An alien shark darts towards you, grabs your wetsuit between its rows of razor-sharp teeth and swings you about like a ragdoll before flinging you into the murky blue. It's scary at first, especially as you've only just begun to explore the depths of Subnautica 2. Then you realize that it's barely scratched your health bar and, really, you could swim past a whole school of these without worrying too much. You need the silver, after all, and if these fearsome creatures are more bark than they are bite, the rest of this underwater ecosystem can't be too grisly. Can it?
Let's rewind a little. Subnautica fans will already be aware that its sequel caters to a few requested features: we return to a silent protagonist after the change in Below Zero and the map is bigger. I've yet to see if we can reach Mariana Trench levels of depth, but it seems like developer Unknown Worlds is listening to what players want. Ahead of what could prove a lengthy period of early access (the studio suggests the survival game could spend two to three years in early access), this is already an encouraging sign that Subnautica 2 could reach the incredible highs and unfathomable depths of its progenitor.
Diving in
The first thing I saw after my escape pod shot me to the watery surface of a mysterious planet was a fish swimming above the water. The gargantuan creature dangled a few fleshy tubes into the brine beneath, skimming the ocean waves like an organic hydrofoil. I immediately decided that this is extremely my shit and swam for a closer inspection. Unfortunately, the Hycean is just set dressing. The opening biome is filled with such disappointments.
While I settled into a David Attenborough-esque survey of the opening biome, filled with colorful reefs and home to a plethora of skates, salpapods, and sea slugs, it felt a little too cozy. Where were my heart-in-mouth moments, my apex predators hoping to end my adventure in a pool of crimson floating in the blue expanse? When even the sharks, with calls resounding through the deep, don't present a threat, it's hard to imagine this planet is hostile at all.
I'm not going to dive into spoiler territory here, but once you venture outside of the opening biomes, things start to get more perilous – more Subnautica. After too much time spent obsessing over the improved base building systems and unlocking the usual suite of tools for the opening dozen hours, you finally start to see some of the spine-tingling sea creatures that sent shivers rattling through the oxygen canisters of players in the original game.
It goes like this: you've built the perfect base, a monstrosity of glass and science that would make a Bond villain blush. It all snaps together nicely, an improvement on previous iterations of the system, and you forget your place in this world. Then you get eaten by a corallic venus fly trap. You lose your submersible to an aggressive aquatic assailant. Whatever the hazard, your water supply is running low, and you've got to swim across a kilometer of open water to get back to your beloved base. Suddenly Subnautica 2 feels very big, very lonely, and very dangerous. But that's the point.
An engaging mystery urges you forwards via intriguing voice notes left by previous crash landees and the guiding hand of your ship's AI, NoA. You're swept into a narrative current of corrupting flora, alien influence, and all-too-human betrayal. With an enticing story and a handful of heart-in-mouth moments already emerging from the expansive blue, Subnautica 2 is full of promise.
That's not to say it's perfect. It looks great and is surprisingly polished – I've only encountered one minor bug thus far – but there's room for improvement. Nighttime looks stunning and feels suitably intense when exploring the inky darkness, but is, generally, little more dangerous than the daytime. I'd like some nocturnal creatures to reveal themselves and threaten me while I run my midnight errands.
Adaptations – effectively splicing your DNA with indigenous flora – are a clever way to gatekeep new biomes, but biomods, which offer passive and active abilities to be used as you explore the murky depths, are underutilized. This brand new system needed far more depth (pun very much intended) from the outset, to truly see how Unknown Worlds is iterating on what has come before.
I'm impressed with what I've seen. Unknown Worlds is delivering on many pieces of fan feedback from the brilliant first game and its arctic follow-up. It's nigh on impossible to replicate the terrifying sensation of seeing your first Leviathan, but if it continues to build on the strong foundations laid in this early access release, Subnautica 2 could get pretty darn close.
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