Sentient Aquatic Life?
04Leonhardt
I came here to laugh at you Join Date: 2015-08-01 Member: 206618Members
I came here to laugh at you Join Date: 2015-08-01 Member: 206618Members
Bit of an odd question. Not sure if Subnautica is the right game, or even that it could be done properly.
Some people aren't going to like this idea. But if controversial ideas were never spoken something something scientific advancement yay
But who cares let's talk about Mermaids
Personally, I would like the idea of meeting indigenous lifeforms that were evolved slightly above the thought processes of "Swim. Eat. Swim. Eat. Poop. Eat. Swim. Eat. Swim."
The Warpers come to mind, with their intelligence being evident in their design. BUT, should these creatures turn out to NOT be completely benevolent and friendly, I'd like to discuss the possibility of evolved aquatic life forms existing in the ocean with the mental capacity to interact with humans to a degree other than "Swim away" or "Bite"
The first thing that comes to mind is Mermaids. People with fish butts.
But it'd be boring if they were just humans with fish butts.
Make them Squid butts!
AND WEAR SEASHELLS FOR HATS
"But Leonhardt" you say "Why would creatures native to this planet be humanoid at all?"
That's a very good question, my friend. Perhaps they could share a common ancestor with the Sea Emperor, thus giving them hands
Or, they could simply be a smaller subspecies of the Sea Emperor, like the human relationship with Gorillas.
But, I get it, giving them something so mundane as a regular human face and eyes might just be too silly.
How about a dunkleosteus
WITH HANDS
Imagine a couple of these guys living in caves, or carved out coral formations, patrolling the seas, hunting sharks with their bare hands, herding Gasopods, growing and farming nutritious plants and things on the seabed. Intriguing. And also dangerous. I mean look at those arms. They could literally rip you in half. Or they could impale you on their spears. Though as long as they don't perceive you as a threat, you don't build any sea bases near their homes, or startle them with your Cyclops horn, you could trade simple items with them, like giving them shiny things in exchange for some rare food or materials. Would communicate through barks and growls, though the player isn't expected to understand. Most trading would be you holding out an item, then the dude goes and gets what he would trade you for it. Of course they would have little need for your technology, being simple folk, they'd prefer shiny things, like gold, or diamonds. They'd regard you as a hero if you gave them a Reaper Leviathan horn. Or that could be a requirement to having them not be hostile to you. Go hang out with a reaper Leviathan until it drops a tusk, then bring it back to them and they'll trade with you.
What do you think?
Should Subnautica have benevolent intelligent life forms?
Do you wanna hang with the fishmen?
Now before this gets moved to Ideas and Suggestions, keep in mind that this is not technically a suggestion, but more a discussion on the gameplay potential of the existence of at least semi-intelligent sea people.
Some people aren't going to like this idea. But if controversial ideas were never spoken something something scientific advancement yay
But who cares let's talk about Mermaids
Personally, I would like the idea of meeting indigenous lifeforms that were evolved slightly above the thought processes of "Swim. Eat. Swim. Eat. Poop. Eat. Swim. Eat. Swim."
The Warpers come to mind, with their intelligence being evident in their design. BUT, should these creatures turn out to NOT be completely benevolent and friendly, I'd like to discuss the possibility of evolved aquatic life forms existing in the ocean with the mental capacity to interact with humans to a degree other than "Swim away" or "Bite"
The first thing that comes to mind is Mermaids. People with fish butts.
But it'd be boring if they were just humans with fish butts.
Make them Squid butts!
AND WEAR SEASHELLS FOR HATS
"But Leonhardt" you say "Why would creatures native to this planet be humanoid at all?"
That's a very good question, my friend. Perhaps they could share a common ancestor with the Sea Emperor, thus giving them hands
Or, they could simply be a smaller subspecies of the Sea Emperor, like the human relationship with Gorillas.
But, I get it, giving them something so mundane as a regular human face and eyes might just be too silly.
And please, I'm not asking for anime space elves to be living underwater. This is just a visual guide.
How about a dunkleosteus
WITH HANDS
What do you think?
Should Subnautica have benevolent intelligent life forms?
Do you wanna hang with the fishmen?
Now before this gets moved to Ideas and Suggestions, keep in mind that this is not technically a suggestion, but more a discussion on the gameplay potential of the existence of at least semi-intelligent sea people.
Comments
I'm against everything that looks even close to humans. That includes especially hands.
Oh... and isn't one of the bigger chunks the devs are currently working on a story?
So you're out on the Sea Dragon Leviathan and Lava Lizard then?
