Subnautica - Undah Dah Sea (you die)

[Ghostse]

The developers have a history that isn't great, and regardless of what reddit like to think

This is not a surprise.

Buckle in kids. Its story time.
Unknown Worlds is the company founded by the core of the Half Life mod Natural Selection.

For those unfortunate enough to not have played absolute peak gaming, NS was a team-based asymetic shooter with RTS elements between a team of Marines and Aliens. Marines have a commander who plays RTS with real humans as his units. Aliens are more decentralized and much more about independent action.
This was around the time VOIP started being viable in games, and both teams required coordination, and this shit was absolute peak.

Changes to Steam (as they shifted from just pulling bits to actually maintaining files) killed the way Natural Selection was distributed and the mod effectively died.

But in the final versions, the game had started to shit itself. They were focusing on catering to a "competitive" format (because a good commander really changed team performance)

Anyway, UW shifted to Natural Selection 2 as a standalone game. The initial plan was to release it for Source, but they decided that Source couldn't do what they wanted to, which was lighting with random growth. The pitch was very cool: sort of how Star Craft has Creep, in NS2 the aliens would need to colonize areas with alien bacterial mats to build buildings. This sounded super cool and would lean in to Natural Selection's core of asymmetry.

The dev process on NS2 was absolutely and irrevocably fucked. They spent years on their POS buggy engine before a remotely playable game emerged. They had to devote dev resources to some Sudoku game to keep the lights on, as well as a Lua IDE.

NS2 finally hit playability and... there was jack shit nothing in it that couldn't have been done in Source. The alien creep growth wasn't continuous like in the demos, it was just expanding polygons with random center placement. Nothing requiring a whole new engine, but they wanted to make their own engine and got retarded paypig fans of their earlier work (me) to pay them to do it.

Adding to that, NS2 was no longer Natural Selection when it was released.
The asymmetry was gone; now the Aliens had a commander and Marines had personal resource pools. With a few differences on mapcontrol, it was now pretty much every other team FPS with one team more melee focused. (there is bunch more of NS theming and tactics that got completely lost in NS2 but I'll avoid the spergout)

In the middle of this, when Subnautica released, when Flavra made some libtard rant about "there being no guns in Subnautica because guns are evil". (which I get why they did it from a gameplay perspective but it made zero sense for you to not be able to build a rail gun when all the components are there and a big fucking thing that needs killing was swimming around)
This while they were still trying to fix the FPS that was (at the time) the only reason anyone gave a shit about them.

At that moment I knew UW was fucking toast and their output going forward would be ass.

So this shit doesn't surprise me in the least.

subcutaneously administered Kharaa antibiotic (erroneously labeled "antidote" in-game, despite Kharaa being a bacteria; and not a poison)

The Kharaa are the alien life form in Natural Selection, and this is an easter egg / supposed to be the origin of the Kharaa.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

That insufferable faggot seth dickinson is apparently working on subnautica 2 so I don't have high hopes

For the most of you that don't know, he contributed to the demise of the freespace modding community by injecting incredibly cringe male feminist stuff into the mods he was involved in and then having constant covid/TDS meltdowns later on.

I only knew that Charlie Cleveland was cringe, now you're telling me there's TWO OF THEM?

 

[Echo_Doge]

It should be mentioned that Moonbreaker was also developed by Unknown Worlds and released by Krafton, and was intended to last for a decade or more.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/845890/Moonbreaker

(Shortly after it fully released in February 2024, it completely and utterly died.)

So... fun fact: Apparently Unknown Worlds had pissed away almost all of the money they made from Subnautica and Below Zero. They were on the verge of going under.

Moonbreaker was basically a big scam of a live-service game that they came up with specifically to snag a big company like Krafton and get themselves bought out.

They got Krafton so convinced that Moonbreaker would be a cash cow that a bunch of money was invested.

And when they pulled the "We're out of money and can't complete the game. But if SOMEONE were to bail us out, we could finish it and pay them back with interest!" card, Krafton was in so deep already that they just bought the company outright, convinced they'd recoup their losses when this AMAZING game released.

But Unknown Worlds had barely done shit with Moonbreaker, so when they half-assed it to release, it bombed. Moonbreaker flopping so hard after costing Krafton so much money was DIRECTLY what led to Krafton digging into the company and seeing the Subnautica 2 grift going on.

NS2 finally hit playability and... there was jack shit nothing in it that couldn't have been done in Source. The alien creep growth wasn't continuous like in the demos, it was just expanding polygons. The asymmetry was gone, now the Aliens had a commander and Marines had personal resource pools.

