Yes, the pun is intended. I have three daughters. Bad Dad Jokes are what I do.
Seriously though, I’ve spent the last week playing Subnautica and have also caught up with Loki. I’ve adored the former but I’m struggling to stay interested with the latter. Why? Let me explain…
Loki episode 3 follows the title character as he teams up with Slyvie, a female Loki variant who is seeking to destroy the Sacred Timeline. Jumping from a Wal-Mart of the future, they end up on a doomed moon, and most of the episode focuses on the Lokis (Lokoi? What is the plural of Loki?) as they make their way to the last starship of the planet. In regard to my previous criticisms of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, this show is an improvement; the main character is commanding every scene, he is active and makes character-based decisions, and I quite liked the back and forth between Loki and Slyvie. Still, even with the drama of the pair trying to break into a spaceship as a planetary collision hangs overhead, I was twiddling my thumbs waiting for the episode to wrap up.
Now let’s talk about Subnatucia. This is a survival game, where you, the anonymous player, crash land on an alien ocean world. You start off with a lifepod and a fabricator, and you scrounge for materials to start building the equipment you need to survive for a few more hours. As you explore out into the islands and darker waters of the game you learn more about this exotic, beautiful and terrifying world, and the strange alien structures that may be the key to getting you home.
The game has a simple, engaging progression based on exploration, and at every turn, you are forced to plan, think ahead and judge your odds for survival. This was the essence of Subnautica for me; it’s searching for minerals on an underwater cliff face in your tiny, paper-thin mini sub, watching the sunlight filter through the surface hundreds of meters above. It’s turning to look down into the shadows and seeing the outline of an enormous fin – and to hear a monstrous roar. The setting draws you in and drives you forward, and the story organically expands from catching fish in a sunny reef to unlocking an alien research base in the heart of a volcano and conversing with an ancient god about the nature of life, death and time.
Here is where I think Loki has gone astray for me. While Loki has urgency and stakes in the episode’s plot, it isn’t connecting with his original setting so it’s not grabbing me. The eternal offices of the TVA were the first “wow!” moment that drew us in – and now we have an episode about escaping a Wal-Mart, to follow a train, to get to a city, to get on a spaceship, then use it to power some time-tech. It felt like needlessly complicated filler and didn’t engage with the setup that we were originally presented with.
All that said, I’ll still tune in to episode 4 – I’m hoping they get everyone back to the TVA and start exploring some of the mysteries of the Timekeepers and the Sacred Timeline. Check back with me next week and we’ll see!
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