Subnautica, more like SubNOTica!
Ohhhhh!
Good thing this game is completely underwater cuz they’re going to need some ice for that
burn!
That’s right, I got a beef with this..beautiful..mesmerizing…
masturbato- I mean masterpiece of gaming craftsmanship.
Despite my overarching goal of exposing Subnautica for what it truly is, I absolutely love this
game.
The graphics are breathtaking and the underwater scenery is vibrant and eye catching, specifically
at night where it looks like you just joined an underwater rave with Sebastian on the electric
conch.
The gameplay is sleek and user friendly, while the movement and pacing of your character
feels very real and freeform, allowing you to really immerse yourself within the wet
realism of the game.
The pacing is excellent for a long slow gaming day, relaxing for the most part with surprisingly
stressful and attention grabbing events that sporadically keep your interest engaged along
the way.
The plot almost becomes a second priority to exploration, as you look for new alien
mysteries to fill your eyes and mind with wonder.
Alright.
Now that I’ve finished my solo circle jerk performance over this game, there’s something
you need to know.
You don’t understand Subnautica.
Beneath the calm, sunkissed surface of this game lies a dark and sinister story.
One that has been written again and again with the blood and tears people throughout
history.
This isn’t a story of survival, quite the opposite in fact.
This is the story of the past, the tale of countless lost voices all put together and
covered under the veil of a beautiful game.
You are not the hero of Subnautica.
Your survival on planet 4546B isn’t a good thing.
In fact, your success at escaping the planet is the last nail in the coffin for every other
lifeform that lives there.
Join me as I show you the truth about Subnautica and the treacherous clues that led us there.
For you shoebies out there who haven’t had the chance to experience the underwater sensation
that literally translates to “Subnautica”, I’ll go through a quick rundown of the plot
and gameplay for you.
You are a crew member of the ship, the Aurora, a ship..
IN SPAAACCEEE!!!!!
IT’S IN SPACE!
Cuz this game takes place in the future, in the late 22nd century to be exact.
Your ship is actually traveling on the outer reaches of controlled space in search of another
colonization ship that has gone missing.
The Aurora is suddenly struck by a volt of energy, and comes crashing into the sea of
planet 4546B much like another phallic shape might come crashing down after an explosive
event.
Nudge nudge, Wink wink...sex.
We pick up the story as the ship is coming down, our character frantically fastening
themselves into one of the escape pods that gets jettisoned during the crash.
Congratulations, you’re the sperm your ship has shot onto this unsuspecting planet, now
the question is, will you survive or die?
You wake up to flames ablazing in your escape pod.
WHAT WILL YOU EVER DO???
It’s not like you’re literally surrounded by water or anything!
Luckily there’s a handy dandy fire extinguisher that you’ll never use again but you’ll
keep in your inventory like a dumbass just in case you happen to experience the first
natural underwater fire.
Now you have one simple goal: Survive.
So into the depths we go!
And the first thing we find is…
ACID MUSHROOMS???
these things have to be trippy as hell….oh boy….I feel fuzzy…
Oh, or you can use them for batteries.
That works too I guess.
So after a shroomy brain-expanding experience, we’ve come to the majority of the game,
scuba diving and collecting resources.
We can find fish, plants, minerals, literally everything we need to create food, water,
and every other piece of machinery we might need.
Course the most sophisticated machine is the fabricator we’re working with, but we don’t
need to get into how ridiculous that thing is.
I mean it can make filtered water from a bladder fish.
Given what I know about bladders I don’t want to know how or what it’s doing, I’m
just going to blindly drink it...aww man...I’m drinking pee aren’t I?
Golden showers aside, the game goes on and you get more advanced gadgetry that allows
you to swim further and deeper for longer.
You learn that other pods also escaped the Aurora, but upon finding them, all the other
people seem to be missing.
In fact there’s even some creepy radio signals from aliens that are going to hunt down the
survivors.
However you’re able to repair your escape pod which is equipped with a radio and it
begins continuously sending out SOS signals.
Eventually one of those signals is picked up by a passing trade ship called the Sunbeam
and they make a detour to save your soggy butt.
You’re saved!...not.
They totally get shot down by a giant energy laser beam from this Quarantine Enforcement
Platform.
Essentially, it’s a planetary defense system to make sure nothing leaves the planet.
We later find out the reason for this defense system.
Planet 4546B was first used as a research outpost by aliens called “The Precursors”!
These aliens were responsible for an outbreak of infectious bacteria known as the Kharaa
Bacterium which has now infected the entire ocean.
The Precursors were working on a cure for this infection, and the giant Zeus lasers
are to make sure the infection stays quarantined.
The Kharaa Bacterium has now infected you, so if you’re going to get off this planet,
you have to cure the disease!
So you do some more ‘sploring, find the largest being in the game, the Sea Emperor
Leviathan, which leads you to hatching her eggs so that the babies can spread an enzyme
called Enzyme 42 which cures the sea of the Kharaa Bacterium, and then you build a rocket
ship to leave the planet.
Holy fuck, thats a lot of stuff you gotta do considering you’re literally just swimming
around a lot.
On the surface the game seems innocent enough, you crash landed on a planet and you have
to survive and through miraculous luck, an OP fabricator, and scuba diving that defies
the laws of pressurization, you succeed.
