To early access or not to early access remains a perennial question of modern gaming. In an industry that regularly monetizes FOMO to the point where it charges an extra $30 to play a game a handful of days “early,” it can be monstrously hard to resist diving into a thrilling-looking project or much-anticipated sequel when it becomes available months or even years before it’s finished. Having squeezed out every last drop of what’s on offer in Subnautica 2‘s earliest form, I feel like the answer in this instance is to suggest you wait, while knowing you absolutely won’t.
The early access model worked extremely well for the first Subnautica. Released in its unfinished form in 2015, it then spent three years being played and updated in direct response to player feedback, growing and improving throughout. So it makes sense that Unknown Worlds are doing the same with Subnautica 2. Although, I’m now wondering if the 20 hours I put in to this earliest form is something that might have repercussions on my patience for restarting the game as it evolves over the planned two or three years of early access development. This isn’t a game with a loop like Slay the Spire 2, but rather one that reaches a certain point and just stops.
There’s a lot about Subnautica 2 right now that feels like it’ll be long gone by the time the game is done. The far smaller amount of personal storage space than was available in the first game is a frustration, not a feature, and the massively decreased rate at which you can improve your oxygen capacity (you get to 75 seconds in the opening minutes of Sub1, but it takes literally hours here) is incredibly tiresome. I’m also very hopeful that the current narrative structure will be torn up and thrown away by the time the game is finished, given that at the moment it’s a string of fetch quests handed out in the most linear way possible. However, there’s absolutely no question that Subnautica 2 is already an extremely solid game, with a vast amount to do (20 hours, like I say!), and I’m enormously bothered to have hit the “That’s all, folks!” message and not have any more to do. I want to keep playing! And I think that, more than anything else, is why I’d suggest holding off.
So yes, my ultimate argument against playing Subnautica 2 right now is that it’s too good. Buy it, by all means—it’s not going to get any cheaper over the next three years, and I’m absolutely convinced it’ll be worth it—but maybe add it to the backlog for a bit?
Right now, you begin the game by crash landing on a watery alien planet, but unlike in the original game, this time you’re accompanied by an emotionally needy AI called NoA. It’s being all suspicious in a very tedious “oh my, maybe we can’t entirely trust this sentient AI?!?” way, and wants you to investigate the black box signals of a huge number of other humans who crashed on this planet before you. So you swim toward the only one available, being deliberately put in the path of various minerals and scannable upgrades that you’ll need in order to progress, then return to be given the next. It works. It’s a gamey structure. But it doesn’t strike me as the right way for a Subnautica game to play. Yes, the original was gated by depth, heat and radiation, but these were presented as obstacles that tempted you to search for solutions, not corridors down which you were being funneled. I feel very sure Unknown Worlds can maintain its narrative intentions while delivering this a lot more fluidly.
The other issue in Subnautica 2‘s current form is the way the game peters out toward its current end. At a certain point, NoA runs out of black box signals to give you and you’re left to your own devices, which should be the ideal way to play but instead goes to the opposite extreme of failing to signpost anything you’re supposed to do next. I did, I should say, enjoy things a lot more at this point, because I was required to begin searching far more carefully, trying to reach more dangerous locations, and then scavenging for new devices to build and upgrades to gain to help me fathom how to reach the deeper fathoms.
At this point you’re scrambling in a way that I think better suits Subnautica, albeit perhaps a little too over-fussily when it comes to one or two aspects. I resorted to looking at wikis (which, let’s face it, is how most people played the original game) to work out why I wasn’t able to upgrade one particular tool, but once that was done I was able to unravel the rest, and soon I was exploring vast structures in a rewardingly hands-on way. At this point I was just delighted, with a great suite of tools, two amazing bases, a vehicle that could dive to great depths, and big tasks to complete, and then…”THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!”
It’s the nature of the beast. I have no complaints here at all, and am honestly blown away that there’s a solid 20 hours of things to do in this earliest build. But I’m also now just cut off, as if a TV show I was deeply engaged with finished on a cliffhanger with no word on when the next season will air. It’s hard to suggest that someone else watch that show just yet, given they’ll be left just as bugged by the situation, right? Subnautica 2‘s pop-up message reads, “You can continue to explore, build, and enjoy the world, but you have reached the end of the current early access story and progression.” And if I knew that in a few months’ time a new update would come along and essentially act as Chapter 2, I’d be down. But the reality is it’ll be Chapter 1.2, and after that there will be times when the game will have changed so much that starting over is the only option.
If your passion is being involved in a game’s progression, and for some reason you’re willing to do provide free feedback on the development of a game that made $60,000,000 in its first 24 hours on sale, then I guess it’s all good. But if you want to thoroughly enjoy what I am, at this point, very certain will be an extremely good video game when it’s finished, then it just makes more sense to wait. Even if the linearity and limitations of the current design are your bag, you’re still going to be dumped in a big cold sea with nothing else to do at a certain point, not knowing when there will be more. Which just doesn’t seem like a situation to recommend.
