Subnautica 2’s latest 1.2 update is friend focused—finally adding the key mechanic to any great multiplayer game
Subnautica 2’s forthcoming Early Access 1.2 update focuses on making co-operative play more social and forgiving. Its headline addition is proximity voice chat, which shifts from local speech to distorted radio-style audio as players move apart, potentially adding both atmosphere and practical communication to underwater exploration.
The update will also add player emotes, shared access to teammates’ backpack inventories and the ability to revive incapacitated players by sharing oxygen within a limited time. Developers say work is continuing on a later Early Access 2 update, which is expected to bring a new region, story content, progression and vehicles.
- Proximity voice chat is coming to Subnautica 2.
- Players can revive teammates by sharing oxygen.
- A later update will add region and story content.
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Subnautica is an underwater survival game in which players explore the ocean, gather resources and try to stay alive. Subnautica 2 is being developed for co-operative play, allowing friends to explore and tackle challenges together.
In a multiplayer game, players need ways to communicate and help one another while they explore. Voice chat lets nearby players speak, while shared supplies and the chance to revive a teammate can affect how groups handle danger.
The game is being released in Early Access, meaning players can try it while development continues and further content is added. That makes updates to co-operative play part of a broader process of building the game over time.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
These features are indeed key to great multiplayer experiences. Proximity voice chat enables natural communication that text cannot achieve, whilst shared resources and revive mechanics create genuine interdependence that makes players feel like a team rather than individuals in parallel. Look at the most successful cooperative games: they all feature robust social mechanics because multiplayer fundamentally derives its appeal from human connection and coordinated effort. These aren't cosmetic additions but the essence of what transforms exploration into a shared, meaningful experience.
The case against
Whilst useful for certain games, these features are not universally key to great multiplayer design. Numerous exceptional multiplayer experiences, from competitive esports to asynchronous games like Dark Souls to adversarial designs, thrive with entirely different priorities, and some players deliberately prefer text communication or no voice at all. More fundamentally, mechanics like revives can diminish meaningful consequence, which many games value specifically. The headline's claim that these define any great multiplayer game misses how genuinely diverse excellent multiplayer design actually is.