Subnautica 2’s no-killing policy isn’t because it’s ‘a game about pacifism’, says design lead, but because players would ‘master the crappy combat’ over anything else

Subnautica 2 got into a bit of hot water (get it?) recently over some Discord comments that bluntly stated it wasn’t a “killing game”. Now, I didn’t exactly buy into the critique of the game centered around that—I think it’s perfectly fine for videogames to be about different things—but I do appreciate that being hounded by a scary ocean creature with no means of defense probably doesn’t feel great.

In a recent interview with MinnMax, design lead Anthony Gallegos explains that the choice wasn’t made because “we’re like ‘we’re a game about pacifism’ or ‘we’re a non-violent studio’—the studio’s founded by modders who made Half-Life mods and their first mods were all about shooting aliens.”

Instead, he explains that “our intent, actually, was two things. One, it was that we wanted to not give people the attitude that they were this dominator over the world, because the message of the game was very much people learning to live in parallel with the world that they’re in.”

Now, if you’re one of the people who think Subnautica 2’s being a soft game for babies or something by not letting you make the ocean extinct, that argument might not be all that compelling. Again, I think it’s totally fine for games to have different themes—but I think Gallegos’ second point is actually far more persuasive even to people who want to go ham with a harpoon.

“We’re really inspired by games like SOMA and Alien: Isolation,” Gallegos explains, before referencing a blog that SOMA’s developer put out discussing the role of combat in horror games: “If [SOMA] ever gave players the means to fight things, no matter how intentionally miserable they made the experience, players would always be like ‘it’s always better to master the crappy combat than it is to deal with the constant threat intention of a thing’.”

In other words, if Subnautica 2 had a combat system—and de-prioritised it to be in keeping with the themes of exploration, rather than subjugation, players would still feel incentivised to learn the combat rather than deal with the deep-sea critters: “They’ll be mad at you, and they’ll sit there and take the time to learn it … By removing the option to deal with combat, it means that the omnipresent tension and stuff like that gets to be there.”

That doesn’t mean there won’t be more mitigation systems coming, though. After all, Subnautica 2’s more episodic release cadence leaves plenty of room for more options when wrassling with the alien ocean.