New York 9s: Subnautica

The Reaper Leviathan supposedly led to 50% of the game’s sales. It is without a doubt one of the greatest creatures in gaming.

The darkness beneath me seems to go on forever. The sonar pings and outlines the world in red. Technically, I can’t see anything. But I know where everything is. And I know at the top of the mountain is a Reaper Leviathan. The rules are simple: stay away. Because if you hear the Reaper’s cavernous roar in the darkness, your sonar will not save you. The last thing you will see is a gaping row of teeth. But you don’t have time to feel sorry for yourself. Because when you mistake on this planet, you deserve whatever happens to you. You should be dead.

I played Subnautica after playing Subnautica Below Zero and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, gaming wise. Because as much as I love that game, nothing could’ve prepared me for the experience of the first game. The collected and refined fear that laced my very thoughts with caution, the quiet dread of my plight…Subnautica was the first time I felt like I lived a game. Don’t get me wrong, Elden Ring was engrossing. Minecraft I was going to work. Retro Bowl was addicting. But in Subnautica, I was actually afraid I was going to die.

Imagine this. You crash land on a planet, a planet you’ve never been to. You’re knocked out by the crash and when you wake up things feel shaky, like you’re floating. You open the hatch of you life pod and climb on top to see a vast sea on all sides, your ship marooned in the waters ahead of you. There is no sign of survivors. Your radio can receive messages but not send them. It’s over. You’re toast. Your only shot of surviving is to go below, into the cold blue water. So you do.

A River Prowler cruises around the Lost River. Behind it, we see a fossil of a Gargantuan Leviathan.

The thing about Subnautica is that you won’t enjoy it. Not in the way you enjoy say, a nice cigar or a good cup of coffee. I didn’t feel anything playing this game and it wasn’t the antipsychotics. It was the adrenaline drip of having to survive in a place where there is no store, no easy upgrade, no simple way forward. Your space ship got shot down. You have no idea what happened or why you’re here. The whole ordeal is a calamity. Everyone’s dead.

Somedays I couldn’t even turn the game on. I was filled with a keen sense of dread and despair. I knew I was going to get more radio messages from dead people, arriving at the Lifepod to see a huge whole in the side where something ripped it open, tore it’s residents out and tore them apart. So complete is the misfortune of mankind on this planet that you can’t even locate bones. In Subnautica Below Zero, in Sector Zero, you are the colonizer, the one who pries a way into the ecosystem. In Subnautica you are basically a rounding error, the decimal on a 0.5% chance of human survival on Planet 4546B. Escape is your only path to prolonged survival.

The ocean has always been the most terrifying place on Earth. The Challenger Deep is roughly 36,000 feet deep. The deepest a human has ever gone without gear is around 1,000 feet. The ocean is the final frontier. We’ve heard sounds down there that have never been recorded before or since. But what makes Earth feel safe and homey is…the earth. The land, the dirt, la tierra that stands above the seas that surround us. If you drain the ocean’s we all live on mountains.

Real life photo of a Bigfin Squid, a creature that never leaves the bottom of the sea.

In Subnautica the best you’ll find are two islands, the Floating Island and the Mountain Island. The Floating Island is probably the most hospitable to humans, with it’s safe-ish sea access and it’s large space for farming. But it’s literally floating. And at some point it will be floating over the Void, a massive 4,000+ feet deep biome that covers most of Planet 4546B. There are two types of creatures that live there. Microscopic and Leviathan. And that’s only if you buy into the theory that the 2 mile long skeleton in the Lost River belongs to an extinct organism. I don’t. That thing is probably out there somewhere. The Mountain Island has an alien facility on it and is pretty barren. It’s also got more dangerous sea life near the shallow depths, making it equally if not more sketchy.

Subnautica excels at making you feel small because everything is huge. Water spreads out around you for hundreds of meters, realistically hundreds of millions of meters (you’ll never make it to the edge of the water, don’t try.) That doesn’t account for how it goes beneath you. There is a vast amount of space to cover and defend and everything covers it faster than you. Your best hope is your Seamoth, which, while it may be the best videogame vehicle ever, is still a poor matchup against most Leviathan class creatures unless you get basically every upgrade possible. But truthfully, if the game wasn’t dangerous, it probably wouldn’t be any fun.

