Best not to read if you haven't already finished the game!

In awe at the huge Alien Facility with all the epic entrance ramp and all the artefacts, I explored and went down into where the sea emperor was with her eggs in the incubator. I activated the incubator, had some visions and she spoke to me. I went down not seeing that it was a moonpool or water or anything like that. I just kind of fell off into a hole and saw the seabed rising up towards me. I look at the sea emperor and she might as well be a piece of scenery. She was completely still and I couldn't interact with her. Creatures and fish were swimming around peacefully (a little bit like they were swimming through air), but I wasn't. In and out of the prawn suit I could only move around as if I were indoors without being surrounded by water. My upgraded jetpacks were weak and no combination of grappling and thrusts could get me out of there. I tried breathing in bubbles from the brain corals to tell the game I'm meant to be underwater, but it didn't work.

Day two of trying, I uninstalled and reinstalled the game on my Xbox, with the save file still there. That did nothing. I get in my prawn suit and go into a glitchy part of the map near/behind the arch where the walls disappear and it's rock, move around a little, and suddenly I fall through the map. You've probably seen other videos of it. I wait till 8000m and I spawn back at the shallow area, but I just keep falling through the map, again. I wait for another 8000m and when I get back to the shallow area I grapple a rock quickly and this gives the map time to load the floor underneath myself. I have a base there so I head towards it, and quickly realise I'm still moving as if I'm on land, both in and out of prawn suit. Manage to climb the ladder up to the interior of the moonpool, walk around, and dive back into water, no fix. I charge my prawn suit in moonpool and take it out, no fix. I can scoot around normally in my seamoth though, no problem. But that's not gonna help me end the game in the way I wanted to! I die on purpose by starvation and when I revive, I can swim, thank goodness. But I see my prawn suit squatting down on the sand and sigh. It still thinks it's indoors. I can't be bothered to traverse around the map without being able to jetpack properly and function underwater in an underwater game.

I've done lots of "give feedback" and now I just have to ignore the game until it fixes itself. So disappointing. I was really looking forward to finishing it. I just wanted to share my disappointment and will welcome any suggestions if any. Or if anyone knows how long they might take to fix it or take on my feedback, that information will be welcome too.

UPDATE, a solution: Maybe this may help someone in the future. I must first declare that the following actions involve cheating, and that I was going to play this game vanilla but since the game cheated me I thought I deserved to use this cheat. So, thank goodness the game was saved in the sea emperor aquarium and I re-loaded the game there. I pause the game by pressing the menu button, then I press RB LB to activate the developer tab. I make myself another prawn and transfer all my modules and storage items into new prawn. Bye bye old prawn, un-view beacon icon as well. I test out my new prawn suit, and lo and behold, it works just fine! The sea emperor starts to swim around and everything is as it should be. Or is it? I jetpack and grapple up to the top of the aquarium where the water surface is, and when I reach the edge of the block, the sea emperor comes to chat, up in my face. A scene I didn't get to witness on my way down. I get out of the moonpool and the forcefield is still in placr with no tablet holder on this side of the door for me to deactivate it. I am locked in. Through research, I'm aware that there's a warp gate that can be used in the aquarium and technically I could have gotten out without cheating. But no, I deserved it once again (I even had two blue tablets in my inventory). I unlocked the door with the developer tool. I did not want to warp out and travel all the way back to the aquarium in my prawn just to see the rest of the facility.

Turns out that I must have fallen through the floor from another room into the aquarium map, which didn't “activate”, which is why I was still registered as not in water and the sea emperor didn't get a chance to do her opening act. Felt like a bit of a waste of a day and emotions but at least now I can get back to playing.