Subnautica 2's early access journey continues
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Subnautica 2 continues to truck along in early access, and one of the biggest updates promised in the Subnautica 2 roadmap is upon us. The newly released patch adds a host of features aimed at making the co-op experience better, but if you're a solo player, there's no need to worry – the devs at Unknown Worlds promise the bigger update with a new region and story content is still on the way.
Officially titled the Buddy System update, the headline addition here is proximity chat. "You'll be able to talk locally with each other and then as you get further away, you'll hear it switch to sort of a radio sounding voice, that'll progressively break up as you get further away," creative director Anthony Gallegos explains in an update vlog. "I think it definitely adds to the tension of it."
There's also a tracking tag that functions as a "short-range beacon," according to the official patch notes, and you can even place it inside containers to track their locations, too. There are a bunch of fresh emotes now selectable from a new emote menu, and several new options for customizing your character.
"We also have player revives," Gallegos says. "So if your friend gets downed, whether it's by a smaller shark or maybe they run out of food and they die from that or they run out of oxygen, there's going to be a timer that will elapse, where you can swim out to them, share some oxygen with them, bring them back to life and sort of save the day."
The original Subnautica was strictly a single-player affair, and if you check the comment sections around this update you'll find a small but vocal handful of solo players who feel a bit burned by this multiplayer-first update. But Gallegos is quick to address those concerns in the vlog: "Of course, alongside all of this, we're continuing to work on the EA2 update that's going to add the new region with the new story and new progression, new vehicles, all those things."
Check out our guides on how to get the Bioscanner in Subnautica 2 or how to craft Subnautica 2 ingots if you need some help.
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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.
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