Who else will check on Abzù besides playing and enjoying Subnautica?
ThePassionateGamer
Germany Join Date: 2016-06-07 Member: 218219Members
Germany Join Date: 2016-06-07 Member: 218219Members
Hello fellow Subnauticans. 
For quite some time now I had Abzù on my games radar. Since it looked beautiful and had this relaxed ocean explore atmosphere. I liked the small bits of gameplay we could see and was rather happy that they must have released a press-demo or something because we now see "longer" gameplay videos on YT and other video platforms.
I leave this gameplay trailer of the demo gameplay here for everyone to enjoy. It is only gameplay and gamesounds so you can hear the music and get a feel for the atmosphere of the game:
I do not really see it as a competition to Subnautica because they mainly share the ocean as their virtual playground of choice so to speak. In a developer video they said that if you just want to play "through" it instead of exploring every bit you can do so in about 3 hours. That alone is a fact for me that those two games are vastly different.
After watching the longer gameplay trailers and listening to the "chillout" like music the game has to offer, I made up my mind and put it on my Steam whishlist.
I am looking forward to another possibly great underwater themed game. I like the fact that they really put alot effort into "filling" their ocean with sealife. There are parts of the game where you are surrounded by 15.000 and more individual fish.
What I also really liked was the fact, that you have to find out what you are (besides a female "person" in a diving suit) and what goes on in this ocean you find yourself in. As far as I know they use no text (besides the tutorial popups at the very beginning) or speech to drive the story...only visual and audible things and stuff that happens in your world tell the story. Together with the great music this may be a fine story to experience.
So far I would describe the pace of the gameplay as almost meditative. It is a nice and giant step away from the action loaded AAA games that rule the industries rankings worldwide. Will I like it throughout the whole game? I dunno... Will it change it's pace once you are further into the story? I can't tell...but I am intrigued to find out.
Who else likes the gameplay trailers and is considering to buy that title?
What did you like about what you have seen so far from ABZU?
Where else should I ask about another maybe great underwater game then in a forum of a great underwater game?
One last thing I'd like to leave here is the request to make/keep this a friendly and open minded thread about another game for all of us to enjoy.
For quite some time now I had Abzù on my games radar. Since it looked beautiful and had this relaxed ocean explore atmosphere. I liked the small bits of gameplay we could see and was rather happy that they must have released a press-demo or something because we now see "longer" gameplay videos on YT and other video platforms.
I leave this gameplay trailer of the demo gameplay here for everyone to enjoy. It is only gameplay and gamesounds so you can hear the music and get a feel for the atmosphere of the game:
I do not really see it as a competition to Subnautica because they mainly share the ocean as their virtual playground of choice so to speak. In a developer video they said that if you just want to play "through" it instead of exploring every bit you can do so in about 3 hours. That alone is a fact for me that those two games are vastly different.
After watching the longer gameplay trailers and listening to the "chillout" like music the game has to offer, I made up my mind and put it on my Steam whishlist.
I am looking forward to another possibly great underwater themed game. I like the fact that they really put alot effort into "filling" their ocean with sealife. There are parts of the game where you are surrounded by 15.000 and more individual fish.
What I also really liked was the fact, that you have to find out what you are (besides a female "person" in a diving suit) and what goes on in this ocean you find yourself in. As far as I know they use no text (besides the tutorial popups at the very beginning) or speech to drive the story...only visual and audible things and stuff that happens in your world tell the story. Together with the great music this may be a fine story to experience.
So far I would describe the pace of the gameplay as almost meditative. It is a nice and giant step away from the action loaded AAA games that rule the industries rankings worldwide. Will I like it throughout the whole game? I dunno... Will it change it's pace once you are further into the story? I can't tell...but I am intrigued to find out.
Who else likes the gameplay trailers and is considering to buy that title?
What did you like about what you have seen so far from ABZU?
Where else should I ask about another maybe great underwater game then in a forum of a great underwater game?
One last thing I'd like to leave here is the request to make/keep this a friendly and open minded thread about another game for all of us to enjoy.
Comments
I wouldn't consider Abzu a direct competitor of Subnautica, mainly because it lacks the latter's construction and crafting mechanics. Abzu appears to be purely a game of exploration, with slightly mystical overtones.
