The Lost Aliens of Subnautica (ft. Alex Ries)

The Archivist: “When designing a speculative creature, where do you like to start?” Alex Ries: “I will tend to gather, maybe 10 or 20 references that are on the topic of the direction I'm going. Reference images of fossil life, reconstructions, living things, even fungi and microscopic creatures. And then I bring it up in Photoshop and start drawing, referencing that.” That's Alex Ries, 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 began as his idea, going through multiple iterations of concept art to arrive at the stunning final designs we see in the game.

However, there is a lot of incredible art from unique speculative life forms that, for one reason or another, never made it into the final product. Not implementing all designs from the early stages of development is a normal part of pre-production, but some of these designs are so well thought out that they deserve further study. So for this archive entry, 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 shown 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 life forms that might have been... Starting in the vast open ocean regions of Planet 4546B, some very unique leviathans almost swam. These huge, curiously shaped creatures are called Thalassaceae and are imagined to fill the niche of a peaceful filter feeder, filtering small particles of food from the water using specialized mouths. The structure of their fins gives them a distinctive profile, and Alex Ries says the creature uses its rear fins to swim in a similar way to Earth's oceanic sunfish. Ries created many different color variants exploring pigment and skin texture options for these life forms, and I must say that some of them are truly amazing.

Like most of the life forms on this list, it's hard not to wish you could interact with them in-game. Other potential organisms are more deadly. One life form that would work in sandy environments is Sand Spear. This terrifying creature is an ambush predator that burrows into the sediment and waits for the unwary to swim overhead before attacking. In behavior and appearance, Sand Spear looks a bit like Earth's Bobbit Worm: an alarming-looking predator that also ambushes its prey. Sand Spear's name and general lifestyle are also reminiscent of the sand shark of the tropics, another species that burrows beneath the sea floor only to emerge spectacularly to catch its lunch.

And like the sand shark, the sand spear attacks at high speed, with pointed jaws extending to grab its prey. In addition to this veritable forest of teeth, the Sand Spear's head features two tentacles that help them detect their targets while they are buried. These antennae are similar to the navigation appendages on the front of certain genera of sea slugs. Overall, while the sand spears would have been an exciting inclusion, they would make swimming near the sea floor much more stressful... On the ice floats, we almost found a very unusual type of symbiotic organism. The garden eel is a strange creature that stores a small tree-like plant in its throat.

While on the surface, it expels the plant towards the sun awaiting photosynthesis. This type of symbiotic relationship between a plant and an animal appears in the natural world and can be seen in the Earth's "leaf sheep", a fascinating type of sea slug that I have mentioned before in other posts. Leaf sheep can use the green algae on their backs to photosynthesize and produce simple sugars for food. However, the garden eel does not spend all day in the sun and can "swallow" the membrane and swim like a more traditional eel when in danger. A truly inventive way of life.

Just beneath the ice of Sector Zero, a combative predator could have been lurking. This warlike creature is a Bulldog Trapjaw, a medium-sized creature that does not appear particularly threatening in a neutral position. However, if you swim too close, Trapjaw will live up to its name by attacking with a pair of long, predatory jaws. These extendable jaws have multiple functions: useful as an offensive tool and as a grappling mechanism to draw prey to its throat. The various species of moray eels in Earth's oceans have a convergent adaptation. Their secondary set of predatory jaws is located further back on the eels' head and contains its own set of sharp teeth.

Like Trapjaw, moray eels use these secondary jaws to grab their prey and drag them deeper into their throat. Ultimately, the Trapjaw, like the moray eel, is a creature to be wary of when diving. Deeper below, another dangerous life form might have been waiting in the eerie light of the Crystal Caves. The Shardrunner is a patient hunter, weaving long, fragile mineralized cables to detect prey. When an unfortunate soul touches a wire, the Shardrunner knows their location and attacks with deadly precision. This type of behavior is almost convergent with that of certain terrestrial spiders, which can also detect any prey that becomes entangled in the filaments of their web.

Some spiders can sense their prey using macroreceptor organs called slime sensilla. Therefore, it is likely that Shardrunner evolved an analogous sensory organ to detect life forms entangled in its own mineralized web. In particular, some of these hypothetical life forms are relatives of pre-existing creatures that evolved to fill different niches and, as a result, possess highly divergent biology. One of the most impressive creatures on Planet 4546B is the Reefback Leviathan of the tropics. These gentle giants almost had a polar relative: the Leviathan Icebreaker, a concept that is one of Alex Ries' favorites. The Archivist: “So if you could add one creature that you created that wasn't in the final game in Subnautica: Below Zero, what would it be?

