Subnautica 2's latest 1.2 update is friend focused—finally adding the…

I'm not sure there's been a better invention for multiplayer games than proximity chat. Whether it be friends screaming vengeance down the side of a mountain after you abandon them in Peak, or the wails of one of your fellow workers fall suspiciously silent in Lethal Company. Proximity chat offers up fertile ground for hilariously wacky and memorable multiplayer moments, so you can imagine my excitement when I found out it's coming to Subnautica 2.

"This is going to let you have an in-game voice chat option that you can do with your friends," Anthony Gallegos, creative director, says in a dev diary. "You'll be able to talk locally with each other and then as you get further away you'll hear a switch to sort of a radio-sounding voice, and you'll progressively break up as you get further away, up until a certain point where you can almost not hear me at all."

Now, you can use your friends as a canary, sending them down into dark caves and listening to see if anything's amiss. At the very least, Gallegos believes it will "definitely add to the tension of" exploring the formidable alien ocean. afsport.lat

But that's not all being added to Subnautica 2 in its next update. The whole patch seems friend-focused. There's player emotes that will "let you roll through a bunch of different emotions, so you can cheer on your friends, clap at them to tell them that you're happy with them, or maybe that you're a little annoyed with them, and you can also show that you're frustrated.

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"The thing that I think is the most exciting about these is actually the ways that people will use them out of context that I think will make for some really fun moments."

Players can also look forward to better inventory sharing, which means you won't have to go searching for discarded loot that your friends leave behind. Instead, all you have to do now is go up behind your pal and access their stash from their backpack—quick and efficient. Although, thieves-be-warned, "the person whose inventory is being accessed will get a little notification" so pickpocketing is out of the question, unless you have an especially unobservant friend.

The last major feature coming with 1.2 will be player revives. Now, if you're playing with a group and get lost, or get too hungry and pass out, your friends will have a short amount of time to swim over to you, share their oxygen, and revive you back to the world of the living. It's such a helpful feature that I'm honestly pretty surprised Subnautica 2 didn't have it before.

All in all, update 1.2 seems like a helpful pitstop on the way to more significant changes, which feels But it is a pitstop that was very necessary before the map gets any bigger and more challenging to navigate: "Alongside all of this we're continuing work on the Early Access 2 update that's going to add the new region with the new story, and the new progression, and the new vehicles, all those things."

Squinting at the new The Blood of Dawnwalker system requirements this morning before my second cup of coffee, my bleary eyes registered that the listed GPUs are often significantly less powerful than the previous recommended specs.

As my tired eyeballs came into focus, though, it became clear why: upscaling, of course. Rebel Wolves has taken into account the modern inventions of DLSS, FSR, and XeSS in its final specs sheet. A reply to the X thread from the official account reveals that the new specs are based on Balanced upscaling settings, which would account for some of the drops.

Why the Balanced setting wasn't clearly stated on the specs image and left for a thread reply to clear up is beyond me. Anyway, for 1080p 30 fps gameplay, Rebel Wolves now recommends an Intel Core i5 11400F or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, alongside 16 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580.

For 1080p Medium settings at 60 fps, you're looking at an RTX 2060 Super, a GTX 1070 Ti, an RX 5700, or the Intel Arc A750, along with significantly chonkier CPUs.

For 1440p High settings, the specs jump significantly to an Intel Core i7 11700K or AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, and an RTX 4060, RX 7600 XT, or Intel Arc B580. Those are some fairly quick processors, although the graphics card requirements are still pretty light.

The Blood of Dawnwalker system requirements (Balanced upscaling)

	1080p @ 30 fps	1080p @ 60 fps	1440p @ 60 fps	2160p @ 60 fps
Preset	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
CPU	Intel Core i5 11400F / AMD Ryzen 7 2700X	Intel Core i7 11700K / AMD Ryzen 7 5700X	Intel Core i7 11700K / AMD Ryzen 7 5700X	Intel Core i7-12700K / AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
RAM	16 GB	16 GB	16 GB BlogMMA Wetten mit Extra-Cash: Die besten Boni und Tricks 2026Warum MMA-Boni anders ticken als Fußball-Deals Fußball-Boni sind oft einfach. Du zahlst ein, bekommst 100 Euro Gratiswette, setzt auf die Bundesliga mit Quote 2Öffnen →	16 GB
GPU	Nvidia GTX 1060 / AMD RX 580	Nvidia RTX 2060 Super / GTX 1070 Ti / AMD RX 5700 / Intel Arc A750	Nvidia RTX 4060 / AMD RX 7600 XT / Intel Arc B580	Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti / AMD RX 9070
VRAM	6 GB or more	8 GB or more	8 GB or more	12 GB or more
Storage	60 GB SSD	60 GB SSD	60 GB SSD	60 GB SSD
OS	Windows 10 or later, DirectX 12	Windows 10 or later, DirectX 12	Windows 10 or later, DirectX 12	Windows 10 or later, DirectX 12

It's also worth noting that when recommended spec sheets include upscaling across the range, it's often set to Quality rather than Balanced. Still, the biggest change comes in the form of the 4K specs.

Previously, Rebel Wolves claimed you'd need an RTX 5090 (!) for 60 fps gameplay at 4K Ultra settings, but many vampiric moons have passed since then. Now, presumably thanks to the fairly hefty dose of upscaling, the GPU requirements have dropped to an RTX 4070 Ti or RX 9070.

You'll still need a seriously powerful CPU, though, as the updated sheet now lists the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D or the Intel Core i7 12700K for smooth 4K gameplay, two older (yet still monstrous) processors in 2026. They're still paired with 16 GB of RAM, though—all of which has left me scratching my head.

The CPU requirements are often lower than previous, which suggests significant optimisations have been made. The lower GPU specs in combination with significant dollops of upscaling, however, isn't particularly encouraging.

Something about the messiness of all this makes me wonder how the game is going to perform when it releases on September 3. I've got no idea, but I guess we won't have to wait long to find out. Prepare your silver crosses?