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Ethics_Gradient posted:Yeah, in 50+ hours of BZ I had never found the big thing you're supposed to find in the cave, I finally broke down and used the wiki... and it still took me like 20-30 minutes of stomping around in circles in the Prawn to figure out where it wanted me to go. Worst area in either game by a mile, it reminded me of that awful DLC area from Dark Souls 2 with the electric reindeer. Everything looks the same so you kind of have to just trust your compass and head north until you find the one story item hidden at the end. Trying to make sense of your surroundings when it's all made of identical tilesets mixed with whiteout conditions was no fun in the beta versions and I'm kind of surprised it made it to the final game without any revisions.
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Jul 22, 2021 21:51
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I've finally gotten around to playing Below Zero on PS4 and am having a blast. But I have to admit I've gotten a bit stuck and can't figure out what else I need to do and where else I haven't been. I'd rather not look things up and risk sequence breaking so if anyone could give me a tip on where to find progression clues that'd be much appreciated. I've cured the bacteria in the frozen leviathan. I've got AL-AN in my head and have been collecting body part blueprints. So far, I've found the Architect Tissues in the icy area (which I did way too early because I completely missed the way to the robotics lab and was wandering around across the bridge with no snow clothes, no snowfox, no prawn, nothin), and the Architect Skeleton in I think the deep anemone cave place? I've helped Marguerit and been to her greenhouse. I've visited all the Alterra facilities on the map. I've scanned a good number of Architect Artifacts, not sure how many exactly. AL-AN has chimed in about a few which I've found and turned off, if it means anything they're N6M, Q59, PK8, and X3J. But I've also found some more without his help. So it seems like all I have left is to find the Architect Organs but I don't think I've seen any clue as to where they're located. AL-AN's been quiet for a while. I dunno if I'm just supposed to keep looking for more unmarked Artifacts to help him network so he can give me some more beacons, but I can't think of where I haven't looked. A few other bits of progression info I can think of - I've got the Prawn and Truck at the mid tier depth modules but not the max yet since I haven't found any Kyanite. I assume that it's in the as yet undiscovered deepest parts of the ocean which is probably where I need to go next, but I haven't stumbled onto it yet and nothing's pointed me in the right direction. Gonna go wander around and try to guess what areas of the map I haven't bumbled my way into yet, but if anyone can figure out what the next breadcrumb I'm missing is let me know.
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Jul 22, 2021 22:21
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Regy Rusty posted:Gonna go wander around and try to guess what areas of the map I haven't bumbled my way into yet, but if anyone can figure out what the next breadcrumb I'm missing is let me know. Not sure ALAN ever gives you a marker for the area you're missing, only a vague reference that only really helps if you've already been there. Do some more exploring in either the area around Marguerite's underwater base or the area with the pink fumaroles and bunch of lithium everywhere.
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Jul 22, 2021 22:33
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NoEyedSquareGuy posted:Not sure ALAN ever gives you a marker for the area you're missing, only a vague reference that only really helps if you've already been there. Found it! I must have juuust missed that I could go deeper there when I did that area last night.
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Jul 22, 2021 23:03
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Half this game is like twisty little caves with no visual signposting that turn out to lead to key plot points. Makes me pine for Lost River and the cove tree.
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Jul 22, 2021 23:13
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You're in a series of twisted passages, all alike. You are likely to be eaten by a leviathan
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Jul 22, 2021 23:48
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Regy Rusty posted:Found it! I must have juuust missed that I could go deeper there when I did that area last night. This is a mild spoiler but When you get the kyanite and return to base to build the final depth upgrades, pack your seatruck/inventory with everything you need to build the alien bits. I'd even recommend looking up the recipe for the final alien bits and taking those with you too. The area you need to go to after the purple crystal area is attached to the crystal area, so it'll save you some annoyance from having to drive back to base, get/make the parts, and drive back. Particularly when the critters down there may require a lot of hiding and repairing, depending on what upgrades you have.
