Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Subnautica - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Video Games hosts Josh, Ryan and Paul are back with our Force a Friend follow up episode of Subnautica! Ryan has been playing Subnautica like crazy after Josh picked it for him to play and it’s time to see what all the fuss was about. A beloved video game by many, we dive into Subnautica to find out if it landed with Ryan or belongs at the bottom of the ocean as well as breaking down gameplay, story and more so you can decide if this should be on your video games radar.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter and Gaius214 Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com//videogamerspod Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/videogamerspod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You hear that? Ugh, paid. And done. That's the sound of bills being paid on time. But with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card, paying your bills could sound like this. Yes! Earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month.

Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, fellow gamers out there. Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast, where we break down all things related to gaming. Today, we are going to be deep diving, this time quite literally, one of the most successful indie titles of all time, Subnautica. I am your host Paul, and joining me are my two gamers in crime. Joining me here first, he's heard the roar of a Reaper Leviathan, now it's circling him before going in for the kill, it's Josh. Man, I don't fear the Reaper.

That's a good song, right? Good reference. All right. And then joining Josh and me, he is currently sitting in his Cyclops paperweight at the bottom of the ocean with no lights and no power. It's Ryan. Oh, why you got to do me like that, man? I'm just mad there's no banks here underwater that we can rob. Oh.

I love the fact. Since we've been playing Payday. That is a little bit of foreshadowing because Ryan ran out of gas in his submarine and then was just stranded at the bottom of the ocean with no way to continue. Yep. That seems like such a ryan thing to have happen like i can never imagine paul like running out of gas because paul would be the guy that's like okay i've got six extra batteries i've got food i've got water like i'm ready ryan's the guy that's like 100 i got a submarine dive dive and then it like just runs out and he's like what do i do now oh you are absolutely correct josh why do you think every time we talk about something i go

let's go zero planning zero foresight but ryan will just jump right in you have to love the enthusiasm all right so for our listeners out there this is actually our very first force a friend deep dive that we have covered We should probably explain the format a little bit here. Basically, what we have started doing is when we do these Force a Friend episodes, one host gets to pick any game that they want us to cover on the show, and they pick another host who is forced to play it. The third host then has the option to pick it up or not. It's totally up to them. And then we usually get about a two-week window where we get to play the game, and then we come back and talk about

what the experience was, do our full deep dive of the game. So, Josh, you're the one who had first honors. You chose to force Ryan to play one of your all-time favorite games, Subnautica. Yeah. If people want to hear the entire Force of Friend episode, just scroll back a couple of weeks.

You'll see it in there. That's where you talk about why you picked Subnautica, why you picked Ryan. We kind of prepped Ryan for what this kind of game is. You can go hear that full episode if you want. And then also as a side note, we should mention that our show is almost entirely supported through Patreon and support starts at five bucks a month.

You get really fun perks like bonus episodes. And one of the new perks is that if you go legendary, you can actually hijack a host where one of our listeners gets to pick the game that we are forced to play. You will pick the game and also pick what host has to play it. And then same format, we'll come back and do our deep dive episode. So if you want to check that out, it's at MultiplayerSquad.com. So Josh, just to kind of remind us, obviously they can go back and hear the full episode, but give us like the summary. Why'd you pick Subnautica and why Ryan?

Yeah, just really like in a nutshell, because again, that's a full episode. So if you want, go check that out. But for me, Subnautica is the game that made me realize that I love exploration, discovery, crafting, survival elements in a game. And I did not know that before Subnautica. So maybe I got lucky and just happened to pick like one of the best games of all time in that regard. But I've always

held this game in super high regard you have played it some ryan knew absolutely nothing about it and i thought here's a good example of somebody that has never even really seen this game that i can make play it and then say like is it just me like obviously it's not because this game's super highly rated but like does this resonate with somebody that's also, cause I went into this completely blind. So I just kind of wanted to see, you know, how does that work, you know, for Ryan? Did he, does he feel the same way as I do? Did, you know, did he have kind of the same journey as I did? You know, that sort of thing. So, you know, it's either going to be, I'm sorry, Ryan, or you're welcome, Ryan, you know, at the end of this episode. But we have not, and just to be clear, we have not talked about this. So this episode, we are finding out what Ryan thinks

as we're recording. So we don't talk about it beforehand. Ryan's been very careful to not give any impressions or anything like that. So one thing I love about this is that the listeners are literally going to hear it as we hear it as well. Yeah. So Josh, you are the quote expert on Subnautica having played it before. I think it's been a while since you last played it. Was it like five years ago? Something like that? It's been probably like four years, but then I did within the last couple years play the sequel which is subnautica below zero because they actually did come out with a sequel to this um and so and then you know it's one of those things where just ryan would randomly share a screenshot of something

and then it would just bring back like all these memories for me and i was like i want to play subnautica again so bad, but Starfield just came out. Yeah, Starfield's been calling us. Yeah. So, Ryan, you have been forced to crack out on Subnautica the last couple weeks. I looked on Steam and it tells me that you have 52 hours in the game. I mean, I don't know how much that is AFK, but you have played a lot of Subnautica here in the last i mean i don't know how much that is afk but you have played a lot of subnautica

here in the last couple weeks yeah i'd say probably uh probably 20 that's afk just just doing stuff i'll just rage and and hit escape and it pauses the game and i'll go do some other things or you know whatever unfortunately i wasn't playing starfield because i was stuck playing subnautica but not not to shame subnautica we got a lot more of that coming uh but it was probably about 30 hours or so that i got in of actual play time i would say okay very nice i i looked at my play record and i have five and a half hours played so i am very much a subnautica noob I tried playing it a few years back and got stuck trying to find some piece of hardware and just kind of like got too frustrated and just quit. And then after we

recorded the Force of Friend episode, I did reinstall it and I jumped back in and I think I played it for about 90 minutes. And then I've just been playing other stuff. Hysterically, I actually played Under the Waves. So I was actually playing another underwater submarine game. Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later. And then, of course, lots of Starfield lately since that has come out. So I think this will be a lot of fun because, Josh, you love it, but you haven't really played it very much recently. So there's also a matter of time. How well does this game hold up?

