u/No_Attitude4534

At some point, every player has looked out at the void and tried to go there. In the late game, once you get top-tier vehicles and start hauling across the map, it feels like a tiny, claustrophobic fish tank. Right now in Subnautica, the game handles the world borders with the empty Void water column, and if you try to explore too far into the deep, you literally just hit an invisible wall that teleports your coordinates back to the Safe Shallows, further reinforcing the claustrophobia. The developers definitely nailed the atmosphere and mechanics of the void by spawning Adult Ghost Leviathans to hunt you down and scare you into turning around, which works for most players. But the second you push past them and hit that coordinate teleport screen, the illusion of being stranded on an endless, living alien world completely shatters. It practically makes you realize you're just playing inside a rigid video game box surrounded by empty programming space. After all, the Void was always an interesting concept for me and one of my favorite ways for a game to keep the player in-bounds. It's just that it feels lacking in certain aspects.

The devs probably think, "We explicitly tell players to avoid the edge, so why waste resources building content out there?" But that's just a massive blind spot regarding player psychology. Telling a gamer “do not go here” is basically flashing a neon sign telling them to do it immediately. The second that 1% of bold players discover a map boundary mechanic they can break, it doesn't stay an accepted end of the map. It blows up on YouTube and instantly becomes a mainstream trend that 100% of the community wants to experience to satisfy their curiousity of whats lies beyond. This is actually something we can already see with how players treat the Void at this point. We can completely fix the boundaries for North, South, Up, and Down, fully covering all angles of out-of-bounds exploits, while keeping the Void biome barrier and it's vast emptiness as a first layer of defense. It's practically just an extra layer of depth most players will never see that realistically gives the endless water a physical, terrifying scale. Best of all, it requires almost no new assets, reuses existing visual effects, and relies on smart chunk loading so it doesn't cause performance stress on the core operating system. Note this is regarding the original Subnautica map and also includes references to Below Zero. It is intended simply to serve as an interesting idea and POV from the player's perspective that might improve Subnautica 2's eventual release.

North: The Polar Ice Wall

Far out on the northern horizon, a massive polar ice cap blocks the way. Because Subnautica's horizon is huge enough to extend way past the crater, this massive ice wall is always visible in the distance from the surface. To keep the performance cost as low as possible, the game renders a simple, flat 2D ice wall PNG on the distant skybox. You can ride your sub toward it, and only when you get close enough to realistically see its true scale does the engine use chunk loading to silently swap the flat image for a physical 3D glacier mesh. You literally end up idling at the base of a kilometer-tall vertical cliff of ice that drops straight into the deep ocean. It gives you a physical collision mesh to hit, stopping the player while making the world feel globally massive (It's also a nice reference to Below Zero).

South: The Active Trap Volcano

To the south, we use the exact same horizon logic from the Ice Wall. A looping 2D animated geyser particle effect is always visible on the distant southern horizon, simulating a massive volcanic plume out in the open ocean. The second the player actually leaves the crater and enters the pitch-black Void water column, the surface geyser effect stops. Because the water down there is completely dark, the engine can safely load a massive 3D volcano onto the seafloor thousands of feet below you without you ever seeing the assets pop into existence. Once you hit around 7,000 meters out, faint ambient orange glows start pulsing up through the darkness of the void. Like a moth to a flame, the player's natural curiosity will literally make them dive downward toward the light. To trap them, the game spawns maybe around 5 giant, invincible, un-stasisable Sea Dragon Leviathans. Their pathfinding could be strictly scripted to act as a herder, aggressively swimming in tight flanks around you to box you in and purposefully herd you into the absolute center of the volcano. The moment you are pinned in the center area of the volcano, BOOM! Instant-death eruption triggers, vaporizing your sub. This also makes sense since we know that the crater and the areas near it have high volcanic activity, so a volcano fits in perfectly and further reinforces existing ecological and geological observations to avoid breaking immersion.

Up: The Quarantine Protocol

Right now, Subnautica has a ridiculous building loophole: structural integrity is tied strictly to water pressure. Because above-water pressure registers as zero, players can cheese the physics engine and build 10,000-foot-tall titanium skyscrapers straight into space with absolutely zero support beams. The game should use the Precursor quarantine cannon to shoot them down a second time. The moment a player builds a base module or flies a vehicle above 1,000 meters (which makes sense given that the neighbouring planet we see in the sky is only a few kilometers away), it triggers the cannon. This makes sense anyway considering that the Precursor's built this cannon specifically to prevent anyone from entering or leaving the planet, so it evn just a tall enough building could probably trigger its weaponry. To keep this optimized, the devs don't need to animate hundreds of individual titanium shards. We just play an audio cue of the protagonist wondering what the hell is going on. Then, a script instantly deletes everything above a 50-meter buffer zone of the trigger line. At that exact microsecond, the game reuses the massive explosion effects from the Aurora crash sequence from the start of the game, but tints the particles bright neon green. The player's screen is instantly blinded by a flash of green light while the top of the tower is deleted completely, removed by the blast as if it were destroyed. To make it feel like a massive blast rippled through the whole structure, a negative multiplier could effect lower modules, causing the rooms downstairs to instantly decrease in structural integrity. It realistically turns a building exploit into an immediate survival emergency. This also prevents players from trying to breach the earlier Polar Ice Wall.