I imagine anything with arms evolved in shallow reef areas, using them to grab and push off of rocks, capture prey, etc. Though a tentacle could do the same thing, I imagined those guys being semi-reptillian like the sea dragon.
This is actually a lot better.
I'd say it would be cool to find INTELLIGENT life, but not necessarily sentient (sort of like how if we were coming to earth and found an octopus, we would realize that it is actually very intelligent etc.)
Not more advanced than us, no.
We're talking like, Jurassic park velociraptors, or real world apes at the absolute most. Though I assume we're not about to teach Jojo the Shark Man sign language.
I should have been more specific. It is not so much arms in general that don't make sense, but more just a general human like build. And the lava lizards seem to be walking along the bottom, so they make sense there.
Lava Lizard - Not so much. A bit suboptimal but it's alreight i guess.
It's the human build just like sayerulz said. The Dragon has freakin ELBOWS oO
Technically the only human thing about it is the upright pose.
I mean I'd like for there to be variety.
Reptiles, crustaceans.
Not just fish with fins or flippers
*just nothing that assumes an upright position when at rest
They'd live in caves, or at the very most little huts made of Creepvine or coral.
Imagine like, cavemen, but fish people.
Plus, the "Long lost civilization of not atlantis" has been done in so many games already.
It makes no sense for them to have hair or a human face at all. None. Why would they have hair, an ineffective form of insulation underwater? Why would they have something that even distantly resemble human faces on a world where nothing else does? Even with convergent evolution, you should end up with something that is recognizably not a human face. Our closest living evolutionary relatives do not have recognizably human faces (even though they still have faces we can somewhat read). But there would be no convergent evolution, humans evolved from land-dwelling species while everything in Subnautica (except perhaps the bird-analog) are marine creatures.
But most of all, why would they have faces that is perpendicular to their spine, why would they be upright? You clearly didn't think about this, the most glaring problem. Fish have eyes and faces looking in the same plane as their fins because that is where they are going. Even most four-legged animals do this for the same reason, even if they have to bend their spine a bit to support their neck.
Tree-climbers from which humans descended from have their face perpendicular to their spine because they used all four limbs while moving forward. When upright humans began appearing, this adoption was useful because the face was still looking in the same direction as the body moved.
But humans are not marine creatures and their face and head are unsuited to the environment. Humans have to try and do an almost 90* turn on their neck to face forward while swimming. Their shoulder-joints are under stress when they try to swim (ask any professional swimmer). Most glaring of all, unlike other mammals that "returned" to the sea our noses are in front of our eyes, not on top or on the back of their head where it would be most efficient.
They do not look like a relative of the sea-emperor, there are no small details that would suggest so. They are monsterfied-human hands, same as your visual guide. It's a half-human, half-octopus with monster hands. The only thing really in common is that their rear half of their bodies has tentacles.
But your drawing directly suggests the opposite!
Hands as such we think of them have no place in undersea creatures because it makes questionable evolutionary history. Hands from gorillas and such are due to a common ancestor way down the evolutionary line that was a tree-climber and thus adopted the paws to hands.
Any manipulator organ would have to look different if it evolved underwater.
Basically any aquatic creature with flippers already has hands, just covered by flipper mittens.
for example, manatees
Whales
Sea Turtles
Prehistoric marine reptiles as well
Plesiosaurs evolved from sauropods that stumbled into the water and learned to swim, their legs and claws flattening into flippers.
The creatures we encounter could quite feasibly still be in the transitioning phase from claws to flippers.
I could write a long fluff piece about how the Dunkleosteus-man evolved from primitive amphibious reptiles that dwelled in the shallows and among the many islands, gradually growing stronger and more intelligent as it became more adapted to living completely underwater, using their claws to ensnare their prey and peel the meat off their bones.
But none of that really matters.
What would you say if our sentient alien folks looked something like this.
Away from mammal traits or something like bones and muscles. Only chitin and hydraulic juices.
Just some thoughts.
So your example is a marine mammal, that is evolutionary descendent from a large land-dwelling family?
Please note that just because they have skeletons with long finger-like bones does not mean that they are hands. They are flippers, they merely look a bit like hands when you are just viewing the skeleton. Note the for them to be effective flippers the skeleton has to sacrifice flexibility (an essential quality for hands) for strength and speed in the water (or so I speculate).
But there are no planned large sections of land in the playable area. For them to be going from one to another they'd need to be at least partial land-dwelling, like seals are. I do admit that this could partially work in the arctic biome, where the ice creates a constant approximation of land.