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Jul 22, 2021 23:59
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Endgame spoilers: People keep saying the circled pengling research area is where Sam stashed the antibacterial. By my reckoning, the circled area is the one with the research setup and a PDA from her! The area with the antibacterial does not actually seem to be any of the ones on the map - it seems to actually be to the northeast of that one. And it's not like it's unprecedented that it isn't marked on the map - there are several others that do not seem to have a corresponding marking on the map. Normally I'm pretty good at reading maps in real life and video games, and this threw me off because I kept trying to reach the circled cave from the leviathan cave and it kept bringing me to that one. Hell, even after watching a video where someone travelled to it I had a hard time finding it myself - it clearly is not anywhere near the marked cave or in fact any landmarks so far as I noticed. It's just in the mountains tucked away in an overhang that I probably walked past several times without noticing. Also, the larger surface area with the worm was massively frustrating to me. The constant bad weather actually hid the fact that it was a wide-open area with lots of branching paths from me. The worm attacks seemed obviously scripted to be in certain spots so I thought it was a setpiece sort of thing where you had to follow the worm tunnels and survive its attacks until you reached the end. I looked up a map of that area and was honestly shocked that there was so much to it - gently caress if I could tell with zero visibility and zero landmarks! I was just going around in circles for a few hours, I guess. Finally, I searched all over while trying to find the Architect fabricator facility. I knew it must have be at the deepest part of the world - because of course it would be. But Below Zero didn't seem to have the same progression as the first game. Instead of a limited number of ways to go deeper that all lead to the same place, each biome seemed to have its own deep area. I had already explored the crystal area and found the facility with the body part in it on my own without a marker, and that seemed to be the deepest it went. Given the pattern of the rest of the game, I thought the way to the fabricator facility must have been in the deep part of another biome. So I went all over, looking for any deep areas I hadn't explored and kept coming up empty. I even returned to the crystal biome and explored it again and came up empty. My only clue that the facility was down there was when I set up a scanner base and saw several shadow leviathans when I only remembered seeing one. I had to go down and scour the place back and forth a few times to even find my way to the even deeper crystal biome which I may have missed because it wasn't even very visually distinct among the forest of crystals! I never had to look up a map of the original game to find my way all to the end. I even found the thermal plant without help. Maybe my lack of ability to find the final deeper crystal biome was my fault and I took the wrong cues from how the game's structure was set up. But the signposting overall was kind of bad, especially in the surface areas. And I feel sort of vindicated that I'm not the only one with issues with those bits. I still liked the game and my grumpiness from all the wasted time didn't diminish the impact of the ending, though! I rather liked the ending.
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Jul 23, 2021 00:42
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Zachack posted:This is a mild spoiler but When you get the kyanite and return to base to build the final depth upgrades, pack your seatruck/inventory with everything you need to build the alien bits. I'd even recommend looking up the recipe for the final alien bits and taking those with you too. The area you need to go to after the purple crystal area is attached to the crystal area, so it'll save you some annoyance from having to drive back to base, get/make the parts, and drive back. Particularly when the critters down there may require a lot of hiding and repairing, depending on what upgrades you have. Haha far too late for that I'm afraid. What you described is exactly what happened.
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Jul 23, 2021 00:50
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And finished. I think it's overall a bit weaker than the first game, and in particular the journey to the deepest depths felt nowhere near as awe inspiring and momentous as the equivalent in the first one. Still the ending was extremely cool and I did have a good time the whole way through.
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Jul 23, 2021 01:44
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I remember playing the EA of this yeaaars ago when you could still sculpt the ocean floor. I finally got around to getting it on the Switch because it wouldn't stop crashing on my PC. Dang I missed this game and my 7yo is completely enamoured with it. To the point it captures his attention more than the standard "goof around in Fortnite creative mode" of a lot of kids. I just wish I didn't get my seamoth eaten by leviathans so much.
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Jul 25, 2021 07:15
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Missed me by that much.
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Jul 26, 2021 14:24
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Don't take that from it. Get a prawn suit, grappling arm, and drilling arm and reclaim the sea.
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Jul 26, 2021 14:30
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I played through to the end of BZ. Overall I enjoyed it but the first game was the better of the two. However, BZ did have a a great story that kept me engaged, right up till the end. The world had some cool parts like the twisty bridges and the lily pad islands, but the rest was kinda boring. It felt a lot smaller too but that’s probably because a 1/4 or so of the game is overland. The overland sections felt forced and honestly, they shouldn’t have bothered. The snow fox could’ve been cool but was kinda too glitchy and fragile. The land worms got annoying real fast. I wasn’t a fan of the sea truck either and would’ve preferred the Cyclops return instead. Oh well. But I did enjoy the game. If they make a third, I hope they take their time with it and not rush. BZ just felt kinda rushed in places. But it’s still an amazing accomplishment for an Indy studio just like the first one was. 8/10
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Jul 26, 2021 21:18
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I did really like the sea truck but by the time I had a bunch of cool modules there wasn't much I still needed to do with my mobile base. Probably should have scoured the bridges area sooner. I did get a ton of use out of the prawn dock though.
