The Archivist: “When you’re designing a speculative creature, where do you like
to start?”
Alex Ries: “I’ll tend to gather, maybe 10 or 20 references that are in the theme
of the direction I’m going.
Reference images of fossil life, reconstructions, living things, even down to fungi and microscopic
creatures.
And then I bring that up in photoshop and start sketching — referencing that.”
That’s Alex Ries, a creature designer for Subnautica: Below Zero, and one of the most
talented speculative biology artists out there.
Many of the creatures that swim in the seas of Planet 4546 B started off as his idea,
going through multiple iterations of concept art to arrive at the awe-inspiring final designs
we see in game.
Yet there’s a lot of incredible art of unique speculative lifeforms that — for one reason
or another — never made it into the final product.
Not implementing all designs from early development stages is a normal part of pre-production,
but some of these designs are so well thought-out, they deserve to be studied further.
So, for this entry into the archive, we’ll explore the incredible unseen creatures of
Subnautica, exploring their potential biology and how they might fit into the existing environments
of Planet 4546B.
And if you like the art showcased in this video, you can support Alex Ries on Patreon
using the links below.
Now, let’s return to the water of Planet 4546B, and explore the speculative lifeforms
that could have been…
Beginning in the vast, open regions of Planet 4546B’s ocean, some very unique leviathans
almost swam.
These enormous, curiously shaped creatures are called Thalassaceans — and are imagined
to fill the niche of a peaceful filter feeder, straining small food particles from the water
using specialized mouths.
Their fin structure gives them a distinctive profile, and Alex Ries says the creature uses
its rear fins to swim in a manner similar to the oceanic sunfish of Earth.
Ries created a lot of different color variants exploring the options for pigment and skin
texture for these lifeforms, and I have to say, some of them are really striking.
Like most of the lifeforms on this list, it’s hard not to wish we could interact with them
in game.
Other potential organisms are more deadly.
One lifeform that would work beneath sandy environments is the Sand Spear.
This terrifying creature is an ambush predator that buries itself in sediment and waits for
the unwary to swim overhead before striking.
In behavior and appearance, the Sand Spear somewhat resembles Earth’s Bobbit Worm:
an alarming-looking predator that also ambushes its prey.
The Sand Spear’s name and overall lifestyle also recalls the Sand Shark from the tropics,
another species that buries itself beneath the sea floor only to emerge in spectacular
fashion to snag its lunch.
And like the Sand Shark, the Sand Spear attacks at high speed, with a spikey maw extending
out to snap up its prey.
In addition to this veritable forest of teeth, the head of the Sand Spear features two tentacles
that help them sense their targets while buried.
These feelers are similar to the navigational appendages on the front of certain genuses
of marine slugs.
All in all, while sand spears would have been an exciting inclusion, they’d make swimming
near the sea floor much more stressful…
Upon the ice floats, we almost got a very unusual type of symbiotic organism.
The Gardener Eel is a bizarre creature that stores a small, tree-like plant in its gullet.
While on the surface, it extrudes the plant into the waiting sun for photosynthesis.
This type of symbiotic relationship between a plant and animal does appear in the natural
world, and can be seen in the Earth ‘Leaf Sheep’ — a fascinating type of sea slug
I’ve mentioned before in other entries.
Leaf Sheep can use the green algae on their backs to perform photosynthesis and produce
simple sugars for food.
The Gardener Eel doesn’t spend all day in the sun, however, and can ‘swallow’ the
membrane and swim like a more traditional eel when in danger.
A really inventive lifeform.
Just under the ice of Sector Zero, a combative predator could have been prowling.
This pugnacious creature is a Bulldog Trapjaw, a mid-sized creature that doesn’t look particularly
threatening while in a neutral position.
Swim too close, however, and the Trapjaw lives up to its name by lashing out with a pair
of long, raptorial jaws.
These extendible mandibles have multiple functions — useful both as an offensive tool and a
grasping mechanism to pull prey into their throat.
The various species of moray eels in Earth oceans have a convergent adaptation.
Their secondary set of raptorial jaws are located farther back in the eels’ heads,
and contain their own set of sharp teeth.
Like the Trapjaw, moray eels use these secondary jaws to restrain prey and drag them deeper
into their gullet.
Ultimately, the Trapjaw — like the moray — is a creature you’d have to be wary
of on a dive.
Deeper into the depths, another dangerous lifeform could have been waiting in the eerie
light of the Crystal Caves.
The Shardrunner is a patient hunter, spinning out long, fragile mineralized tripwires to
detect prey.
When an unlucky soul touches a wire, the Shardrunner knows their location and strikes with lethal
accuracy.
This kind of behavior is almost convergent with that of certain spiders on land, which
likewise can sense any prey that becomes entangled in the filaments of their web.
Some spiders can sense their prey using macroreceptory organs called silt sensilla.
So, it’s likely the Shardrunner has developed an analogous sensory organ to detect lifeforms
entangled in its own mineralized web.
Notably, some of these hypothetical lifeforms are relatives of preexisting creatures that
evolved to fill different niches, and as a result possess highly divergent biology.
