Does Subnautica need an ending?
SalmonJEDl
Finland Join Date: 2015-05-14 Member: 204465Members
Finland Join Date: 2015-05-14 Member: 204465Members
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Plus, even with a definitive ending there is no reason people can't be put back in the ocean to keep playing. The mass effect games did this so even after the conclusion of the story you could still enjoy DLC with your built up character. I don't see why that can't be done here as well.
edit- i realized now that I'm the 3rd commenter, sooo yeah...maybe ppl do want the other ones just they haven't seen this yet
The whole purpose was to terraform the planet... so what happened to that mission objective? What if ships are already on their way expecting a habitable planet?
The idea is to have a story, and have event trigger and happen around you, yet leaving you your own will to chose how and which events to react to, or on the flip side suffer the consequences if you don't.
That's one possible branch of a good story. Ships might be on their way to the planet, and are scheduled to arrive in 1 year game time (say, 300 days/nights).
By that time, if you have not advanced far enough in your discovery of the planet's mysteries to figure out what shot the Aurora down, the next ship will suffer the same fate. Some elements of story might lead you to build a communication array and reach out to the rescue/terraforming next ship and warn them not to come; another branch might be to remove the threat. Another might be to discover a sentient race and figure out that the terraforming party will kill them all when they terraform the environment to make it suitable for humans, leading you to an ethical conflict. The possibilities are endless.
1) You find a very deep hole in the lava zone.
2) You need an exosuit to establish a base at the bottom and hull upgrades to bring your cyclops down.
3) Even deeper down, there's a large artificial door on the bottom of the ocean. Your hud instructs you that you can penetrate this door. You find a large drill fragment and construct a large base around this gate.
4) You drill through it which takes you to the alien city with strange bio-luminescent life and intelligence.
5) Some goal to achieve there. After completing it, you should be left on the planet to explore as much as you want.
Also I think some endings/outcomes should be the kind in which the player "fails" at something, like the one suggested by @conscioussoul ;;:
Other "fail endings" could include:
- Not containing the Aurora's radiation field in time, so the radiation will slowly creep up to cover the whole game map causing player death or at least an ecological disaster (see below)
- Disastrous failure when attempting to repair the Aurora = the whole thing blows to smithereens/sinks too deep beyond all help (a consequence of multiple relatively foreseeable failures when repairing, like trying to jumpstart the engine/reactor core too early in the process)
- A self-inflicted ecological disaster caused by unsustainable living habits of the player. A failure to estabilish a sustainable economy to support your living/existence, leading to the death of the player in some way. A non-story driven, tragic ending to teach some manners for those who would just dive around and killing everything that is killable
Still, there should be some outcomes that don't erase the player's reason to reside on the planet. What if a player, realizing that life on the planet has value in itself, not only as a resource to be used by humans, does no longer wish for the planned future colonization?
Overall I think at some point the devs should address the ethical side of the colonization project in the backstory.
In short, I would be very much against ticking clocks in the background that measure good vs bad endings. So much so it would probably cause me to shelve the game indefinitely. They are that much of a dealbreaker to me.
it's difficult to have some important events happening if you don't have an internal clock as one of the possible trigger.
For instance, the Aurora blows up after 3 days. It's not because you get close it it, or any other trigger. it's related to time. And it make sens with the story.
Another example? Say the Aurora isn't repaired in time and radiations are starting to degrade the bio diversity and break down the ecology. The dev can decide that it will happen in 10 days, or in 100 days, whatever, but if they don't set a "timer" on it, then nobody will believe the story. If the radiation is leeking, hell, better put an end to it. Not SO fast that you go there without preparations... but not lazily anytime to are so bored you have nothing else to try. Ideally, the environment would start to degrade slowly, but decay may accelerate exponentially if you wait too much, and your onboard computer might give you warning of the effect of DNA and biodiversity, or even on your own health.
Take now an end event like a rescue ship. If a rescue ship is arriving, it make sens that it's arriving in a set amount of time... but nothing prevents that time to be a fairly long time. Right now, on experimental, I have start my whole game over from scratch 3 times and reach the max you can do, and I must have perhaps 50 hours of gameplay. I know the game is not yet ready and all, but what I am saying is, what if the rescue team is planned to arrive in - say - roughly 100h of game play?
