Welcome to Proteus
Congratulations, you have taken a major step towards Zero Debt Day.
Subnautica 2 (Early Access) day is here, and it does not disappoint!
Scene-setting
The environmental storytelling was my favourite part of Subnautica. In so many ways it was retreading older ideas, like audiologs and visual ephemera, but the envcironment was so beautiful and the underwater mechanic so fresh, that it just worked. Also, the gameplay loops felt so much like a procgen game like Minecraft, but you were actually in this beautifully-crafted world, that the intentional storytelling felt like a little treat you got now and then.
This feels much, much more ambitious. The opening sequence is even more evocative than the first game, with fun little visual clues about what has gone wrong, and how this game will be different.
Half-glimpsed hides dimly lit by my lifepod’s running lights in the abyssal dark, warning lights about heavy metals, 60 atmospheres of pressure. From the jump, this is a weirder game. And I’m here for it.
There’s also a bit more tutorialising this time, which is appreciated, and while the rollout of detail in the first game was decent, I feel like the guardrails are a little sturdier this time.
The future sucks
The idea that you’re basically a printed clone, initialised into debt reminded me of (amazing) games like Citizen Sleeper and Hardspace: Shipbreaker, and I’m keen to see how the game expresses the current culture of resistance against technofeudalism.
UX FTW
On the upside, there are lots of little quality of life improvements, like fabricators pulling from all inventories within a certain radius, so you don’t have to do that dumb game of tetris to print things, and there’s an early biomod available that lets you hover in place underwater without using much oxygen, which became immediately useful when doing fabrication, since you can build and fuss and build without scrambling to the surface for air.
Deck-certified!
It runs really well on the Deck, though the graphics are, frankly, not amazing. And I suspect that’s 100% because I’m running it in potato mode. I’m playing it on the TV with a regular controller and the experience is seamless.
Live. Die. Repeat.
Like most folks I played Subnautica on the semi-survival mode. I was mortal but didn’t need to eat or drink. This time, that option doesn’t exist, which confused me since I figured that would be a very common way for people to play, but I realised about an hour in that death is part of life….in Subnautica 2. Each time you are reprinted, your adaptability to the environment improves, so actually suffocating, starving or dehydrating to death is part of the loop (along with being poisoned, burned, frozen, crushed, butted, stabbed, eaten and electrocuted). How horrifying. I’m sure I’ll get used to it. This way though, true Survival Mode makes much more sense.
I’m excited to see how else they’ve refined the mechanics of the first game!
P.S. I like how your PDA seems to hate the little ship-board computer.