“That one is the more subtle one where we’re trying to remember not to be prescriptive and to give players space to interpret the experience in the way they want.” Something they focused on is making the alien sounds strange and unfamiliar - the goal was never to scare people directly, but to encourage them to wonder where a certain sound came from.

Kalina, who grew up with game systems in his house from five years old and summons the open-world fantasy Ultima series as one of the most formative to his eventual career choice, explains that while Subnautica: Below Zero is about the “thrill” of survival and discovery, a key element is also what players themselves make of it.

It’s a little bit of a balancing act where we’re trying to let the character have their moment and their response to the things happening in the world, but also not get in the way.”

You also don’t want to emotionally neuter your characters. “Sometimes there’s some dissonance there because maybe the character expresses an emotion that the player isn’t experiencing. On that note, he explains that the idea was to create a character who has her own motivations and is there for a very specific reason. “I think one of the biggest challenges anytime you give voice to a player character, maybe more so in first-person games, is that there’s just inherently a potential conflict between what I’m thinking as the player and what the player character thinks and is telling me about the experience they’re having,” says Kalina. Along the way she must stay alive in the deep sea by cooking and curing fish in the fabricator and crafting essential tools. That started with having a protagonist with a voice and a personality.” The protagonist he’s speaking of is named Robin, a xenologist who travels to this deserted, dangerous planet to investigate the circumstances surrounding her sister’s death. “We decided to switch it up and try our hand at a little bit more of a story-forward experience. 'Angry Birds' Maker Rovio Agrees to $775M Sale to Segaįor Subnautica: Below Zero, Kalina shares some of the team’s new approach.

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