Subnautica 2 Leak Could Completely Rewrite the Unwritten Rules of the Original

After the widespread critical and financial success of 2018’s Subnautica and 2021’s Subnautica: Below Zero, underwater diving fans will soon be able to explore another alien ocean world in Unknown Worlds Entertainment’s upcoming Subnautica 2. Initially announced at Xbox’s 2024 October Partner Preview, Subnautica 2 will have similar gameplay mechanics as the first two games, along with a new story and new features such as the ability to play in co-op and hints at an ability to alter characters’ biology. However, according to a supposed Subnautica 2 playtest leak, the upcoming sequel may upend its predecessors’ traditions in one major way: starting the game deep underwater.

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Subnautica Is Coming To An Unexpected Platform

As Subnautica 2 nears the beginning of early access, Unknown Worlds announces that the original game will soon be coming to a new platform.

Subnautica 2’s Playtest Leak Explained

In late 2024, Unknown Worlds announced that Subnautica 2 would be heading into Early Access sometime in 2025. According to Subnautica 2’s Steam listing, Unknown Worlds is putting Subnautica 2 into Early Access to allow fans to “… play the earliest version of Subnautica 2” and so that the developer can build better games based on ongoing fan feedback. Players interested in playing Subnautica 2 in Early Access were asked to reach out to Unknown Worlds via their official Discord channel. However, according to Reddit user SN2Throwaway, Unknown Worlds has already begun letting select members of their Discord begin playtesting the game.

SN2Throwaway divulged numerous supposed details of this playtest on Saturday, June 21, according to information told to them by a friend who participated in the playtest. According to SteamDB, a Subnautica 2 playtest beta was created on Thursday, June 5 and was last updated on Monday, June 9. SN2Throwaway’s Reddit post detailed how the Subnautica 2 is supposedly built on Unreal Engine 5.5.4, that a creature called the Collector is “… quite scary,” previous Subnautica characters Ryley Robinson and Marguerit Maida are referenced, and that players will “…start really deep rather than high.” Later, SN2Throwaway describes starting the game deep underwater as “… fear inducing…” and that the player is only able to start deep underwater thanks to an ability to modify genes.

How Subnautica 2’s Leaked Start Can Impact the Game

If SN2Throwaway’s leaks turn out to be true and remain the same in later Subnautica 2 playtests and Early Access gameplay, Subnautica 2’s start may flip fans’ traditional conceptions of Subnautica’s story and gameplay loop. Little is currently officially known about Subnautica 2’s story aside from the fact that players will embody pioneers who travel to a new distant world too dangerous for normal humans to survive in.

Unknown Worlds suggests that players may have to “… change what it means to be human” and that an artificial intelligence will encourage the pioneers to continue on. Based on this vague official story synopsis and SN2Throwaway’s leaks, having Subnautica 2 start deep underwater could set up the game’s themes.

For instance, Subnautica 2 may start with a ship crashing into the depths of one of this new alien world’s many oceans in a state that traps the pioneer in the flooding ship rather than a lifepod as seen in Subnautica 1. This could lead the ship’s onboard AI to direct the pioneer to use an experimental gene-altering machine to make it so the pioneer can instantly withstand the pressure of the ocean’s depths. While the pioneer may survive the crash this way, it could instantly reveal to players what horrors lie deep in the alien ocean and essentially scare them back to the surface, as SN2Throwaway’s leaks claim players get propelled back to the surface shortly after starting in the depths.

Potential Gameplay and Thematic Subnautica 2 Developments

Instead of having players begin the game rather peacefully, Subnautica 2’s underwater opening could indicate that the game may be more horror-focused, while at the same time showing that there are other ways to navigate the ocean depths besides using technology. Subnautica players could explore the ocean world 4546B freely, but only to a point where they were required to find schematics and build various types of submarines to progress the story and travel to the planet’s horrifying depths. Subnautica 2 may flip the script in a sense, letting players alter their genes to survive certain hostile environments instead of being pigeonholed into using just machines to explore other regions of the planet.