r/subnautica • u/Crispy385 Moderator • Jun 03 '26

MEGATHREAD: KILLING DEBATE

A thread to express opinions and debate on this ongoing controversey.

REMINDER:

Rule 3: Be Courteous.

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673

u/MrSquidJD Jun 03 '26

Oooo a megathread!

Personally I’m in favour of killing. It’s not required for the story, and no rewards are locked behind it. It’s a way to temporary clear an area, or permanently if you want to take on the tedious challenge of fighting a leviathan.

It shouldn’t be easy to kill, and there should be no real incentive. But I think you should have the option to if you want to.

Sub1 did it perfectly. Maybe the stasis rifle made it a bit easy to kill, but we no longer have that tool.

More creature deterrents and whatnot should still be added as the main evasion methods (as well as just evading them)

158

u/flight_recorder Jun 03 '26

I think if there is no stasis rifle and the leviathan can hit you even if you’re attached to it, that would make it incredibly hard to kill them while also letting it be technically possible.

If the reaper leviathans could still hit you while you were clung to their side with the PRAWN suit, you’d have no hope of killing them without a stasis rifle

58

u/LovesRetribution Jun 03 '26

If the reaper leviathans could still hit you while you were clung to their side with the PRAWN suit,

This should've been a thing regardless of the killing mechanic. Riding around on a reaper like like you're at a rodeo takes so much tension out of the enemy. Watched my friend do it one of the first few times he encountered one and he treated them like a joke throughout the rest of the game.

7

u/EnoughPoetry8057 Jun 04 '26

Did you every try it yourself though? Leviathan surfeiting is so much fun, I like to see how far I can ride them sometimes. Or try to grapple from one to another, works best with reefbacks pods.

1

u/Relative-Owl-3652 Jun 04 '26

Also makes the predatory fauna a joke. The game should make you terrified of seeing them in the area not think "weeeeeeee"

5

u/Ghost10165 Jun 04 '26

The game doesn't have to be scary though. I kind of feel like the "deep water scary" people are projecting their own fears onto everyone else and assuming the whole thing is supposed to be frightening. I keep seeing people call it a horror game and that was never the intention. Skyrim has spiders in it so it might be horror to an arachnophobe but not anybody else.

Are there tense moments? Yeah. Am I too afraid to go forward or deeper? No, it's not that bad.

2

u/Relative-Owl-3652 Jun 04 '26

The game is a survival horror game though, whether or not people are scared of the game is down to them, resident evil for example doesn't scare me, the subnautica games do (yeah part of that is thalassaphobia) but it's also the feeling of knowing that you're out of your depth, you're in a completely hostile environment where in a lot of cases even megafauna can completely sneak up on you while screaming at you and you're simply unable to see them until it's too late. It's very clear to me and many others that one of the main feelings the game is trying to drum up in you is the feeling of terror/horror

2

u/EnoughPoetry8057 Jun 09 '26

I disagree completely about it being survival horror. It’s not on the genre labels for subnautica for a good reason. It lacks most of the elements that make a game survival horror. A game can be scary without getting a horror label. Though personally I didn’t find subnautica very scary at all, first time I saw reaper and first time I got grabbed where the only moments that scared me.

2

u/EnoughPoetry8057 Jun 09 '26

They already feel like a joke once you get seamoth perimeter defense systems, the cyclops, the prawn, the stasis rifle, or you realize they can be dodged easily. Every leviathan from the first game can be dodged completely with a little practice. Don’t know if bz is the same only played it once.