An Open Letter to Subnautica: Below Zero" Developers

Dear team-behind-Subnautica-Below-Zero,

Ben Sonnek here, longtime Subnautica fan, currently hooked by the in-development Subnautica Below Zero. Here’s a quick summary of this letter: gushing praise, a couple concerns, and an idea.

Let’s start with the praise.

I’ve enjoyed UnknownWorlds’ survival games since the first Subnautica was still in its beta version. There were no alien bases implemented yet, the Seamoth submarine was a recent invention, and my old laptop could hardly keep up with the graphics so the water looked like a wavy blue quilt. However, my love of sci-fi and aquariums convinced me to buy the game soon after I saw the first ad on Steam, and I haven’t regretted it since, especially after I upgraded laptops and can see the water properly (and the framerate doesn’t plummet when a leviathan is around, an occasion that has led to many Seamoth maulings).

Then the beta for Subnautica Below Zero got released.

Needless to say, I have not regretted that purchase either. Now I have the unique privilege of being with this project from more-or-less the beginning, and I like the game’s look and what I’ve seen of the story so far.

FYI, I’m writing this letter between the Seatruck update and whatever update is slated to come next. Here are some cues as to how far I’ve gotten in the story so far:

Now, Part 2: the concerns.

First, I might ask you to pay all gamers’ PTSD therapy bills once you apply the leviathan-class predators to the game. I’ve seen the concept art.

Second (and last), I wonder about your choice to make Robin speak. (To any other readers not familiar with Subnautica Below Zero, Robin is the character whom you play in the game.)

See, I can’t remember the name of the main character in the first Subnautica game unless I look it up—and I consider that a good thing. That poor unfortunate diver never said anything except for grunts of pain, usually because of those friggin’ Crashfish. I liked that a lot as a player; you could project onto the guy more easily if he said nothing and we supplied the voice lines. You felt like you were him, wincing when the edges of the screen went red from an injury. It was like playing an underwater version of Chell from Portal 2, another of my all-time favorite games.

Robin, while an enjoyable character, has conversations with her sister in an overhead space station. Part of the thrill of the first Subnautica was that the character, a crash survivor, was on his own and with minimal backup. You don’t get that when Robin is making cutesy remarks to her unseen sister. Plus, about those remarks—while the first Subnautica protagonist was project-able with his silence, Robin’s dialogue could rub some players a little weird. I know this is very much an early-development concern; hey, I remember a lot of voice logs changing before the final release of Subnautica 1.0. Still, I’d like to address the issue. A lot of games give the first-person character dialogue, I know, but after using a silent protagonist in the first game…is it a wise choice now?

Maybe. I can’t always oppose a fresh take on something. Subnautica itself was a fresh take on survival games.

However, before Below Zero goes deeper into development—minor pun not intended—I wanted to slide this concept past you first, a concept that mostly maintains everything Below Zero has set up so far:

What if we players were Alan, the alien AI?

(Again, for those of you not familiar with Below Zero and didn’t read that PDA screenshot up there, Robin accidentally downloads an alien AI into her head in the game. The AI’s seed code is Al-An, so Robin calls it Alan.)

Anyway, here’s the picture: the game starts with the black screen and the “Unknown Worlds presents” text, like the first Subnautica. Unlike the first Subnautica, though, the sound you hear with the black screen is not the sound of an exploding spaceship. It’s the sound of an alien computer booting up.

The screen fades in, revealing the inside of an alien facility. The player can’t move, but instead watches Robin enter and activate the console. BAM—and the player can see from Robin’s perspective. We can move around as her. We can also hear her dialogue, freaking out over how she can control her mind and mouth…but not her muscles.

The player, playing as the downloaded alien AI, has taken those over. We become an AI that has control of a human host.

Think about it: the AI could have no memory of itself or its functions, like the player. It would also know nothing of Robin, again like the player. The AI and Robin would have to work together to solve the mystery of this section of Planet 4546B, learning more about each other while not alerting Alterra that one of their own is being controlled by alien tech. This way, Robin can keep her dialogue while not contradicting whatever the players are thinking. As the silent AI, we’re free to roll our eyes, laugh, and/or give the thumbs-up, not jolt out of character because Robin said something quippy when her controlling gamer would rather hide in a snowbank. If the AI has no lines, we players will naturally add our own, like we do in the first Subnautica.

The aliens couldn’t communicate in human language in the first game, and I was a little wary about their technology’s voice lines in Below Zero’s early release. Don’t get me wrong, they sound awesome, but I felt a little of the alien mystique was lost with their first words to humans. If the player were a silent AI, the mystique remains, and part of the story could be Robin figuring out how to converse with the alien being possessing the majority of her motor functions.

As a final point, I think the player-as-Alan angle would add a unique tension to the game. As the AI, players cannot explain themselves to the host and will sympathize with her unique plight. When diving into harm’s way, it will be like driving your best friend’s car through a demolition derby; you don’t want to hurt yourself or your friend. You have to pray that, as the story goes, Robin trusts your actions more, maybe moving into the relationship of grudging friendship—although that won’t stop her from strongly questioning your sanity when you have to dive into deeper, darker regions of the sea. Maybe the gameplay can give the AI-player and Robin a chance to communicate through, I don’t know, computer prompts or something. The twists write themselves: the player learns about Robin through voice lines and data logs—while also learning about the AI host’s history. Maybe the possessing alien program was decommissioned and memory-wiped for mismanaging the disease from the first Subnautica story, or something like that.

Then, the ending! As a semi-reversal of the first Subnautica, in which the player left via rocket, the player-AI in Below Zero could leave Robin and allow her to escape in a rocket on her own, watching the smoke trail leave the planet’s atmosphere.

Anyway, that’s my idea, and I think it has plenty of room for an Unknown Worlds spin that will blow everyone’s mind. Take it or leave it; I won’t be heartbroken if Below Zero’s plans are set in stone already. Looking at Subnautica 1.0, I have no cause to worry about 2.0’s trajectory. To wrap it up here, keep up the good work. To inspire you, here’s one of my most encouraging Subnautica screenshots of all time:

No! Wait! I meant this one. My bad.

Whether or not you read this…thanks for everything!

(Note from a few days later: Forget the thanks. The Snowfox update just came out, and...how many nightmares did you guys have to harvest to make the Chelicerate leviathan? Really???)