Unknown Worlds have released the PC system requirements for Subnautica 2, the ocean exploration and survival game hitherto defined by extravagant legal clashes between publishers Krafton and certain ousted and/or reinstated UW executives. I fear they are going to make you cry. The system specs, not the executives.

To hit 1080p and 30fps on low presets, you will need 12GB of RAM. That’s a lot for min spec, right? I’m not the Hardware Tsar (Tsardware) round these parts, but I still think of 8GB as the baseline for anything three-dimensional and blockbustery. The recommended spec is 16GB of RAM with an 8GB graphics card. If you want to run it at 4K on high presets at 60fps, meanwhile, you will need 32GB of RAM, which I believe is all the RAM that currently exists. It’s possible I’m overreacting, but I think in order to play this game on non-office hardware I will need to open my own palladium mine.

Which is a shame, because I really like Subnautica. I think it’s the only survival game I’ve ever truly liked, save for Minecraft and more recently, Lucid Blocks. The sequel – which runs on Unreal Engine 5 – will launch into early access on May 14th, opening the proceedings with a massive squid monster. The water is entrancing. You never saw such marine snow! With any luck, they’ll find a way to shrink the min spec during early access so that people who don’t own palladium mines can have a go.