This is ironically what I loved about Subnautica. The game does not hold your hand throughout. You don’t have a map, you don’t mindlessly follow waypoints, you are not being given a guided tour through the story like some ride at Disneyland. You have to learn to navigate the area yourself, memorize landmarks, and figure out what you have to do yourself with the clues around you. It is a bit of a whiplash at first when you are so used to being babysitted and guided throughout a game but I’ve found it to be the unbelievably rewarding once the “click” happens. You can absolutely miss important (and dope AF) events if you miss the timings that the game gives you. You are treated like an adult by the game. You really get the feeling of being a lone explorer, planning and going on expeditions to gather what you need whether it is resources or blueprints and it will all be you.
The risk-reward situation of exploring increasingly complex and disorienting ship fragments, slowly cutting through blocked doors with a laser while seeing your oxygen levels dwindle and hoping you can find your way back out in time were absolutely fantastic to me. The way the gameplay and the way you travel through the world entirely changes the moment you unlock the PRAWN suit, and one again with the Cyclops are absolutely amazing.
I wish this game clicked with everyone the way it did for me. It is easily my top 5 best single player experiences ever and I only wish I could forget it so I could discover everything again. But The Outer Wilds never clicked for me like that so I can understand why some people might not like it.
For me, games are strictly a form of entertainment. I play to escape reality and do something fun for a while. So when a game “treats you like an adult,” I feel like the fun is gone and now I’m stuck working just to gain a little bit of progress. I don’t get a sense of reward from that, I just get frustrated.
Especially if there are important events that you can miss. I used to be a completionist with my games (I still am, to a degree) and I wanted to explore every nook and cranny of a game to really enjoy every bit of effort the developers put into creating this world. But finding out a game takes 50+ hours to beat, and then realizing that I may have missed important details and that I’ll need to replay that lengthy game to find them again… no way. That’s too much effort. I mentally check out really quick.
I agree with you about The Outer Wilds. I think I’ve played about an hour of that game and I had no idea what I was doing or what the plot was about. Everyone kept saying it’s better if you go into it blind, so I didn’t read anything before playing and, well… I don’t know what I was playing. That’s another game on my list to give a second chance before I give up on it completely.
The crazy part is them giving you the “legend of” in the question. Without it, I could see it being a toss-up for most people. At least they didn’t pick Sonic.
Your comparison to Satisfactory makes me think you’re approaching the game with a completely wrong mindset. It’s not supposed to be a chill sandbox playground with no difficulty where you rapidly conquer the planet and build cool stuff. It’s intended to be an engaging survival game with a horror aspect of diving into dark depths and hoping that whatever lurks there doesn’t notice you. It’s meant to be atmospheric, with the threat of starvation, predators and later on some story aspects pushing you to explore further and deeper for materials and tech.
I hope you give the game anoher chance at some point because it really is a one of a kind experience. There’s two things you should be aware of: First, in regards to another comment: there’s no events for you to miss, IDK what that person is saying. There’s two big plot points that happen in a playthrough regardless of your presence. Both of them give you a timer well in advance so you can show up to / observe the place when it happens. Everything else, like all the distress signals or abandoned bases? They’re empty from the start of the game, even if you go there immediatelly nothing will change. You aren’t missing out on anything.
Second, don’t feel bad about missing out on upgrades or whatver. The vast majority of them are sidegrades. The important stuff that you need to progress both spawns much more often than the sidegrades, and you will often find it at the distress signal locations.
You’re absolutely correct, I am approaching it from the wrong mindset. The thing is, I like my crafting games to be chill sandbox games. I have ADHD and am easily distracted, so being dumped into a world where I’m struggling just to survive, and then finding threats everywhere while I’m trying to progress on a build or something… I find myself stressed and unable to focus on progression. So I prefer games that let me go at my own pace, without distractions from the task I’m focusing on.
With Subnautica, I don’t know where to go to progress without spending time exploring and getting distracted along the way. So it will take me hundreds of hours to actually complete the game; time that I rarely dedicate to any single game. And too much time if I’m not having fun along the way.
I’m the same way (also have ADHD). I love Subnautica*'s underwater gameplay and alien moon aesthetic, but I can only really play it in Creative Mode since I really like building bases and exploring without worrying about resources and dying.
(* I have Below Zero instead because I like the snowy aesthetic and playing as a girl 😅)
I would suggest trying a new game without the food & water need. It really lets you focus on the plot. I also needed to look through a few YouTube videos at various points, because some things aren’t obvious or are easy to miss.
Just stick with it. There comes a clear point where your base can self sustain unlimited food, water, and power. Then the game REALLY starts. You’ll see. It’s worh it.
Subnautica’s out of bounds always fascinated me, both with how creepy it is and way it works. The lore telling us that there’s bigger things out there too makes it even better
The Driller specializes in drilling tunnels and igniting alien bugs with his flamethrower using C4 on Scouts.
I love this game, even though I haven’t played in months. I’ve got a verified mod installed that gives every enemy googly eyes (and one semi-mobile plant that already looked like a Muppet opening and closing its mouth) which makes me very happy.
The Driller I regularly play with has a nasty habit of abandoning our group to go drill tunnels where we don’t need tunnels. He’s always looking to take shortcuts directly to his objective instead of following the caves.
Then, when we’re trying to run to the drop pod, Molly will just go straight up one of his tunnels in the ceiling, where we can’t follow. Then we’re frantically running around, trying to find another route to the drop pod without Molly’s flags.
Oh, and he fights every large bug with C4, nearly killing us all in the process.
Tbf, as a Driller main I, too, drill straight toward objectives. Though I’ll ensure I don’t drill at too steep an angle, since I don’t want to have to bother jumping off I can avoid it. I’ll also drill straight toward the escape pod from whatever room the group is in, which usually winds up helping everyone.
In my group, the person that usually plays engineer has the nuke OC, so I’m generally not the main source of friendly fire. I do fight giant bugs’ with C4, though.
DRG is always there for me if I get tired of other games. I’m a Scout main because I like flying around like Titanfall. There’s a build that raises single shot weak spot damage to deadly levels. It’s a blast bunny-hopping around praetorians and killing them in 2 shots.
Giveaways could be tolerated if verified by a moderator first. There are a lot of scams involving game code giveaway, so to protect the community we opted for banning it until we find a reliable way to verify such codes beforehand.
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