Lack of lore in Below zero
Vasya
Join Date: 2021-02-05 Member: 267471Members
Join Date: 2021-02-05 Member: 267471Members
I love both games, but the original had more lore and was interconnected. The ecosystem was spelled out, the bacteria and the planet's survival were explained, the shipwrecks and their one crash site, which at first looked like coincidences, lined up into a coherent picture. There are many blank spots in Below Zero and many things are not explained. Here's what I would add:
1. Architects. From the dialogues with Al-An, it becomes clear that Robin knows about the bacteria, and about the Architects themselves (even if she doesn’t realize that they are interconnected), but the question arises, what do people generally know about Architects? The planet was discovered for 1-2 years, I don't think that Alterra blabbed to everyone that they had found the remains of a space civilization, however, in her letter, Lil speaks to Robin without fear about the Architects, and even in one of the cut PDAs, she calmly disclosed the existence the remains of space civilization to her children. It would be interesting to know what exactly ordinary people know about Architects.
2. Maida. How she survived the bacterial infection. She has been on the planet for 10 years and is still alive. I would like to get an explanation. But even if it does not exist, I would like to have more logs about her life. An old story described her arrival in the Arctic, briefly her life and the arrival of Alterra. Here we have her arrival in the Arctic, and ... and then we immediately go to the moment when she already knows Sam. You could add a PDA describing her life in the Arctic, the taming of the Snow Stalker, then the arrival of Alterra and, for example, the PDA that Sam is spying on her and she would like to "talk" to her. All this could be broken down into 2-3 PDAs and scattered around the Maida base, or scattered around the world (I know that you originally wanted to add Maida's tech sites).
3. Without going far from the bacteria, I would like to have an explanation, or a hint about how life survived the epidemic. The crater contained enzyme 42 peepers, which delivered it to other animals and suppressed the symptoms of the bacteria. But the Arctic is alive, without explanation. The infection that destroyed billions decided to take pity on the Penguins and did not kill them. I would like to have an explanation in the game.
4. Cure for Frozen Leviathan. How Sam created the cure is vague in the game. Judging by the way it looks and how it works, this is an enzyme 42, but according to the description, everything looks like Sam created the medicine herself, which may give players the impression that Sam, without knowledge of biology and chemistry, created something that the advanced race did not could. Since you cut the Sea Emperors, you could add a detail to the lore that Alterra had a stock of 42 enzyme in case the bacteria escaped and Sam took it from there.
5. Scanned items. In the game, there are still plants that cannot be scanned, mainly in Lily pads and deep lily pads. But you can close your eyes to this, but there are things that you would like to scan. For example, brinecles, these are giant water icicles, or a statue in deep architect cache, it stands out, but it is not possible to scan it, or a tablet that Maida threw to Preston, what is the point of being a tablet, why not throw him a bone or a piece of metal. I would also like to have an explanation for the void. In the original, the void was inhabited by Ghost Leviathans, which fed on microorganisms. However, here the void is inhabited by the Chelicrates (which scare me more than the ghost leviathan) but what do they eat? In the game there is no ency of both the void itself and the ency of the void Chelicrates themselves
1. Architects. From the dialogues with Al-An, it becomes clear that Robin knows about the bacteria, and about the Architects themselves (even if she doesn’t realize that they are interconnected), but the question arises, what do people generally know about Architects? The planet was discovered for 1-2 years, I don't think that Alterra blabbed to everyone that they had found the remains of a space civilization, however, in her letter, Lil speaks to Robin without fear about the Architects, and even in one of the cut PDAs, she calmly disclosed the existence the remains of space civilization to her children. It would be interesting to know what exactly ordinary people know about Architects.
2. Maida. How she survived the bacterial infection. She has been on the planet for 10 years and is still alive. I would like to get an explanation. But even if it does not exist, I would like to have more logs about her life. An old story described her arrival in the Arctic, briefly her life and the arrival of Alterra. Here we have her arrival in the Arctic, and ... and then we immediately go to the moment when she already knows Sam. You could add a PDA describing her life in the Arctic, the taming of the Snow Stalker, then the arrival of Alterra and, for example, the PDA that Sam is spying on her and she would like to "talk" to her. All this could be broken down into 2-3 PDAs and scattered around the Maida base, or scattered around the world (I know that you originally wanted to add Maida's tech sites).
3. Without going far from the bacteria, I would like to have an explanation, or a hint about how life survived the epidemic. The crater contained enzyme 42 peepers, which delivered it to other animals and suppressed the symptoms of the bacteria. But the Arctic is alive, without explanation. The infection that destroyed billions decided to take pity on the Penguins and did not kill them. I would like to have an explanation in the game.
4. Cure for Frozen Leviathan. How Sam created the cure is vague in the game. Judging by the way it looks and how it works, this is an enzyme 42, but according to the description, everything looks like Sam created the medicine herself, which may give players the impression that Sam, without knowledge of biology and chemistry, created something that the advanced race did not could. Since you cut the Sea Emperors, you could add a detail to the lore that Alterra had a stock of 42 enzyme in case the bacteria escaped and Sam took it from there.
5. Scanned items. In the game, there are still plants that cannot be scanned, mainly in Lily pads and deep lily pads. But you can close your eyes to this, but there are things that you would like to scan. For example, brinecles, these are giant water icicles, or a statue in deep architect cache, it stands out, but it is not possible to scan it, or a tablet that Maida threw to Preston, what is the point of being a tablet, why not throw him a bone or a piece of metal. I would also like to have an explanation for the void. In the original, the void was inhabited by Ghost Leviathans, which fed on microorganisms. However, here the void is inhabited by the Chelicrates (which scare me more than the ghost leviathan) but what do they eat? In the game there is no ency of both the void itself and the ency of the void Chelicrates themselves
Comments
the tablet has a reason: it was scraped from the story of both subnauticas and stayed in that cutscene as easter egg ;D
The guy that brought Robin to 4546B was from XenoWorx IIRC. He was doing a favour to Robin and then left because of his job duties.
The abandoning of sector zero past Sam's death is in my opinion insufficiently explained in the game. I guess Alterra's investigation of the explosion at Omega base concluded that Marguerit is still active in sector zero and a danger for all missions there. So they abandon that area and use the radio tower to spy on her.