Subnautica gets a (blurry) graphics overhaul in the Eye Candy update

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Plus new voice-overs for abandoned bases.

Subnautica, one of the best games set under the sea, has just received a meaty graphics overhaul. The Eye Candy update adds a wave of new graphics options to the Early Access exploration game including bloom, motion blur and depth of field, as well as a 'Filmic Mode' that makes the game look more cinematic.

You might want to fiddle around with the settings when you first dive in because while turning them all on makes the game prettier it also appears, from the screenshots and the trailer above, to make it much more blurry. Now, that makes a bit of sense given the underwater setting but it could prove distracting for some. By playing with the new settings for a bit you should be able to get a new look that you're happy with.

Alongside visual changes, the update adds new voice-overs for abandoned bases and changes the way that some items work. The dive-reel, which is designed to let you retrace your steps, now guides you with balls of light rather than just a cord, and the prawn (a mining machine) will now place items you mine directly into your inventory so you don't have to go scrabbling around for them. Scanner Rooms are now easier to use, too, and won't show you items that you've already picked up.

The update also ships more than 250 bug fixes, including the perennial problem of your surface lifepod inexplicably drifting miles from its starting point, and a visual glitch that made stars shine through the moon.

Click here for the full update notes.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.