Kerbal Space Program 2 vibes… I’m suddenly less optimistic on subnautica 2.
Great. An upper management restructuring. Capitalism does it’s thing again. Subnautica 2 will be a shitty cash grab.
At least we had the first one.
They had already hinted they wanted to make Subnautica 2 into a multiplayer co-op, and they specifically mentioned “games as a service”.
After backlash, they specified the multiplayer would be optional, and “games as a service” means long term updates, not microtransactions, which sounds suspiciously like a rollback to me…
I was already kind of expecting that, seeing as below zero’s map wasn’t half as interesting as the first game, the storytelling was mid, and the mechanics were all over the place, like they just wanted to make another hit by shooting in every direction, with half the work put into it.
When Below Zero came out it was clear that they had no idea what made Subnautica special, something that a sequel had no hope of replicating. Fear of the unknown and the drive to explore deeper. Once you’ve completed Subnautica you are a god of the sea, and that knowledge and experience cannot be lost.
Mobius Digital was able to make a successful DLC for Outer Wilds because they understood what made their game work, which is the player’s own curiosity.
Hmmm publisher gutting original creative team from a highly anticipated sequel. This always ends well.
To be fair, they didn’t gut the original creative team.
Max McGuire was CTO and a programmer on the original game, Ted Gill was President and a Producer on Below Zero.
Charlie Cleveland was current CEO, and the director and lead designer of the original game, so was the head of the origin creative team, and that does seem like a big loss, but no one else from the art, writing, or design teams seem to be leaving, so it’s not really a ‘gutting’ of the original creative team.
My guess (especially given how buggy Subnautica was), is that they were missing their delivery milestones so the publisher wanted to replace the organization heads and move at least Charlie Cleveland back down to a creative role, but they refused and left together.
Yup, sounds like I need to wait for quite a few patches and some real reviews before I buy
Kerbal Space Program 2Subnautica 2
