If I had a nickel for every game released in the last few months with a message about the tension between technology and humanity, I’d actually have three nickels. Which isn’t very much, but across such a short period of time, it is unusual. There was Pragmata, with its musings about how tech can never copy the essence of living, no matter how convincing. Then came Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, which takes a broader view of how the privileged wield technology to maintain the gulf between themselves and the disadvantaged. It’s insightful, but focused on the big picture. And there’s Subnautica 2, which makes the topic personal. This is a game with a message about technology, and it’s probably not the one you assume at the start.
The first data logs you unlock go deep into what basically amounts to Subnautica 2‘s version of AI psychosis. You’re enslaved to Alterra, a company that forces you to work until you pay off some unspecified debt, a freedom that’s never going to manifest — something your character and colleagues are well aware of. Alterra sends “pioneers” to other planets in a bid to gather resources or stake a claim there before someone else can, and aiding you in your mission is a personal digital assistant linked to a network called NoA that plans your every move. It even makes you a new body when you die and keeps backup copies of your soul. How nice! Except the first thing you learn about your assistant is that people tend to develop unhealthy attachments to it and lose their minds.
A handful of interactions unfold shortly after that make you think Subnautica 2 is retreading old ground about not losing yourself to technology, how something so simple as watching the sunset is a finger in the eye of heartless techno-overlords. The assistant offers inspirational messages designed to keep you focused on your task while slipping in guilt for pioneers weak enough to let themselves feel overwhelmed. It spits out “culturally relevant motivational facts” in a way that suggests someone outside Alterra litigated this feature into existence. It’s artfully presented, but fairly mild as critiques of technology and big business go.
Then the tone starts to change. Across several non-essential data logs, a now-dead colleague records interactions with a culture apparently native to the planet. These people once engineered marvels, though were recently reduced to working with rudimentary tools and creating simple objects. (Though looking at what they achieved even with these basic tools, it makes you wonder whose definition of “simple” we’re working from here. Leonardo Da Vinci’s?)
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