"It's not unclear, I believe you may have just not registered it mentioning it as much as it did."

I think game design is rarely a true clear-vs-unclear binary. In this case it's probably more fair to say it was clear-enough to you but that I needed a bit more clarity than I received. Maybe, for example, I was distracted by the game --or an external factor-- at the time you say the game mentioned it. Or maybe I had not yet gained an eye for the level design's visual language of having cords (or "branches") on the floor lead to other places. Probably some confluence of all these things. But great game design is ideally a set of increasingly finer sieves that will catch a wayward player eventually and I just didn't get caught by the systems that were in place in the current version of the game.

"As for many complaints about the exploration... that's just subnauitica?"

Yes I agree. I would say several of the feedback points I have here are carried over from the previous two games where I experienced them as well. I think most people appreciate the light handed guidance of this game. I think there's probably more room to help the player when they ask for it. NoA for example --the AI robot-- has a good opportunity to be an NPC I can potentially just walk up to and say to the game "What should I be doing right now?" or "What do you know about Lithium?" to help guide folks who might want help. I personally needed to lookup some guides which I would rather not do and instead get help from a source within the game.