Ryan, you have now played so much here recently. And then for me, just kind of, you know, more or less still the noob that never really totally got hooked. So fun fact, when I introduced you guys, they're talking about like Reaper Leviathans and Cyclops. I don't even know what any of these things are. Even though we have not shared our thoughts on Subnautica, Ryan on occasion would post a screenshot or asking, how can I power up my Cyclops that is sitting on the bottom of the ocean? So I'm just throwing these conversations out there. I felt a little left out because you guys were talking a little bit about Subnautica. I kept trying to derail the conversation, trying to get Ryan to talk about our favorite HBO shows, talking about Danny McBride, Sidney Sweeney. I just felt

a little left out. So I'm glad we're now post-Subnautica. It's good though, because I love the idea that you're going to have this perspective of a listener that maybe hasn't played Subnautica, has heard of it, said, oh yeah, I know that game, but I've never really dove into it. And so I like that, Paul, you get to kind of be that voice for people that don't know a whole lot about the game. And it's like, you can ask questions, you can clarify things from that perspective. So it's actually neat that I'm kind of glad that you're not in the same category as like Ryan and myself, because I think it adds a very neat perspective to this. Yeah. And if we're talking about an element of the game and it doesn't make sense to me, then it definitely won't make sense for the listeners. So I'll jump in and ask questions as needed. All right. So Ryan, you boot up Subnautica. You don't know a whole lot of what to expect. Josh prepped you a little bit in the Force of Friend episode. Can you describe what the game actually does play like and what

your initial impressions were for like the first one or two hours of the game? Yeah. So basically you boot up, you're in a crisis. You're hopping into a escape pod your ship's going down you buckle up and get ready for the ride you know everything's going crazy lights are flashing um it's a really cool scene as you start just to start into a game like okay what the heck's going on how are we going to start this out some debris starts bouncing around inside your pod. Boom. Smokes you in the dome. You're out cold. You wake up. You're on Waterworld.

You're on this water planet. You climb out of your little escape pod and you see your ship a few hundred meters away in flames. Absolutely destroyed. And you're just like, okay, well, what do now? Where do we go from here? So it's an interesting way to start a game. I know these survival games always have, you know, different techniques on how they kind of bring you into the world that you need to just all of a sudden figure out,

all right, well, go ahead. Go ahead, little one. You know, go ahead and figure out what to do. So I did like how this one brought you into that world i thought it was pretty neat i thought the escape pod and then that's kind of your home base um yeah i i think it was pretty cool how they they started the whole you know kind of part of the game yeah i totally forgot how the game starts 100 miles an hour. You literally hear the alarms before the graphics even settle in.

So the fact that they throw you right into the middle of the chaos is actually really exciting. It doesn't last very long. It's like the first 60 to 90 seconds of the game. And then it's kind of like calmly swimming around looking at all these fish and starting to grab materials and you don't know what they do so it is a little funny that the game starts on such a frantic note and then it almost like immediately slams on the brakes while you just kind of get your bearings try to figure out what to do because obviously you're gonna have to survive on this alien ship but it does start out on on a really high note which i think is a lot of fun i was gonna say i was uh sitting there on the pod,

because it went from 100 to zero. All of a sudden, I'm on this calm ocean atmosphere, and I just see nothing but ocean around me. And so I kept saying Forrest Gump in my head. Instead of running, I was swimming. I just started swimming. It is a neat juxtaposition where you know your crash landing and i love that they go through that sequence because it's like well how did i get here so it's like the game does a really

good job of like setting the stage for you but then there's this really neat moment at least for me where like you said ryan where you're like okay like i'm. I'm stranded on this ocean planet. I'm leaving my escape pod. And you're in this like really beautiful kind of like coral reef area. So it's really neat that the game kind of like gives you this like newbie friendly, like calm, peaceful, like pretty starting area almost so that you can really get your feet under you. Like if they had just dropped you into like the middle of the ocean, where it's super dark, it's deep, you don't know what's going on. I think that would have made things a lot harder for people to get into. But the fact that it's like, everything's shallow,

it's all pretty, there's coral and fish everywhere. It's like, this is what I want to do on a vacation almost. I really like that it kind of funnels you into that to give you that kind of safe starting area, I guess, before you start exploring out a little bit further and kind of testing the limits of things. Yeah, I really like how this game opens. There's sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, where like in Fallout 3, it starts where you're a baby

and you have to like create your character and there's all this history to cover and it's like can we just kind of get the game started and subnautica really does that well they drop you already in the middle of the action and i really do appreciate that so let's talk about josh's favorite components of a game audio design and graphics i've never met anyone who cares more about audio than josh um i would say subnautica's graphics are not terribly cartoony but they're also not like hyper realistic it's definitely a little bit stylized it um i i don't even know how i would quite describe it it's not quite world of warcraft-y, but a little bit. It kind of reminds me of that.

Do the graphics work for you guys? How'd you feel about the art design? It's funny for me because I haven't played it in a long time, other than, like I said, the sequels below zero, which is the same graphics. I don't know that they actually improved anything when they did that. I like them. I mean, they are very colorful. They are stylized a little bit. I think they hold up really well. Like I said, Ryan was posting some screenshots and stuff and I was like, oh yeah, like I remember that area or I remember that. But it's funny because this game is five years old now. But when I look at it, I don't look at it and go, well, this game seems like it's starting

to age from that standpoint for me. So maybe maybe again i might have rose colored glasses on because you know i i look back at this fondly so i'm curious what ryan thinks as far as like you know you're playing it in 2023 did it feel old did things look a little dated or was it just like yeah this game looks like the game they're trying to make yeah i thought it just like you said looked like the game they're trying to make i i thought a lot of it the the sequences with the water the way things moved around um just the different animations within the graphics of of the world i thought were really neat one one of my favorite things to do on the seamamoth as I explore losing my mind was just run through schools of fish. And it's just, you hear them and it's such a good, speaking of audio, it's such a good audio sound of the fish hitting the windshield of your Seamoth.

