Video Game / Endless Ocean: Luminous

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Endless Ocean: Luminous is the third installment in the Endless Ocean series created by Arika, released on May 2nd, 2024 for the Nintendo Switch.

In this installment, players are taken to the mysterious, unexplored Veiled Sea; a place left mostly isolated from the rest of the world. As such, it's your job to explore it, learn about the wildlife that lives there, and unravel the mysteries of the ocean.

Much like the previous entry, Blue World, Luminous features an in-depth multi-player mode that allows for up to thirty players to explore at once and document their findings with one another. However, there is also a single-player story campaign with a goal of saving the "World Coral" in various locales.

Trailers: Announcement Trailer, "Sounds of the Sea", Overview Trailer, Launch Trailer

What will you find in these tropes?

• AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: Sera's Synthetic Voice Actor doesn't always know how to pronounce the names of the animals in the game. For instance, she pronounces "betta" like "better" without the R instead of how it's really pronounced, "bay-ta," and she pronounces "Amamotsumi" as "amma-maht-soo-mee" when, being a Japanese name, it should really be pronounced "ah-mah-moat-soo-mee."
• Achievement System: Comes in two varieties. There's the "Mystery Board", a plot element with 99 icons which track various challenges met during play, and there's a traditional achievement list which provides the titles previously seen in Blue World.
• Actionized Sequel: Inverted. In stark contrast to Blue World which added aggressive animals and the Pulsar, Luminous goes back to the original game's style of gameplay with absolutely no threat whatsoever, just exploration.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Phantom, the legendary manta ray from Blue World, has gone from jet-black to neon purple. Cacao Maharaja, the legendary leatherback turtle from the same game, has gone from yellowish-brown to a more pinkish shade.
• Albinos Are Freaks: Following a trend from Blue World, this is inverted with new albino creature variants introduced in the game, as certain species are required to unlock secrets in a form of mythological reverence. However, the Leviathan continues to be a straight example, still carrying its reputation as a ship destroyer from its days in the Zahhab Region.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Some of the legendary creatures and UMLs are like this; in addition to the purple manta ray Phantom, there's also Lancia Amabile, a giant neon pink marlin, for example, as well as odd color variants for regular creatures such as blue narwhals and green whale sharks. There are even some that have odd patterns, such as polka-dotted common fangtooths and striped orangespine unicornfish).
• Arc Number: 99:
  • There are 99 squares on the Mystery Board.
  • The first event dive had a hidden arrangement of dumbo octopi spelling "TETRIS" as a reference to Tetris 99, and another event dive and its rerun had an arrangement of dumbo octopi (the first time) and giant isopods (the second time) forming the number 99.
• Artistic License – Paleontology:
  • The Helicoprion genus of sharks (the one with the spiral jaw) appears in-game; however, the in-game Helicoprion is specifically identified as H. karpinskii. In reality, there is no fossil evidence telling H. karpinskii apart from the more well-defined H. bessonowi, H. davisii, and H. ergassaminon, as the only proof of the species's existence is two teeth from the 50's that were considered insufficient evidence to characterize it.
  • Yezoteuthis is only known from a jaw fragment, meaning its model in Luminous is not grounded in any fossil evidence outside of said fragment's scale indicating it to be bigger than the giant squid.
  • Hybodus appears in-game, but the validity of it being called that is a topic of fierce scientific debate. While it is also less aggressive than what a predator of its nature would have been, this is explained as part of the Veiled Sea's soporific effects.
  • The ability for certain prehistoric fishes such as Coccosteus to enter saltwater is not fully confirmed, but Luminous treats it as a regular way of life for them.
  • Tylosaurus is depicted with a eel-like tail, despite the other mosasaurs correctly having shark-like tail flukes.
  • Similarly, the plesiosaurs are also missing the tail fins that they had according to fossils.
  • The Plesiosaurus and Elasmosaurus have heads that are too long and thin.
  • Tanystropheus is greatly misproportioned, with its trademark Long Neck being too short and its head too long and pointed. It is also apparently toothless.
  • Mosasaurus has a regular tongue, when mosasaurs most likely had forked tongues.
