Closeup Of AL-AN’s Color Changes.

Zoooom in

Here’s a very adorable animation that AL-AN has in the early-access original story!

I do prefer the final story, but this is so cute. I think they should’ve kept this animation in the final release. It gives him more personality.

A removed conversation between Robin and AL-AN that remains in the games audio files.

It’s a very interesting interaction, but I do see why they opted to leave it out. Though it is nice to see a longer conversation between them. Especially one where they talk out their reasonings for differing views, and one where Robin ends up expressing empathy for AL-AN.

Transcript under the cut

AL-AN: Thank you for undertaking the quest for an alternative storage medium.

Robin: I would really love it if you could stop referring to me as a storage medium.

A: Not you. Your body.

R: My body is a significant part of who I am and how I experience life.

A: It is different for us.

R: Clearly. Or you wouldn’t have been hanging out in that sanctuary waiting to hitch a ride with me.

R: How did you get in there anyway?

A: We came here in search of a cure for the Kharaa bacterium.

R: What? Thousands of years ago?

A: I do not experience time as you do, but yes, that is technically correct.

A: My body was infected before a vaccine could be developed. I uploaded my consciousness to the sanctuary for storage.

R: What happened to the others?

A: Some left, others perished. Over time my connection to them grew weaker… I cannot sense them now.

R: AL-AN… I—

[missing piece of dialogue]

R: Yes okay, but— what I was going to say was… I’m sorry.

A: …Why? You have done nothing wrong.

R: Not sorry like an apology. Sorry like I feel empathy.

A: Are all your human languages so… confusing?

R: All the ones I know are.

Unused aside dialogue about rockgrubs between AL-AN and Robin

Transcript under the cut

AL-AN: The rockgrub is small, but it has a spine. Much like you Robin.

Robin: …How exactly?

A: Like the rockgrub you are small and have a spine.

R: Ah. Thanks?

Dialogue for scanning AL-AN before you transfer him into his vessel

Are Architects Smarter than Humans?

The way AL-AN talks mixed with the fact that Architects are more technologically progressed than humans in the Subnautica universe leads him to seeming ‘smarter’ than the average human. He has a wide range of knowledge and despite his lack of experience with human social cues he is able to articulate himself extremely well. He also has access to tons of information due to his prior position as a scientist, but also because of what comes with existing as an Architect in the first place.

I mean, if your brain had direct access to all information available currently, you'd of course seem smart, but is that just you retelling what things have already been discovered or is this you being ‘smart’?

In that case you are only as smart as Google allows you to be (and the proverbial Architect GoogleTM is damn good). If you took an Architect never connected to the network and a human with no access to the internet how would they compare with their baseline intellect?

Wait a minute—what does that even solve? You could also argue the fact that because Architects are (usually) always connected to the network that this hypothetical is entirely unfair because it strips Architects of something that defines how they function. Being connected to the network is their normal existence, which would indeed imply that they are smarter than humans, yes? As they normally should have access to this advantage.

The average Architect has all the available knowledge that their species has learned available to it at all times while the average human has to rely only on things they’ve learned and how well they can research a certain topic. Again, being connected to the network for Architects is like if your brain was connected to Google and also literally everyone that currently exists and those that existed in the past. Just because a singular Architect may not have learned something for themselves doesn’t mean they can’t implement and use that knowledge. Just like how humans don’t need to have been the one to discover something for them to learn about and understand said thing.

Except then we go back to the issue of are they smart or do they just reiterate things they have available information on without actually having had studied or learned about said things? Even that fails to acknowledge the fact that they’re a hivemind! Trying to measure just one Architect is pointless when the only Architect mind that exists singularly from the rest of the network is AL-AN—besides he was never supposed to exist individually in the first place… and we have gone back around in a circle.

How could you even begin to compare the two species at all when they are so inherently different? Architects have senses that humans cannot begin to comprehend as we have never experienced them and vice versa. Their perceptions are very different from ours. Differences that make them seem so otherworldly to the other that it’s difficult to ascertain where you begin to measure which is ‘better’ and which is ’worse’.

To complicate things even further you would have to consider what each species considers to be intelligent at all, and then both would have to agree on these requirements. Is a fish lesser than a human just because it experiences existence in a way unfamiliar to us? What even is ‘smart’ or ‘intelligence’ and who decides what that means? It’s always going to be biased when the beings who created the definition also makes the rules and the criteria that must be met to fit that definition. An IQ test would mean nothing to a species that evolved under entirely different circumstances and whose minds work in entirely opposite ways to our own. Just as whatever they use to measure intelligence might not apply to how our brains work…

…Oh my god, it’s a loop that never ends. I can’t even remember which side I was arguing for, or if I was ever even arguing for one at all. Quite honestly, there’s no answer to my original question. I’ll be frank with you I cannot come up with one anyhow. I tried, but the more I kept writing the more I realized that each point contradicted itself again and again until we end up here. Back at the beginning.

“Are Architects Smarter than Humans?”

Closer look at the hologram AL-AN types on

A conversation between AL-AN and Robin in the old story about sensory perception

Stares at you…

He has become too pink someone stop him!!!