Hellraiser
Arcane
Finished Below Zero yesterday after playing it during the weekend.
tl;dr version: the base game in general is a better game because there is less storytelling and more exploration, especially encouraged exploration since it does not have as much of a quest compass.
autism enabled version: It is definitely smaller and at the same time the game is telling you where to go to most of the time, which leads to a more linear and shorter experience. Especially when you look at tech progression which now is really hampered because you don't have aurora wrecks all over the place. Exploration, which for me was the main selling point of the first game, suffers because of this smaller scale and because the waypoints the game throws at you are far less "subtle" (closer to the actual "you need to go here to progress" spots). There's a ton of tight spaces so it is no wonder that the Cyclops is not in, it simply would be too fat.
Gameplay wise the additions of the sea truck, spy pengwynn (or how was it spelled in game) and arctic land exploration (including exposure/hypothermia risk) add not a whole lot over the "base" game. Practically what you pay for is a new map and story scenario, so technically getting more of the same. You end up getting less of the same though, since the map is smaller, and the game spells out where to go at least 7 out of 10 times as opposed to the more subtle approach of guiding the player the first game had (which sometimes was maybe a bit too cryptic, but it added to the exploration experience IMO).
The land part in particular is in my opinion largely underdeveloped (yes, I obviously know there is "nautica" in the title and it is not the focus of the game/series), if you bother with the topic of arctic exploration in a survival game it really should have forced you to build shelters inland or place beacons around not to get lost in heavy snow. This disappointed me also because I am a sucker for arctic settings ever since as a kid I watched the shit about Mariusz Kaminski's arctic journeys (Potato TV also used to have a weekly show about the topic at one point in the 90s), and I really hope we would get a better arctic experience.
Meanwhile all you need to do to survive on the icy land is get a snowfox, you even don't need the arctic suit since the snowfox acts like somekind of "Kharkovchanka" and prevents hypothermia despite not being enclosed. Between that and the abundant food found in caves all around the land biomes, that raises body heat, the cold ends up being a bit of a joke without much effort. Although at least magnetite for the snowfox is not so easy find, unless you know you can just use the spy pengwynn to find it in the small caves it can access and collect minerals from (easy to miss that the pengwynn is useful for this IMO). Speaking of which it is a pity the game does not make more use of remote exploration/drones. The camera drones are also quite underused, I wonder if there is a mod to make them mine deposits.
Story is worse because there is more of it, or rather there is a voiced character having dialogue, but at least it got severly cut down and retooled between EA and release. I am quite certain it would be as woke if the original game did not have the whole "sole isolated mute survivor listening to doomed logs" theme, you saw the [current year] seeping through some of the log entries you collected. Initial BZ story in EA was worse with more chatty characters and a scenario with more holes. Also the new intro sequence is better, since you get to the meat of the game or rather water much sooner with less scripted sequences than in the first BZ story iterations.
The one thing the game objectively did better was streamlining some recipes (fabricator for instance) and not doing a "lol, now go back and collect plants before they rot" at the fucking last minute of the game, clearly informing you what you need to bring in advance of reaching the deepest part of the map.
Well that and you don't need to dodge as many vessel destroying killer leviathans to finish the game. Only once I lost my PRAWN parked outside the alien ruins at the bottom of the map, while I was busy engaged by the endgame storytelling. Of course I had to reload, because I could not return to the surface and finish the game without it (unless it would spawn me in the drop pod if I died, dunno).
tl;dr version: the base game in general is a better game because there is less storytelling and more exploration, especially encouraged exploration since it does not have as much of a quest compass.
autism enabled version: It is definitely smaller and at the same time the game is telling you where to go to most of the time, which leads to a more linear and shorter experience. Especially when you look at tech progression which now is really hampered because you don't have aurora wrecks all over the place. Exploration, which for me was the main selling point of the first game, suffers because of this smaller scale and because the waypoints the game throws at you are far less "subtle" (closer to the actual "you need to go here to progress" spots). There's a ton of tight spaces so it is no wonder that the Cyclops is not in, it simply would be too fat.
Gameplay wise the additions of the sea truck, spy pengwynn (or how was it spelled in game) and arctic land exploration (including exposure/hypothermia risk) add not a whole lot over the "base" game. Practically what you pay for is a new map and story scenario, so technically getting more of the same. You end up getting less of the same though, since the map is smaller, and the game spells out where to go at least 7 out of 10 times as opposed to the more subtle approach of guiding the player the first game had (which sometimes was maybe a bit too cryptic, but it added to the exploration experience IMO).
The land part in particular is in my opinion largely underdeveloped (yes, I obviously know there is "nautica" in the title and it is not the focus of the game/series), if you bother with the topic of arctic exploration in a survival game it really should have forced you to build shelters inland or place beacons around not to get lost in heavy snow. This disappointed me also because I am a sucker for arctic settings ever since as a kid I watched the shit about Mariusz Kaminski's arctic journeys (Potato TV also used to have a weekly show about the topic at one point in the 90s), and I really hope we would get a better arctic experience.
Meanwhile all you need to do to survive on the icy land is get a snowfox, you even don't need the arctic suit since the snowfox acts like somekind of "Kharkovchanka" and prevents hypothermia despite not being enclosed. Between that and the abundant food found in caves all around the land biomes, that raises body heat, the cold ends up being a bit of a joke without much effort. Although at least magnetite for the snowfox is not so easy find, unless you know you can just use the spy pengwynn to find it in the small caves it can access and collect minerals from (easy to miss that the pengwynn is useful for this IMO). Speaking of which it is a pity the game does not make more use of remote exploration/drones. The camera drones are also quite underused, I wonder if there is a mod to make them mine deposits.
Story is worse because there is more of it, or rather there is a voiced character having dialogue, but at least it got severly cut down and retooled between EA and release. I am quite certain it would be as woke if the original game did not have the whole "sole isolated mute survivor listening to doomed logs" theme, you saw the [current year] seeping through some of the log entries you collected. Initial BZ story in EA was worse with more chatty characters and a scenario with more holes. Also the new intro sequence is better, since you get to the meat of the game or rather water much sooner with less scripted sequences than in the first BZ story iterations.
The one thing the game objectively did better was streamlining some recipes (fabricator for instance) and not doing a "lol, now go back and collect plants before they rot" at the fucking last minute of the game, clearly informing you what you need to bring in advance of reaching the deepest part of the map.
Yes I know there are teleporters in the base game around the chamber connecting to all the biomes, but the whole thing is tedious as fuck with the boring slow walking.
Well that and you don't need to dodge as many vessel destroying killer leviathans to finish the game. Only once I lost my PRAWN parked outside the alien ruins at the bottom of the map, while I was busy engaged by the endgame storytelling. Of course I had to reload, because I could not return to the surface and finish the game without it (unless it would spawn me in the drop pod if I died, dunno).
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