Kerbal Space Program 2 vibes… I’m suddenly less optimistic on subnautica 2.
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.
Oh good now maybe the Subnautica developers can go independent to make a spiritual successor that isn’t called Subnautica and isn’t garbage.
Just hope it isn’t The Neptune Protocol.
Underaquaia? Seaunderia? Drownica? Or, my personal favorite: “fuck ugly giant cthulu adjacent heart attack inducer 2”
I can only imagine the new PTB are already working feverishly to add mandatory for story progression, 30+ hour combined Seatruck and Snowfox segments, a minigun which mounts to the seaglide, and mats necessary for key endgame craftables which are conveniently available exclusively through loot boxes you can earn by sending individual dev team members your nudes or earn 15 a week absolutely free with your monthly Deep Dive Club subscription
Also, from orbit the planet looks completely covered by ocean, but once you land it’s like calf high at its highest… but there are still leviathans, for some reason. Because fuck you, that’s why.
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.
In their place, Striking Distance Studios CEO Steve Papoutsis (who has a major role in the development of The Callisto Protocol) has been appointed as Unknown Worlds CEO.
I can smell the mediocrity from here.
Unknown Worlds was already dead anyway.
The team had already lost any chance of recreating the greatness of the first game when their sound designer made unbelievably stupid comments on social media, leaving the company no choice but to fire him.
This is very sad because I loved their stuff ever since the Natural Selection Half-life mod.
If you’re basing that on Subnautica Below Zero, it’s worth noting that basically the whole creative team is different, not just the composer:
Subnautica credits:
Director(s)
Charlie ClevelandProducer(s)
Hugh JeremyDesigner(s)
Charlie ClevelandProgrammer(s)
Charlie Cleveland Steven An Max McGuire Jonas BötelArtist(s)
Cory Strader Brian Cummings Scott MacDonaldWriter(s)
Tom JubertComposer(s)
Simon Chylinski
Subnautica Below Zero credits:
Director(s)
David KalinaProducer(s)
Charlie Cleveland Cory Strader Max McGuire Ted GillDesigner(s)
Alex RiesArtist(s)
Cory StraderWriter(s)
Jill Murray Brittney Morris Zaire Lanier Tom JubertComposer(s)
Ben PruntyTIL, I liked the OST, but holy cow this guy’s twitter is nasty. He can get fucked.
One reason Subnautica came out better through the years was the relationship built between the developers and players (beta testers?) by relying on transparency and active feedback. Subnautica was a big mess during the first iterations, and a lot changed and improved thanks to this collaboration IMO.
I remember when they explained that the game won’t have weapons and I scratched my head as I wanted to play an undersea Natural Selection game. I was wrong then, and I hope we’re all wrong and a better game (or at least similar one) comes out of this.
aw man i was HYPED for subnautica 2. loved the first game and below zero but now I’m worried
I’ll wait for more info,… but from now on I’m approaching SN2 with extreme caution
“This news article matches 7 of the 9 preconditions for stimulating terror in gamers.”
