Subnautica 2 has officially come out in early access as of the 14th of May - I found this out through Jacksepticeye's playthrough video of it. I didn't play (very much of) the original game or Below Zero, but did watch his video's on it as a younger man; I still remember just how cool it was back then, and I was excited to watch it now. My tastes in media have obviously changed over the years though, and although I do still enjoy watching gameplay videos sometimes, I found myself getting kind of annoyed at his gameplay (and commentary), and wanting to just play it myself. I don't really play games that often anymore (you can see evidence of that on this blog - the last was Routine in January), but I decided why the hell not and downloaded it, though I did have to boot into Windows since the game doesn't have Linux support and I didn't really want to faff about with Proton today.
Despite being in early access, the game is phenomenal - Unknown Worlds have outdone themselves with the graphics and gameplay of this sequel and I had a shit-ton of fun.
![CAUTION] I will be avoiding outright spoilers, but the game is best enjoyed blind if you are a Metroidbrainia type like me.
Subnautica 2 starts you off 800m below sea level on a crashed ship - very reminiscent of the previous game, but a twist on the formula is that the lifepod you start on respawns you in a very diagetic way: you are a "print" of the memory data they have on you, persisted through deaths with the blackbox you have implanted (?) in you. As mentioned, the game is unfinished, and some of the data entries still do not match up with the gameplay mechanic text; for example, it's obvious the "print" verbiage was meant to be "fork", as this terminology is still used to refer to some of the other poor sods stuck in the same situation as you, and one tutorial entry outright refers to your respawn mechanic as forking (IIRC). I would have greatly preferred this, but "print" is fine too :) I always appreciate when games try to tie mechanics into the narrative!
The game goes out of its way not to hold your hand - there are "objective markers", but these mainly direct you to what your AI assistant finds signals for in the game world, primarily blackboxes of the missing previous colonists. Other than that, you are left completely to your own devices, with not even names being given to the points of interest or biomes you find. They obviously do have names, but I'm finding it fun not to look these up and to come up with my own notes and descriptions for places.
The core gameplay loop is simple - basebuild, explore, find blueprints, find resources to make those blueprints, and unlock new areas to explore. The crux of the player's enjoyment is the game world, and the developers have masterfully crafted one in which every piece of environment tells a story, whether it be the natural way of this alien world or what the previous colonists have done to it. For example: nearby the lifepod is various pieces of wreckage where your colony ship crashed, and some of these pieces of wreckage landed just on the side of large cliffs under the sea, going down 100m deep. Peering over the edge clearly shows you the wreckage on the seafloor (at least the parts that are shallow enough to see) and naturally inclines you to explore downwards - the thing is though, you cannot realistically explore more than 100m below sea level without significant upgrades to your air capacity or building an exploratory vehicle.
I've played about six hours, and they generally followed along the above line - I rushed early air tank upgrades because I know how the game works from having seen the previous two, and relatively peacefully explored the starting area, pieceing together clues about what happened to the colonists before me and what this alien planet was hding below the surface, while improving my equipment and my base to launch further exploration efforts. I'm barely into the game, despite it ostensibly being an early version - I'm just about to craft the first sea vehicle and explore deeper down where pressure would normally stop me short.
One moment I'd like to talk about from today was near the end - I was looking for blueprint parts to craft this vehicle, and was looking for wreckage using a scanner in my base that lit up all the locations within 300m, making my way through them. Towards the end, I found what looked like a huge coral formation in the shape of a giant maw, with some lithium nodes and parts of a portable oxygen generator. While excitedly picking up the new resources, I heard rumbling - without a second thought, I pointed myself towards the surface and jet out of there, only stopping once I was reaching it to look down. To my horror, what I thought was a coral formation was actually the two halves of a giant mollusk - the two great jaws were closing shut behind me. Despite the chills running down my spine, I dove back in to get the lithium and blueprints, surmising the danger couldn't be that bad - and it wasn't!
I set about collecting the various nodes amidst the rumbling, and saw the jaws close around me; unfortunately though, some kind of acid starting shooting out, and I immediately tried to get out while I still could, but got turned around and trapped in the little pearl of the mollusc, unable to find the entrance I came in from. I decided to just freeze and spam my medkits to wait it out, and the acid eventually stopped, so I figured it was time to get out. As I was looking around for the exit, I caught a glimpse of the inside of the jaws through the slits in the inner pearl and audibly gasped at what I saw: yellow eyes staring back at me.
I haven't experienced such a rush of discovery since I played Outer Wilds for the first time - I highly recommend picking this game up if you haven't. I luckily have a glut of free time this week, so I'll be playing as much of it as I can while I can. I'll report back, and give this a thorough review and rating once I'm done with the game, or whatever of it is currently available. See you tomorrow!