Should ancient alien relics and buildings be in the game?
TerraBlade
Join Date: 2015-05-25 Member: 204886Members
Join Date: 2015-05-25 Member: 204886Members
So this hasn't been brought up in my quick forum search, and I apologize if I just missed the discussion. But alien relics and having them in Subnautica, do we want them? Personally I would say yes, as the game is about exploration and what other epitome of exploration could there be then the discovery of a new civilization. Even if it might be dead and buried by the time we get there.
This poll will be focused on ancient relics of a dead civilization. The reason being that living aliens might be dangerously close to becoming a need for more combat measures for both logical and gameplay reasons. Since the devs have stated they want to minimize combat emphasis as much as possible, that kinda leaves archeology of alien relics as the only recourse. Here are some of the ideas I've had that the aliens could be presented as.
Alien Biome/City:
This could be an entire biome dedicated to perhaps an ancient alien city. Maybe the natives were aquatic, or maybe the city sank beneath the waves. Or maybe it is found even deeper by traveling through the deep sea tunnels. Could hold unique metals for upgrades, background story for the world (maybe it wasn't always an ocean planet), unique fragments for alien tech, and more.
Alien 'temples':
For whatever reason these ancient structures stand alone on the ocean seabed. Inside puzzles could block access to ancient alien secrets that could lead to unique upgrades and research paths. Or as an alternative there could be ancient secrets that can only be accessed by turning off the security that exists in one or more of these temples.
Super-weapon Complex:
Perhaps the device that brought down the Aurora was an ancient super-weapon that is still active for all these years. Maybe fighting among the Aliens was the reason it was used, and for their subsequent demise. Maybe it was a last ditch effort to protect the planet from something that came from space. Whatever the reason, it is in a massive complex that must be navigated, repaired, and deactivated as the final and most difficult dive yet. From the dive reel to prevent getting lost, to stasis rifle use to get past fan blades and traps, to even using the exosuit to break past collapsed portions, every tool will have a use and the player will need them all and their brains to shut down the ancient weapon.
These are just the tips of the iceberg of what I feel aliens and their presence could have on the game. So personally I would love to see them all, obviously. But what do you all think? Keep in mind, these could easily be added as DLC if they won't fit in to the base game.
Alien Biome/City:
This could be an entire biome dedicated to perhaps an ancient alien city. Maybe the natives were aquatic, or maybe the city sank beneath the waves. Or maybe it is found even deeper by traveling through the deep sea tunnels. Could hold unique metals for upgrades, background story for the world (maybe it wasn't always an ocean planet), unique fragments for alien tech, and more.
Alien 'temples':
For whatever reason these ancient structures stand alone on the ocean seabed. Inside puzzles could block access to ancient alien secrets that could lead to unique upgrades and research paths. Or as an alternative there could be ancient secrets that can only be accessed by turning off the security that exists in one or more of these temples.
Super-weapon Complex:
Perhaps the device that brought down the Aurora was an ancient super-weapon that is still active for all these years. Maybe fighting among the Aliens was the reason it was used, and for their subsequent demise. Maybe it was a last ditch effort to protect the planet from something that came from space. Whatever the reason, it is in a massive complex that must be navigated, repaired, and deactivated as the final and most difficult dive yet. From the dive reel to prevent getting lost, to stasis rifle use to get past fan blades and traps, to even using the exosuit to break past collapsed portions, every tool will have a use and the player will need them all and their brains to shut down the ancient weapon.
These are just the tips of the iceberg of what I feel aliens and their presence could have on the game. So personally I would love to see them all, obviously. But what do you all think? Keep in mind, these could easily be added as DLC if they won't fit in to the base game.
Comments
When i think about an alien species living underwater i feel that Temples are too human. God knows what a civiliced alien race could build.
I'm thinking about organic building that remind more of a zerg base than of atlantis.
The superweapon thing just contains too much wweapon for me. So much else to learn form an old alien civilization. Also they probably lived on this planet for quite some time, so they probably knew their way around in this environment.
I put the term 'temple' in quotations like that because I feel it would be a building that might appear to be one, even if that isn't it's purpose. Think of some of the more famous memorials in countries around the world, like the Lincoln memorial in America, and how they might appear to an alien race who didn't know anything of our history.
Which is part of the reason I was thinking of the superweapon. Maybe the thing was a last ditch effort to deflect a devastating asteroid strike that made the ocean planet...well an ocean planet. It just happened to survive and saw an incoming ship as another asteroid to be shot at. Maybe we weren't the first ones to come to the planet, and the other guys weren't the peaceful scientific type. In my eyes the weapon would along the way have the explanation somehow as to what happened to the original inhabitants and their ultimate fate.
A few alien temples or other buildings sounds cool. There shouldn't be too many of them, and they should also be kinda broken or covered in plants. Maybe you could find out how to read alien writings, and thus become able to read some texts on those buildings. You'd find background info and maybe even story elements.
I don't like the idea of huge ancient weapon complex. There could be some tech that was the cause of Aurora's crash, but superweapon doesn't sound right. But if devs do this really well, I'm OK with it.