And they're splatting and you're just cruising around. I would beeline out of my way to go hit a school of fish. Sorry, no actual fish were harmed in the recording of this podcast. I think overall, I think they did a really good job. It's like you said, it's not graphics that are going to blow you away. They're not out of the water, so to speak. But I think they did awesome. It was definitely, once you are in that world, that's how you view the world.

That's how you see the world. You're not thinking about the graphics. You're just thinking about what you're doing and where you're at. So it definitely lets you kind of get into that subconscious mind zone of this is where I'm at now. And then the audio. I had an awesome time with the audio. I think a lot of along the story which we'll get into later you know story quote unquote but but i think a lot of the audio was

done brilliant as well a lot of the voice actors who did it um did a great job the mechanics the machines i i think overall that section of the game was done brilliantly and i think that the stylized graphics fit the game really well because there are fantastical elements to this where you're exploring certain biomes that couldn't really exist in real life. And so the fact that the graphics are a little bit more stylized, I think suits that really well. If the game looked hyper-realistic, I don't think it would have worked as well. So I really do appreciate that. And this is a cheaper budget title.

If you want to be real nitpicky, some of the animation movements are a little bit goofy. Even just simply swimming in the water, there's these weird long noodle elongated arms that kind of move in a weird way. But it's nothing that I find to be distracting. Like, I don't think anyone's writing home about the graphics of Subnautica, but I think they work great. All right, so let's take our first break, and then we'll be right back and let's start breaking down some of the story. Okay, we are back. Let's go ahead and talk about, as Ryan referenced, the, quote, story of Subnautica. I legitimately, this is the very first thing I wrote down. As the Subnautica noob, I wanted to ask you guys, because I've been trying to avoid everything online about this game, I just wanted to survive. They are trying to escape. And so you're running

around doing things to try to help with that goal. But is there any more to the story other than that? Is it just simply a survival and escape game, or is there more to it? Ryan, I'm curious to hear Ryan's thoughts on this, because the first few hours of the game is literally just getting your feet under you. Like not dying of dehydration, not starving to death. You're looking around this coral reef a little bit. And you really don't have any idea of what's going on or even what to do for the most part. But I felt like there was a moment where Ryan started to realize that there is a story to this game, but how you discover the story is different than most games. You get the story in little bits and pieces. So I'm just curious,

Ryan, did you think there was no story at first? Do you still think there's no story? What are your thoughts on the actual plot, I i guess of subnautica dude this this whole thing it i'm first i want to honor preface this with i'm horrible at these survivor games i have the worst you know josh has game adhd where he just can't finish game if i have in in-game adhd where in a survival game if i'm not guided i'll be 10 miles away from where I'm supposed to be just exploring or looking at things that have nothing to do with anything because that's just the way my crazy brain works.

So it took me a while. That's why I said I just started swimming. I just started exploring and stuff. But you have a radio in your pod and that's your first kind of link to what the heck is going on you get you get these distress signals you start to find other other escape pods and you got to go search them out and then as you do that it progresses and you start to learn more about what the heck happened what's going, how the ship crashed. So in the intro, there's not a lot,

but if you pay attention and you do the right things, you got to go back sometimes and read some stuff in your little data links. But there is a story to it. You just have to pay attention. Yeah. So just to touch on, I think that, and this is not really a spoiler because this happens within the first, I think, hour of the game. Yeah. But you get a radio call from your company or a ship that says, hey, we're coming to rescue you. And I think that's the first part of the game where you kind of go like, okay, oh, yeah, there's stuff beyond just survival and me swimming around goes. And that ship, there's a countdown. So you get a good 90 minutes or something like that

before the ship shows up. And then it's time for the ship to come rescue you. And it's like, you're a little suspicious, but that sequence is, I think, a really neat sequence for people. And especially with Subnautica, for people to go like, there's more to this game than just swimming around and collecting fish. Yeah. And there are other events

that happen along the way. And so there might be a certain explosion or something that you get to look and see. So there are, I feel like events and mysteries that you maybe want to go find out more about, but you're not really given the overall umbrella plot line, at least in anything that I played. I was never sure, like, are there nefarious elements of this company? Did the ship crash because there's some saboteur on board or what's going on? Because I never got to see or experience any of that. Are there any elements is it like the show lost or anything like that or is it just purely hey the ship crashed because just a part went bad like is there more to it yeah take take us down this path and then if

there's more i'll add to that as like you know somebody that's completely beaten the game and knows a little bit more about that but i'm curious what ryan feels about like the story part of it because you've you made it really far like you were close to the end ryan so uh it is like the show lost because i was always lost that's that's right on brand but no um i i did find it what it does is it gives you these just little tidbits hey you know we're distressed on here and and you're drawn to them because as you as you progress to these places that's how you unlock you know you have a scanner you unlock more items or things so as you go to do that that's the carrot they dangle for you um you can get more items for survival but that also gets you

more parts of the story. So every area you go, you get a little tidbit more, a little tidbit more, and then some things you can just kind of discover while you're exploring. So as you go, there's just little bits throughout that kind of build this whole background on why this happened, how this happened, who may or may not have been there before you um so i think that overall the you know quote-unquote story was actually pretty neat i did get sucked into one of the one of the plot lines um that i found myself just focusing on that like how can i find out more about this where do i need to go how do i need to uh dive into the depths further to to get more information so there are there are some little nougats that they put in that that keep you going on some of the plot lines so overall i i think it was you know it was very interesting like i said i'm not good at these games if we played this together like all of us and you guys

could have kept me on track i'm sure we would have had an absolute blast with this and the storyline. But I just get so stinking sidetracked that it's so hard to follow these things. And I'm all over the place. But overall, I thought the parts that I did follow with the storyline were genuine and kept me engaged. One of the things I love about Subnautica is they tell a story, and I feel like you almost touched on that, Ryan, where it's a puzzle. Every time you get a piece of that puzzle, you start to see the picture that the puzzle is putting together. And so in the beginning, you really have no idea at all. You don't even know what pieces you have, but then as you slowly get more and more information, or you discover this alien facility, or these machines that are

under the water, or a base that's destroyed and sunken underwater, and you get these data tapes from people that were there, you're getting the pieces of the puzzle. And that continues through the whole game until the very end of the game when it's like, now the puzzle all the puzzle. And that continues through the whole game until the very end of the game when it's like, now the puzzle all comes together. And that for me is like the payoff of the story, right? So I feel like Ryan was getting there because it's like you said, like you wanted to follow this thread, right? Like I got really, really curious about like, what is this? What's happening? And I love that. Again, I'm going to reference Outer Wilds because Outer Wilds does the exact same thing.