You could even combine the idea of a timer with a random or specific event.
For instance, maybe the rescue team will arrive within 40 days of you meeting a sentient being. Or any other trigger, depending on what the game story requires.
The point is: events planned on a timeline do not mean that the player will be pressured; if it happens, it may happen purposely at the end when events start to cascade.
I'm generally against concluding endings, but they wouldn't ruin the game. However, ticking timers would.
Point is, no choice leads you to "fail". It only changes the story.
Failed to stop the aurora from exploding? (after all, you had 3 days warning!) well, that's ok. Now cleanup the mess.
Failed to cleanup the radiations in time? Hell, that might be even GOOD, if your end goal is to terraform the planet out of its dangerous lifeforms. Or not. It's a choice, to hurry or not to hurry to goal A or goal B, or none.
That's the beauty of a non-linear story system.
If instead all the foraging, construction, exploration, battery licking, and alive staying the player will be concerning themself with helps kick along a slick narrative, it means everything they do will be layered with added dimensions of purpose and meaning, making the overall experience all the more fulfilling. So I'm of the opinion there should definitely be a story - preferably a killer one. And a killer story should have a killer ending. Whether or not the player still gets the option to take that thermal vent sojourn after things wrap up is my only question, but I'd have no regrets if I'm faced with a wall of credits once all is said and done. Don't get me wrong, I love the hell out of Subnautica, but there's only so much one can do in a game before it's all been done.
But I don't think that changes my point that it kills exploration. Plugging a component in that the RNG says is now going to fail, leading to a timer to escape? That is ok in my book, since it is cause and effect. But having an overall 'time to failure' to get the best ending...well that is the problem. Because now you have to beat the clock to get the 'best ending'. If you put it to a random event, how do you prevent a player that might have put hours in already from being frustrated if they are unable to meet the timer and now are relegated to a 'bad ending'? Because personally I'd be rather rightly upset.
You can have a timer tied to a random event, but again the timer must be a consequence to a players action so it feels organic. The exploding Aurora isn't tied to anything the player does, but now has to contend with. As it is now, that means it's a goal, fix the aurora so you can build in deeper water, use better suits, and more easily get to things that the radiation is preventing you currently from doing. Add a timer though and it can be frustrating if you just aren't finding what you need fast enough, as the game then focuses on learning what biome has what and the quickest way to get what you want. The opposite of exploration, or at least natural exploration.
As for tying it to doing meeting aliens...you can run into problems there. Because again...what if you weren't ready? Again, I could have stumbled into the nest and not realized what was going on and now put myself on the road to the bad ending due to either beginner's luck or bad luck. Both of which build frustration, since if it was a static location now I know to just not go there until later (kills exploration) or if it were a RNG event then I could feel cheated as pointed out before.
I know some of this might contradict what I have said earlier. But timers should be on players action as a result of player action. For instance if we knew, or were warned, that throwing a switch might dump toxins and in doing so results in a timer...well then the player has nothing to blame but themselves. So timers need to be limited, if used at all.
If it's like in was implemented in star control II, it can work really well. What they did is that the game story is made so that the first in-game year is super slow, no pressuring events are triggered, and you can explore etc. This can go a quite a long while, enough for a LOT of exploration. Then you get into the second half of the game, time-wise, and some events gets triggered. A merchant tells you he has a device that can turn black as it predicts its own destruction, and that it will be destroyed at the current rate within another 2 years. A bit later, you start seeing massive move of one of the galaxy friendly specie on your scanner. If they reach their destination (which will take a month in game or two) they will be destroyed at the arrival (they are too naive to think they won't be welcomed with open arms). So you have to talk to them to convince them to return home. You can do this 3 times, after which they won't listen to you anymore and will go. So by that time you must be sure the other lifeform at the other side becomes peaceful. etc etc.
In other words: they managed it so that the event ticking are starting to arrive roughly when the player has reached a strong knowledge of the galaxy and has explored quite a bit.