  • Akmonistion is portrayed using a retooled model of a great white, even though as a stethacanthid, its body more likely resembled smaller reef sharks.
  • Most flagrantly, the genus Tetoriichthys is seen swimming in the saltwater Veiled Sea. However, they are a type of arowana, which inhabit freshwater.
  • Cheirolepis is also out of place relative to what its fossil record suggests, though not to the same degree as Tetoriichthys due to it also being found in estuaries (i.e. brackish water.)
  • Leedsichthys has a lumpy head, as in outdated portrayals, when it should have a smooth one.
  • Shonisaurus has a barrel-like body, which is now outdated. It would have had a more slender body instead.
  • The placodont Henodus is classified as a plesiosaur, which is a bit of a stretch as the two groups were merely closely related (something that is pointed out with Psephoderma).
  • The megalodon is the traditional portrayal in which it's basically an oversized great white, which the fact file states is its closest relative. Newer studies suggest it's actually more distantly related to great whites and would have had a more different appearance. This is in spite of the fact the game correctly refers to it by its current genus name Otodus.
  • The most jarring example is when Sera refers to a basilosaurid (an early cetacean), the Grand Ancestor, as an ichthyosaur (a fish-like reptile). And yet, the fact files get this right.
• ASMR Video: The "Sounds of the Sea" trailer is edited to be similar to one, just showing off the game's ambience.
• Character Customization: As demonstrated on the store page, money earned can be spent on color patterns for your diver's ensemble, as well as additional stickers and emotes.
• Chekhov's Gun: Crown-of-thorns starfish were constantly condemned in both of the previous games as a pest that munches on coral to the point of depopulation and reacts positively to pollution. Chapter 2 initially starts as a Pest Episode featuring them because of this exact detail.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Aside from none of the human characters from previous entries appearing (though some are referenced in salvage item descriptions), several species and even groups of species are missing, such as jellyfish (not counting the giant siphonophore), starfish other than crown-of-thorns starfish, manatees, otters, penguins, incirrate octopi, and sea cucumbers, with some groups only being represented in the form of UMLs, such as birds (Simurgh Daria/Simurgh Shamal), pinnipeds (Jawhara Tajir/Jawhara Malik), seahorses/sea dragons (Yurlungur and the Yurls/Glumungur and the Glums), and gastropods (Amamotsumi/Menohatsumi).
• Computer Voice: Sera's lines, both in the story and throughout the Creature Log, are voiced by text-to-speech software, given that she's an AI.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The first Not So Extinct creature shown in the reveal trailer is the Anomalocaris, which was first seen in Blue World, where it was theorized to have been scientifically brought back to life and somehow released into the seas. Later trailers and screenshots also show the other two prehistoric creatures from Blue World, the plesiosaur and Cameroceras.
  • A giant squid is seen in shallow waters near the end of the reveal trailer, but looks much smaller than an adult, suggesting it is a juvenile. Blue World had previously explored this concept with Kraken Jr., another juvenile giant squid in the Cavern of the Gods.
  • The trailer mentions the existence of mythical creatures (i.e. the legendary creature system from previous games) while the player is looking at a giant, ghostly-white fish, a nod to the series's frequent use of inverting Albinos Are Freaks (the Ancient Mother, Ailuros Pearl, Leviathan, and Singing Dragon all come to mind, as does King Gigide and Snowball.)
  • Most saltwater legendary creatures from Blue World return, effectively making cameos in the appropriate tiles during dives. Their Creature Log entries continue to reference their backstories from said game, implying that all of them left or escaped their original homes after its events.
  • The first Event Dive used the Singing Dragon as its focus creature, playing off of its original role in Blue World as a critical element of the game's climax.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: The UMLs take the roles of Blue World's legendaries, who have since been demoted to cameos. The ones that share a species contrast their predecessors.
  • The Living Fossil was an ancient silver coelacanth whose mottled appearance and slow movement reflected how impossibly old it was. Raja Emas, however, is gold with a youthful appearance and outpaces the player the instant it shows up.
