What with all the lawsuits and countersuits between publishers Krafton and certain former Unknown Worlds executives, you could be forgiven for thinking that “Subnautica 2” is some kind of arcane courtroom term – a compact way of saying “vicious haggling over withheld bonuses”, perhaps. Here’s a new developer diary video to remind us that Subnautica 2 is actually an underwater sci-fi survival game. It doesn’t have any lawyers in it, but it does have a massive peckish tentacle monster. Set that one up for you, comments thread comedians!
Shared on Krafton’s press site, the video introduces the Collector Leviathan, which appears to be a giant squid except it only has four tentacles/arms, not the regulation 10, unless you include all the tiny wiggly ones around its mouth.
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Given its embarrassing tentacle deficiency, it’s no shock to read that the Collector Leviathan is an “irritable” creature. If it sees you, it will emit a noisy shockwave and jet towards you with body laid horizontal. Then, it will rear up vertical to give you a lovely look at its volcanic split cranium and painterly bioluminescent forehead patterns. Then it will grab you with a tentacle and eat you.
It’s definitely better to be inside a submarine when this happens, but it’s even better to not let it happen at all. Hide from the Collector, and it will eventually lose interest and glide away. You can also lure it off by throwing a flare.
I dread meeting something this big in a real-world aquatic context, but I do like watching videos of human divers encountering more reasonably sized cephalopods. I hear that octopus arms contain “partly independent mini brains”, and that they both deceive predators and court mates using colour changes.
Please put some of that in Subnautica 2, Unknown Worlds. I’d suggest letting players talk to the Collector Leviathan by means of chromophore mechanics, but that would risk aggravating both Edge Magazine and Wittgenstein, and I make it a rule never to piss both of them off at once. Also, now that I consider it, maybe don’t give the Collector active camo – the prospect of it sneaking up on me through murky water is quite harrowing enough.
The video is a tacit reminder from Krafton that there are still “veteran developers” at Unknown Worlds following the sudden ejection of Subnautica 2 director Charlie Cleveland, studio CEO Ted Gill, and co-founder Max McGuire. It’s a 10 minute walkthrough of the Collector’s creation that doubles as a dissection of the production itself – transporting us from concept sketches through modelling and animation to the creation of visual effects and AI behaviours.
There’s a teasing glimpse of a doc from September 2024, created by game designer Louis Karim, which rolls through how the Collector conveys its alertness through posture and sound. As regards some of the game’s areas, at least, it will spawn at a distance from the player and despawn when you’re sufficiently far away. It’s a relief to learn that there’s only one present per session, even during co-op. All this is WIP, mind.
The doc also mentions a couple of in-game biomes, Sparse Plains and Outer Bounds, plus a blurred-out reference to another Leviathan. There’s an untitled image of a third creature that looks like a piscine aeroplane. Apparently you will encounter the Collector in the course of “pearl interactions”. Perhaps we’ll have to crack open giant clam shells while avoiding the megasquid’s attention.
The September 2024 doc will likely be of interest to the Subnautical subredditors who are trying to gauge the completeness of Subnautica 2 from leaked materials. The current pie-slinging match between Krafton’s lawyers and those of the departed Unknown Worlds execs hinges on whether or not the game is fit for early access release this year.
Krafton claim it needs more time to cook, partly because the bygone Unknown Worlds bigwigs have been shirking their responsibilities, and are only interested in money. Cleveland, Gill and McGuire insist that the game was substantial enough for launch this year, and that Krafton only delayed it because they’re welching on a timed $250 million earn-out. I am having more fun thinking about the tentacles.
