Subnautica 2 Takes Around 15 Hours To Finish The Story

Subnautica 2 Takes Around 15 Hours To Finish The Story, But We're Three Years Away From The Actual Ending Published May 15, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT Harry is a writer based in London, UK. He has several years writing guide coverage for some of the largest video game launches, with a focus on MMOs, gacha, multiplayer shooters, and simulation games. He has attended multiple conventions and game events, including Gamescom, Black Deserts' Heidl Ball, and the Battlefield 6 launch event, as well as interviewing developers from across the industry. I was curious to see how much Subnautica 2 we were actually going to get in Subnautica 2, considering how fraught the development process has been with a significant lawsuit hovering over proceedings. There was a question at the back of my mind that developer Unknown Worlds might have had to rush the game out the door. Despite it launching in early access though, that’s not quite the case. It turns out you can finish most of the story content, which involves hunting down the black boxes of missing colonists (don’t worry, I won’t dive into any more spoilers here, but I will say that I love the writing), in around 15 hours. Or, if like me, you spent an hour and a half looking for silver and two hours listening to every bit of lore I could find, closer to 20, if not more. By the way, I found a place to farm so much silver at the start of the game. Just head to the large genetic bloom north of your pod, then head west to the poison cave underneath the coral stack. There is loads of silver in there. To complete everything there is to see in the game in its current state, I’d say around 20 to 30 hours are required for exploration, discovery, and building. The game is a sandbox, of course, so you could spend much longer building an enormous megabase and scouring every corner of the map. But overall, I’d say Subnautica 2 is really putting the ‘early’ in early access. That’s fine. The first game was in development for around four years, and in the end, the original Subnautica became a cult classic with such a good pedigree that its sequel catapulted to half a million players on Steam within the first few hours, and has already sold over two million copies. Subnautica 2 Will Grow With The Players Unknown Worlds has built a great relationship with its players over the years. Watching the early access of Subnautica unfurl update-by-update was a great joy, with the internet awash with theories as each new piece of narrative was unveiled. The studio was very receptive to player feedback throughout the process too, deepening this bond. It’s one of the great early access success stories, alongside giants like Baldur’s Gate 3. At the same time, I think Subnautica 2 will come under a lot more scrutiny than its predecessor, just by the nature of being more popular. Half a million players and two million copies sold for a new early access title with around 15 hours of story content is sort of bonkers. The game is still missing some fundamental things, too, like a FOV slider. It’s traditional early access in this regard: Subnautica 2 is definitely, 100 percent not finished. Bashing your head against an invisible wall while trying to reach the enormous coral tree on the horizon is, as our own Kaitlyn Peterson wrote in her review, like being inside a massive aquarium. But I didn’t really mind that. Experiencing Subnautica 2 with no spoilers has been amazing so far. I screamed my head off after getting attacked by a sandspear last night. Each new discovery or hidden cave feels satisfying. The slow, resource-based progression and the expansion of my home as the last human on Proteus is as compelling as it was back in 2018. I’ve played the entire game with no soundtrack because of the ambient sound and low grumbles of distant creatures in the murk, or the sudden silence of the vast open ocean as it drops away from an underwater cliff: just perfection. Subnautica 2 hardly does anything to change the formula, and that’s fine. The real challenge is going to be deciding whether I jump in for each update and progress the story in chunks, or if I wait for the 1.0 release in three years. I did sort of half-and-half with the first game and I wish I’d just had the conviction to wait it out to explore the game in its intended state, start to finish. The hardest part of this is avoiding spoilers. If you’re playing please don’t tell me what is going on with that massive tree or the bizarre sea-disease that seems to be infecting everyone. I’d like to officially ban all YouTube shorts of the game until it’s finished. Cheers! Subnautica 2 Systems Released May 14, 2026 ESRB Everyone 10+ / Language, Fantasy Violence Developer(s) Unknown Worlds Entertainment Publisher(s) Krafton Engine Unreal Engine 5