  • Gungnir is a Long-Lived red marlin implied to have some form of hypertrophy that gave it Super-Speed, is extremely aggressive, and is also suggested to be a solo act that has traveled the world. Lancia Presto is a blue marlin that, while also bulkier than its regular brethren, has a more subdued personality and Hates Being Alone.
  • Leo was respected as an authority figure above regular leopard seals and was also visibly shown to have fought countless battles. Jawhira Tajir, while also possessing some manner of superiority above seals, only uses it to showboat by stealing treasure and has evidently never been in a real fight.
  • Cacao Marharja was large enough to look like a Turtle Island, but didn't quite play into the trope due to not actually having anything growing on it. Rosier Rose/Beryllos, however, has an entire coral reef growing on it and is explicitly used as a mobile habitat.
• Contrived Coincidence: It's implied Blue World is still canon, which would make it an astonishing stroke of luck that all of the returning legendaries (including the ones implied to be sapient) have gathered in the Veiled Sea at once after already leaving their original homes across the planet.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Not only can the player swim around active hydrothermal vents without issue, they can also encounter molten lava if they swim deep enough and not get harmed there.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: The reveal trailer shows that up to thirty players can explore a region at once at the same time, in a massive step up from Blue World's two-player co-op.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Thanatos and the Ancient Mother are both given a massively reduced role. Thanatos has gone from being an Arc Villain that haunts an area of the map and serves as an obstacle to the player to being a rare encounter. The Ancient Mother, similarly, has gone from being one of the endgame goals of the previous two games to being a rare encounter.
  • This also applies to the other Blue World legendaries in general, becoming normal rare encounters with their stories decoupled from gameplay. The sole exception is Lady Dorothea, who is guaranteed to appear together with Rosier Beryllos.
• Dented Iron: Thanatos looks even more injured and disheveled than in Blue World, with his scars larger and deeper (plus one cutting across his eye), bloodstains all across his body, and his dorsal fin having a chunk taken out of it.
• Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: The store page explains that using a player's session ID, friends can be invited to a game in progress, and up to ten strangers have a chance of being matched into the session until hitting the 30 player cap.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first event dive didn't feature any constellation patterns made out of crown-of-thorns starfish, just the dumbo octopi spelling "TETRIS."
• Eldritch Ocean Abyss: Deep, dark regions of the ocean with otherworldly creatures make a return in this entry, as shown in the reveal trailer.
• Emote Animation: Your primary method of interacting with other players besides tagging. You use in-game currency to acquire more.
• Escort Mission: Unlocking some squares on the Mystery Board requires the player to bring certain animals to stone disks. One will accept any animal in the area, while the others require more specific creatures (for instance, the one asking for "a fish favored by a celestial body, be it blazing or barren" will only accept ocean sunfish, giant sunfish, and Apollo).
• Fluffy the Terrible: While none of the UMLs are intentionally harmful, HQ likes to give them flowery names befitting their mystique and occasional bouts of disruptive behavior... except for the guitarfish with piezoelectric crystal growths, who is simply just called "Mertz" as if they were somebody's pet fish.
• Forgets to Eat: The Creature Log implies Phantom isn't feeding himself properly out of neglect, even for a filter feeder, as it states that he would rather wander in the ocean than go look for food.
• Gameplay Grading: Each dive session has you scored in four areas: Teamwork (how well you engaged with other players and worked towards the research goal), Research (how many fish you scanned and what kinds), Salvage (how much salvage you found), and Exploration (how much of the map you filled in and light fragments you found). Do well enough in a given category and you'll receive a gold, silver, or bronze medal for it.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: The Veiled Sea's waters have a soporific effect that silences all forms of aggression in marine life. This justifies the removal of the aggression mechanic from Blue World and explains why certain predators like most sharks haven't simply gone into a feeding frenzy with the sheer abundance of prey around them, but also notably seems to be so powerful that even Thanatos (who was a de-facto Invincible Villain in Blue World obsessed with killing) can't help but lighten up after stopping by.
