sims. I like these open world survival games.

This quick look definitely played the game, but the way GB does their QL's does not do these type of games justice. I have 1,000 hours in a similar game, I have 700 hours in a similar game, and I have over 450 hours in a similar game. To a fan like me, 20 minutes just doesn't show the game off, and it's okay!

These games are grindy, these games aren't the most entertaining to watch, and they aren't the best to keep people watching, but I do love them.

Thank you GB for looking at this game and I hope people support it!

(BTW I don't give a shit about politics, i just enjoy games and this game is fun.)

I've put in quite a few hours in the game, and even I haven't seen the Sunbeam yet. I've held off on it because I thought that was the end of the game. I wonder if this is safe to watch anyway?

@necromanti said:

There's a lot more to uncover after the Sunbeam stuff, unless you've already found that through exploring I guess.

Tried this during early access, and the first 45 minuts I thought i was another survival game that didnt interest me. Then i came back to it last week, and gave it an hour more. Holy shit, this is like no other survival/exploration/adventure i've played before. Im now ~20 hours in, and i love everything about it, its not too much boring crafting, survival aspects shifts during gameplay so water and food is rarely an issue now, but i still only been to ~300m depth, havent really played around with my prawn suite yet, and not even close to getting the first big submarine. So much game left, and i couldn't be happier!

Might be a little of a spoiler - But, creatures are suppose to spawn and kill you when you travel too far into the void. It happened to me. Not sure why it didn't happen to Vinny.

I love this game, but this quick look was really weird. I don't know if they strayed past the Dead Zone altogether, but how the hell did they manage to get that far and that deep without at least one Ghost spawning, I could barely last a minute out there without being ambushed. Was really hoping they'd get attacked right at the end just to show off the terror of those moments.

What a quick look lol

The resource management is a big part of the game, adding to the tension of exploring the dark depths, rewarding you with better ways to get/create resources as you progress through the tech-tree. In the beginning, you might struggle just for food/water/full batteries, but the further you get the less these resources are an issue (being replaced by managing inventory space to a degree of which you will also get more) because you get ways to just generate them without much effort, like farming your own Peepers/Bladder fish in tanks, growing your own plants, running water filtration machines and having tons of batteries and chargers.

It also rewards planning, giving you the feeling of being a real explorer when you have to make sure to take enough (and the right kind of) supplies along for longer expeditions and having to decide when it's time to start making your way back to home-base as your food and water supplies deplete. Rarely have I seen a game doing it so well, The Long Dark does the same to a certain degree, but Subnautica is way less punishing because later in the game you will get some really cool vehicles making it easier and it hasn't as much RNG potentially screwing you over like blizzards coming out of nowhere.

The late game is a bit like being Captain Nemo with your own Nautilus out of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but in a sci-fi setting with base building and such a thick atmosphere that can shift from relaxing (nice visuals/sounds) to straight up terror (the deep sea stuff, running out of resources in a bad place) in a very natural way.

Imho removing the survival mechanics from this is akin to taking out animation priority from the Dark Souls/Monster Hunter games, it's part of the whole appeal with which you have to work to fully appreciate it.

Hey, watched a friend play this game on XB1. Weirdly, it has graphics options: anti-aliasing options, motion blur, ambient occlusion, etc. We turned all of them up, and the game eventually turned completely red in hue (???). We turned the anti-aliasing off again, and the color returned to normal. The game runs surprisingly well, with some intense framerate hitches when surfacing, but the means to that end are pretty rough.

The environmental textures in the XB1 version look like shit. They are extremely blurry, like in an N64 speedrun where the player busts through the level's seams and sees all the stretched out shit you're never supposed to see. So, while this game is playable on XB1 and the framerate is actually really good, there's a pretty major sacrifice being made to make it work. Worth knowing if you are deciding on which version to get, and I'd wager the PS4 version isn't much different.

EDIT: also why did you all respond to the kingdom come poster, like jesus christ have you any foresight

@tomba_be: well, for me a lot of the game is overcoming these limitations, by building items that help with finding and hunting fish/water sources, the whole game is about gradually getting to explore and do more stuff

Did I mess up the numbers? Maybe Vinny's depth was displayed in meters and not kilometers... that actually makes a lot more sense now that I think about it. Woopsies!