In the middle of this, when Subnautica released, when Flavra made some libtard rant about "there being no guns in Subnautica because guns are evil" I knew UW was fucking toast.

The entire upper management of Unknown Worlds are a bunch of grifters. Everythingthey take a direct interest in turns to shit.

They KNEW they could do everything in Source. But they also knew that they could make more money by grifting from their fanbase for years to cobble a shitty "Custom Engine" together instead of licensing Source and having the game ready to go in a few months.

Subnautica was a side project they picked up to try and convince investors that they were a totally legit super serious game company, not a bunch of scammers basically doing an asset flip of Natural Selection in a worse engine.

They didn't expect it to do much, but they somehow ended up with a talented sound designer, a biologist with some decent writing chops, and some talented graphics designers that made a pretty compelling early-access game.

They listened to Early Access feedback, realized when to cut their losses on certain content/features that they couldn't get to work in time, and got signal-boosted to the sky by Lets-Players (Markiplier, Jack Septiceye, ect). And in the end, they accidentally made a good game.

So when Subnautica made them bank instead of being mere busywork and Natural Selection 2 died a slow, embarrassing death instead of being a big ESport success, they pivoted. Hard.

The upper management looked into Subnautica. And it turned to shit, as can be seen in Below Zero.


Still, the hypocrisy of them spouting their anti-gun nonsense when his company started with a violent, PvP, gun-filled game is endlessly hilarious.

I only knew that Charlie Cleveland was cringe, now you're telling me there's TWO OF THEM?

At minimum. The majority of the team that's left are Californians, if that tells you anything.

 

[Bunkerhousing]

I want to try Below Zero but I do not want to give them any money. Kinguin is selling something with a windows account, aybe that would be a way to play the marxist story without giving them monies. But unsure how it works when you buy a windows account.

 

[geckogoy]

I only knew that Charlie Cleveland was cringe, now you're telling me there's TWO OF THEM?

TBH its a similar story now you mention it

 

[Ghostse]

So... fun fact: Apparently Unknown Worlds had pissed away almost all of the money they made from Subnautica and Below Zero. They were on the verge of going under.

Moonbreaker was basically a big scam of a live-service game that they came up with specifically to snag a big company like Krafton and get themselves bought out.

They got Krafton so convinced that Moonbreaker would be a cash cow that a bunch of money was invested.

And when they pulled the "We're out of money and can't complete the game. But if SOMEONE were to bail us out, we could finish it and pay them back with interest!" card, Krafton was in so deep already that they just bought the company outright, convinced they'd recoup their losses when this AMAZING game released.

But Unknown Worlds had barelydone shit with Moonbreaker, so when they half-assed it to release, it bombed. Moonbreaker flopping so hard after costing Krafton so much money was DIRECTLY what led to Krafton digging into the company and seeing the Subnautica 2 grift going on.

This is completely on-brand for UW. They did this shit with NS2, spending years in DevHell while they would take small jobs, like the Sudoku game, their Lua IDE and doing other contract work, to keep the lights on while also begging additional investment money and try to get more cash from paypigs - They got some outside investment as well as fan bux.
While I had been retarded enough to give them IIRC $50 (which at the time I figured I'd had significantly more than $50 worth of fun with NS1 so they'd earned it) especially as they continued to change the game (Alien commander is where I pretty much gave up hope)

NS2 was stable-but-not-complete when they started working on Subnautica so the endless grift pipeline is at the core of their identity.

And yes. They pissed away all that money. A lot of the money was lost, like any good Ponzi scheme, in making NS2 not total ass & paying off their first round of investors.
They were still dreaming of the big money from licensing their engine and pushing Lua as the next greatest coding language - apparently their IDE/debugger was apparently the bees knees for all 10 people who actually use Lua.

The entire upper management of Unknown Worlds are a bunch of grifters. Everythingthey take a direct interest in turns to shit.

They KNEW they could do everything in Source. But they also knew that they could make more money by grifting from their fanbase for years to cobble a shitty "Custom Engine" together instead of licensing Source and having the game ready to go in a few months.

We know NOW it was a total grift, and what was talked about wasn't shipped BUT:
the Natural Selection 2 pitched to paypigs, the Alien Creep was much more important than what it turned out to be, and to do what they were describing to fans- randomly growing alien creep that would expand to cover floors, walls, ceilings and respond dynamically to game events including automically morphing into structures - would have been nearly impossible in Source.

(NS2, as pitched, was going to be more about the Aliens managing the Creep and trying to influence its growth; Gorges (alien builder class) would just direct the creep to grow to a resource node and the creep would automatically start to build one, and any alien could contribute resources to make it build faster. vs what it became which is just a biological power connection)

Now there's the bigger question of why they didn't just do the needful to ship NS:Source and work on NS3 with their custom wank engine afterwards but, as you covered: the answer is grift. If they gave people a playable-without-relying-on-pre-steam-versions-of-halflife version of Natural Selection they'd never pry them over their attempted new hotness.