• Giant Flyer: Simurgh Daria and its variant Simurgh Shamal are giant pelican UMLs, and while you only see them and the smaller pelicans surrounding them diving into the water, dialogue with Sera confirms that they can fly despite their giant size.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: The story's first chapter leads the player to the Raja Emas, a golden coelacanth whose size puts many of the other giant legendaries to shame. Unlike the fragile, regular-sized coelacanths or the aged Living Fossil from Blue World, this one has a surprisingly-youthful appearance and swims through an earthquake completely unfazed.
• Green and Mean: Akmonistion is portrayed as a shark-like creature (albeit with possibly-inaccurate musculature) with a bright green hide, set apart by the odd anvil-shaped dorsal fin that gives it its name.
• Junk Rare: The coins are 3-star salvages that unlock squares on the Mystery Board... and are only worth 99P.
• Large Runt: The juvenile giant squid in the reveal trailer, compared to the previous game's specimen, Kraken Jr. Still quite large, but not as big as an adult, nor as special or isolated as Junior, who was the son of the only adult giant squid in Blue World and had taken residence in the Cavern of the Gods.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The trailer for Luminous uses the Anomalocaris as the first example of how the game will be handling legendary creatures, almost certainly ribbing on how the second game handled its introduction as a cutscene-only encounter.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to Blue World, the creature aggression mechanic has been removed, significantly reducing a lot of the tension associated with creatures like sharks. It is somewhat bemusing to see creatures like the Megalodon, Hybodus, and the previous game's two Arc Villains reduced to swimming in an idle stroll because of this.
• Lost in Translation: One of the possible salvage items is a birthday note to a two-year-old inside of a bottle. It's addressed to Oceanne, which obfuscates the reference to the likely intended recipient: Oceana, Jean-Eric's granddaughter from Blue World.
• Loyal Animal Companion: Stepping up from the previous games' cetacean partners, Luminous now allows you a much wider variety of fish to swim with, although your diver level must be high enough in order to bring larger creatures with you and some, like UMLs, blue whales, giant siphonophores, and the Ancient Mother, can't come with you no matter what. The overview trailer shows this in action by bringing not only a dolphin like in the previous games, but also a school of tuna, a lobster, and an entire Pacific right whale.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • A Koolasuchus appears in the "Sounds of the Sea" trailer deep within an enclosed underwater ruin. However, it's believed by general scientific consensus that the species occupied surface streams within Australia when they were still around. The only accurate thing about their placement is the likely temperature at that depth and location, as Cretaceous-era Australia was within the Antarctic Circle at the time.
  • Tetoriichthys, being a genetic cousin of modern arowana fish and Phareodus, should not be anywhere near the saltwater conditions of the Veiled Sea.
  • Cheirolepis was able to survive in saline conditions, but there is no evidence it ever lived in the actual ocean, only streams and estuaries.
  • Sometimes the Event Dives will do this for fun: For instance, the Lancia Amabile dive was set in a river that was instead populated by saltwater creatures, and the Splatoon crossover dive had freshwater catfish (representing the Zapfish) showing up in saltwater areas.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: A large Threatening Shark briefly shows up in some parts of the reveal trailer. This is actually an updated version of Thanatos's model that was used in a cameo for the Arika-developed mobile game Sakana Collection, and the full release confirms it is in fact the genuine article that appears in-game.
• Not So Extinct:
  • The reveal trailer shows that the player can find several animals that are thought to be extinct, such as Mosasaurus and Anomalocaris. A promotional image also shows a plesiosaur, after it had previously appeared in Blue World as a secret creature.
  • In the "Sounds of the Sea" trailer, the player character swims through an ancient ruin which is positively crawling with different types of ammonites. The classic nautiloid variant shows up, as well as its more eccentric cousins like the Diplomoceras and Ancyloceras.
  • Some of the salvage items, such as a prehistoric claw and feather, seem to suggest there are Living Dinosaurs on the land surrounded by the Veiled Sea.