It tells a story piece by piece, but you don't realize it until you start getting a glimpse of that overall picture. And for me personally, that lands incredibly because it is that carrot. I want to know more. As the picture starts to become clear, I go, I got to know more.

Why are these facilities here? What is this stuff under the ocean? How did it get there? Why are these ships crashing? That kind of thing. And I like that form of storytelling. Yeah. And it unravels not through a quest log. So the game never tells you, hey, you have to go reach this part of the map for this exact purpose go do it go do a fetch quest there's nothing like that in the game it's basically okay i'm right here in my little escape pod i've got a fabricator and when i click it it says i can craft this this this this and this and it requires these mats and you just start swimming around and grabbing materials and then crafting things and then like going back out into the water. And for me, I found that to be really hard just because of how I game as a gamer.

I don't get sidetracked in the way Ryan does, but I think for me and Ryan, we tend to need a little bit more structure and direction in order to keep going. For me, when it's like, well, I've crafted everything except this one item, and that item requires this, and I can't find that item, and there's no marker that tells you, hey, you can find this in this part of the map. It just led to a lot of frustration for me, which is why I didn't stick with it. I think there's got to be a really fun game here that i just haven't experienced because for me the lack of of structured storytelling and questing just kind of leaves me where i just don't necessarily know what to do like i remember at one

point i was even playing in the beginning i couldn't remember what i was looking for and ryan you said oh you just have to head north or whatever. And I was like, oh, I don't have a compass yet. Like that doesn't help me. I don't know where to go. You can't even really look at a guide necessarily if you don't know where you are or what you're doing. So I think for some people that works really well

where you're just living inside this gaming world, discovering the story. If you're someone who needs a little bit more structure and you like having a quest log like I do, then it's just a little bit harder to kind of get sucked in because I think in the beginning, there's not very many nougats of story. It takes a while for that stuff to start rolling.

Yeah, there is definitely, you have to, there's a certain amount of investment before you get any payoff, to be honest. That is definitely a concern for some people. It's like, why am I doing all this? I don't understand what's going on. I've got no direction. And if you have a hard time with that, then that will be something that people struggle with, for sure. For me, once I start getting those glimpses, it is the bait, it is the carrot.

And it's like, I will focus on wanting to know more at that point. But that is definitely something that people will either love or hate about a game like this because it's definitely not gonna land with some people. Yeah, and I mean, I may be wrong, but I feel like, I mean, I don't need someone to hold my hand, but just, just on the intro, you know, you get out and, you know, like you said, Paul, you didn't have a compass, like just a simple audio of, you know,

your character going, I better get a compass together, you know, so I know where to go. And then boom, the mats pop up on what you need and then you can you have some sort of direction okay this is what i need to do then i learn where to go and i can learn what you know how to get the materials and as you do these things you'll you'll start to learn how the whole material process goes how you fabricate things and it'll advance you so much more just from a few little changes i think would change the whole beginning of this game to where it gives you just a little bit of direction and helps you learn the you know the whole kind of basis of it and then you can kind of progress from there and get kind of then

then then there's the carrot okay i know what i'm doing here i know what i have i know how to survive and now i can go off and explore yeah like rust has such a simplistic system but when you play for the first time you show up naked on a beach but then at least they tell you craft a stone hatchet and then you can kind of see it it guides you a little bit subnautica it's more so experimenting and looking around and figuring things out on the fly and so you get there uh and and I think some people the fly. And so you get there, and I think some people would love that system, but a little bit more frustrating in my opinion. So a huge element of Subnautica is obviously exploration. I mean, this is an underwater,

ocean, sea game. What would it be if you weren't out there exploring? There are a lot of different biomes depending on your depth and what direction you head from your base uh most of these biomes i have not seen but kind of like just browsing through a list here there's like a mushroom forest there's different kinds of reefs and caves uh not to get too nitpicky but there's also like free-flowing underwater lava and stuff like that as well not entirely too sure how that works but all right um so like finding new biomes is obviously exciting not just because it looks different but it's gonna bring in new materials so you can craft better gear you're gonna start running into new kinds of creatures did you guys find the exploration to be really satisfying in subnautica ryan, I'm going to keep throwing to

you first because it's like, I'm curious. I want to know Ryan's thoughts. It's like, when you found a new area you'd never seen before, was there excitement? Was there dread? I'm like, oh, a whole other area I have to figure out now. But that is a big part of the game so how did that click or not click with you it clicked as in it was a sense of wonder because i did think this world was beautiful the mushroom you know area and and uh some of these caves i thought they were absolutely beautiful i i love to explore i love to you know once you the little, you get this thing called the Seaglide, and it's a little propeller, handheld motor thing that you can kind of move through the water a little quicker with. Once you get that, you can kind of zoom through these areas and look around. And I found a lot of joy in just exploring and looking around and checking things out

and seeing what other animals and creatures and how many plants and all these things I can scan. I was trying to scan everything I could just to put it in our databank. But it was also mixed with a lot of rage and frustration because I couldn't find the materials I was looking for. Yeah. So I'm delving through the depths of these areas looking for gold or copper or quartz. And I'm like, I've been through these tunnels a hundred times and there's quartz everywhere.