Down: The Leviathan's Maw

This is the ultimate cosmic horror loop, and because it only triggers when you hit the absolute deepest trenches of the Void, we don't even have to worry about surface skimmers. You dive down into the bottomless abyss, and suddenly your camera is forcefully locked to face straight upwards toward the fading light. The engine slightly brightens the background water layer just enough so that pure black realistically looks darker than the pitch-black of the void. A featureless, vanta-black silhouette of an ambiguous maw slowly closes up over you from the edges of the screen. You try to swim upward to escape, but you dove too deep and there practically isn't enough time. The indistinct maw closes, transforming into a solid invisible wall that is completely indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness. If you try to glitch or cheese your way through the muscle mesh, it's literally too thick. If you try to swim further down to escape, you meet the stomach acid, it's like floor is lava but you can barely see. If the Seamoth, Prawn Suit, or any other device like the Cyclops touch the stomach fluids, their structural integrity decreases rapidly. Should the player attempt other means of escape, they will promptly find that the massive leviathan is immune to stasis rifles; trapping them in a closed cavernous maw where they slowly suffocate or get one-tapped by the stomach acid. Thus fully closing all methods of map escape and creating an airtight sense of immersion.

Looking Ahead to Subnautica 2

Now that the developers have Krafton's backing and aren't some tiny indie studio anymore, they seriously have zero excuses for cutting corners in the upcoming sequel. In the Subnautica 2 Early Access, we can already see they are trying to improve map edges by introducing glowing orange warning grids, direct user interface text alerts, and spawning the aggressive Shiver Leviathan to forcefully tear your sub apart. It's a huge step up in terms of making the boundary look intentional. But hitting a grid wall with text warnings still snaps the player right out of the immersion and forces the player to have to entertain a suspension of disbelief to continue playing immersively. Instead of relying on basic interface text overlays or coordinate resets in the new Unreal Engine 5 setup, they have the performance budget and the rendering tools to pull off a fully immersive, multi-layered boundary framework just like this. It would take what used to be a technical limitation and turn the boundaries into a cohesive and natural part of the game.

Greetings Comrades; this is the Winter Lazzo Newsletter…

LAZZO MOVES AROUND

With recent developments across Teyvat, the Lazzo has temporarily gone nomadic, we are reporting live from the scene on Sumeru. After a recent internal upheaval this nation of wisdom was plunged into strife with the sudden return of Eleazar and a strange variant of withering.

LEY LINE UPHEAVAL

Official scrambled today when it was revealed that massive ley line junctions are unraveling, causing a destabilization of the entire world. Reports indicate that the activity originated from the Irminsul, leaving many worried.

ABYSSAL INFILTRATORS

In a shocking discovery; abyssal changelings have been discovered throughout Teyvat, these imposters take on the face and memories of others to lure in victims, if you see someone you know suddenly appearing at your door; inform us and do not let them in. They are not your neighbor, should one be aggressive, retrieve your musket and kill it. DO NOT FALK FIR THEIR TRICKS. They may mimic dead people.

CELESTIAL NAIL DISCOVERED

I…I don’t know how to say this but…recent reports from our satellites indicate something deeply disturbing, a Sovereign class celestial nail is currently aiming towards Sumeru. Intelligence indicates that it may fall within the next week or so.

DOTTORE’S UNIT LEAVES SUDDENLY

The former Dottore unit, led by the mysterious ‘Epsilon’ has gone on a strange unannounced expedition to the desert of Sumeru, rumors indicate that they have been spotted near an old abandoned Eleazar hospital, and appear to be tracking down a patient who escaped. Reports indicate their target is a girl named Collei. Though the exact temperament of Epsilon is unknown; the Lazzo is not optimistic.

WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

In the wake of this turmoil her majesty the Tsaritsa has declared as such “Do not be afraid, for through our hearts and bravery; shall our comrades return victorious. For there is always a blizzard to brave; but afterward, there lays a welcoming cabin.

EDITORS NOTE

A strange changeling resembling Dottore has been spotted in Snezhnaya; we are currently calling this entity ‘Cycloptorre’, be extremely cautious if you see him.

Comrades, usually I would remind you of her majesty’s dream, but..just stay safe everyone. Whether by Celestia or the Abyss, they are ruthless forces who will not hesitate to end your whole family.

Surtalogi: uses bow capable of easily destroying star systems

Lan: uses bow capable of easily destroying star systems

Hunt: Strength above all else

Surtalogi: strength above all else

Surtalogi: uses great sword to slice stars (it’s his worst weapon)

Lan: one arrow to kill them all (best weapon)

Plus they kinda look the same.

Plus with the feats we know of Surtalogi it’s impossible he isn’t known in hsr (he wouldn’t be destruction because he only seeks strong foes, so he can’t be lord ravaged but he’s clearly low-aeon level at minimum. Zephyro the strongest lord ravager could only destroy a star system with a good amount of effort)

I know it crack and btw sorry for not posting I’ve been kinda. Busy with end of year exams.

Do we like Traveler? What’s or stance? (This is both for Fatui and Celestia)

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I know it’s not really RP but it’s important to establish for baseline, canon will go with majority vote (hopefully I don’t start a war ;) ), ig if you want to state your claims put in in seperate posts but here you go.

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