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Subnautica 2 Design Lead Anthony Gallegos recently explained the reasoning behind the game’s no-killing policy in an interview with MinnMax. Gallegos said the decision was not made because the studio opposes violence in games: “We’re not like ‘we’re a game about pacifism’ or ‘we’re a non-violent studio’the studio was founded by modders who made Half-Life mods, and their first mods were all about shooting aliens.” Instead, he said the team had two main goals. The first was to shape how players interact with the world: “Our intent, actually, was two things. One, we wanted to avoid giving players the attitude that they were dominators over the world, because the message of the game was very much about people learning to live in parallel with the world they’re in.” Gallegos also explained that the team wanted to preserve the sense of danger and tension and cited SOMA and Alien: Isolation as major inspirations: “We’re really inspired by games like SOMA and Alien: Isolation.” “If [SOMA] ever gave players the means to fight things, no matter how intentionally miserable they made the experience, players would always be like ‘it’s always better to master the crappy combat than it is to deal with the constant threat of the thing’.” According to Gallegos, removing creature killing helps maintain the feeling of vulnerability and encourages players to survive, adapt, and coexist with the alien ecosystem rather than simply eliminating every threat they encounter.