game could be more open-ended!!

started a singleplayer world today to think up some more feedback and noticed how similar the game’s structure is to that of below zero (in the sense that making progress boils down to going to one specific place at a time, rather than being able to find fragments/resources in multiple places). while i don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing, if anything it works great for the early game pre-Graveyard, i do think the later parts of the game should stop holding the players hand as much.

for example, on a recent sn1 replay i went to the dunes before the aurora explosion and got the reinforced dive suit before the radiation suit. absolutely not something suited for beginners, but, it’s an option!! with sn2 in order to get past the heat you are required to get the heat tolerance, which requires the feedback resonator, which requires the habitat builder, so on and so forth. replays aren’t really about finding a new way to do things, it’s just about doing the same things faster. (granted this may just be because the map itself is currently really linear, but, still.)

again i think it’s ultimately a good thing that the player is eased into things at the start, it works well with what the story’s doing, i just really hope that the game can eventually trust the player enough to let them explore for themselves instead of being locked into one area at a time!! it was really cool how every first subnautica playthrough is always a little different from one another and i really hope the sequel follows suit instead of taking BZ’s more “Curated Experience” sorta approach.