Early access is crazy. No one can convince me buying a game before full release is worth it anymore, especially when the meme of developing the game alongside community input is so blatantly disregarded.
I understand the strategy behind it. Go put out a game and drip feed content to keep it in the news cycle for the next two years. Every time you put out a patch, streamers play it and you gain more sales. However, it does not work in an iterative sequel. People know what to expect. An iterative sequel should have all the things at launch, as the previous entry had at end of life.
If you don't then you're using EA to pad development time and generate revenue before being able to ship a completed product. Since you're using EA to pad development time, you can't exactly pivot to player demands and feedback. On top of that, I imagine adding something like being able to stab wildlife would require reams and reams of new code and animations, which would slow down dev time. So it's a fundamental flaw in the game design itself. Let people kill underwater horrors!
How do you even do Early Access gating bullshit in an exploration game without completely ruining the experience?
You're tooting around in your little diving bell and suddenly *BONK* invisible wall. Hey fren, looking for the rest of the game? Come back in 12-24 months and there's a chance it'll be here!
1. Make game EA despite success of prior entries
2. Use the logic that it is so that the community can have input on the game's development
3. Gamers (2 million) who paid to beta test your game give feedback on your game, stating that they don't like that they can't kill even the smallest fish with a knife, as they could in previous entries in the franchise, (no one ever complained that being able to kill creatures was unfun).
4. Tell your supporters that they can suck a fat one because this is the game's vision.
Early access is crazy. No one can convince me buying a game before full release is worth it anymore, especially when the meme of developing the game alongside community input is so blatantly disregarded.
I was a huge fan of S1, and less a fan of BZ (I hated the protag and all the talking, but it was still fun at times, if a bit different), and so far I'm not sure what to think of 2.
I'm not a fan of so much log overload, but honestly I've just been sorta tuning them out and not paying all that much attention so I couldn't tell you anything about the characters. I really like the Axum though. I like the concept, so far the execution has been interesting. I'm kinda hoping they wrap up the pioneer's stories and give us more of that stuff.
As far as the game goes though, it's fun. Not as good as the first game, but it's hard to compare them fairly since I played that as a full game, and this is just EA. I've been enjoying the multiplayer a lot, and I don't hate the whole active/passive bioscanner abilities. I just hope they don't take ages to update the game.
The only criticism I have (aside from hating the logs) is that I miss the verticality of the first game. There's a little bit of that in 2, but I miss the cool cave zones and stuff. So far this one has felt much more flat/step-shaped outside of the initial shallows zone.
The 'descending into the depths' bit of the first one was great. Having to overcome your fear of the dark and the creatures in it to find answers and leave was a highlight. Also tack on their gay non-violence bullshit in Sub2 where you can't kill anything really undermines the 'survive to thrive' aspect of games like this. You start out afraid of your own shadow, but by the end you are grappling to reapers in your prawn suit and beating them to death. That neatly ties everything into a bow as your blast off leaving the world you conquered behind. But can' have that in Current Year because my hekkin nature and colonialism or some shit.
Subnautica 2 had been in development for over 4 years, which begs the question of what exactly they've been doing in that time that they need to release the game with 2/3 of the content missing?
Subnautica 2 had been in development for over 4 years, which begs the question of what exactly they've been doing in that time that they need to release the game with 2/3 of the content missing?
No need to speculate, we know the lolsuit happened because they weren't doing anything.
While I have no love for the publisher either it's a damn shame they got rewarded for their scam, and now again with cattle buying into the EA.
Subnautica 2 had been in development for over 4 years, which begs the question of what exactly they've been doing in that time that they need to release the game with 2/3 of the content missing?
Back in the day, it used to be that the majority of the game was made very late in development. Halo 2 was more or less made in the last seven months before release and everything prior was engine tooling, bugs, art style and so on. And once they figured the central gameplay and the engine was good, they made the actual game rather quickly. A ton of newer games also spend a lot of time on the art style, the engine, trying to figure out what to do but don't have the efficacy where they can ship a full game within a year from when they have everything they need. To further add onto that, Subnautica 1 was built in Unity while 2 is built on UE5, so the devs spent even more time on learning new tools.
