“I really like finding ways for the narrative and the gameplay to really connect, and that’s one of the reasons we rebooted the story after we started development,” Kalina says. Unknown Worlds had to go back to the drawing board to more naturally blend the core mechanics and the story it wanted to tell. An initial draft had players starting with a fully operational base that gets destroyed, forcing them to start from scratch.
#SUBNAUTICA BELOW ZERO MODS SERIES#
The story, which revolves around an explorer looking for her missing sister, initially created challenges for a series that’s primarily about survival. The subtle environmental cues are still there, but Below Zero also contains more explicit set pieces, direct dialogue with NPCs, and scripted story beats that bring an extra layer of structure to stitch together the stretches of non-linear exploration.Ī hidden cave in Subnautica: Below Zero. The story drives the game’s flow this time around, guiding players a little more than the game’s more freeform predecessor. It’s a whole new world, new story, new creatures.” Our ambition was pretty big and we didn’t have a clear read on how big it was. So we started by deleting the old world and starting from scratch. “They’re built on the Ultima 6 foundation and it’s basically the same tech and gameplay mechanics, but a whole new world. “We were looking back at old games like Worlds of Ultima,” Kalina says. Project Lead David Kalina tells Inverse that while the game originally started as an add-on to the original game, that added scale turned it into something much bigger. As Developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment walked through some of the game’s new features, it quickly became apparent that there’s a grander sci-fi story happening on planet 4546B this time around. Inverse attended a preview event for the game, which is set to exit early access sometime this spring.