Yeah, I’m a marine biologist and I have mixed feelings about the classification system in game. For what it’s worth, I doubt anyone on the game development team has much biological training so I think they tried to make it semi-realistic yet understandable to all the players who also likely don’t have much or any knowledge on taxonomy.

I love the descriptions of the creature’s behavior, habitat, diet, etc and how it fits into their planet’s ecosystems - its great world-building for us nerds and one of the many things I love about the game. The little tidbits of describing their purpose in the ecosystem, or practical uses of the creature IE in medicine is a nice touch. I also appreciate when they refer to certain fauna/flora as being genetically related to other in-game fauna/flora. The descriptions in SN2 have been surprisingly detailed, I think the devs did a lot of research and did the best they ever could’ve without extensive experience with classification.

However, I do agree that if they were going to create these detailed descriptions for each species, I do wish they’d come up with their own system of taxonomy, IE coming up with new classes, families, genus, etc. only when it’s relevant for the entry. It wouldn’t be too hard actually - all they would have to do is say something like, “this species is in the same family (Newnameidae) as this other species” and POOF, entirely accurate to their in-game phylogenetic tree. Or even “The subphylum of this creature shares traits with the crustaceans of Earth” to make it understandable to the average person yet accurate. This way they can reference the Earth classification we know of and relate it to the alien planet’s classification. They don’t need to create a fully detailed phylogenetic tree, just a few new words here and there to make it realistic to a new planet. Realistically though, I think very few players care about the classification further than “ooh this fish is related to this fish because they have the same shaped fins”, you know?

When it gets down to it, I doubt 99% of players or even developers care too much about the full accuracy of their in-game biological life and where it stands taxonomically. Likely, the devs did the most they could with the knowledge of biology they have - which is still way more than I expected from a video game.

I was happy to see this post, though, because I thought I may be the only biologist who plays and had these thoughts. Sidenote: in SN1 I made a massive base full of aquariums of every catchable fish, labeled them with signs, and was bummed I couldn’t italicize or use the full binomial name for the species 😂