So when Subnautica made them bank instead of being mere busywork and Natural Selection 2 died a slow, embarrassing death instead of being a big ESport success, they pivoted. Hard.

The upper management looked into Subnautica. And it turned to shit, as can be seen in Below Zero.


Still, the hypocrisy Flavra spouting his anti-gun nonsense when his company started with a violent, PvP, gun-filled game is endlessly hilarious.

Flavra & Cleveland were considered near-gods by the NS community. I never did any looking into the behind-the-scenes of the actual mod development, but I don't know if early success went to their heads and then they Libtarded out or if this was a case of "succeeded not because of but in spite of", or if there was a less visible personality who didn't come to UW.

But in any case, Flavra after starting Unknown Worlds has had the reverse midas touch on every passion project.

Flavra's christmas movie I'm sure will be no exception.

 

[regalterry]

he contributed to the demise of the freespace modding community by injecting incredibly cringe male feminist stuff into the mods he was involved in

You have no idea how angry this makes me.

And a Kerbal Space Program mod to add women’s names to the list of possible astronauts, back in the day when the game only had men’s names; on the theory that the Kerbals, being little green hamster-frog people, might not be sexually dimorphic.

These animals are a plague.

But Unknown Worlds had barely done shit with Moonbreaker, so when they half-assed it to release, it bombed. Moonbreaker flopping so hard after costing Krafton so much money was DIRECTLY what led to Krafton digging into the company and seeing the Subnautica 2 grift going on.

Another in the long list of examples of why publishers need to firmly be pressing the boot on the gamedevs' necks if you want a good game.

I hope Krafton makes them crunch like niggers in a lithium mine until they make a good game.

 

[Echo_Doge]

I don't know if early success went to their heads and then they Libtarded out or if this was a case of "succeeded not because of but in spite of", or if there was a less visible personality who didn't come to UW.

But in any case, Flavra after starting Unknown Worlds has had the reverse midas touch on every passion project.

It's marketing. He markets himself as this brilliant, creative mind who was an early access pioneer. But most of his stuff is basically dev-logs, carefully edited to make in-development stuff look way better than it is, while taking credit for it.

His stupid Christmas movie is the best example of this. The movie looks like trash and is going to suck. But he already has an army of dickriders worshiping him and he's planning on selling a "Making a movie" documentary about it that will probably make more than the movie itself.

He runs completely on his reputation.

 

[Counterfeit Obol]

Reading up on UW's follies, and it turns out the suits didn't know how to shoot web after all.

Subnautica was a side project they picked up to try and convince investors that they were a totally legit super serious game company, not a bunch of scammers basically doing an asset flip of Natural Selection in a worse engine.

They didn't expect it to do much, but they somehow ended up with a talented sound designer, a biologist with some decent writing chops, and some talented graphics designers that made a pretty compelling early-access game.

Reminds me of how The (OG) Lion King and Shrek were side projects the executives paid not much attention and made considerable bank, while Pocahontas and The Prince of Egypt were the main focus and didn't perform as well.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

I want to try Below Zero but I do not want to give them any money. Kinguin is selling something with a windows account, aybe that would be a way to play the marxist story without giving them monies. But unsure how it works when you buy a windows account.

May I introduce you to qBittorent? Nigga.

 

[Hermiöne Granger]

I want to try Below Zero but I do not want to give them any money. Kinguin is selling something with a windows account, aybe that would be a way to play the marxist story without giving them monies. But unsure how it works when you buy a windows account.

Why the hell you want to play this woke garbage?, go watch a youtube gameplay instead.

 

[regalterry]

Why the hell you want to play this woke garbage?, go watch a youtube gameplay instead.

Especially since the game fails to capture what made Subnautica so memorable.

I too wish there was another game like Subnautica to play, but the original developer is unlikely to strike that gold vein again.

 

[Fig Kommandant]

I too wish there was another game like Subnautica to play,

The Forgotten City is not at all the same setting or a survival crafting game, but the atmosphere still feels similar. It's a mix of cosy, horror and weirdly creepy set in a roman town trapped in time. The game focuses on exploring an "alien" world similar to Subnautica. Like I said, really not the same setting or genre, but it scratched a similar itch for me as Subnautica did.

 

[Echo_Doge]

Why the hell you want to play this woke garbage?, go watch a youtube gameplay instead.

