The main conflict with Scaly Pete could be interpreted as anthropomorphizing the shark since it is a traditional revenge plot, which – played out with people – informs many similarly structure open-world games (the game has been consequently framed as “GTA with sharks”)
The narrator, loosely reminiscent of Richard Attenborough’s style of documentary narration, makes some generalizing remarks about how sharks supposedly aim to kill humans etc., i.e. they evoke traditional nature documentary narrativization (e.g. with facts about bull sharks etc.) but blend it with the game’s ludonarrative dissonance (e.g. “the appetite of this shark is nearly insatiable”) for problematic effect
An expansion called Truth Quest was published in 2021, which dramatizes the conflict between apex predators with a new boss creature. It muddles the complexities of mutation/transformation by doubling down on a traditional ‘survival of the fittest’ structure.
