Hello Subnauts, A few of you noticed some information shared online by our publisher, KRAFTON 🕵 While some of the news is exciting, we’d like to clarify: Early Access is not intended for release in 2024, but we plan to share a lot more information later this year! In reference to “Game
Maybe it's just me, but I think it was a mistake to describe it as GaaS. I understand how they're trying to use the term, but the fact they felt the need to clarify how they meant it should have been a clear enough sign the term is rather tainted.
Worse, it may make some people skeptical & suspect that they intend to change their tune down the line. Their track record notwithstanding, that's how some may be after having been burnt before with other experiences.
In reference to “Games-as-a-Service,” we simply plan to continually update the game for many years to come, just like the previous two Subnautica games. Think our Early Access update model, expanded. No season passes. No battle passes. No subscription.
It gets thrown around a lot as a buzzword, but it really just means "intended to get post-release updates that go beyond bug fixes." Nearly every game released these days, good or not, classifies as GaaS. It's functionally meaningless.
Fuck the marketing term, in practice it can be great. Monster hunter world did it great, you got the base game that was a complete product, and then post-launch you got new monsters (like deviljho), new events with new weapons or armor, special hunts (like kulve taroth) or events that flood you with materials to catch up to the end game. And when that was over for the base game you got an expansion with another year of support.
I wonder if Youtube will be around long enough for kids born in the 2010s to make "retrospectives" on the Subnautica series and talk about how researching opinions on Subnuatica 2 are difficult because some people referred to Below Zero as #2
The original subnautica game is still gorgeous. I played it for the first time last summer and loved it, spent 80 hours to finish and don’t regret it for a sec, the atmosphere of that game is amazing. Just chilling in the “safe” sections is so relaxing after a long day of work as well
It's my favorite game to watch other people play. I loved sitting with my flatmate, looking stuff up to help them progress while they did the stuff that would make my thalassophobic ass involuntarily quit
The first game is very good. Go into it as blind as possible and try not to look up a wiki on your first run.
The second game...I think if I was to compile a list of "Ten prettiest screenshots from the Subnautica series" Below Zero would be responsible for at least eight of them. They stepped up the world design a bit. Primary gameplay loop is very similar, the story is a bigger disappointment than me.
The gameplay got worse because they, instead of using their incredible swimming mechanic and undersea worldbuilding, added a ginourmous, empty, and boring bit of walking simulator. Those land areas are a nothing burger of plain white plane. Honestly the Walking in subnautica is pretty miserable but at least you dont notice it much in the bases and vehicles you build.
I thought you were exaggerating, but after checking it out, it really does feel like a mid-late 00's website, and goddamn do I fucking miss it. Everything online these days is flat, overly-simplified, absolutely corporate and sanitized to fuck and back. I feel like, on an atomic level, I'm closer to a frown than a neutral expression when browsing most of the internet these days.
Also Subnautica itself fucking rules, good to see their website has just as much effort put into it.
I'm confused as to why every article about this is calling it Subnautica 2, like I know Below Zero wasn't as good as the original but this will be the 3rd game in the series.
Anyway, glad co-op will be a thing, tried the multiplayer mod just before the 2.0 release and whilst buggy it was really fun, looking forward to them releasing the new version which looking at their GitHub, seems to be getting closer
to me this reads more like damage control. maybe it's just my bias from enjoying the franchise a lot, but the fact that unknown worlds is clarifying a statement made by their publisher with this language in it just smells like the publisher had no clue what was actually going on and wanted to leak something that "looked good" (from a business not consumer perspective)