Now there's nothing. What am I going to do? So it's with a mix of elated joy and wonderment at the world I'm in. But frustration because I do have so much oxygen. I'm only down here for so long. I got to get back up. I got to get these materials so I'm only down here for so long. I got to get back up. I got to get these materials so I can advance in the game and progress.

So it was hard to be under that. If I was just exploring, I would have loved the world. But with those things combined, it was a little tricky. Do we all agree that finding mats is the low point of this game? It is, but it's not.

And this is any kind of survival game. It's rust, right? Like any game that has survival and crafting, there's a certain grind that happens to collect materials and move to that like next step. But that reward for the next step, a lot of times makes it worthwhile. You know, like when you do discover a new area in Subnautica and you go from collecting, you know, quartz and copper to now you're finding gold and rubies and more precious elements, you kind of go like, well, this is going to lead to something cool. I just don't know what yet. And so there's that there is that sense of like, I have to put in a lot of effort and work, but there's going to be some kind of payoff here. And like I said, we see that in Satisfactory, Rust, Valheim, and all of these survival crafting games where, yeah, I think that is like the chore part of these types of games, but it usually comes with a nice reward system. It kind of built into that as well. Yeah, that totally makes a lot of sense.

So there's actually, there's still more aspects of gameplay that we haven't even really talked about in any kind of detail. So in referencing the survival elements, there are, I believe, four survival elements. You guys can tell me if they add any more later in the game. You have a health meter. Of course, you can be attacked by creatures. You know, there's ways that you can die in the game. You also have hunger and thirst meters. So you have to take care of your food and water. You also have limited oxygen. And so there's a lot of ways to take care of those survival elements. So for example, in the beginning, you do have some bottles of water and stuff like that. But pretty quickly, you start to learn, okay, there's actually a certain type of fish. I think they were called bladder fish. I can grab one, I can stick it in my pocket and back at my base, I can turn it into water

or like maybe 30 to 40 minutes into the game, you can start crafting bleach and then you can turn bleach into disinfected water, you know, things of that nature. So all of these things kind of feed together. I was kind of curious to hear from you guys. Did you feel like the survival elements added to the experience or was it more of an annoyance? Because with survival games, it tends to be a little divisive how people feel about that.

I thought some of the work was worth it and you got the payoff on what it took to get those items but oh man it was so annoying to just have to keep rounding up water the water right you're on a water planet i'm on a water why it was i should have taken a screenshot my locker was nothing but disinfected water because i was so tired of having to like go craft more well that's yeah that's that's that's this you know the smart thing to do i of course didn't do that i had to go do it piece by piece every time every time i needed water but uh i would keep a little bit of a storage but just in my regular inventory because i was trying to do you know the rest of

the game i was trying to play you know the game just play water simulator. How do I collect water? But that's just like anything. It's something that you can run through. You can grab the stuff you need, take care of that, and then get back to focus on the actual game, what you're supposed to do. So I think it wasn't a big annoyance. I don't think it was a detriment to the game could it have been a little different in my opinion maybe maybe it could have given you a little more uh nutrients or water when you had the stuff and then and then paul didn't mention but just for your food and your substance you you would capture fish and you could cook them

but they would degrade and decay so if you didn't eat them right away then then the the values go down down down down then all of a sudden it's taking away your water well it still may give you a little bit nutrients on your food so it's it's you know then you have to go collect salt so there's just so many factors and i understand that you know that's that's real world man you got to do these things to survive. But some of it just was extra steps that were just sometimes annoying. But overall, I don't think it was that much of a hindrance on the actual game or gameplay. I like the survival elements because it is a stepping stone towards the other aspects of the game, right? Like, okay, I got to make this really long swim to go explore this cave system that I found, right? But I can't make it without stocking up on food and water first. So I need to kind of play this mini game where, okay, I'm going to

stock up. I'm going to get the supplies I need because I've got this journey in front of me, right? It's like Lord of the Rings, right? Like they can't just, they gotta, they gotta get some food. They gotta get some water before they set off on their epic journey. And it's kind of like that. It's like, okay, I've prepped. I've got my knife. I've got food.

I've got water. I'm ready to set off now. And then you kind of, you know, make those first few swims. And then it's like, you know, so for me, I like it. I do get that it is a chore. It is work in a game, but to me, it kind of adds, it's a stepping stone to other things. And I think I like that, even though I get that it is work.

Yeah, I would say I could take it or leave it in regards to the health and water meters. They didn't bother me. I don't know that they added much. It's the oxygen survival that is really cool. So when you're dealing in a game where so much of it is about diving deep underwater, you have a set amount of oxygen. And the game gives you different ways to build up that oxygen meter. So early on in the beginning, you just have to hold your breath. You go underwater. You can only last maybe like 30 seconds. It's pretty quick something like that yeah and then before you know it you're crafting these bigger oxygen tanks that last longer underwater you can find little plants that give off bubbles of oxygen so if you just stand

above them it'll replenish your oxygen i thought all that stuff was really cool and a lot of fun to figure out and you can carry extra tanks with you as well and swap over to them so that way you can stay underwater longer and i thought that out of all the survival elements that is the one that works by far the best because it's directly related to the whole point of the game which is to continually dive deeper and further away from your base yeah yeah i did i didn't think that was neat because they they would put it to where and they they structured that well to where those you know you have your inventory you have so many squares and different items take up different amount of

slots so a tank takes up a lot more than you know just a little piece of uh copper or whatever so you can't just stack up 20 tanks and in your uh inventory and then just go down as long as you want because they take up so much space. So I thought it was neat that if you were going to do that, that's going to be a detriment to how much you can carry and what your exploration is going to be. So I did like the oxygen. I tell you how many times I was swimming.

