Subnautica 2 is off to a strong start at the beginning of its years-long Early Access process. There’s already a solid 20 hours of content, and while it could certainly do with being less linear, there’s already a ton of stuff to do. But the biggest complaint in this earliest form is the ridiculously over-violence of the larger fish. Thankfully, the latest hotfix appears to have stepped in to try to calm things down.
One of the noisier aspects of audience reaction to Subnautica 2 is a large contingent of players demanding ways to be able to kill the aquatic alien creatures you’re surrounded by after crashing into the waters of an unknown oceanic planet. The original Subnautica featured a knife that could be used in last-ditch desperation, but the sequel has axed this in favor of some extremely under-powered, non-lethal ways of dealing with its many murderous fish. While discourse over the ability to kill the sealife has been feisty, Unknown Worlds has remained resolute that it’s just not going to be an option.
Interestingly, PC Gamer reports today on comments made by design lead Anthony Gallegos who says it’s nothing to do with “pacifism,” but rather a far more fundamental game design choice. “Our intent, actually, was two things,” Gallegos said on MinnMax. “One, it was that we wanted to not give people the attitude that they were this dominator over the world, because the message of the game was very much people learning to live in parallel with the world that they’re in.” And the second? “We’re really inspired by games like SOMA and Alien: Isolation.” He points out that if SOMA let you fight back, “no matter how intentionally miserable they made the experience, players would always be like, ‘it’s always better to master the crappy combat than it is to deal with the constant threat intention of a thing’.”
However, despite all this, the fish are way too annoying. If you’ve played the early access, you’ll know there are caves where shark-likes are a constant irritation rather than an interesting challenge, and how just basic travel can become a very tiresome chore thanks to over-zealous goliaths. So back in May, developers Unknown Worlds promised to address some of these issues in an upcoming patch. On May 20, an open letter made clear the team knew “creature balance needs work,” saying, “some predator encounters feel more frustrating than tense or exciting,” promising incremental adjustments over the next few patches.
The first of those is now here, and along with updating the game to DLSS 4.5 and dealing with some pesky DLSS-related crashes, there are a range of balance tweaks to the nature of the grumpier fish. Key among these are having Hammerheads no long wreck your Tadpole while you’re not in it (a particularly tiresome problem), and made Marrowbreaches attack you less often. To balance that, their attacks will be more dangerous. The patch also nerfs the wildly irritating Nibblers, so now they have a smaller perception range, longer signalling of attacks, and slowed them down. Again, that’s balanced with a nastier bite.
I’d love to see the Bulletheads getting a similar treatment soon (again, with the accompanying increase in damage), but my main irritant remains the Collector Leviathan and its massively OP patrolling of the primary route between your first two bases. I want an innovative solution to evading its attacks, rather than just making it less scary. I’m looking forward to seeing what else comes up in the next few hotfixes. You can read the full patch notes for Hotfix 3 below:
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Fixed issues that could cause DLSS to crash the game.
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Fixed issues that could cause DLSS settings not to be saved correctly.
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Fixed Frame Generation not being available in certain versions of the game.
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Upgraded DLSS to version 4.5.
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Reduced Interior Wall costs to 1/4 of their previous price.
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Hammerheads no longer attack unpiloted Tadpoles.
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Fixed Hammerheads occasionally not being attracted to Flares.
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Increased overall damage of Marrowbreaches.
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Spaced out Marrowbreach attacks to occur less frequently.
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Reduced Nibbler perception range, making players less visible to them.
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Increased the duration Nibblers circle the player before attacking.
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Reduced overall movement speed of the Nibblers.
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Increased sensitivity of the Nibblers to the Multitool.
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Increased overall damage of Nibblers.
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Fixed a rare crash when starting games.
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Fixed Clients (not the game host) reverting to their previous position when rejoining a multiplayer session.
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Fixed Strike Armor modification stacking additively, which could result in a potentially game-breaking state.
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Fixed goggles remaining visible in first-person view when exiting the Tadpole Haul Chassis as a passenger.
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Localized text callout on the Terms of Service acceptance screen.
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Added additional context to crash reports to provide better details for hard-to-reproduce issues.
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