• Once per Episode: Every Event Dive so far has had at least one pattern made of small sea creatures for the player to find. Starting with the second Event Dive, "White Orcas Under Ice'', the minimum number of patterns was increased to two, with at least one of these patterns always being a constellation made of crown-of-thorns starfish (Orion in "White Orcas Under Ice," Cassiopeia in "Dashing with the Lancia Amabile" and its rerun, and Ursa Major and Ursa Minor in "The Awesome Giant Squid"). The other patterns are: the word "TETRIS" made of dumbo octopi in "Song of the Sea Dragons," a heart made of dumbo octopi in "White Orcas under Ice," the number 99 in "Dashing with the Lancia Amabile" and its rerun (made of dumbo octopi the first time and giant isopods the second time), and a pixellated squid made of dumbo octopi in "The Awesome Giant Squid."
• Palette Swap:
  • Some common creatures have variants with alternate, often outlandish palettes or patterns, such as green whale sharks, polka-dotted common fangtooths, albino great white sharks, and orcas with inverted color schemes.
  • Every UML has a palette-swapped variant. For instance, the Lancia Presto is neon blue while its variant, Lancia Amabile, is neon pink, and Rosier Rose has pink coral on its shell while its variant, Rosier Beryllos, has green coral.
• Pest Episode: Chapter 2 begins with an explosion in the crown-of-thorns starfish population. HQ's worried they might start munching on the World Coral, so the first part of the chapter has you and Daniel go scan some of them to see if they're actually a problem (the answer is no, and the dead Coral nearby was simply crushed to death by currents.)
• Planimal: The seventh UML is a gigantic (as in, 6.6 meters long) Costasiella kuroshimae sea slug named Amamotsumi that has grown so big that the pylon-like growths on its back used to store algae have been replaced with actual shrubbery.
• Prehistoria: One of the possible sub-areas in a session is an ancient ruin absolutely riddled with prehistoric lifeforms. They can also inhabit smaller benthic caverns.
• Purple Is the New Black: Phantom's updated model turns him neon purple from the jet black he used to be, a color fit for the royal prince he once was.
• Randomly Generated Levels: According to the reveal trailer, every time you dive into the Veiled Sea it'll be a completely different area. Later updates confirm that the maps are seed-based and can be revisited by exploring at least 80% of the area.
• Rent-a-Zilla: Several of the UMLs are regular creatures with anomalous gigantism, such as the Raja Emas from chapter 1 (a coelacanth), the Lamba Apsara (a Careproctus shigemii snailfish), and Amamotsumi (a Costasiella kuroshimae sea slug.) None of them mean any harm, but Raja Emas and Lamba Apsara are both swift enough to cause violent disruptions from the sheer momentum of their weight.
• Revisiting the Roots: After Blue World's much more thorough plot and feature list with a variety of characters, Luminous is much closer to the first Endless Ocean in structure; you're just doing research for its own sake, it uses a Minimalist Cast, and the focus is mostly on the fish themselves.
• Ribcage Ridge: One of the locations on the sea floor shown in the reveal trailer is of a large mammalian skeleton with fish surviving in and around it. This is in fact Truth in Television; Whale carcasses can function as miniature ecosystems due to their size.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Creature Log entry for the Sacabambaspis makes note of its real-world following fawning over its flat face resembling a smiley and its pill-shaped body.
• Sea Monster: The reveal trailer notes that, much like the previous entries, many creatures that you can find are mythical ones that are surrounded by legends.
• Shout-Out:
  • The inclusion of Sacabambaspis references a Japanese and Chinese internet meme featuring the creature from 2023, popular enough that plushies were of it to capitalize on the trend. While most of them come in red in-game, you can find the silver coloration used for the meme as a rare encounter.
  • Because Arika also hosted an Endless Ocean event in Tetris 99 the same weekend, the "Song of the Sea Dragons" dive event contained a little alcove filled with dumbo octopuses arranged such that their bodies formed letters spelling "TETRIS".
  • At the end of the game, when the characters are discussing how the World Coral could start deteriorating again in the future if people don't take care of the environment, Daniel speculates that perhaps "evolved squid and octopuses" could have replaced humanity by then.