Alex Ries: “I probably would have chosen the Icebreaker Leviathan, remembering the Reefbacks and the impact they had on me. I thought bringing that creature, that design to the arctic environment might be interesting. And a possible solution could be that they have to make their way through the ice. I knew that would have a lot of implications when you have a creature interacting with the environment like that. It could be a kind of nesting place for Pengwings to live. It could almost be a kind of moving ice flow. I think it wasn't included in the end, it just would have been very, very difficult to implement in terms of programming.

But I think that would have been my choice. Aside from the Reefback, of all the creatures in the original Subnautica, one of the most iconic (and most imposing) was the feared Reaper Leviathan. For Below Zero, Alex Ries imagined that a smaller but more agile relative known as the Crested Reaper could terrorize the frigid waters. About the size of a killer whale, Crested Reapers are a very different type of predator than the Reapers we know. In another parallel to land killer whales, the Crested Reaper is exceptionally cunning, capable of colliding with ice flows to knock prey out of reach into the water, a behavior that real killer whales have been observed doing.

However, the Crested Reaper takes this hunting strategy a step further: its signature crest is actually a specialized ice ram that helps push ice floats. The concept of a more intelligent and maneuverable branch of a Reaper Leviathan is really intriguing, if a little scary... Other imagined branches are much less threatening. As an example, we have the Grabsquid: a smaller, more intelligent polar relative of the huge and terrifying Crabsquid. Just as the Crabsquid possesses a mysterious bioelectric discharge, the small Grabsquid can generate a weak bioelectric field. As a result, the Grabsquid is naturally attracted to small electrical devices like batte

ries

, a behavior that mirrors how its deep-sea relative is attracted to larger energy sources.

Large animals developing a reduced body size in response to a limited environment is a well-documented form of adaptation. My favorite example of this on Earth is 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 that shape the huge Crabsquid into the small Grabsquid are maintained from an evolutionary perspective. Interestingly, an alternate name for the Grabsquid branch is Seamonkey, as this concept was actually an early version of the rather different looking Seamonkeys that made it to the final game.

Some The Archivist: "So, in your opinion, which creature changed the most during development?" Alex Ries: “I think Seamonkey might have actually gone through the most iterations, because it started out as a blank slate. It took me quite a while to get to a friendlier look. Because the focus was more on the alien. But we tried to make it more naughty and readable. It was in so many strange directions that one of the creatures turned towards the Trivalve. So the Trivalve was one of Seamonkey's first attempts. But it was different enough that he managed to turn it into another 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 smooth Skyrays can be seen flying over various regions of Planet 4546B and are the only life form in the games that evolves in powered flight. The Kitewing would add exciting variety to the skies of Subnautica by being not only a passive life form, but a serious threat. This powerful predator uses its large claws to capture its 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 claws and a towering crest.

This head crest resembles the crown structures of certain pterosaurs, which paleontologists believe may have arisen for social displays and improved aerodynamics. Therefore, it is likely that the Kitewing's powerful crest serves a similar purpose. It's easy to imagine these swooping terrors flying through the skies of planet 4546B... Returning to completely original concepts, in the twilight of the abyss, a predator like no other could make an appearance. The ascending worm may appear to be an average squid-like organism at first glance. However, what sets this way of life apart is its extremely unusual hunting method. The little ascending worm may not have the jaws or muscles to take down large prey, but it has another weapon: decompression sickness.

When the ascending worm hunts, it grabs its unsuspecting prey with two deceptively strong tentacles and quickly inflates itself with gas, dragging its target to the surface in the hopes that the change in pressure will kill them. Decompression sickness, also called curvature, is a real danger that divers face and is caused by the formation of gas bubbles inside the body due to depressurization. A truly gloomy fate. Other theoretical life forms 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 bright lure reminds me of the classic anglerfish, the Shard's upright 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 stand out is its defensive capabilities. When attacked, it quickly excludes hypersaline slime which quickly forms an ice "shell" around its body, from which it suddenly swims free. This leaves the predator attacking the fragment's fake ice shadow while the real life form escapes. A surreal but ingenious form of defense. One of the most distinctive regions in Subnautica: Below Zero are the Thermal Spiers, an ecosystem defined by chimney-shaped hydrothermal vents.