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Jul 26, 2021 21:20
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It's kinda sad how we were all excited for months to play BZ, comes out then the thread slows to a halt  There was a lot of things in BZ that I wish were better polished. As it's been mentioned multiple times; the story was half-baked and didn't breadcrumb well, the above ground sections weren't fun and confusing, and being able to miss out on key plot areas like how I completely missed visiting the frozen leviathan until the game was about to end . What bummed me out the most about BZ: were the deep end biomes. There was something about the crystal caves that just didn't capture that sense of wonder/danger that the end zones of Subnautica held. Maybe the build-up was better when you had to go through Lost River, then Inactive and then Active Lava Zones. Those biomes held a lot more story ie the labs, the containment, the tree, the artifacts and history, etc. There wasn't really anything interesting in the crystal caves. Oh well! Happy to have played it, glad I waited for it to come out of early access. But it won't get a second play through from me. Where I've done 3 replays of original Subnautica.
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Jul 26, 2021 21:42
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Regy Rusty posted:I did really like the sea truck but by the time I had a bunch of cool modules there wasn't much I still needed to do with my mobile base. Probably should have scoured the bridges area sooner. My big takeaway is that in 10 years when they both get remastered the cyclops and sea truck need to be switched in the games. BZ being smaller meant that I really only needed one base, so having a big home base and a true mobile base with the cyclops would be just right - let me park my rear end in the glaciers or lilypads or whatever and do excursions from there using the prawn for the various tunnel systems, while the cyclops fends off the somewhat too-numerous hostile critters. On the other side, OG was big enough that I wanted multiple bases, which makes the sea truck as a base intermediary vehicle a lot better, and I think the final areas would have been more fun if the cyclops hadn't been so big and clunky.
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Jul 27, 2021 06:10
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OgNar posted:Missed me by that much. really puts to scale just how big these fuckers are. you don't get the same impression from the front.
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Jul 27, 2021 07:32
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Geodude posted:It's kinda sad how we were all excited for months to play BZ, comes out then the thread slows to a halt End biomes: Maybe that's because they didn't open up? In SN, you get through some tunnels and arrive in fairly big and impressive areas. While in BZ, everything just gets more cramped. If the last crystal area was a more open area with some bigger features that could've been better. I also felt it didn't help that it went purple crystal => red crystal. Make up something new, jeez.
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Jul 27, 2021 10:32
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Zachack posted:My big takeaway is that in 10 years when they both get remastered the cyclops and sea truck need to be switched in the games. BZ being smaller meant that I really only needed one base, so having a big home base and a true mobile base with the cyclops would be just right - let me park my rear end in the glaciers or lilypads or whatever and do excursions from there using the prawn for the various tunnel systems, while the cyclops fends off the somewhat too-numerous hostile critters. On the other side, OG was big enough that I wanted multiple bases, which makes the sea truck as a base intermediary vehicle a lot better, and I think the final areas would have been more fun if the cyclops hadn't been so big and clunky. Navigating a fully upgraded Cyclops through the lost river and into the lava zone was the highlight of the game for me. Dropping distraction torpedoes, hitting the shields when you get attacked, steering it through the cramped passageways. All of that was fun as hell. But gently caress those lava leech assholes forever.
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Jul 27, 2021 11:39
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Cartoon Man posted:Navigating a fully upgraded Cyclops through the lost river and into the lava zone was the highlight of the game for me. Dropping distraction torpedoes, hitting the shields when you get attacked, steering it through the cramped passageways. All of that was fun as hell. But gently caress those lava leech assholes forever. I actually felt like the first game peaked (in terms of environments and awe) at the ghost tree. I hated the lava zone, I crosscrossed that thing in my cyclops a dozen times before finding the geothermal plant, and it was way way too dark- so I had to rely on sonar, which isn't actually super fun imo. My game was also breaking down at this point and huge chunks of stuff wouldn't load properly, including the *lighting* in the very final area before the alien containment. Maybe the lighting in the inactive lava zone was also broken and that's why it was so dark? Dunno.
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Jul 27, 2021 12:05
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:Maybe the lighting in the inactive lava zone was also broken and that's why it was so dark? Dunno. Were you playing with the visuals set to "Cinematic"? That makes a huge difference in how dark dark is.