But if you’ve learned anything from this channel, you know by now that there’s always
something else going on.
In this case we have to ask the question “why?”
Why were we flying over Planet 4546B in the outer reaches of controlled space to begin
with?
The answer comes down to one word: Colonization.
You might remember me mentioning earlier that the Aurora was on a journey to find quote,
“another colonization ship”.
You see, according to the lore of Subnautica, in the late 22nd century humans are in the
process of colonizing other planets.
Apparently we didn’t learn about how shitty it was when we started colonizing other places
on earth.
Now this might not seem like a red flag to you, but it should.
Colonization (as it has played out in history) is the act of settling among and establishing
control over the indigenous people of an area.
Basically what the English and Spanish and French did to the natives of America and Canada.
Many people assume colonization just means settling in an untamed and unexplored land.
If you’re Elon Musk striving to make civilization in the vast, lifeless, iron desert that is
Mars then fair enough...but in Subnautica we’re talking about humans occupying a place
already teaming with life.
So in this case, colonization actually refers to taking control over the land and its inhabitants.
When this happens, control is established and colonies are generally used to extract
valuable resources, essentially gutting the land for the gain of whatever homeland is
colonizing with no care about the people or animals who already call that area home.
So, Subnautica’s story already isn’t exactly what you might have expected.
You’re part of a crew that is essentially looking to fuck over lifeforms on other planets,
you dick.
You may have heard the phrase “The empire on which the sun never sets”.
This phrase, which historically has referred to both Spain and Britain, and now has been
applied to the United States, embodies this idea of colonization.
An empire can be so vast and expanding into lands so far away from each other that it
will always have sunlight touching it no matter the time of day.
Impressive.
But!
Colonization is a huge reason we had slavery.
Indigenous natives were subjugated, controlled, and forced to work for no wages and in poor
working conditions.
Colonists often brought diseases that the indigenous people had no immunities to, and
a simple disease like the chicken pox would kill an entire village of indigenous people.
I don’t want to get into the entirety of the history of colonization, but it’s a
bloody path filled with horrendous actions that a foreign people did on another just
because they were from a different place.
And that sentiment brings us back to Subanutica, and your role in it.
The Aurora is looking for another colonization ship, meaning that the original ship, the
Degassi, was looking to establish a colony on Planet 4546B.
That’s why your ship is already equipped with scuba gear and the ability to create
underwater equipment.
After building a Phasegate to make it easier to travel to the planet, the crew of the Aurora
was planning on landing on Planet 4546B to search for the survivors of the Degassi.
Those survivors were supposed to be the first colonists for the planet.
Now take that information into account with the rest of the game.
You not only survived, but cured the infection that plagued the planet.
Upon your return to earth there’s no reason why the Alterra Corporation can’t send another
ship to construct the Phasegate and harvest the planet for all it’s worth.
We know first hand just how rich the ocean is with plants and minerals.
We had to harvest them to survive.
Your survival is the death sentence for that planet.
Since 4546B is fully submerged in water, aside from a few islands, humans wouldn’t end
up settling there as a home.
Instead they’d come to harvest the vast amount of resources it has, likely destroying
the entire planet’s ecosystem in the process.
And your character has a list of everything that planet has to offer, including how common
or rare certain resources are and a general idea of where to look to find what.
You’re the gunline just waiting to hear to word “fire”.
You’re the executioner of all life on that planet.
All because you survived.
But...it’s not wholly your fault.
You see, mankind is not the first race to colonize this planet.
Its written right into the plot, a race came here before you.
A race that made the planet what it is today.
The Precursors were the first colonists of 4546B.
They came, created structures and experimented on the natives of the the planet, aka the
Leviathans.
The Precursors took their children and experimented on them, killing them in the process, with
no thought as to what they were doing to the Leviathans.
They caged these massive creatures to run tests to cure the Kharaa Bacterium.
Ironically, they ended up being the reason the infection spread across the entire planet.
And so they quarantined the planet before they left.
Subnautica is not the story of one person’s survival.
It’s the story of colonization.
Of one group unleashing a plague, and another curing it, only to harvest the planet’s
resources.
Disease and stripping the land of its wealth are wrought from colonization, and it’s
all too clear that’s exactly what happened to planet 4546B.
You’re just another messenger of death.
And who knows if you curing the planet of the Kharaa bacterium is actually better for
the lifeforms that live there or not.
They’d been left alone for centuries, but now they’ll be subjected to humanity’s
often cruel intentions, and the resource-stripping effects of that might kill off everything
that did survive the disease.
That’s the true dark story of Subnautica, a planet colonized twice over, that had everything
taken from it the first time, and will likely have the same thing happen again with your
escape.
But at least now we understand.
But that’s just my analysis of Subnautica.
I told you there was more to it than just a pretty face.
What do you think?
Maybe by the 22nd century humanity had actually learned how to live in harmony with nature.
But judging by the amount of tech on the ship and our gutting of the planet for our own
personal survival needs, I kinda doubt it.
Either way you should still check out the game if you haven’t it’s really amazing
and beautiful.
That’s all from me today, so click on a thingy on the screen and check out one of
our new shows, like this one or Real Truth!
Or subscribe or something and that way I can see you all next time.
Cuz I’ll see you guys next time!
Toodles.