53:29 "you dont survive the crash because you are the main character, you are the main character because you survived the crash.

I like to think the character walks like a potato on land because he just forgets to take off his flippers

I think they added the mist to conceal the islands on purpose.  So that new players don't immediantly flock over to them, and instead they explore rather than see the island and go over to it for safety.

@53:05 The reason the game suddenly dips into a huge, never-ending hole on all the barriers of the play area is explained. The place where the player crash lands, all of that play area, is actually sitting on top of an extremely large volcano. All those deep areas the player is exploring is actually the hollow center of the volcano and is also why it gets extremely hot the deeper you go, and why the lost river is very acidic.

So what happens is when you reach the edge of the map(or play area) you are at the edge of the lip of the volcano, a very, very big volcano, so the dip is ridiculously deep. There is also life outside this volcano, as the player finds out if you roam outside the play area, giant ghost leviathans will come and kill you. But the volcano is warm and has lots of chemicals, it transfers lots of heat and minerals, which is why the play area is so abundant with life.

So yeah, the planet is actually insanely deep, which would make sense considering how deep earths oceans are. Didn't you find it odd that the apparent deepest point of the play area is only like 1500 meters? That's because that's just the depth of the volcano, any deeper is all magma.

Never will I forget the heart attack I had when I was going straight in one direction on the surface with my Seamoth and got launched into the stratosphere by a Ghost Leviathan from below me.

I’m more scared of the back of the Aurora then deep sea tbh

Finding out that there was an Island in a game that I just assumed took place 100% under water was one of the coolest moments I had in this game. I didn't even realize the teleporter was a teleporter right away because I didn't know there was second island. I'm glad they obfuscated the view of the islands. I feel like the beacons provide you with an easy enough way of navigating,  along with using the different biomes as reference points.

43:17 Aurora was ment to check what happen to Degasi group, how they dissapered so its rather obvious that they would check their last location...

What I love about this game is that progressing isn’t just make some gear to go deeper, but push yourself to WANT to go deeper.

"Complains about having to go to every biome for the enzymes"
"i wish every biome had a special thing for the rocket"

If I'm not mistaken I believe the line about the prawn suit making you feel invincible is a reference to when the prawn suit was literally invincible

A bit late, but: The ships (Degasi, Aurora, and Sunbeam) all coming in range of the cannon does make sense, even aside from the fact that any orbiting ships likely comes into range eventually because of how orbital mechanics work.
The Degasi just happened to be shot down because it got too close. The Aurora had a side mission to track the Degasi’s fate according to its logs, so it makes sense that it flew close to the crash site. The Sunbeam was on a rescue operation tracking the location of the player, so this ship was directly heading for the proximity of the crash site.

when it comes to the ships all landing in the same area, which is a volcanic mountain (hence the large dropoff at the edge):
-the degassi ship was making a gravity slingshot maneuver around the planet when it went too low and got shot down. it was hit but not totally destroyed, and they were able to steer it to crash-land in the area. (and then they lived for presumably several months)
-the aurora's secondary mission was to look for the degassi, so it entered orbit around the planet and prepared to send down landing craft. (equipped with prawn suits, at least one cyclops sub, and seamoths). at some point, it got shot down, and the captain sacrificed himself and stayed on the ship to manually guide it towards the shallow equatorial crater (identified via scans from orbit). half the lifepods deployed (half were destroyed before launch as they were on the side hit) late into the crash, so were scattered near the crash site. within 8 hours of the crash, everyone but you are dead. most of them from simply landing near large predators or too deep, although two survived to make it to the floating island and then were later killed. this is the luckiest part of the game for you, but it's not like it's that contrived that only one person would survive, and they wouldn't make a game from the perspective of a guy who's fabricator malfunctioned and then he ran out of air.

"Weapons were removed from the fabricator since the massacre on Obraxis Prime"

I think the critique around 27:00 about the invisible islands misses what I think was a key design choice - have the player think there is no land available. If, at the beginning of the game, you look out of the escape pod and see two islands, your immediate intention would be to travel to those islands instead of exploring the ocean. While there were some visual bugs in hiding the islands (I noticed at the beginning that some clouds looked like they were 'in front' of the ocean and found out later that they were the land masses) stumbling on them makes a whole lot more sense based on the intention of the games to be, you know, about being stuck in an ocean.

The fact that we don't see the islands from the start is great imo. I was just going into a random cave (and I was really scared..) then I came out from inside the cave, and stumble onto this island. I was in awe cause I did not expect it at all!

The Kharaa bacterium wasnt accidentally released. they explain how a sea dragon leviathan attacked the base.

"And what's the point in surviving here if we have to kill everything that makes it so wonderful?"
-Bart Torgal

Literally the single biggest scare I've had in the last 10 years was when a Leviathan first appeared behind me.
I almost shat my spine out.

The speed with which this game goes from "ahh, blissful swimming through the alien reefs" to "oh wow this is triggering most of my phobias at once" is truly shocking lol