I was swimming with that sea glide up to the surface, and it's like three two one and i'm like i'm like blacking out and then you get like i think it's 10 seconds before you die die and then i'm like at the surface and i can see the ripples of the water i'm like come on come on 20 meters 30 meters or 30 meters 20 meters 10 meters come on you know and i'm almost there so i i thought that was a good a really good feature and like you said paul i think it just added a lot to the game inventory management's tough in this game especially in the beginning when you don't know what you're doing yep so even though i had played before i didn't remember a

whole lot and i i ended up with like four alien eggs that took up like an eighth of my inventory yeah each one is like six or something yeah and i'm like are these important do i just like drop these on the ocean floor and leave them behind like i didn't know what to do and you have very limited inventory so it's kind of hard you can't just grab everything and then try to figure out what to do with it later you have to be a little bit more intentional okay i can only carry two of these or three of that or you know can't hold on to these four alien eggs all at the same time so you kind of have to like learn what everything does and then you start to figure out okay actually i can find that near my base i don't have to hold that out

here you know all that stuff starts to click the more you play all right well we're going to take our last break and then we'll come right back and finish up this episode. All right, guys, got about 20 last minutes here in the episode. Crafting. I feel like we've, we've kind of mentioned crafting a lot, but we haven't gone into a whole lot of specifics. You have your fabricator in the beginning. Are there any other devices that you use to craft later in the game? Or is everything about coming back to your base and crafting there? Don't you get like a platform that you build where it's not just the hand fabricator, but that's where it's like you're starting to build like these big ships and underwater vessels and stuff like that too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You have your, oh my gosh, what was it called? It's like a sea vessel like fabricator type thing where you can you can actually and the cool thing was when i made my cyclops you know that paul has no clue what it is um you can actually pack it up and move it because when i first made it and i made the sea moth which is some small kind of uh one man vehicle that you can zoom around around uh the the depths and it goes to like 200 meters when you make a cyclops it's a submarine and it needs a lot more space i couldn't i couldn't build there it's like you know it's too shallow you don't need to move in another space so

you could pack it up and i'd have to move it to another area then you could create it and it it has these little drones and they create they create the item which is really really neat it's in the air suspended over the water you see this giant submarine which is such a payoff after you went and you collected all these materials it's spent forever uh because it's not just oh you need this this and this to make this this and this you have to combine this, this, and that to make each item. So there's like instead of four materials, it takes 27 materials to make those four materials. So that was such a payoff to see that up in the air.

And once it finally created and drops into the water, I mean, I shortly just stranded it 500 meters down in the depths but but it's a one-time use one-time it was definitely definitely a one-time use submarine for me but uh yeah the the the creation in this game is is really cool i think that's one of my favorite parts is being able to take that stuff that you have obtained and make stuff out of it. For whatever reason, everything this company has ever made works and sustains underwater. Perfect for a water planet, I guess. But it was very fortunate to us that we crash landed here. Yeah, so you're crafting vehicles, you're crafting base building mats, and you're making

your actual base bigger and larger. Are there any other parts of crafting that the people out there need to know about? I mean, for me, there is base building in this game as well. And you do need to build some bases. And these are cool underwater just hubs. Because you get to a point where even with the Cyclops, which Ryan, I love this fact that Ryan said, like, this is this big payoff because when you get the Cyclops, this is no rinky dink submarine. Like this thing is big, man. Like you can literally walk around the inside of it. You can put storage facilities in there. Like you can actually like, once you get it, you kind of go like, really? Like I have this like full-size submarine now?

Like, oh man. But you still need to build underwater bases as like these hubs and these jumping off points because the submarine takes a lot of fuel. It's just not, I mean, it's awesome. It definitely launches the game forward. But I actually enjoyed the base building as well because there's times where it's like,

I found this new area, it's super deep. I need to build a launching spot here just to store new, Paul, are great bioreactor materials. So if you just pitch those in the bioreactor, they burn forever and give your base a lot of energy and stuff like that. So there's this neat management system within the crafting and the base building and the building of these vehicles and stuff too, because it's like you get this neat stuff that you can use, but then at the same time, you also have to maintain those a little bit, which I found to actually be enjoyable just because it's like, I feel like it's like Castaway, right? Where like he finally builds fire and he's like, I have built fire. And it's like me, I'm like, I have built a base, you know, 300 meters below the surface. Like, yay.

And then I forget about it and it runs out of power and then everything breaks. But yeah. Which also sounds a lot like us playing Satisfactory in the beginning, you know, running out of throwing all those leaves and wood into all those, you know, burning power plants. So basically, to kind of like summarize everything for subnautica the gameplay loop is essentially you go out you explore you find mats bring them to your base you craft stuff either upgrades to your character or vehicles or parts of your base then you venture out further and deeper and then that's just kind of a perpetual cycle right so now i built something that i can go

300 meters deeper now i find a new biome and new mats and the new blueprints and new recipes. And then that just kind of cycles over until the game ends. Is that just kind of how it works? Yeah. Yeah, honestly. And then the whole time you're discovering more and more about this planet, about what happened before you came to this planet. And so while all of that is occurring, you are getting these pieces of this overall puzzle that you eventually wind up putting together and realizing what happened. And ultimately, your goal is to escape this planet, which at the end of the game, if you do things the right way, you do get to do. And that's a neat sequence in and of itself. It almost takes you back to the right way, you do get to do. And that's a neat sequence in and of

itself. It's kind of almost takes you back to the beginning of the game where it's that chaos and your crash landing. The escaping of the planet is a really neat part of the game as well. Okay. So in regards to the ending, are there more than one endings or is it just one? Because you almost hinted there that there might be multiple, Josh. You said if you do everything right, does that just mean if you finish the game or are there different paths you can take? I don't think there's different paths. I don't think that there's multiple endings to the game,

but the ending of the game definitely stands out. Like I said, you do wind up escaping this planet. How you go about that is neat. The things that you learn and what you have to do to get to that point are really cool. And it's just such a satisfying moment of all of this stuff I just did, all these pieces of the puzzle, all these biomes. There's some emotional stuff too. I don't want to spoil stories, components and things like that. But it's like you kind of

figure out what's going on on the planet. And part of that is like making these tough decisions on like what you want, like how you want to handle those things. And then it's just this like moment of like, I did it, man. I crash landed. I had nothing. I built submarines and all this stuff. I went to the very bottom of this planet and then I managed to make my way out of it. You know, I don't know. It's just like a feel good moment, I guess. So Ryan, as we're kind of like wrapping things up here, I thought that the timing of you playing this was very funny and I was curious to hear your thoughts because you have been so hyped for starfield and then starfield releases you basically play 21 hours a day out of the 24 in starfield for the first three days so we could record our our review of it and then you

