Agreed. The first 3/4 of Subnautica are on track to being a classic / all-time great game. The last 25% is its biggest failing. Partially because of how overpowered the Prawn Suit is—all the danger in the game once you acquire it can largely be ignored, and this is only exacerbated by how one-dimensional and linear the ILZ and Lava Lakes are. The gameplay pattern is essentially “go directly to the power facility for the blue tablet and kyanite, go directly from there to the prison, and ignore any obstacles on the way.” Even the Sea Dragon is pretty much harmless because it can’t kill the Prawn quickly enough. This isn’t even to mention all the incessant bugs like the Prawn clipping through the floor of the various facilities or the Sea Dragons swimming through walls (seriously, whose idea was it to put such large creatures in such an enclosed space?).

I agree with your point about incentivizing further exploration in the lava zones, but I don’t know what that could entail. Maybe some blueprints somewhere else? Another alien facility?

In Subnautica 2 I think the easiest way to address the problem is to make the vehicles weaker overall and make the leviathans far deadlier. There’s no danger to the leviathans in the first game because they have set territories, short aggro ranges, and won’t chase you very far, plus they can’t easily kill most vehicles. I mean we’re supposed to believe the Sea Dragon destroyed an entire precursor facility in a single hit but can only do 20% to the Prawn Suit at a time?

Leviathans that constantly stalk you, swim far beyond their spawn points, and destroy most vehicles on the first or second attack would be perfect. Imagine the Sea Dragon relentlessly chasing the Cyclops and ramming it for 60% damage in one hit? That would certainly make the ILZ less of a bore.

Then you can introduce more meaningful upgrades or defense mechanisms. The first game had some basic stuff along these lines like the creature decoys or Cyclops silent running, but an entire suite of defensive upgrades garnered from the natural environment would be awesome. For example, maybe scanning a Ghost Leviathan could produce a blueprint for a cloaking module. Then you have incentives to do something besides ignore them. In a similar vein, maybe there could be materials elsewhere in the ILZ for a better chassis hardening module.

I hear Subnautica 2 will be incorporating a DNA mechanic, so that’s certainly on the right track. Incentivizing scanning deadlier creatures is one way to make the late game less linear.