Although the diver's swimming motion looks reasonably fluid, the model could use a few visual 'tweaks' to make it less angular. There is also a psychological distancing effect due to the diver's slightly alien appearance, a lack of breathing apparatus and other familiar instrumentation found in most diving simulations. I found myself unable to fully relate to being in his/her place in the same manner as I would while playing Subnautica. In this aspect, Subnautica offers greater potential for player immersion.
(no pun intended)
Still, it might be worth taking a more detailed look at Abzu. I'd certainly be prepared to pay a reasonable amount for this game.
They deliberatly avoided a breathing apparatus or an air gauge so that you can concentrate fully on exploring. I like that kind of approach.
@Bugzapper did you notice, that the fins extract extend form the divers "shoes" and retract when you not use them for a moment? I found that a cool feature purely from a style standpoint.
I'd be deliriously happy if fins in Subnautica had the same feature. The flip-flop sound while walking around in our bases or the Cyclops can be a bit distracting. Obviously, the Devs have never heard of hard-sole Neoprene dive boots.
But it bugs me when people enjoy these kind of visuals. I sometimes think lazy developers can't be bothered to make any decent graphics or textures so they call it "the art style" and move on. It looks like going back 30 years and playing on an old Amiga.
Nah, not for me. I'm not the kind of person who thinks graphics are particularly important either (I still play some pretty old games regularly and many new ones with poor graphics) because obviously gameplay is most important... but I'm not seeing any gameplay here I'd be interested in personally.
It looks like underwater Journey... and boy did I hate that pointless waste of my time.
Please bear in mind I'm an opinionated curmudgeon, and if it were up to me I'd burn every art gallery to the ground and blow the ashes up the artists arse with a trumpet. Definitely not the target audience for this one.
But it is already retractable in SN...
That doesn't mean that I'm not going to play it though since it looks like it would be fun to explore.
As for the rest of the fauna, I love Subnautica's creatures, and I'm not at all a fan of Anzu's art style, but the animation here looks really great! Everything seems to use smooth, procedural animation, looks really natural! No rotating on the spot there (I'm looking at you, Gasopods!).
I can't say much about the gameplay, and as I said I don't care much for the visual style here (to each their own ofc), but I'd love to see these kind of fish movement physics in Subnautica.
As a side note, anyone REALLY hear the classic Tomb Raider theme song during the opening of this video? It sounds like it's teasing it
I think they went for a less realistic style because we would otherwise face technical limitations. They wanted to implement individual fishes in the numbers of 10.000+ on screen which are all and I think we can agree on this fluidly animated. If they had tried this with the goal in mind to make it as realistic as possible they would hit framerate issues very soon. At least that's my guess. So they had to decide which way the wanna go. One of a more comic like style with a rougher style and a hell lot of fish on the screen or a realistic style with way less fish. We could see what they went for.
I think the chosen graphic style has to fit the game and harmonize with the world they create with it. Borderlands for example was planned with realistic graphics and then they changed that to the comic style. I think it is safe to say if it fits the game, it is ok to use a less realistic graphic style.
By the way, I like your direct an open way of telling your opinion. I'd rather read things that I think are honest then little lies that just try to blend in. Don't bend yourself to suit other people opinions I say. So thx for an honst post.
Since I don't have any benefit of opening this thread and I am in no way related to the Devs or Publishers of the game, it is no "advertising". I just made this thread because I like good underwater games and in my opinion Abzù has the potential to be a good game if you like those laid back kind of games. It is just a personal thing that I do like this kind of game but I thought, why not share this in a forum where other fans of underwater games gather.
I don't think I broke any forum rules with this or something like that and of course if this thread does offend the Subnautica Devs, they could delete it or tell me to and I would delete it. I don't want to offend someone here by talking about another game. And I really do not see Abzù as a competitor to Subnautica.
Cory is jealous lol. Speaking of which, are there plans to improve the schools of fish we have in Subnautica? or are they going to be the same paper thin, ground entering, sprites? Not that its too big of a problem, they can look fine at some points.
I kinda lost track of the game at some point between it's first appearance at E3 2014 and about 6 month ago. I remembered that game then and tried to recall it's name to find new information about it. Wasn't able to recall the name and thought to myself, next time I would write down interesting games to remember them. Then I stumbled upon some news about the game and "found" it again through that. Now I also have it on my wishlist.
Good to know that I could help you out by mentioning it here.
You are welcome. Hope you have fun with it, should you consider buying it.