kind of are just forced to go right back into subnautica for this episode do you think that that made playing subnautica harder because you had Starfield waiting for you? Or are you able to bounce between games like that? No problem. It definitely had a little influence on me. At points I was, you know, before because I did start playing it before Starfield came out and I was kind of easy breezy just cruising around. And this shows, you know, with like what josh said how stupid i am at these types of games he's like building bases and getting storage for all this stuff i wish you guys could see okay josh you know because you've played you know those floating little like storage

lockers you can make yeah i had just a fleet of those around my original base because i i just yeah i would just wander around so when i needed a material i'd have to go look through each one of those and they only hold like 10 slots and because i didn't pay attention to the actual game because that's just how i am i'm just like oh you know i just hit it you know 100 miles an hour and i just want to go explore and look at stuff so it was it was tricky and then oncefield released, I got super into that. And then once we finished recording the episode, I hopped back onto Subnautica. And I'm just thinking the whole time, man, I want to be playing Starfield right now.

But I also was still having fun. But it was up and down for me. I hated the monsters that would destroy my ships. I went through 15 or 20 of those sea months. Like, I almost rage quit four or five times. And I would message you guys in Discord. I'm about to rage quit. Talk me off the wall.

Like, I'm going. I'm done. You know? So, it was definitely up and down i still had a lot of fun playing this game but uh it was it was definitely interesting with such a big uh game coming out in the midst of all this you know to try to balance the two so overall ryan sounds like you had a lot of fun. It wasn't an entirely positive experience. There were frustrations along the way, but ultimately, it sounds like you're glad that

you played the game. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I will say that I, excuse me, I will definitely keep it. And I think I'm going to go back to it because I need to eventually get back to my Cyclops that's 500 meters down with no energy. So I got to get back down there. But I'll definitely go back to it and finish out the last little bit of the game. But I enjoyed it. And overall, it was pretty fun. Anything you want to say to kind of summarize your thoughts on the game as a whole, Josh? I mean, I'm very curious to hear Ryan's overall rating of this.

I have to give him kudos. Being forced to play a game is hard enough, right? Being forced to play a game when one of the biggest game releases of 2023 is literally happening at the same time is a pretty monumental obstacle to try to overcome. So I will say kudos to Ryan, because I know it wasn't easy. I know you did it for the show and for the listeners. And I know you really started grinding things out towards the end to make sure that you were ready for this. So it's one of those... I gave Ryan a little pep talk,

where I was like, there's nothing you're forced to I gave Ryan a little pep talk, like, you know, where I was like, you don't, there's nothing you're forced to play, Ryan, you get to play Starfield and Diablo four and all this stuff for a little while. Like, you know, you've, you've, you've done your time, you did good, you know, and all that too. So I just say, you know, kudos for, for actually putting in the effort and doing what you were supposed to do on that. And I know that you did it for the show and for the listeners. So, and I did not want to like rub it in Ryan's face or anything, but as I was beating Starfield,

I was just so excited. I had to like tell someone. So I'm putting in our discord, like guys, I just played like one of the greatest missions I've ever seen in a game. It's called entangled. And I'm like, yeah,

I just beat it. And Josh is like, what are your thoughts? And I'm like throwing it all out there and i can just kind of picture ryan like like just one tier coming out as he's in subnautica looking at his dead side literally was like currently logged into subnautica just diving down and then i was like getting eaten by a reaper yeah this is one of the greatest missions ever you know and i'm just like oh my gosh and i'm a bethesda super nerd and so yeah yeah that was uh that's an interesting uh section there between the two so i know i am very much in the minority here as someone who has started subnautica twice and just could not get sucked in i think what was missing for me is my favorite story elements have to do with interpersonal relationships. And in Subnautica, at least in the

opening hours, there is zero of that. You are by yourself. You're not talking to people. There's no changed relationships over time. Maybe that stuff gets added later. I don't know. But when that's missing, then for me, that's what made it hard where the story, I just didn't really care about like, okay, so the ship crashed. It's a fun,

exciting action sequence, but I don't really care why it crashed. Like you gotta, you gotta give me something to make me think that there's more to it. And so I just like lost interest. I found the opening sequence to be amazing. Then it kind of like slams on the brakes and it's just a lot of material collecting. I just fizzled in hearing all the stuff you guys are saying. I think there's a great game here. And I think if I forced myself to get past hours five, six, seven,

I think I would probably enjoy it, but anything short of someone forcing me, I don't see myself going back to subnautica anytime soon. It just doesn't work for me. You, uh, you got to get to the Degasi man. Yeah. That,

that sequence is so awesome. The way it all plays out, the, the, the way the story is, the audio, like everything in it is so enticing and it keeps you going. Like you said, I wish it was just little bits that kept you in the next carrot. But it's just so few and far in between.

And then you got to search for that carrot. And then you find it. And then you don't know where the next one is. And it takes you forever to find the next one. That was the issue as for me but there are some parts story wise that that would definitely suck you in would i have found those if i wasn't forced to play this game maybe not i don't know um but i would suggest if if you want to spend a few hours, you got some time to kill, like, you know, kind of delve into it. Yeah, it's definitely a very unique game. And the hilarity is that I ended up playing all of Under the Waves in two days. I absolutely loved it because that game is about nothing but

interpersonal relationships with this guy and his wife and dealing with the grief of losing his daughter. And that really worked for me. And the game looks and plays terrible. The animations are completely awful. I even saw jokes about it online where people were saying, hey, mom, can we get Subnautica? And mom says, no, we have Subnautica at home. And it was just showing the terrible animations from Under the Waves. But yet, I absolutely treasured Under the Waves and that worked a lot better for me. So, I'm sure there's people out there who love both or hate both, but I almost feel like if you want in a very emotional interpersonal journey, Under the Waves is there. And if you like more of the technical and exploration and living in that world, then Subnautica is