One of the most awe-inspiring creatures from Planet 4546B is the Reefback Leviathan of
the tropics.
These gentle giants almost had a polar relative in the form of the Icebreaker Leviathan, a
concept which is one of Alex Ries’s favorites.
The Archivist: “So, if you could add one creature you created that wasn’t in the
final game into Subnautica: Below Zero, what would it be?
Alex Ries: “I would have gone probably with the Icebreaker Leviathan — Remembering the
Reefbacks and the impact they had on me.
I thought bringing that creature, that design into the Arctic environment could be interesting.
And one possible take could be that they have to forge their way through the ice.
I knew that would have a lot of implications when you have a creature interacting the environment
like that.
It could be a sort of a nesting place for the Pengwings to live on.
It could be sort of a moving ice-flow almost.
In the end it wasn’t included, I think, it just would have been very, very difficult
to implement in terms of programing.
But I think that would have been my choice.
Aside from the Reefback, out of all the creatures in the original Subnautica, one of the most
iconic — and most imposing — was the dreaded Reaper Leviathan.
For Below Zero, Alex Ries imagined that a smaller yet more agile relative known as the
Crested Reaper might terrorize the frigid waters.
Roughly the size of an orca, the Crested Reaper are a very different kind of predator than
the Reapers we’re familiar with.
In another parallel to Earth orcas, the Crested Reaper is exceptionally cunning, able to bump
ice flows to knock out of reach prey into the water — a behavior that real orcas have
been observed doing.
The Crested Reaper takes this hunting strategy a step further, however — with its characteristic
crest actually a specialized ice-ram that aids in jostling ice floats.
The concept of a smarter, more maneuverable offshoot of a Reaper Leviathan is really intriguing
— albeit slightly scary…
Other imagined offshoots are far less menacing.
As an example, we have the Grabsquid: A smaller, more intelligent polar relative of the huge
and terrifying Crabsquid.
Much like how the Crabsquid possess a mysterious bio-electric discharge, the tiny Grabsquid
can generate a weak bio-electric field.
As a result, the Grabsquid is naturally drawn to small electrical devices like batteries
— a behavior that mirrors how its deep-water relative is drawn to larger energy sources.
Large animals evolving a reduced body size in response to a limited environment is a
well-documented form of adaption.
My favorite Earth example of this are the channel island mammoths, an isolated population
of mammoths that were almost ten feet, or three meters shorter, than their mainland
relatives.
So, the limited resources of the frigid Sector Zero shaping the massive Crabsquid into the
tiny Grabsquid holds up from an evolutionary perspective.
Curiously, an alternate name for the Grabsquid offshoot is the Seamonkey, as this concept
was actually an early take on the quite different-looking Seamonkeys that made it into the final game.
Some The Archivist: “So, in your opinion, which creature changed the most during development.”
Alex Ries: “I think actually, the Seamonkey might have gone through the most iterations,
cause that thing started off a complete blank slate.
It took quite a while to arrive on a more friendly sort of look.
Cause the focus was more on alien-ness.
But we tried to make it more mischievous and readable.
It went in so many strange directions that one of the creatures spun off into the Trivalve.
So, the Trivalve was one of the early Seamonkey attempts.
But it was different enough that we managed to spin it off into its whole other creature.
In the vast skies above the teeming oceans, we almost had a unique predator in the form
of the Kitewing, a relative of the much smaller Skyrays.
The gentle Skyrays can be seen flying over various regions of Planet 4546B, and are the
only lifeform in the games to evolve powered flight.
The Kitewing would add some exciting variety to the skies of Subnautica by being not just
a passive lifeform, but a serious threat.
This potent predator uses its large talons to seize prey and carry them back to its nest.
Alex Ries imagined a few different variants of this tyrant of the skies, including one
with extra talons and an imposing crest.
This head crest resembles the crown structures of certain Pterosaurs, which paleontologists
believe may have emerged for social displays and improved aerodynamics.
So, it’s likely the mighty crest of the Kitewing serves a similar purpose.
It’s easy to imagine these swooping terrors flying through the skies of planet 4546B…
Returning to entirely original concepts, in the twilight of the abyss, a predator unlike
any other could made an appearance.
The Ascender Worm might appear like your average, squid-like organism at a glance.
Yet what sets this lifeform apart is its highly unusual hunting method.
The small Ascender Worm might not have the jaws or muscle to take down large prey — but
it has another weapon: decompression sickness.
When the Ascender Worm hunts, it grabs its onto unsuspecting prey with two deceptively
strong tentacles, and rapidly inflates with gas — dragging its target to the surface
in the hopes the pressure change will kill them.
Decompression sickness, also called the bends, is a real danger that divers face, and is
caused by gaseous bubbles forming inside the body due to depressurization.
A grim fate indeed.
Other theoretical lifeforms could have even stranger methods of attack and defense.
The Shard is a creature that travels slowly through the water vertically like a knife,
luring prey from below with its glowing lure.
While this glowing lure recalls to mind the classic angler fish, the Shard’s vertical
swimming posture actually reminds me of another deep-sea creature — the elusive oarfish,
which has been recorded swimming in a similar manner.