The same principle could apply.
I think it feels a lot more organic when major events that are not tied to the user eventually are set to happens, with or without you. It makes the whole story believable, and not totally player-centered.
Yet of course, yes, it's possible you aren't realizing fast enough that, say, radiations will eventually frack your ecology. That can be addressed several ways:
- different events and quests allows you to repair the damage done. The longer you take, the more work (or different story lines) you will have to take. It does not mean you can only reach a "bad" ending
- you can reach a less desriable outcome and realize that new endings are possibles, and that will motivate you to replay again. And this time, you will need less time to explore because you have seen it all already, which means it will naturally go faster
- In one game you might want to try to lazy exploration stance (and see what happens and what comes out of it). In another playthrough, you may enjoy very much purposly speeding up to change some events. Both experiences would be totally different which is awesome.
More importantly, if it doesn't matter and EVERY ending is reachable to you regardless of time, IMO you will feel cheated at the story level and feel like in a linear story. That's what I don't like with Skyrim. The open-world is fantastic. But I know I can just purposly ignore quests until I feel like doing it, which means quests like "rescuing a kidnapped girl" become, from a narrative point of view, totally stupid. You know the world will "conveninantly" stop rotating for you because, god forbid, the "main" quest has to stay open. That's LINEAR.Personally, it's an insult to my intelligence.
What if you aren't ready?
Well, what of it? That's life. It's much more interesting that way. Not everything happens when you are perfectly ready. It's part of the challenge.
But don't get me wrong. There are NO BAD ENDING. There are only DIFFERENT ending. Even an ending that results in the whole planet exploding with you on it isn't "bad" IMO, it's actually fun and you bet I'd want to replay the game to meet that ending too.
Oh and i got another idea, how about to launch the message he'd need the help from the sentients inhabitants of the planet? maybe after trying to negotiate with them for it.
I've yet to play a game with a timer that didn't drive me to just go to a walk through and follow that to get the 'good' ending. At this point, you have killed the concept of exploration and the joy of discovery. I don't know if everyone else would be driven to that point, but I would and it would just cause me to walk away as soon as I got the 'good' ending. This is also why if there is a definitively good ending there needs to be more then one.
Endings just should not be on a timer, and event he example of Star Control would be a limiting timer since you knew you had to be prepared in a year...and thus removing a lot of the organic feeling of the game. Timers just flat out limit the nature of exploration by their very nature, which is something we want to avoid in an adventure game.
But in the end it's both optional and if you do it you could either choose if you want to end or just stay on the planet.
For me it felt kind of exciting to know that I have to do something, even if it was just a 10 minute trip to the aurora to fix it up a bit...
I know that as things stand right now, all I really need to be happy is some more gameplay systems to tinker around with.
On the whole, I'd prefer different story objectives with different completion methods. That and mostly non-game ending consequences for failure. At least, not without many warnings and chances to correct the circumstances that's leading toward a catastrophic game end-state.
I get that the developers want an exploratory approach, having the player discover stuff like in Minecraft rather than chain them along. But I'd definitely would like to learn more about the world, how it exists and why the Aurora was shot down.
A bit of speculation: let's assume that the energy wave that attacked the Aurora wasn't an accident or a flicker of nature. With the level of tech displayed, nothing natural should be able to hurt the ship that it couldn't foreseen or know about. So that leaves that someone or something wanted the Aurora hurt. Yet nobody comes to the escape pod, there is no sign of civilization beside the Aurora. That's a mystery, a mystery worth exploring.
Multiple choices on what to do when the mystery is untangled would be perhaps various responses to the mystery itself. Maybe the player walks away, maybe the player decides to live on the planet, maybe the player devotes themselves to the mystery or maybe the player decides to do drastic action. We have no hint of what that mystery is so far.
Basically, you restart the Aurora, and it starts slowly giving you things to do to help it recover. Auto repair systems open up new sections of the ship, allowing you access to new technology. The Cartographer maps out the ocean floor, the Archive catalogues fish populations, the Flight Deck allows you to build aircraft to travel to new maps, the Hydroponics Farm lets the player grow plants for food, etc.