—PDA Voice
The Minecraft-inspired underwater survival/exploration game Subnautica has serious performance issues on the Switch platform, at least, as will be addressed in greater detail. Besides this, the game is largely not just superb. It is legitimately perfect in much of its execution. All while using a Fabricator machine to prepare food and water from extraterrestrial fish and other resources, players traverse the waters of a world with a disastrous past that slowly comes to light. At first, the player has few options. With time and diligence, the player can craft gear allowing for longer dives, underwater bases with a wide variety of features, and vehicles that permit exploration to the uttermost reaches of the areas that yield resources and plot advancement. However, with greater depths and meticulous exploration comes exposure to Leviathan class predators, which provide horror to a game with an otherwise often peaceful or enigmatic tone. For those wanting a less tense experience, creative mode and staying in the safer parts of the game in the story mode allow you to focus on customizing bases in a similar vein to how one might expand or personalize a home in Animal Crossing.
Production Values
The graphics are on the better side of middling. Color schemes tied to particular locations, like the orange-red of the molten depths or the blues, reds, and purples of the initial area, excellently distinguish between "biomes" and serve as visual indicators of what resources to expect from them. Darkness is also used to great effect as a way to enhance the mystery or vulnerability as one passes through certain new areas—or familiar ones where a Leviathan class predator has been encountered, like the Reaper seen latching onto my vehicle in the second screenshot from the top. Oh, there are even larger animals than Reapers! Creature animations and the appearance of vehicles like the Cyclops submarine range from mediocre to great, with vehicle exteriors being among the best of the game's visual feats. But, though perhaps it runs better on other consoles, the Switch version of Subnautica is very hit or miss with its performance.
Multiple times, the game crashed. The first time was right after I tried to save; you must manually save because there is no autosave function. Then, after the game crashed for the first time and I had restarted it, a PDA I had just acquired had disappeared from its position without its text appearing in my PDA's files, with no indication as to whether this glitch would impact my ability to trigger the next story-related messages. Subsequent crashes did occur but did not impact my progress. And as strange as it is, sometimes the game allowed me to pin three crafting recipes to the HUD, and sometimes it allowed me to pin more like six. This seems to be because the size of the circle indicating the recipe changed to the point os f becoming much more massive than in other cases. For this reason, the size of pinned recipes differs between some screenshots.
Gameplay
Though the world might seem incredibly vast and multifaceted at first, and it is, you can progress fairly quickly if you try to, especially if you are already familiar with the basic mechanics and locations. The player uses the little they initially have available to build more extensive things as they are able. For example, you can use copper samples and acid mushrooms from the starting area to craft batteries, which can in turn be combined with another material to create larger power cells for vehicles like the small submersible called the Seamoth. Both power sources can eventually be charged inside of a base thanks to an expanding arsenal of crafting recipes. Exploration of random new areas is vital for obtaining miscellaneous items and upgrades, especially for things like the Seamoth or the Prawn Suit (an exoskeleton that can go the furthest distance below the surface when fully upgraded). Gradually, you can amass quite the blueprint and resource collection through intentionality or happenstance. Certain blueprints and crafting items are only found far below the surface, so exploring as deep as possible for your oxygen levels or current vehicle is essential.
The first of the vehicles you can climb inside is the Seamoth. However, two upgrades in, your Seamoth can only descend safely to 500 meters before the pressure causes damage. The Cyclops can reach 500 meters from the beginning. Since the Cyclops already has built-in storage lockers and you can fabricate additional fixtures inside it, the vessel can serve as a mobile base with defensive capabilities. However, it is extremely slow, difficult to maneuver properly in narrow passageways or general ascents and descents, and in almost constant need of having its six power cells swapped for replacements. It is not a simple or quick matter to pilot it from one end of the map to another. Besides the carrying capacity and how it can be outfitted with food and hydration-producing machines, the most significant benefit of the Cyclops despite its severe inconveniences is its diving depth. Whereas the Seamoth has a starting maximum depth of 300 meters and an enhanced maximum of 900 meters with two upgrades, the Cyclops depth capacity climbs to 1,300 meters with only two of the three upgrades. Using this submarine is hence one of the only ways to access certain parts of the game! The Prawn Suit, however, starts with the capacity to go 900 meters down.
