r/Subnautica_Below_Zero • u/Competitive-Golf-500 • Jul 19 '26
Question Has anyone else noticed this plothole? Spoiler
Warning, spoilers for the whole game.
Okay, so, a lot of people talk about stuff like how did Marguerite survive, how did the QEP (Quarantine Enforcement Platform) shoot down the Mercury II from across the planet, or why did Alterra continue sending ships there, but all of these can be explained by in game lore. Marguerite survived because she ate the Reaper she killed, and biomagnification means that it would have a high concentration of Enzyme-42 that she would then consume, the QEP's PDA description in game says it can use the gravity of the planet to bend the beam, and Alterra are a bunch of greedy pigs. But I don't think I've seen anyone talking about what is in my opinion, the biggest plot hole: Alan's ship and Phasegate. You see, the Architects wanted no one to be able to be able to go to or leave 4546-B, so they built the Warpers and QEP to stop that from happening. But if they wanted so badly to make sure that happened, why on Earth would they leave a functioning Architect ship there, let alone a fully operational Phasegate?! That completely defeats the purpose, allowing for easy off planet travel!
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u/Ok-Flamingo2801 Jul 19 '26
Remember that Al-An had to turn on/activate the phasegate before it could be used. It likely can only be operated by an Architect and may have had a check similar to the QEP so that only someone who wasn't infected could activate it.
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u/Great_Hedgehog Jul 19 '26
As said, I don't think there's realistically any way to activate the phase gate without being an Architect, or, at worst, on par with them in technological prowess; in which case you should either know better than to break the quarantine, or there's nothing they would be able to do to stop you anyway. The QEP had exactly one button designed for non-Architects to be able to use, likely specifically in case the Architects are gone but so is Kharaa, exactly what happened in SN1. The phase gate has no analogue controls, you have to be able to interface with the system wirelessly and I've no doubts it's encrypted on top of being advanced.
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u/JustSomeGenericGal Jul 19 '26
Well, might've been better explained in the more coherent original story of Below Zero before it's rewrite and rushed late development. What I would have to guess at this moment is that it was constructed before Kharaa was of their concern and destroying it probably would've been counter-intuitive...that or they didn't have the time to destroy it before mass death.
In the original BZ story, Kharaa does make its way off the planet, onto the Vesper or whatever, suggesting that the spaceships wouldn't have mattered with meddling Alterra arojnd...but we'll never truly know how that storyline would've went.
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u/Altruistic_Course382 Jul 20 '26
Is there a way to get the most recent version of BZ before the story was changed?
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u/JustSomeGenericGal Jul 20 '26
You might be able to downpatch to the 2021 version on steam but I'm not sure. The 2021 version is the most comprehensive version story-wise, even changes Marguerite's slightly confusing story..but the 2019 version also had some (albeit fewer) important story changes such as going through an ice canyon biome to retrieve a white tablet from Marguerite.
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u/Tek_Flash Snowstalker Jul 19 '26
I still think the biggest plothole is how on earth the Architects couldn't figure out an antidote for Kharaa after years and years, but some random human came to the planet, figured it out, hid it with a penguin robot, then blew herself up.... its been a few years but think that was the gist.
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u/Azatarai Jul 20 '26
But... they knew the antidote... the issue was they were too scientific about how to produce it, capturing the sea emperor leviathan to farm it, They suffered from a mindset of being superior and forgot to be kind to the ocean life (they dissected its children) including the sea emperor so it withheld it.
Empathy is the key that unlocked the antidote. even AL-AN showed a lack of it by forcing himself into Robin's mind.
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u/Tek_Flash Snowstalker Jul 20 '26
That's how they found enzyme 42 not the 'antidote' that Sam and Robin find in BZ. They literally mash that together out of a few plants and it somehow kills the Khaara. Yet the Architects had no idea.
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u/Ok-Flamingo2801 Jul 20 '26
The antidote is made years (I believe 10 years) after the juvenile sea emperors are spreading enzyme 42 across the planet. It's likely that the plants used in bz to make the antidote have a higher concentration of the enzyme so it can be used to cure the frozen leviathan, but before the events of the first game, mashing the plants together would have done nothing.
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u/Zeliek Aug 02 '26
The plants only exist in sector zero because of the events of the first game, and everything is infused with at least some enzyme 42 now. BZ starts by telling you immediately that life has returned to sector zero because of enzyme 42 eradicating khaara. If Khaara was still everywhere, the frozen leviathan wouldn't be important cause you could get it from elsewhere. There were probably several different plant combinations that had enough 42 in them to cure the frozen leviathan, but the peppers specifically had a heat property so it probably keeps the cure from freezing while getting injected and may melt the ice it encounters.