They're liberal retards. They fired the sound designer for the first game because he had incorrect opinions and was a Qanon follower.
I know people are already saying the story is a huge retread of the first game. You're stranded on an alien world, the planet has a virus that is slowly killing your character, you need to find a cure. There's an ancient alien race that was also on the planet and died horribly from said virus. I haven't gotten very far through the story but all the same narrative beats are being hit.
I haven't seen this anywhere else. But I think while the game is repeating the story from the first game, they're also taking "inspiration" from SOMA. Whether or not this is a good thing is up to you. While the WAU has parallels with NoA, there are also some similarities with the tree. The tree seems like it is the origin of the protean virus, much like how the WAU was mutating everyone on PATHOS-II to survive in the ocean depths after the comet destroyed earth. The tree also compels people to move towards it, while there's no direct correlation, Johan Ross from SOMA was obsessed with getting back to the WAU with Simon so it could be destroyed. One of the Colonists in S2 also has the same obsession. Getting to the tree and killing it. Mark Sarang from SOMA and another colonist in S2 also have the similar idea of killing off what remains of humanity, albeit for different reasons.
There's also the idea of what makes you human. While its not directly explored in S2, the idea can still be extrapolated. You wake up on Proteus already knowing you're just a consciousness uploaded to a 3d printed body. Much how Simon was brought to PATHOS-II as a copy uploaded to a corpse with computer parts strapped onto it. The "horror" comes from the NoA AI neing able to reset you, as well as your memories. Which brings into question whether or not you or the colonists are yourselves. If you can just be reset, and be brought back to a pre-determined point in time, you probably aren't really the original. SOMA explores this theme much better, between the four versions of Simon that go through the course of the game. This also isn't the main focus of the game.
PDA entry that talks about this briefly.
There is a "puzzle" at the midway point of the game, where you have to interrogate a copy of Brandon Wan, a researcher who is long dead, but his brain scan contains information that will let you continue along with your journey. You have to reset him over and over again until you can interrogate him the correct way, all while when you do it wrong, he becomes immediately distressed and his scan has to be reset. In S2 there is whats left of a colonist on one of the AI stations. She can't be printed again but she can be spoken to, albeit briefly. You need to get some information about where to go next out of her. The memory of the copy is low, and she will be reset upon being spoken to long enough, resulting in the conversations starting over. The AI even warns you several times that you need to finish talking to her before she is reset again.
NoA is trying their best to keep the colonists alive, but can't because of the virus, he also runs out of material to 3d print the colonists anymore because the virus has damaged their templates too heavily. The colonists are also very aware they are under the AI's control. Even noting that they can't swear in english, the AI won't allow them to after they were printed again after some point. If you know about SOMA you know that the WAU had a great deal of control over the PATHOS-II survivors.
There is also of course the plot thread of humanity being gone because of the bacteria from the first game. How the colony on Proteus is the last bastion of humanity, even though there's no actual humans left, you're just brain scans uploaded to 3d printed bodies. Earth in SOMA has been destroyed by the comet. By the time you arrive to the underwater research station the survivors are mostly dead save one, and the last one dies shortly after you find her.
I don't have a lot of practice writing analytically. So this may come off as a bit jumbled. But I feel like Unknown Worlds took a lot of "inspiration" from Soma for this version of their story. But in a truncated and sloppy way.
It really is infinitely fatiguing dealing with, or being subject to, Lefty bullshit, because of how they need to endlessly virtue signal.
There are all sorts of ideologies I could deal with because they keep it to themselves or have some sort of merit to them, but modern Western Leftism is so off putting that dozens of content creators, many shitty, just make entire careers bringing the shit they do and say up, they are that bad.
all I'm hearing from this is expected, but like I said, still somehow annoying.
