Despite the legal issues surrounding Subnautica 2, developer Unknown Worlds and publisher Krafton have released a new developer vlog about the upcoming title, this time around focusing on the Collector Leviathan. The dev vlog, which you can check out below, shows us some behind-the-scenes details about how the Collector Leviathan was designed, taking us from early concept art to how it ultimately made its way into the game.
The Collector Leviathan has been designed around being one of the first hostile leviathans that players will encounter when they play Subnautica 2. To handle this, the deep-sea predator has been powered by new behaviour trees and stimulus systems in Unreal Engine 5, allowing it to react to light, sound, and player actions in real time. Animations have also been a priority for the Collector Leviathan, both when it comes to its idle roaming as well as when players finally decide to engage it in combat.
“The Collector Leviathan is not just a monster that blindly attacks players,” said AI the Collector Leviathan’s AI designer Antonio Muñoz Gallego. “It is an intelligent and highly threatening deep-sea lifeform that actively reacts to player behaviour and pursues them. Our main goal with our creatures was to make them feel reactive, so the Leviathan is constantly re-evaluating the situation in real time. To achieve that, we use Unreal Engine 5 behaviour trees and our AI stimulus system.”
This new developer vlog is a follow-up to another one from back in April, where Unknown Worlds gave us our first look at some in-development footage from Subnautica 2. The developer vlog also gave us a look at some co-op gameplay, as well as some of the new vehicles and creatures that players would come across during their time exploring the seas of the upcoming title.
Subnautica 2 was originally slated for an Early Access release on PC and Xbox Series X/S this year. However, there have been some problems surrounding the game, prompted largely by Krafton deciding to push its Early Access launch to 2026. This decision to delay the game was made after Unknown Worlds got “some great feedback” from behind-the-scenes playtests. While the response to the title was great in these playtests, the studio noted that it still had to make improvements in some areas of the game.
“We are confident in what we’ve created; we just want to give you a little bit more content for our first Early Access release,” said the studio when it announced the delay.
The decision to push Subnautica 2 back to 2026 was made after Krafton announced change in Unknown Worlds’ leadership back in July. The original three co-founders of the studio—Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire—have been replaced by Striking Distance Studios CEO Steve Papoutsis. This change has only been limited to the leadership, with the main development team seeing no changes made to its personnel.
The three co-founders subsequently filed a lawsuit against Krafton, accusing the publisher of “months-long” campaign to delay the release of Subnautica 2 and withholding bonus payments that would have been made when the title hit its Early Access release milestone.