It’s not Dark Souls but it’s worth noting Subnautica hands you very little that is outside the realm of reality. Yes there’s a lot of tools scattered around from the ship wrecks and yes there’s plenty of food and water, but these will only help you survive day to day. To make progress in the game you will have to take some risks. There’s no way around it. But in a game where you’re in always struggling to survive, it’s not hard to talk yourself into taking risks. Every time I ventured out of lifepod, I ventured a little further out. Eventually, after acquiring a submarine, and then an even bigger submarine, I explored the entire map. But even after doing so Planet 4546B never felt like home.

The 2-mile+ Gargantuan Leviathan if it was alive. That pixel giving off light…that’s you.

Everything around you is massive. You are nothing in this world except a minor visitor, a curio. The ecosystem is barely affected by your presence, even as you kill hundreds of fish and mine tons of srones and minerals. 4546B is entirely indifferent to you. Unlike Subnautica Below Zero’s Sector Zero, in Subnautica’s Crater, humanity has very little influence. Prior to the Aurora crash, there has only ever been three humans on the planet, the survivors of a crash involving the starship the Degassi. But that was a while ago and all that is left of the Degassi crew is their ruined bases.

On the mountain island a massive alien structure juts out of the mountain. Weird block shaped architecture, protected by weird cyborg like creatures that teleport short distances. Warpers. A few ingame days earlier, I had been received radio transmissions from a nearby space ship, the Sunbeam seeking to do a rescue mission. Their final transmission tells me to go to the Mountain Island to await extraction. It feels good to hear a human voice. It’s been fun but I’m excited to get off the planet.

As the Sunbeam descends on the planet, a loud siren noise can be heard. The alien structure groans and shifts into a different shape. To my horror I realized it was a massive turret. In one shot it vaporizes the Sunbeam, insuring that we are trapped on the planet. After a minute you realize that turret must’ve been what shot down the Aurora as well. A purple tablet you’ve found allows you to enter the alien structure. A trophy pings. It’s requirement says “Find the Quarantine Enforcement Platfrom.” While leaving the island, I see a fish with greem pustles and then I make the connection. A sidequest from Subnautica Below Zero involved the Kharaa, an alien bacteria that the Precursors (the alien civilization) was trying to contain. Suddenly it clicked. The alien turret was supposed to keep us from landing, and it was supposed to keep us from ever being able to leave. Alarmed, I do a self scan on my scanner. The scanner confirms what I’ve feared. I’m infected.

Born in the Lost River, the Ghost Leviathan is one of the most eerie and alien looking creatures in Planet 4546B. As it develops to maturity, it will eventually move out from the underground Lost River to the Crater and then the deep dark Void at the Crater Edge.

Regardless of whether I get off the planet or not, I need to cure the infection. Pretty quickly I realize that there’s only one solution-I needed to go to deeper. In various biomes such as the Blood Kelp Zone. the Mountains and the Sparse Reef, there were deep trenches that just went down. At the bottom of these places I would see a faint green glow but the trench would go deeper than I could go. I got on my grind, acquiring some vital tools and key depth upgrades that allowed me to finally make my move. Placing my newly built Prawn Suit into the lower decks of my Cyclops submarine. The Cyclops is basically a mobile base, complete with a docking space for a vehicle and plenty of storage. But it is big and awkward and it’s hard to move in the tight spaces of the trench. Once down in the Lost River, it only gets worse.

What’s sketchy about the Cyclops is that it’s so large that you can’r really see what’s around you. I had to use the sonar to see in front of me as I navigated the narrow caverns of the Lost River. The soft pings of the sonar. It’s quiet. Too quiet. Suddenly an alarm sounds and the Cyclops shakes. A fire has broken out in the engine room. I can’t worry about it now. I speed forward, getting lower to the ground as I do. I can see the red dot of a Leviathan on the radar, heading away from me.

A Ghost Leviathan has rammed into the side of my Cyclops, boring gashes in the metal I have to fix once I get clear. As I repair the hull of my Cyclops I can see the Ghost swimming around the center of the cavern. It swims over in my direction for a moment, then turns and circles back around. I take a deep breath. Time to move on.

