"It's like, man..."

Subautica 2 developers have spoken about the decision to stay firm on the non-violent stance on its upcoming oceanic survival game, even after fans from one country wanted weapon manufacturing.

Speaking to press in an early Subnautica 2 briefing last week, where Eurogamer was present, lead game designer Anthony Gallegos and media lead Scott MacDonald at Unknown World dove into the themes of environmental cohabitation.

"You can scan creatures and read lengthy PDAs about their taxonomy and their history on the world. We know a lot of fans treat this game like a David Attenborough Earth type thing, so we really wanted to deliver that as well," said Galligos.

One of the manifestations of the game's non-violent approach to wildlife in Subnautica 2 is the presence of 'bloom', which infests and agitates fauna in the game. In one example shown to press, some plantlife is fighting off bloom, which has infected its roots.

One of the main goals of players in Subnautica 2 will be learning how to cure those infestations of bloom, according to Gallegos. The colour of the water where its present will become muted, creatures will get more aggressive - and the devs have made it clear that creatures are more aggressive because of the bloom, not because they are "bad".

One journalist, meanwhile, asked about the lack of weaponry in Subnautica 2, and pointed to the lack of defensive options in past Subnautica games as a source of frustration. To this, Gallegos responded:

"The studio started with the Natural Selections series, but when the Sandy Hook shooting happened in the United States, one of the studio founders Charlie Cleveland wanted to create a game that didn't push violence [...] It's a core tenant of the Subnautica franchise.

"The one thing we want to push is we want people to feel they're learning to adapt to the world, rather than being a conqueror or dominator, but I do know the theme of what we're doing where you started out on a colony ship, it would make sense that there'd be a means of self defence. We plan on tackling that in the story over time, but the player is not one of those people using weapons."

According to Gallegos, the team is focusing on making the player think about how to deter creatures and avoid combative situations, rather than pushing them to kill creatures.

"One of the things that always bothered me is that Subnautica 1 players would enter an area and try to figure out 'how am I going to kill this Leviathan so I don't have to deal with it anymore', which I think is unfortunate," Gallegos said. "It removes the tension of the region. But of course players do, as it's the optimal way of dealing with the creatures."

MacDonald added to this that the team at Unknown Worlds was adding gameplay mechanics to mitigate those aggressive urges from players, so that they aren't using weapons, but instead tools to maybe distract a creature rather than harm it.

Another journalist, Edwin Evans-Thirlwell of our sister site RPS, asked more about the non-violence ethic, and whether players would be receptive to it.

"I think it's a point of resistance that we'll get repeatedly while making the game, though we feel strongly about it," Galligos responded. "For us, the main thing is we want to listen to feedback from players who feel they can't defend themselves in an area or something like that, then we want to ideate on the means in which they can do that. But I think it's an important and interesting constraint to challenge players on how they can avoid things."

Galligos went on to speak about the earliest feedback rounds for the game, to find out what players would want from the series. From this, he revealed, the team received surprising feedback from certain players.

"There was one country that I won't name, and they overwhelmingly wanted to manufacture weapons. And it's like, man, I feel like people got a totally different vibe out of the original Subnautica than a weapon manufacturing video game."

With Subnautica 2 set to release later this month, you can read Eurogamer's preview of Subnautica 2's Early Access build, in which Kelsey writes: "Already, even in Subnautica 2's far from finished state, it feels like there's simply so much to do; optimising crafting and base-building, locating more blackboxes to unravel, piecing together the story, and ultimately discovering what's hidden away in the ocean's complex cave networks and beyond."

Extracted and lightly reformatted for readability. · Source: pt