Exploration and Discovery: Subnautica Vs. Tomb Raider

I fully dove into Subnautica recently (pardon the pun). I had started it once or twice in prior years but ended up quitting due to not knowing the next objective and/or generally disliking my experience with the VR implementation. Upon the suggestion of friends, I gave it another go and ended up finishing it with ~24hrs of playtime within a week. After finishing Subnautica and being dissatisfied with how little the game directs the player I wanted something that erred on the side of hand-holding. Enter the most recent AAA Tomb Raider trilogy. While I climbed a picturesque cistern in Syria as Lara Croft I realized I was not getting the same feelings of curiosity, wonder, awe, and payoff that I had gotten under the sea despite literally playing the role of a famous world explorer.

Subnautica gives players a greater feeling of exploration compared to Rise of the Tomb Raider because it gives players more agency, caters to macro and micro levels of exploration, and uses less artificial gates for progression. Starting with the point of agency I think it's worth noting how both games start. Subnautica plays a brief cutscene then puts players in control while inside their life pod only demanding they put out the fire around them to gain full freedom. At this point players can explore a vast amount of the ocean without any upgrades. To contrast this, Rise of the Tomb Raider starts players with a lengthy intro cutscene typical of many AAA games then lets the player control Lara Croft on a slow, narrow, straight path through the snow leading directly to another cutscene which transitions to another linear sequence where players learn how to jump, climb, and so on. I understand this approach is common for games attempting mass appeal because teaching players how to interface with your game is of the utmost importance, but it comes at the loss of exploration. The life pod starting beat put players in a scenario where they can test their controls and be taught the very basics of interaction without feeling artificially limited. The snowy starting beat doesn't let the player do anything other than walk and it doesn't give the agency to properly walk wherever you wish (meaning I couldn't walk myself to death in the first minute of the game). The starting beat for these two games are indicative of how they'll handle exploration for the rest of the game.

Subnautica uses exploration to drive player progression whereas Rise of the Tomb Raider's progression is linear, but provides new opportunities for exploration in visited locations. What I mean by this is Rise of the Tomb Raider utilizes Metroidvania level design and that (I believe) hurts the feeling of discovery imparted on the player. Designers set up a bunch of large zones I can run around in and presented many gated areas within that clearly tell me I need to return with the correct key/tool to unlock the gate. This to me doesn't feel like exploration as it is more focused on use of keys instead of discovering a new space. In fact, most spaces I opened and explored in Rise of the Tomb Raider didn't give me the same sense of discovery Subnautica elicited with every new biome, creature, landmark, and structure. In Subnautica, if I could reach a biome I could explore the whole biome. Having tools can help make exploring the biome easier but parts of it are not locked behind items/tools. The onus was on me as a player to go out and search the land to gain technology that allowed me to reach new places. Rise of the Tomb Raider opts to give you new tools for exploration (ex: Rope Arrow) at the climax of linear golden paths that are only traversable (at first) by progressing the main story. A relatable metaphor may be discovering a key in a sandbox. Imagine you're in a big square sandbox and you must feel inside the small dunes to discover the key versus being in a long rectangular sandbox and knowing you need to traverse to the end of the sandbox before reaching into a dune in order to get the key. If you felt the rectangular sandbox sounded less exciting (for discovery) you understand what I experienced playing Rise of the Tomb Raider.

All that being said, I enjoyed playing both games and they each gave me "Wow!" moments in very different ways. Just wanted to touch on a funny thought regarding a game about a globe trotting explorer not giving me a great feeling of discovery.