  • The fifth Event Dive (fourth not counting the rerun of the Lancia Amabile Event Dive) was a collaboration with Splatoon, focusing on creatures that appear in the series such as squid, octopi, cuttlefish, sharks (Shiver's Animal Motif), eels (Frye's Animal Motif), manta rays (Big Man), catfish (Zapfish), salmonids (the Salmonids, of course), nautiluses (Gnarly Eddy), crabs (Bisk and Mr. Coco), giant isopods (Iso Padre), sea pigs (CQ Cumber), largehead hairtails (Myron "Ronnie" Swamps, a member of the band SashiMori), and animals that appear in some stage names, like hammerhead sharks (Hammerhead Bridge), sturgeons (Sturgeon Shipyard), marlins (Marlin Airport), anchovies (Ancho-V Games), flounders (Flounder Heights), mahi-mahi (Mahi-Mahi Resort), arowanas (Arowana Mall), triggerfish (Camp Triggerfish), splendid alfonsinos (Museum d'Alfonsino), mackerel (Port Mackerel), and eeltail catfish (both a reference to the Zapfish and to Eeltail Alley). These animals were often found in groups of four, referencing Splatoon's four-player teams. Similarly to "Song of the Sea Dragons," there was an alcove with dumbo octopi forming a pattern, in this case a pixelated squid, as well as crown-of-thorns starfish forming Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, representing Mr. Grizz and Grizzco.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Dunkleosteus is depicted with a short, compact body as per modern research.
  • Megalodon is referred to by its current genus name Otodus.
  • Liopleurodon is correctly described as being 5 to 7 meters long, as opposed to 25 meters as kickstarted by Walking with Dinosaurs.
  • Ammonites are depicted lacking beaks like modern-day cephalopods, alluding to the fact they were filter-feeders.
  • The fact files take great care into classifying plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and mosasaurs as each their own group and not dinosaurs.
  • Atopodentatus has a wide, horizontal mouth, with its fact file stating that its originally-depicted split mouth is now outdated (it was actually a result of the fossil being broken).
  • In contrast to the original two games' interpretations, the Goblin Shark is correctly shown with its jaw retracted by default, though it will occasionally push its jaw out to demonstrate its capability.
• Stealthy Cephalopod: The player character in the "Sounds of the Sea" trailer finds themselves diving into a ruin with no natural lighting. It turns out to be a reserve for a large amount of prehistoric creatures, most of them ammonites hiding in the darkness.
• Sticky Fingers: Jawhara Tajir, the sixth UML, is an intelligent seal who frequently steals the leftover treasures in the Veiled Sea to wear for themselves.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: In a series first, you can spend as long as you want under the waves in solo mode; multiplayer would be the same case if the sessions themselves weren't limited to an hour in length.
• The World Is Just Awesome: In grand series tradition, Luminous is all about showing you the beauty of the Earth's oceans and the wildlife that thrives within them. In the reveal trailer, there are shots of vibrant coral reefs, icebergs, kelp forests, and various species of fish of every possible shape, size, and color.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Due to the Veiled Sea suppressing his violent tendencies, Thanatos has softened up significantly compared to his appearance in Blue World and no longer tries to kill the player on sight.
• Uplifted Animal: Downplayed with Jawhara Tajir; while not sapient, it's implied to be a descendant of a breed of seals selected for heightened intelligence. At the very least, it knows what "treasure" is out of instinct and likes hoarding it to showboat.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: Defied. You can place acquired stickers around your diving suit as additional details, but the whole pelvis region is strictly off-limits to this feature.
• Virtual Sidekick: The player character is assigned a partner AI called the Survey, Exploration, and Research Assistant — "Sera" for short. She keeps track of how much of the Veiled Sea has been examined, how many species have been scanned for biological data (and reads their analysis aloud), and provides missions and commentary during the story mode.
• Walking the Earth: Phantom apparently left Valka Castle to wander through the ocean by himself at some point between Blue World and Luminous, stopping in the Veiled Sea. It's noted in-universe that the reason as to why is a mystery, especially if it's true he is in fact the ghost of Prince Valka.
• The Worf Effect: Thanatos and the Okeanos's Guardian were highly resistant to any attempts to temper their ferocity in the second game, but by the time they reappear in the Veiled Sea, the water's soporifics have reduced them to docile reef sharks by comparison.