One species that could have been part of this environment is the Ventspider: an arthropod-like animal that would crawl between vents on long, thin legs. On Earth, all kinds of sea spiders have emerged, some large bottom-dwellers that crawl along the sea floor and others light enough to swim... although not very gracefully. However, Ventspider is unique because of its method of obtaining food. It has feathery gills that collect sulfur around the vents to feed the Extremophilous bacteria in its abdomen. Oddly enough, Earth's hydrothermal vents hostall kinds of specialized life forms that feed on the rich chemical soup they produce.

Among these life forms are bacteria, which have evolved to be highly resistant to the heat of boiling vents. So the idea of ​​a symbiotic alliance between such bacteria and a larger life form like Ventspider isn't so far-fetched after all... In the original games, there are all sorts of dangerous creatures to keep an eye out for. But one particularly baffling concept would make these life forms even more deadly. The Rotnest is a parasite that would infect other creatures on Planet 4546 B. This parasite would take over the brains of its hosts and transform into a launch pad for jet-propelled spore capsules, which would explode and infect life forms. nearby, spreading the infection. .

As scary as this concept may seem, we may find something similar on Earth. An infamous type of fungus can take over the bodies of ants, hijacking their minds and essentially turning them into zombies, using them to move to an ideal location to sprout and spread its spores to other life forms. And the Rotnest works the same way: its host eventually passes away and the Rotnest slowly digests what's left and releases spore pods at any creature foolish enough to investigate. A truly threatening concept. However, of all the creatures in Subnautica: Below Zero, Shadow Leviathan is perhaps the most intimidating and well-known.

However, at multiple points throughout its development, it seemed quite different. The Archivist: “I'm curious, what was the process like to design the Shadow Leviathan? How did you choose the final look of that creature? Alex Ries: “He came to a fork in the road with that creature. We needed something big and scary. I did a lot of initial sketches that were more traditional looking, almost like a dragon head. It had shiny white teeth and huge jaws like a deep-sea snakefish and things like that, but it almost looked like a vertebrate. But it also had a lot of references to things called arrow worms.

Horrible little invertebrates that have a face that is basically a bunch of nested spines sticking out of it. He just did a little study where instead of the dragon face, it was this more invertebrate face. Among all those who connected a little more with people. It was somewhat disturbing. And combining that with some lamprey and some other sea creatures that people generally find horrible, we're moving in that direction.” The Archivist: "I definitely got scared during my game." And there's a leviathan that didn't make it to the final game that could have been even bigger than Shadow Leviathan.

The Ice Dragon is a cut creature of such intimidating size and design that it lives up to its mythical namesake. We can see in the concept art that the Ice Dragon would swim with wings as fins, another visual nod to the myth of Earth's dragons. However, this alien dragon didn't breathe fire, but instead released a stream of ice breath to trap vehicles, sort of like a scaled-up version of the brine fish from the final game, which Alex Ries also designed. In fact, the Ice Dragon is so large that its size could have been a problem in terms of implementing the life form into the game.

While this is understandable, I wish you could find this frozen terror beneath the ice of Below Zero... And there's one final life form we need to cover. 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 the game as AI or artificial reconstructions, so we have no idea what they really look like. Or us? This early concept art by Alex Ries shows some potential designs of what the architects' biological forms could look like. The Archivist: "Architects are so mysterious in the game that I'm curious how you decided to approach their design." Alex Ries: “I wanted them to be kind of annoying creatures.

A little precise. Nerd, almost. So I tried to design a creature along those lines. Something that could use the tool and environment that we had already seen. Something that could use a tablet as a computer, but it's still strange. “So, I started moving in kind of a direction that combined amphibian and reptile references, but I think a combination of salamanders and mantis shrimp were my main inspiration.” The Archivist: "That's great!" We've now seen an incredible variety of life forms that nearly swam the oceans of Planet 4546B, and along the way, we've learned a lot about creature design.

A huge thank you to Alex Ries for sharing information about his design process. If you enjoyed discovering the invisible 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. If you liked this post, you can support it by liking, subscribing, and hitting the notification icon to stay up to date on all things Curious. See you in the next video.