It’s been more than a decade since the original Subnautica dove into early access. The deep sea survival game spent four years there as developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment added new features, biomes, and polished the whole thing up with the game’s players. It may be difficult to remember just how incomplete it was in 2014.
As Subnautica 2 releases into early access today, its developers are very aware that players may be expecting a game much closer to completion than they’ll get their diver’s gloves on.
“I think it’s definitely influenced the amount of content we felt we needed to launch with,” Subnautica 2 design lead Anthony Gallegos told our dear Edwin at a recent roundtable, explaining how they’ve aimed to build a fuller experience for this first launch than they’ve done in the past because expectations for early access games have changed since 2014.
“That being said, we also didn’t want to make it to where we were going to make the game, 90% complete and then launch it either,” Gallegos continued. “We very intentionally didn’t do that, because even though we know we will probably get some flack for it, it is very important to not only the DNA of the studio but also the success of the game that we build it alongside fans.”
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Unknown Worlds Entertainment began life as a team of modders working on Natural Selection, a total conversion mod for Half-Life. That was iterated on and improved over years by players and its volunteer creators. When they formed a studio and started work on a standalone version, the released it first in alpha and then, working with players built towards a beta release and eventually a full launch.
“[Early access] is not a way for us to launch the game incomplete and just get cash,” Gallegos says. “It’s not a way for us to just try and cheap out on things. It is literally ingrained in the philosophy, and why I would say more than half of the team joined the studio. They want to make a game alongside players. So, for us, it’s about making good on that promise – not only to the legacy fans but also to our team.”
Intentionally launching with a lot of Subnautica left to build is more than making good with their team, though. They are also trying to avoid repeating the failure of their last game, turn-based miniatures game Moonbreaker, which launched in an almost complete state. “I think we all realised, after we did that, that we probably didn’t go into early access soon enough,” Creative media producer Scott MacDonald says. “So by going into early access with enough meat on the bones of the game, that players will really, really get stuck in and enjoy it, but also not too much that we can still change the game in the ways that we might need to, depending on player feedback, I think we managed to hit the exact Goldilocks point with Subnautica 2 early access.”
Edwin’s been playing the Subnautica 2’s early access build and found it to be a very fleshed out – if familiar – experience. There will be more story to discover and additional biomes to come, but it doesn’t play like an incomplete game. In terms of what’s been left out that’s still to come: we know that that horrifying squiddy leviathan will soon be dropped in the ocean.
So, yeah, if you want to swim the waters of Subnautica 2 without being attacked by giant tentacles, you should probably dive in sooner rather than later.