Since other people are throwing out some stuff, I might as well add that it's not implausible to say that the planet wasn't always completely covered in ocean, the planet could have had lots of exposed land and an industrious civilization. As with any industrious civilization, they got carried away and pumped too much CO2 into the atmosphere and melted their ice caps, drowning the planet.
However considering that they're adding an ice biome into the game, that would mean that the ice caps could have reformed and a lot of land could be exposed somewhere, so that wouldn't work.
In any case, that mysterious energy pulse capable of wrecking a spaceship mid-orbit definitely suggests some kind of intelligence somewhere. Also:
What do you mean by this? Some alien stuff in experimental? I haven't opted on the experimental yet so I wouldn't know.
Anyways if there's to be an extinct civilization, it just HAS to be made into something you can do a lot of research on. That might include linguistics, archeology and other related branches of science. Just think about how cool it would be, finding pieces of alien language and slowly reconstructing the way they communicated, thus getting answers for many questions regarding the extinct species, and the planets natural history. Would also be interesting to analyze "alien fragments" with devices suitable for this.
I agree. Definitely not something that says "I'm an important place of an ancient extinct race of amphibians Ia Ia Ftagn" on first sight, preferably not on the second either.
Also as a side note the city could be something related to what WE would do, build a city on the ocean floor that is still meant to support surface life. There are many forms this could take, and maybe those structures currently in the game are related to it?
Depending on the strike and the size of say a comet the planet could still have ice caps and cover the planet. One proposed theory to terraform Venus as example is to drop comets or other ice chunks from the Oort Cloud that is supposed to encircle our solar system several astronomical units past Pluto.
Whatever tech it is, if it was tech, then it's a weapon. The amount of energy to fire from the surface of the planet into space with any effect is variable depending on the atmosphere composition and thickness...but still astronomical (no pun intended). If the weapon is still active and underwater the energy required goes even higher, and might be the reason Aurora was disabled and not outright destroyed. All that power would need a facility, and that facility would realistically have to be massive.
Granted it doesn't have to be a weapon made for war. Proposed satellites and missiles have been designed for Armageddon type scenarios against incoming astronomical threats such as comets and asteroids. If so chances are it would be automated since the best chances to intercept and destroy/divert a threat is as far as possible; which to make the calculations fast enough would require a computer. Let alone to target and modify a beam of energy to strike with effect. All that just shouts 'super weapon' to me.
You could argue, and I just thought of this, that the pulse might have been the dying SoS of the former inhabitants. Kind of like a final data burst to let others know they existed. However the loading screen shows the Aurora going down in flames which no communication burst I can reasonably account could do that damage. Unlike the movies, overloaded electronics don't tend to explode as a general rule (there ARE exceptions though). So I don't see the communication burst overloading the reactors...realistically.
Then again this is a game and sci-fi...so the concepts only have to be grounded in science, not slaves to them per se.
Edit: One final reason I thought of for the existence of such a complex might be the opposite direction. Instead of trying to prevent something from getting to the planet, it could be trying to keep something on the planet from getting out. Where the original builders felt that destroying potentially friendly visitors was still preferable to letting whatever is on the planet from reaching the stars.
To the point then: let's assume that there will be ruins of and ancient and extinct civilization. What would be the most interesting way to find them? Should it happen by "chance" or should it be lightly/heavily story driven? This kind of random stuff popped in my mind:
If relied on finding by chance, the settlement/ruin itself should be semi visible. Pillars poking out of the sand or something, covered in coral yet maybe too symmetrical to be natural. Or perhaps some radar/sonar technology the player crafts, would show strange readings when nearby. However found, the ruins could then be dug up using hands (oh god no), terraformer or some other more suitable device. Afterwards the place would probably look like a legitimate archeological dig site, perhaps extending way underground. I would just love to set up a nice little underwater dig site project with a temporary base, lighting and like... 4 kilometres of dive reel?
IMO temples are fine as well, ppl say its a human thing, i think the temples just come from a deeper intelligence and wonder of currently unknown causes and effects. If the alien race was smart enough to build civilizations im sure they had temples as well (plus it could be awesome)
Why not both? Perhaps there are even other human ships.
I would be ok with both, but weren't we supposed to be the first human ship to the planet? Though I guess that wasn't explicit more then it was implied.
Maybe another terraforming company lost their mission too, but they covered it up. The player would already be playing the role of an ancient alien detective, why not a regular detective?
In Humanity's colonization efforts an earth corporation found the only known "stable wormhole" it was dubbed the "Eve Gate" and for many years it drove humanity to reach farther than their own galaxy, until it finally collapsed. The collapse of the Eve Gate in this new galaxy, named New Eden, was a massive interstellar phenomena that drove humanity that had made it into New Eden back into technological darkness. Because the Eve Gate itself was a massive wormhole it was also equally brobdingnagian in it's collapse. The implosion was so strong and so large that it's force and resulting electromagnetic buildup was felt many, many hundred star systems away. This could have been what happened to the Aurora.....
Of course..... It could have just been a giant space whale who called the planet home and little ol' Aurora just got "capped" for movin' in on it's turf. But that's just silly, right?