i have no idea what playing subnautica the "normal" way is like, because the one time i played it i decided to do it on permadeath mode, with my roommate watching and acting as co-pilot. it's still an experience i look back on fondly.
the game is fairly long, and past a certain point i committed to only playing it once no matter what the outcome, since by then enough time had been invested that the prospect of starting all over from scratch would have been too much - especially with my roommate on board. and i think choosing to do this imparted a sense of realness i haven't really felt in a game since.
with no second chances, weighing the risks as i got deeper and deeper felt genuinely nerve-wracking, and it was almost sickening to descend to new areas. the deeper you get the darker it gets, and i later found out that my roommate had secretly installed a mod to make the depths even darker.
underwater mazes, too, were scary, and i got a real appreciation for how easy it is to get turned around when exploring such places. there were many moments of navigating a passage and thinking that Of Course i know the way back out, only to feel panic setting in as i realized i didn't, and i might genuinely just die poking around a cave somewhere.
but i didn't die, and i finished the game. and i'll never play it again.
and since then i often think of the value of choosing to just do it once. now i don't think these kinds of modes are something everyone should enjoy, and if i did try a permadeath mode i'd usually want to play a game through normally first. but i did it for this one specifically because i think otherwise i would have just thought the game was Alright, and playing it with these qualifiers turned it from something i'd probably just have an okay time with to holy shit, this is giving me all kinds of feelings about simulated terror giving way to feelings that genuinely are akin to Actual terror
and i feel a nostalgia for the places i went to in the game and the things that happened, because in a way they did happen, and it has sort of simulated the feeling of visiting a real place. and i had a friend with me.
also my underwater mech was named chef boyarsea