I set up shop at the Cove Tree, from there descending down to the Inactive Lava Zone. I discover several more alien structures, including a thermal power plant and a massive containment facility for a creature called the Sea Emperor. These area’s are patrolled by other Leviathans, relatives of the Sea Emperor known as the Sea Dragon. The sea dragons are massive and shoot fire from their mouths. All around annoying to deal with. Though this area was undoubtedly a pain to survive in and required a lot of clutch playing on my part, I did enjoy the challenge of this sequence.

A Reaper Leviathan in the Crash Zone. The area is now over run with them since the crash.

But while Subnautica is the story of an alien world and only features one human being, it does not shy away from human centric issues like greed, corporate culture and the human effect on the environment. We are only this planet because of a chain of greed driven choices-the starship Degassi was shot down with an important executive aboard, leading the ship Aurora to take a detour to investigate, which causes us to be shot down as well. We are just a lowly crew member who has to deal with all of this shit but sadly, it could be worse, because we are still the lone survivor.

If, at the end of the game you decide to leave, you are greeted with a funny but very dark surprise-according to your PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), your time on the planet has caused you to rack up a massive debt to Alterra, the company that launched the Aurora. Why is this? Because according to laws they completely made up, by crash landing on the planet, Alterra now “owns” it and by using the planet’s resources to survive, you have been stealing from the corporation. It’s a brutal satire injected right into the end of a painful, traumatic experience. As you lift off, it feels surreal to realize you are about to return to the world of money and bullshit.

But in a way, you shouldn’t be surprised. The entire time you’ve been on Planet 4546B radio transmissions have been governed by rank and file. Person X is a VIP. Better try and rescue them. You are a grunt. Literally nothing. It’s only until everyone is dead that you are the top dog. It’s a depressing, humbling experience, but one we should all be familiar with in corporate America.

A Reaper skeleton found in the Sea Dragon’s home. Evidence of a previous hunt.

And by the way, the Aurora crash has destroyed this environment. Radiation is leaking from the hull. That’s a major problem. As is the fact it landed right above the Sea Dragon’s hunting hole. Sea Dragon’s may be a pain. But they’re super cool. And they deserve to live. Not only that, but the creatures they hunt are the Reaper Leviathans, the most rambunctious predators in the game. And this corporation is slowly starving them by crashing it’s spaceship into their hunting hole and blocking it off. Truly a disgusting display.

I was sad about the Sea Dragons potentially starving. It reminded me that no matter what I did on 4546B I could never integrate with the ecosystem nor undo the damage humanity had done on the planet. Some things are simply impossible to go back from. Such is life. RIP to the Sea Dragons. You killed them with your spaceship.

But not all is lost. You still have the opportunity to save a planet in crisis from many threats and also to save yourself. It’s a journey that is meaningful in large part because of ways that it utilizes agency and lack thereof in different situations. You can’t save the Sea Dragons. At times it feels like you can’t save yourself. But with resilience you can survive. You will learn to control what you can control and free your mind in doing so.

The Cove Tree is the safest area of the game, despite being in the Lost River. I built a base here and felt happy.

Subnautica was the one of the first games I’ve played that felt truly….finite. It was such an experience. Where as it’s sequel Subnautica Below Zero seems to be very open to post game, in Subnautica it’s been harder for me to keep playing. I want to. But…it’s hard to go back to 4546B. I don’t belong there. It’s not my home. I don’t belong there. No matter how many space-age style bases I build there I will never be a part of this planet.

It was a profound experience. All of it. From my first time exiting my Lifepod to finally leaving on the Neptune rocket, I was under siege from the world around me. If Dark Souls tested my skills, Subnautica tested my emotions. I felt fear in a way I rarely had. I also felt wonder. It begs the question…if an alien world was this bad, would it really be much worse than here on Earth? Maybe in some ways. But seeing the billions of dollars in debt I owed for living made me consider the question.

If you like video games….if you like feeling, you should try Subnautica. It’s one of the greatest survival games I’ve played because it gives you the real feeling of survival. An alien planet. A vast ocean. Leviathans and beyond. And perhaps the most crushing foe, isolation. But it was hard to think about it at the time. Because I was hungry, thirsty or drowning about 90% of the time. And that’s ok. Because that’s life on Planet 4546B.