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Jul 27, 2021 16:12
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wolrah posted:Were you playing with the visuals set to "Cinematic"? That makes a huge difference in how dark dark is. I think I had whatever the default is, I don't recall changing it. Had no idea this was an option. EDIT: Also, I'm certain at least some of my lighting was just broken at the end of the game. In the active lava zone outside the containment area, the first few times I visited (and built a base) it was properly lit up bright, but later something went wrong and the whole thing became this murky green. The game seemed to be falling apart at this point, from one edge of the inside of the containment area, only the lowest LoD would show up on the opposite side, and when getting close to the surface of the water, the shaders became broken, and you could clearly see all the rough polygons. Comte de Saint-Germain fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jul 27, 2021 |
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Jul 27, 2021 16:36
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That entire area is just very unfinished. I ran into probably 5 different bugs in the few hours I spent in that segment and several others in the thread mentioned encountering all of them. not exactly a bug, but the area leading up to the leviathan containment building also does not agree with the game’s draw distance at all.
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Jul 27, 2021 18:11
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Put about ten hours into BZ this past weekend before realizing I was just not having as much fun as I had with OG Subnautica. Decided to just call it even and stop playing further since it wasn't very enjoyable. Most of my gripes seem to have been covered already but it basically just boiled down to A) plot I couldn't give two fucks about, B) No cyclops/the seatruck isn't nearly as cool, C) Map design.
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Aug 3, 2021 19:07
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I've never had an interest in survival games, but after watching Lillia play the game, this actually looks kinda fun and interesting. I love exploration, and the survival loop doesn't look to be too punishing either, just enough to matter, but not harsh enough to be frustrating. I've heard that's a very difficult balance to meet for many games (*cough We Happy Few *cough*). It's not SO exciting that I need to pick it up now, but maybe at the next sale.
Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Aug 4, 2021 |
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Aug 4, 2021 15:26
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Subnautica is very good, even with a few rough edges (sorry Obama guy). BZ made me appreciate the original game even more because in so many ways it’s Subnautica with bad design choices instead of good ones.
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Aug 4, 2021 16:06
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Eh, I would say that BZ fixes many of the original games flaws, and then makes some new ones. I think it’s on pair with the original.
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Aug 4, 2021 19:01
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I got like ~20 hours in BZ just building a base and dicking around aimlessly, accidentally wandering into plot/story stuff. Then another game I wanted to play went on sale so I played that and now I'm having a hell of a time returning to BZ and getting my bearings. I'm almost tempted to just start over because that might make things simpler. With SN I was better able to drop it and pick it back up again when playing other games around the same time. I think the world design plays into that- where you have large biomes for stuff practically advertising there's something new in there, but in BZ everything's so compact that you can easily miss something if you aren't looking for it or don't know what to look for.
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Aug 4, 2021 20:06
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I haven't finished BZ, and while it obviously has some problems, I don't think it's substantially worse than the first game. The improvements to the streaming alone is worth a lot of other changes I don't like as much. I'll trade my beloved Cyclops for the seatruck if it means that the level actually shows up. I tend to be forgiving of the story having some odd choices considering the circumstances behind its creation. It's really hard to write a story around recycled material, it takes a lot of skill and experience and even then the seams often wind up showing. I also think they've got a really unique challenge in BZ. SN came out at a time when everyone was releasing big procedural survival games with minimal or non-existent story or end-game goals, and SN shows up with a hand crafted world and *just enough* story to really surprise people. BZ can't sneak up on you like that, because everybody going in knows "oh this is the underwater survival crafter *with a story*" so expectations are just going to be very different.
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Aug 5, 2021 12:22
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Finish BZ and get back to us.