To be fair, some of the environments are pretty cool. I like the Crystal/Fabricator Caves, the Twisty Bridges, and the Purple Vents.

And the Squidshark, Rock Puncher, and Shadow Leviathan are all great creatures to see.

But the story sucks, the voiced character is annoying, the Pajeet PDA Voice is insanely grating, and a lot of creatures are just reskinned versions of stuff from the original game (Chelcerates being reskinned Reapers is most blatant)

 

[JJLiautaud]

All I know about BZ is that it was so bad Old Man Jingles stopped doing his let's play of it, from the thread it seems like he was justified.

 

[regalterry]

from the thread it seems like he was justified

It's basically the textbook example of a developer completely misunderstanding what made the previous game great.

I don't know if it was the devs deliberately making a game to spite audiences because they were praising the wrong things about Subnautica 1, or whether they were trying to compensate for what they saw as the failings of the originals and ended up going overboard, but the end result was rancid.

I think the game would have been more warmly received if the protagonist and her sister weren't so utterly stupid, entitled and unlikeable. Whoever wrote the plot of BZ needs to be fired.

 

[Coldsteel the Hedgehog]

It's basically the textbook example of a developer completely misunderstanding what made the previous game great.

I don't know if it was the devs deliberately making a game to spite audiences because they were praising the wrong things about Subnautica 1, or whether they were trying to compensate for what they saw as the failings of the originals and ended up going overboard, but the end result was rancid.

I think the game would have been more warmly received if the protagonist and her sister weren't so utterly stupid, entitled and unlikeable. Whoever wrote the plot of BZ needs to be fired.

The worst part is that the plot is the result of a mid-development rewrite. Originally, Robin was a scientist reporting on Area Zero who ends up conspiring against Alterra after they more or less leave her for dead. I'm fairly certain the planned ending involved making explosives and sending them up to your boss' ship and blwoing it the fuck up, talk about being way more exciting, lol.

 

[Shartavius]

I vaguely recall one of the disastrous development hurdles being that late-development rewrites of the game's plot resulted in having to re-record the entirety of characters' dialogue with inferior actors; due to the pre-rewrite actors being unavailable during the pandemic. Despite the worst version of the game being the release version being standard fare in this bleak chapter of human existence, it remains telling that UW essentially abandoned the title once the sales revenue came in to fund their next miscarriage (bringing BZ's QOL improvements into the original game is the last thing they bothered doing for the franchise that wasn't terrible).

 

[CaptainAutism69]

The Forgotten City is not at all the same setting or a survival crafting game, but the atmosphere still feels similar. It's a mix of cosy, horror and weirdly creepy set in a roman town trapped in time. The game focuses on exploring an "alien" world similar to Subnautica. Like I said, really not the same setting or genre, but it scratched a similar itch for me as Subnautica did.

I bought this today and tried it. I turned it off an got a refund where within the first 45 min I was given a quest to stop people bullying a faggot.
Woke garbage (that also runs like shit)

 

[Echo_Doge]

The worst part is that the plot is the result of a mid-development rewrite. Originally, Robin was a scientist reporting on Area Zero who ends up conspiring against Alterra after they more or less leave her for dead. I'm fairly certain the planned ending involved making explosives and sending them up to your boss' ship and blwoing it the fuck up, talk about being way more exciting, lol.

Yeah, it had some pretty interesting stuff. Where an Alterra exec was ACTUALLY smuggling samples of the Khaara Bacteria off the planet and onto his ship, with a plan to infect colonies and only sell them the cure if they basically allow themselves to be acquired by Alterra.

Your character found out about this and was "Accidentally" dropped into the arctic to die. And the end goal was to blow up the execs ship before it could leave the planet with the Khaara samples. Supposedly that would lead to the bacteria being spread to multiple colonies by scavenger vessels that clean up the debris and mutating into the Khaara from Natural Selection.

For inexplicable reasons, they decided to bastardize that plot into what became the Terrorist Sister B-Plot. And instead pushed the shitty "Last of the Precursors" scavenger-hunt plot with Al-An as the main one.

And they even bastardized THAT. Originally, Al-An was supposed to be a stranded Precursor AI able to talk, give background on the Precursors, and provide commentary, but your main character was supposed to stay silent. Now she never shuts the fuck up, Al-An is a full-fledged Precursor scientist responsible for the outbreak, and you run off to the Precursor Homeworld to basically excuse his horrific crimes via Sassy Black Girl Magic.

The ending was originally "You blew up a fucking Alterra ship. They know it was you and they'll be hunting for you." But Al-An offers you sanctuary with his people if you can rebuild his body and help power a phase gate to get the two of you off-world.

Made a lot more since than the current shitty ending.