But what really makes the Shard stands out is its defensive capabilities.
When attacked, it quickly excludes hypersaline slime which rapidly forms an ice ‘shell’
around its body — from which it suddenly swims free.
This leaves the predator to attack the shard’s false ice ‘shadow while the real lifeform
escapes.
A surreal, yet ingenious form of defense.
One of the more distinctive regions of Subnautica: Below Zero is the Thermal Spires, an ecosystem
defined by chimney-shaped hydrothermal vents.
One species which could have been part of this environment is the Ventspider — an
arthropod-like animal would crawl between the vents on long, spindly legs.
On earth, all kinds of sea spiders have emerged, with some large bottom dwellers that creep
along the sea floor, and others light enough to swim… although not particularly gracefully.
Yet the Ventspider is unique due to its method of getting food.
It possesses feathery gills which gather sulfur from around the vents to feed extremophile
bacteria in its abdomen.
Strange as this may sound, hydrothermal vents on earth are home to all manner of specialized
lifeforms that feed off the rich chemical soup they produce.
Among these lifeforms are bacteria, which have evolved to be highly resistant to the
heat of the boiling vents.
So, the idea of a symbiotic alliance between such bacteria and a larger lifeform like a
Ventspider isn’t so far-fetched after all...
In the original games, there’s all sorts of dangerous creatures to look out for.
But one particularly unnerving concept would make these lifeforms even more deadly.
The Rotnest is a parasite which would infect other creatures on Planet 4546 B.
This parasite would take over the brains of their hosts, and transform into a launching
platform for jet-propelled spore pods, which would explode and infect nearby lifeforms
— spreading the infection.
Terrifying as this concept sounds, we can find something similar on Earth.
One infamous type of fungus can take over the bodies of ants, hijacking their mind and
essentially turning them into zombies — using them to move to an ideal spot to sprout and
spread their spores to other lifeforms.
And the Rotnest works the same way, with their host eventually passing away and the Rotnest
slowly digesting what remains — and launching spore pods at any creatures foolish enough
to investigate.
A truly menacing concept.
Yet out of all the creatures in Subnautica: Below Zero, the Shadow Leviathan is perhaps
the most intimating and well-known.
At multiple points throughout its development, however, it looked quite different.
The Archivist: “I’m curious, what was your process like for designing the Shadow
Leviathan?
How did you settle on the final look for that creature?”
Alex Ries: “It came to a fork in the road with that creature.
We needed something big and scary.
I did a bunch of initial sketches which had a more tradition al— almost like a dragon-like
head.
It had glowing white teeth and huge jaws like a deep-sea viperfish and stuff like that,
but sort of vertebrate looking, almost.
But, I also had a bunch of references of things called arrow worms.
Horrifying little invertebrates that have a face that’s basically a bunch of nested
spines coming out of it.
It just did one little study where instead of the dragon-like face, it was this more
invertebrate face.
Among all those that sort of connected with people a little bit more.
It was sort of disturbing.
And combining that with a bit of lamprey, and a few other marine creatures that people
generally find horrifying, we moved in that direction.”
The Archivist: “It definitely scared me during my playthrough.”
And there’s one leviathan which didn’t make it into the final game which might have
been even larger than the Shadow Leviathan.
The Ice Dragon is a cut creature with such a size and design so intimidating that it
lives up to its mythical namesake.
We can see from the concept art that the Ice Dragon would swim on wing like flippers — another
visual nod to the dragons of Earth myth.
This alien dragon wouldn’t breathe fire, however, but release a stream of brinicle
ice breath to trap vehicles — sort of like a scaled-up version of the brine fish in the
final game, which Alex Ries also designed.
In fact, the Ice Dragon is so large, its size could have been an issue in terms of actually
implementing the lifeform into the game.
While this in understandable, I do wish you could encounter this frozen terror under the
ice of Below Zero...
And there’s one final cut lifeform we need to cover.
All throughout the original game and its sequel, mysterious structures built by a group of
aliens called Precursors or Architects remain abandoned.
The Architects only appear in game as AI or artificial reconstructions, so we don’t
have any idea what they actually look like.
Or do we?
This early concept art by Alex Ries shows some potential designs for what the biological
forms of Architects might look like.
The Archivist: “The Architects are so mysterious in-game, I’m curious how you decided to
approach their design?”
Alex Ries: “I wanted them to be sort of fastidious creatures.
A bit precise.
Nerdy, almost.
So, I tried to design a creature along those lines.
Something that could use the tool and the environment that we’d already seen.
Something that could use a tablet like computer, but still alien.
So, I started moving in a sort of direction that combined amphibious references, reptilian,
but I think a combination of salamanders and mantis shrimps were my main inspiration.”
The Archivist: “That’s so cool!”
We’ve now seen an incredible variety of lifeforms that almost swam in the oceans of
Planet 4546B, and learned a lot about creature design along the way.
A tremendous thank you to Alex Ries for sharing insights into his design process.
If you enjoyed discovering the unseen creatures of Subnautica and want to see more, you can
support Alex Ries on Patreon using the link in the description.
And as always, thanks for watching.
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See you in the next video.