As for finding your way around the world whether or not you are using a constructed vehicle, the game is designed in such a way that finding your way back to a particular point can be challenging. Sometimes the PDA gives important information about a spot that might have ramifications for the main story. But since there is no map screen and the PDA notification does not mark your position, you have very few options to pinpoint where you are if you have to leave the area. There is no way to tell where the message was triggered apart from very specific means. Unless you brought a beacon with you, have a very precise memory, or take a screenshot or video of how far you are from your crashed escape pod with the Aurora's hull in view to provide more visual context as to the direction, you will have to wander around and stumble into the same area. However, the world is structured to incentivize random exploration with resources and fragments of equipment like the Seamoth. Different biomes house varying resources, from copper to rubies and more, all of which have their applications for fabricating useful items. But while exploring, the player must be careful to utilize food and water in their current inventory or remain close enough to either a Fabricator or previously prepared consumables to stave off starvation and thirst! Cured fish and bottles of purified water are especially helpful for longer journeys away from a Fabricator.
Story
Ryley Robinson survives the crash of an Alterra Corporation starship called the Aurora into 4546B, a planet that, at least where he lands, is almost entirely covered by an ocean. While initial scavenging efforts start near his lifepod in a shallow area because it is all he can access, he slowly acquires the means to venture further out from his pod's landing site, including below the surface. In the process, he uncovers evidence of a past extraterrestrial species that engaged in empirical research to neutralize the threat of the Kharaa virus, which still endangers most life on the planet. He himself becomes infected, his departure from 4546B depending on his ability to find a cure because of a weapon system meant to shoot down any vessels that try to land on or leave the planet in order to quarantine infected organisms—or lethally prevent infection.
Intellectual Content
One of the things Subnautica more directly brushes up against, though the creators probably never identified it properly, is the logical possibility of organisms that look quite different from the creatures of Earth. Towards the end of the game, a major plot point affirms how collaboration can lead to better results than confinement or force, which pairs well with the lack of emphasis on offensive weaponry available to the player throughout the game. Subnautica does not focus on how force or violence can legitmately solve certain problems (as with self-defense), instead focusing on how peacable interaction with a character fully revealed late in the game benefits both parties. Yes, this aspect of the design enhances the player's vulnerability on an exotic planet, but it also fits well with the intentions of the original creators of what is now a franchise. Not that this means their intentions are logically valid.
Detailed moreso in optional PDAs, though, the corporate hellscape of a future in which Subnautica occurs is bleak. Corporatism reigns to the point that civilians in Alterra-controlled regions are not legally permitted to have their own weaponry with the exception of a survival knife, and even then, it is only to enable people like Ryley access to a tool almost inevitably required for resource acquisition. Only Alterra's police force are supposed to have anything more substantial than this basic knife or its upgraded version, the thermal knife. And at the end of the game, after the credits, Alterra does not let Ryley land the rocket he constructed from blueprints provided by the company for him to escape 4546B on a human-settled world until he pays what it claims he owes them: one trillion credits for using Alterra technology to gather resources and survive until he leaves the planet. It is ironic for a high quality game from an indie development studio to depict the workers of future humanity as financially enslaved to interplanetary megacorporations, only for that series to be taken over by a large corporation that reportedly mishandled worker treatment out of greed.
There are other important matters that Subnautica directly or indirectly touches on, and one relevant to Judeo-Christianity is what Ryley might eat throughout his time on 4546B. Perhaps it is due to the graphical presentation on the Switch platform, but some of the creatures that can be cooked by the Fabricator do not appear to have both fins and scales and thus seem non-kosher, and the scan information for one of them says it is a reptile, a category of animals morally unsuitable for consumption according to Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. Of course, if there was one situation where it would be less evil or morally fine to eat unclean animals, it would be in a context of genuine survival or extreme danger to one's wellbeing. At least the PDA voice says that the blood is drained from the corpses by the machine along with other fluids during the preparation, as eating blood is even more explicitly condemned as a universal sin (Genesis 9:4, Ezekiel 33:25). But would general humanity care about such things in this fictional setting even if they are true? Probably not, as a PDA file indicates that the future society the protagonist is far removed from typically regards the subject of religion, and likey by extension all philosophical issues other than whatever the likes of Alterra leadership treats as true, through the inherently erroneous framework of extreme emotionalistic pluralism.
Conclusion
Subnautica is an incredible indie title that seamlessly blends exploration, crafting, survival, and horror. What starts with the minimally urgent process of combing through a mostly safe, shallow area (accordingly called the Safe Shallows) gives way to navigation through extraterrestrial buildings deep under the surface, with an assortment of enormous predators encountered along the way. Few games offer both such relaxing and such tense experiences, and with absolutely no tonal imbalance. Other than things like the glitches and somewhat subpar graphics, there really is nothing inadequate about the game. The quality of the gameplay, environments, and plot threads that eventually come to light is so immense and unrelenting that Subnautica is literally one of the greatest video games of the past 20 years and beyond.
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