probably a little bit more up your alley. All right. So Josh, do you feel like Ryan's thoughts on this game are fair? Any follow-up questions you have for him or do you feel good? No, I mean, I'm feeling pretty good about this. I'm getting the gist in Ryan. You can confirm this, but I think there's a point in Subnautica where you really start to unravel the mystery, right? Like you start to figure out what's going on on the planet, why you need to go deeper. You know,

you find these alien bases, right? And you start to explore them. And as you do that, you start to get an idea of what's going on and what the overall like objective of the game is. And it's that mystery and that solving of that mystery that for me was the biggest draw. So I'm just curious, like Ryan, did it get its hooks in you? Did it completely whiff? And you're just like, dude,

if I never have to go underwater again, I'm completely happy about that. But that was the main draw for me. And when Paul said, like, is this Lost? That's what I loved about Lost. What's this hatch in the ground? Why is it there? Where are these people? I got a lot of that from Subnautica. So I'm just curious if you picked that up as well.

No, I did. I did. All these little parts. And I probably did some out of order because of how I explore, you know, in these types of games. But the little things that did give you that tidbit of information, that tidbit of story, did suck me in. And then it would pop up a marker on your map. And you're like, okay, now I need to go. I got to check that out. But it's like, okay, now I got to do these maths.

So then sometimes I get distracted and I won't do it for a while. But it was always there so I I definitely got that feeling of a draw towards parts of the story um to continue on but I just I just wish it was a little easier to continue with that and and do those steps and it wasn't so much of a of a gap between how much I need to get where I need to go to continue that story you know right pacing yeah yeah all right well now that it's the end of the show Ryan here's where Of a gap between how much I need to get, where I need to go to continue that story. Right. Pacing. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Well, now that it's the end of the show, Ryan, here's where we get to get your ratings here. So first up, we have our segment, Make Love, Marry, or Murder. This is where we get to rate the game. Is it marriage material that you play long term, you recommend to others? Is it maybe make love, where maybe there are a couple hours to be had or maybe it's best to buy on sale or is it a game that you would murder and not recommend sounds like you're somewhere in between make love and and marry is that correct yeah i'm uh i'm a strong strong make love i don't know if i could quite marry this game but i think it's it's to

the point where i would definitely play this again. I probably am going to play it again just to do some more stuff that I haven't felt like I finished. And I have a draw to finish still, even with Starfield Looming and all the other games that we have on task to play. But I feel like this one is definitely a good make love. Okay. And then looking at our leaderboard so if if our listeners are not aware we do have a website videogamerspod.com and on there we each have our own individual leaderboards every time we do a deep dive if you play and cover the game to to an extent long enough that you can put it on your leaderboard,

then we would do that. I have not played enough. I'm not going to put it on my leaderboard. Ryan, we finally have yours. The website has been updated. It took a little while to get your list. You have not played all of the same games.

Josh and I have over the course of this podcast being out. So your leaderboard is a little bit shorter. Ryan, you currently have 30 games on your list up at the top you've got stuff like red dead 2 god of war diablo 4 in the middle you've got some stuff like fallout new vegas fall guys deep rock galactic and then toward the bottom you've got some stuff like death loop oh it hurts my heart disco elysium oh i love that game. And Battlefield 2042. So out of your

30, where do you think you're going to put Subnautica? So you mentioned it right there. I think with how we did that other deep dive on Ark, another survival game that we had an absolute blast playing, but I feel like

I genuinely enjoyed this more i this would be a lot higher probably if we were all able to play together i i love playing games with other people if we were able to play this together and you ryan what are you doing over there come over here we need to do this and and you guys keep me on track and we could build stuff and explore together it would be different but i'm wanting to put it uh just above that at 19 so right now i have halo infinite there so it'll be uh pub g hollow knight then uh subnautica okay gotcha so you've got it yeah pretty much almost right in the middle of your list on the leaderboard. Okay, Josh, are you going to put it on your leaderboard?

I mean, I know you haven't played it recently, but do you want to put it on there? No, I think it's actually on my top 10 leaderboard. Is it not? I think it is. No, it is not on my top 10. Nope. Your top 10 for if our listeners want to know EverQuest, God of War, Witcher 3, Rocket League, Divinity Original Sin 2, Overwatch 1, GoldenEye, Ocarina of Time.

It's probably not a top 10 game, honestly. I love it. I love it. I recommend it to everybody. I don't know that it's a top 10 game for me. Maybe like in your top 30? Probably somewhere in there. Easily.

It's probably in my top 20, to be honest, you know, as far as that stuff goes. But yeah, I would have to play it again and see how it holds up. I've actually gone back to subnautica and dabbled in it again, but I've not ever done that for more than just a few hours.

It's almost like, I just want to go back to the ocean for a little bit. Yeah. Kind of be like, yeah, I remember this place, you know? And then it's like

i don't want to have to collect all this stuff and find water every five minutes so exactly good to visit you see you later yeah i hear you kind of like how if i don't necessarily want to watch a whole movie i'll just watch my favorite clip on youtube and i kind of feel like i got it out of my system exactly kind of like that yeah not not a full playthrough all right well i i want to give my sincerest thank you to josh for not making me play this game for 20 hours longer than i did uh also as a reminder to everyone out there please go check out support options at multiplayer squad.com we do also want to say thank you to everyone out there for listening please go check out our other episodes especially next monday because then ryan gets to

come back and he is going to force me or josh to play a game we do not know who he's going to pick or what the game will be i'm very curious ryan that that sounded a little bit evil i'm suddenly a little bit scared i can't wait to find out so make sure sure to tune in, if not any other episodes. Make sure to come back next Monday and find out what we're going to play next. Anything else to add, guys? Anything we learned? Anything interesting? Are we good to go?

Thanks to Ryan for being a good sport, especially with Starfield in the background. But Ryan, you are free. I'm free freedom! All right. Well, thanks so much everyone until next time happy gaming see ya all right see everybody