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Aug 5, 2021 12:40
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The only story part of BZ that fizzled for me was the frozen leviathan and your sister’s fate. The rest was great and I thought the ending was pretty good. But I think they wanted to do more with the frozen leviathan but just didn’t get it done. The first game’s story was better though, especially the reveal at the end when you make it down to the containment facility. I really hope we get a sequel in the same universe but they should take a good 4-5 years to make it and not rush. Cartoon Man fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Aug 5, 2021 |
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Aug 5, 2021 12:49
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Fiction-wise my Big Beef with Bee Zee is the failure to do anything interesting with alan the alien. You've got this representative of a radically abhuman species in the protagonist's head and the writers choose to use this as a way to explain what's special and interesting about humans: we're mortal, we face every day as a chance to make new discoveries, we like hope, etc etc. Alan basically becomes your space buddy. This is thematic territory that's been mined out by decades of past work. Now, if my av didn't give it away, I like and appreciate SF that tries to really grapple with how very alien the alien could be. Wouldn't an organism that views bodies as disposable chassis have its own perspective on the ecology of this planet? Wouldn't a chimera built on the harvested best traits of dozens of species have something to say about how the protagonist relates to and exploits her environment? Would they be horrified by their codependency with this single, destructible human? Would they see themselves as a curator of diversity and a protector of ecosystems, or as the apex authority over a horrific chaos of unguided evolution that (ultimately) reached up and devoured them? Would they even be able to communicate with the player character in words, or could they instead use something like operant conditioning to guide the player into the behaviors they want? A human being is a highly specific, highly contingent organism, a peculiarity, a rarity: not a generic touchstone to use as a baseline against which aliens are contrasted. If the game really wanted to use the alien as a mirror to the human, why not get Alan going on what makes humans unique, rather than our own myths about who we are? For instance: human beings are not strong individual thinkers or problem-solvers. We are evolved to take social cues, to identify experts and mimic them. Our cognition is in some respects inferior to a chimp's or a bird's on basic logic tasks. Get Alan digging at that stuff. Make them ask the player "why are you alone, when your mind is meant to be with others?" And make the player ask the same question right back at them: aren't you meant to be part of a network? (Tie in the fact that the player could be using wikis and forums and reddits to guide their behavior!!) Most of all, make Alan's presence in the character's head a presence in gameplay as more than a beacon-giver. Let them speak through mechanics as much as words. gently caress I wish I could've worked on this  e: and if the emotional goal of the story is to create a bond with alan the alien, well, all the better to make him really strange! Make that bond a tenuous connection across a gaping chasm of eons of divergent evolution and it's all the more meaningful! Get the player wondering whether this thing even has theory of mind or whether you're interacting with a machine learning model of a human-friendly psyche while the real alan broods in there being unknowable. Make every moment of grace, charity, and trust truly unexpected and uncertain. Alan's body is menacing, Alan's promises are uncertain. Use that to create doubt. Then, if you want a happy payoff, reaffirm that the bond really does exist, that Alan really does value you as more than a tool. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Aug 5, 2021 |
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Aug 5, 2021 14:08
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Remember they started wrapping BZ up and a pandemic hit. Blew everyones schedule to hell. I'll still play BZ, have like 200+h in it so far. While its smaller, its biomes are much more well done. But i'm just a massive fan of swimming games. Bought Deep Diving Simulator and Beyond Blue recently. Though neither are very good games but good swimming sims.
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Aug 5, 2021 14:13
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The Subnautica devs needs to stop making large confusing areas that are hard to navigate, BZ has two of them but I’m not sure that either were as bad as the lava zone.
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Aug 5, 2021 14:37
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Oasx posted:The Subnautica devs needs to stop making large confusing areas that are hard to navigate, BZ has two of them but I’m not sure that either were as bad as the lava zone. Even knowing where it was, I lost track of how many times there was a big seamonster blocking my view of the door. Which reminds me I miss when sea dragons were more chill AI wise, it lead to more photo ops. Time was I could turn around and look at a sea dragon staring at me hovering outside the entrance all relaxed and happy to see me... Of course this was also a time where I would see Warpers follow me indoors inside bases more often sooo...
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Aug 5, 2021 15:01
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I also have to say that in BZ I really liked the more chill fauna- gently caress warpers forever, what a massively annoying monster. (I haven't reached the end yet so maybe there's a BZ equivalent?)
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Aug 5, 2021 16:15
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I haven't finished BZ, and while it obviously has some problems, I don't think it's substantially worse than the first game. The improvements to the streaming alone is worth a lot of other changes I don't like as much. I'll trade my beloved Cyclops for the seatruck if it means that the level actually shows up. This is about how I felt about BZ. any issues the game has compared to subnautica are easy for me to forgive when the game doesn’t constantly feel like it’s buckling under its own relatively modest weight. Also, I prefer BZ’s soundtrack and it feels like the music transition triggers are handled a lot more smoothly which contributes to the same feeling
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Aug 5, 2021 16:30
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I also have to say that in BZ I really liked the more chill fauna- gently caress warpers forever, what a massively annoying monster. Nah just a couple rear end in a top hat reapers in the final crystal cave, hopefully you’ve got the sea truck bug zapper installed.
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Aug 6, 2021 02:29
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I know I'm probably Playing Wrong, but I honestly never even built the cyclops until I HAD to to make the escape rocket. Clunking around in just the prawn (Or as I call him, Crab Manager) was enough for me. Although I'm like this in real life too. Never ask me to drive a moving van. If I had it my way, I would have never given up the sea moth.
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Aug 6, 2021 03:05
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