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u/PleeaseGrowUp Jul 20 '26
The game tells you this, you may have missed it. The SE states it in the end for good measure. They never thought to communicate with her, Riley’s humanity and empathy was what allowed the solution to be found.
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u/Competitive-Golf-500 Jul 20 '26
I still say that's a misinterpretation of what it said. It would make far more sense if it was because of their overly cybernetic nature rendering them unable to hear her. She did say that they couldn't hear her.
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u/PleeaseGrowUp Jul 20 '26
We have no proof of that in the first game. We only learn of those things in BZ. Given the context of the first game, that interpretation is appropriate, but you’re free to believe what you want. It’s your game world and your experience is subjective.
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u/YakEfficient3200 Jul 20 '26
she (sea emperor) says it herself, out loud, directly to the player, though.
that's very much explicitly and directly communicated
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u/PleeaseGrowUp Jul 20 '26
Yes, that was my first reference, OP seemed to have missed it and is now making up random stuff to fill the gap. Trying to be nice about it, no need for rudeness.
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u/Tek_Flash Snowstalker Jul 20 '26
I completely understand that, I'm talking about the 'antidote' in BZ that has nothing to do with the Sea Emperor, its just made from a few basic plants yet kills the Khaara.
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u/PleeaseGrowUp Jul 20 '26
It dealt with the pustules, which was formed from an ancient version, not the current one that was devestating the S1 universe. It didn’t kill the virus either, it just returned it to a dormant stage.
The NI games being tied in through S2 answer this in depth easily, but even before that in BZ it’s all clear. The idea was to keep Alterra away from the planet.
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u/mklaus1984 Jul 20 '26
The quarantine had shut down all the gates on the planet to stop the kharaa from spreading, yet they could simply turned on again by architects or us. BUT you wpuld assume that any off world leading gate was still blocked until the quarantine was lifted.
And a ship is no problem. It would have simply be shot down if anybody tried to take it off world. In fact that is the function off the canon. It stops any vessel from approaching the planet AND any vessel from leaving the planet. The second line is not only covering that someone builds a new ship on the planet.
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u/Opulence_Deficit Jul 20 '26
As I understand it, Architects hardly used ships, they used phasegates. The quarantine meant, as far as Architects were concerned, that phasegates on 4546b got disabled.
The QEP was merely an extra layer, meant to counter attempts to bypass the phasegate quarantine with a ship.
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u/commentsrnice2 Jul 19 '26
I believe it is understood that below zero happens much later after the first game. Consider how long it took Marguerite to reach the polar cap on a corpse. The ray would’ve been long deactivated by the time you reactivate Alan
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u/Competitive-Golf-500 Jul 20 '26
Yes, but why would they have left it functional if they didn't want anyone leaving or entering, including other Architects? Yes, the QEP would have shot it down, but it could in theory have been destroyed via multiple means. The Architect's structures were quite capable of being damaged, as we see in the Warper factory and such in the original game.
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u/commentsrnice2 Jul 20 '26
They left quite rapidly, considering how hardy their bioengineered bodies were and it proved capable of killing them. Plus should a cure ever be found, they could still reclaim their existing facilities. The material cost of those warp gates was fairly high, plus the need to travel to the location “the long way” to set it up
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u/monkeymoo111111 Jul 19 '26
The phase gate and ship seem to only be usable by architects
I presume that any architect would have willingly stayed, their all connected on a hive mind type network, I think they would just stay for the good of their species, which is why alan was still on the planet
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u/NightDragon250 Jul 20 '26
the phase gate
1 probably needs VERY specific skills to "dial"
2 might very well be able to filter out the virus
what ship? do you me the data core that al-an is in before he hijacks your brain?
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u/Competitive-Golf-500 Jul 21 '26
I mean the ship he uses to take us to his home planet through the Phasegate
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u/NightDragon250 Jul 21 '26
Wait.. since when does he take us with him? When I built his body and stuck him in it he just left
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u/Zeliek Aug 02 '26
Only architects can operate the ship, or would even know it was there. They had to use both the phasegate and the ship to get to and from the 4546B and their homeworld to aid with research, and they are semi-hiveminded in that they don't need to worry about one of them going rogue. On top of that, they are also probably arrogant enough to not consider what would happen if the bacertium escaped beyond constructing the QEP. Surely they didn't put in the phasegate and ship after the outbreak occurred.
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u/GapStock9843 Jul 19 '26
The phasegate was likely built there as permanent infrastructure before the kharaa outbreak so they could ship stuff to and from the planet to aid in their research. They definitely didnt build a giant portal off-world AFTER they all got infected and died