I loved Subnautica, and I could not have cared less about Subnautica’s base-building. For me, it was all about exploration, discovery, the horrors of the black depths, and the sweet relief of escape to the warm, well-lit shallows. I built what I needed to get by, but honestly my base was utterly basic: As George Carlin put it, just a place to keep my stuff while I went out to get more stuff.
Apparently I’m in the minority in that regard, though, because Unknown Worlds’ latest Subnautica 2 dev vlog is all about base building, and it’s clear the team is putting a lot of effort into it—and based on the responses, fans are very happy about that.
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Subnautica 2’s base-building system is “brand new,” base design lead Kiel McDonald says in the video, and aims to “keep the spirit” of base-building in the first two games while enabling players “to express themselves even more.”
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“I think the main thing is our new procedural system, where basically you don’t have to be constrained to a specific shape,” McDonald says. “We have moved away from fixed pieces for the most part, and have a much more sculptural, expressive system.”
That means players will be able to customize their bases to a far greater extent than they could in Subnautica and Below Zero: Windows can be applied in various shapes, and the studio plans to let players paint their base in different colors, use different colored lights, and apply “different cosmetic options inside.” And of course you’ll be able to share the majesty and/or coziness of your undersea abodes with other players, although entirely at your own risk—and entirely optionally, as Unknown Worlds reassured us in February.
For players who are into building bases in their survival games, this will no doubt be very cool—and looking at the YouTube page, where people seem to be lining up to mash the “like” button, there’s an awful lot of you out there. For those of us who are not, well, there’s always the ol’ ‘build a box with a door’ option to fall back on, which is what I will absolutely be doing.
The trailer does not, unfortunately, provide us with a release date: Subnautica 2 remains slated to launch into early access sometime later this year.
