Constructing your lab will be a central facet of underwater exploration in Subnautica 2, and the tools available to you are evolving for the sequel. In the latest development vlog, Unknown Worlds Entertainment gets into the added customization that'll be available in the marine survival sim.
"This is a brand new system, I don't think we've seen anything like this in any other survival game," Kiel McDonald, base design lead on Subnautica 2, says.
"What we're doing is kind of novel. We're using some techniques that haven't been used in games like this before," Milan Singh, senior gameplay engineer, adds.
The team has "moved away from fixed pieces for the most part," explains McDonald, and pushed toward procedural generation. Instead of just picking shapes and tiles from a menu, as is typical of this kind of construction in video games, players can customize to a more granular degree, letting them express themselves and get more ambitious in their ideas.
"We have a much more sculptural and expressive system," McDonald explains. A highlighted example is in the windowmaking – previously, you just had to live with whatever sheets of glass and plastic the game offered, whereas now, all sorts of variables are at your fingertips.
"With the procedural system, instead of having just these big blocks that you can put the windows on," Carolyn Lu, senior engineer, explains, "you can make windows in whatever shape you want."
It all looks quite fluid going by the footage given. You can add curves and other aesthetic options to the architecture, letting you make a base that's truly befitting of your quest into the depths. Subnautica 2 is due to arrive in early access at some point this year.
