So, a little over a year has passed, Subnautica had a few days in the sun (and a few in the shade), and now the Early Access version of the sequel has been released.
I haven't picked up Subnautica: Below Zero yet, but I bumped into a couple videos of Markiplier playing it on YouTube. Haven't seen a whole lot of the game after an hour and a half, because he apparently has way worse thalassophobia than I do and spends most of his time losing he got dam mind.
However, I've still managed to notice a couple things.
First of all, they're keeping up some of their ridiculous critter design... Now we have literal SPACE HEATERS in the form of alien flora-fauna who... Probably have an entirely insufficient explanation as to why they radiate heat like an oven element. Then there are the underwater plants which inexplicably collect oxygen in a prominent bulb that conveniently features a natural orifice for sucking that sweet O2 directly into your SCUBA kit when you're 100+ meters below the surface.
Holefish now have a giant version which doesn't look like a holefish so much as just a reskinned mola mola... Which is fine, we needed more passive fauna, and sunfish are a really good example of something that is both passive and pretty funny to look at. I don't know how exactly you suck oxygen out of the holefish's hole, but you can do that too.
No comment about the penguins, other than that the alpha version has some funny animation errors with the younger ones. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interaction with them, but again, we needed more fauna that wasn't actively trying to murder the protagonist for the crime of existing.
Unfortunately, crashfish still exist. I fucking hate crashfish. I hate everything about them. Their sole redeeming feature is that you could fire them at bonesharks in the first Subnautica, which was kinda entertaining. But they were honestly kinda bad at even doing that. Fuck crashfish.
There are a couple other new beasties, including another stalker-shark-type-thing analog, which I haven't gotten to see a lot of yet due to Marky breaking down into a full-blown panic as soon as one of them is nearby.
More importantly though, the game itself is... A lot more linear. Like, really linear so far. And not only is the protagonist now fully voice-acted, that fact also gets shown off a lot by silly communications with the orbital station that is apparently monitoring your progress for the glory of Arstotzka Alterra (if I had a twin, I would definitely greet them casually with "we shared a womb!" every time we talked). And you're apparently not allowed to make a habitat tool until... Sometime later? It hasn't come up yet.
I also noticed that they seem to have managed to re-add an early bug back into the game after having fixed it in Subnautica... Which, y'know, always a good sign.
I really don't know if UW learned the right lessons from the original Subnautica. It's still early going, but... I'unno. Guess we'll see.
It's still pretty funny to see that they've got the same damn bugs from the original Subnautica's EA versions... Random flashes of light and rampant terrain clipping, ho!