Subnautica: Below Zero

Well, I've just finished the game today by playing with the "below zero multiplayer mod" made by BOTBENSEN (he loves to put his own name above the credits of the creators). Anyway this was quite a horrible experience. I've now beaten the Early-Access Version of Subnautica 2 -> Subnautica 1 -> Subnautica: Below Zero. This was by far the weakest entry. The first game made you feel genuinely alone. The silence, the huge empty ocean, finding abandoned bases and slowly piecing together what happened. Below Zero is scared to let you be alone for five minutes. Robin is constantly talking, usually making some sarcastic remark, and Al-An is always in your head asking questions or being vague about everything. Their dialogue is honestly painful sometimes. Al-An will ask a completely normal question about humanity and Robin responds like she has to win every conversation. She even keeps joking that she could kill herself so he dies too. I know it is meant to sound confident or funny, but it just comes across as absurd. The game also never gives Robin any real doubt about Al-An. We literally build him an insanely powerful alien body, while knowing almost nothing about what he actually wants. At no point does Robin seriously think that maybe this ancient alien could betray her or just kill her once he no longer needs her. There is no tension at all. You build the super alien body and everything is immediately fine. Marguerit is also completely wasted. In the first game she felt almost legendary through the Degasi recordings. Then you finally meet her here, find out she survived by killing a Reaper and floating across the ocean on its corpse, and she basically becomes a quest NPC who stands in a room. You cannot properly ask her about the Degasi, Paul, Bart, the infection or how she survived for so long. After her scripted scenes she is just there. You can have more meaningful interaction with the fish in her base. The worst part is Sam. Finding out what happened to Robin’s sister is literally the reason she comes to the planet, yet the entire storyline is optional. You can finish the game, help Al-An, leave the planet and never properly solve the mystery that started the whole story. It feels like the game says “oh yeah, your sister, there is probably a PDA somewhere if you still care.” Robin also arrives on the planet in a disposable pod with apparently no plan for leaving. Then near the end she suddenly says Al-An is her only ticket out. So what was the plan before that? Did she expect to die there? Was someone coming back for her? The game just never explains it. Below Zero looks nice and some of the biomes are pretty, but the world feels smaller, safer and much less mysterious. The writing constantly gets in the way of the atmosphere, the characters feel flat, and every potentially interesting conflict is immediately made harmless. The absolute best part of the game is the jukebox! The first Subnautica made me feel small. Below Zero mostly made me wish Robin would stop talking.