Subnautica 2's "optional co-op" looks like exactly what I want – not the live-service mess I was afraid the survival game might become

Two people play Subnautica 2 on portable gaming handhelds

(Image credit: Unknown Worlds)

Arguably the only thing missing from the original Subnautica was multiplayer, and the devs have heavily promoted the fact that Subnautica 2 is bringing co-op to the table. While the devs quickly pushed back on publisher Krafton's early assertion that the sequel would be a live-service title, I've still had some concerns about whether multiplayer would undercut the sense of lonely adventure that made the first game great to begin with. Luckily, a new dev diary suggests that the co-op feature is pretty much exactly what I'd hoped for.

No part of the game will "require cooperative play," according to design lead Anthony Gallegos. "But if I want to come along and bring a friend, they can totally participate with me in every moment along the way. We never wanted to encroach on someone's game that just is like, 'I want to play solo.' We never wanted to have the moment where you had to pull the switches in tandem. That's never the way we want it to be. Optional co-op, start to finish."

Subnautica 2 Dev Vlog - Diving Together in Multiplayer - YouTube

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While this echoes the devs' earlier assertion that Subnautica 2 is "a single-player first experience," it seems that multiplayer was hardly an afterthought – in fact, co-op was a part of the game from its earliest prototypes, and lead engineer Jon Bjarnason says "every single feature that we made since then has been multiplayer capable."

You can easily convert a single-player Subnautica 2 session into multiplayer, or you can build a multiplayer world from the start. Full crossplay is supported through an in-game friends list, but you can also send invites through your normal platform friends list. "It's really simple to continue games with your friends or let them continue the game and for you to pick it up later," Gallegos explains.

This is all basic stuff, but I've seen far too many sequels fumble what should be slam-dunk additions to ever take it for granted. Amid an ongoing legal battle between Krafton and the original Subnautica 2 leads, it'd be easy to assume the survival game might lose the plot – but whatever else might be going on behind the scenes, it seems the current devs understand what made Subnautica so memorable in the first place.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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