For their latest game, Still Wakes the Deep, developers The Chinese Room are taking a dip into the sub-genre of horror known as aquatic horror. Usually, aquatic horror and creature features go hand in hand, but that isn’t always the case. Sorry readers, but all those low-budget shark attack horrors do not count! For my…
The post Still Wakes The Deep Xbox Review appeared first on Invision Game Community.
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week we enjoy poking around spooky oil rigs, we object in dramatic court cases, and we discover what we love about a game series through a TV adaptation of it.
What have you been playing?
Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.
Still Wakes the Deep is the Dark Souls of Walking Simulators. Or is it?
Jim Trinca, who recently reviewed Still Wakes the Deep for VG247, has opinions about the new game from The Chinese Room (Matt also has opinions in Eurogamer's review). Specifically about how he thinks it could be a much better game without the monsters. He doesn't want to get rid of the naked bum that appears in it though. Just in case you were wondering...
In today's video, Jim explores the wonders of Still Wakes the Deep's dangerous North Sea oil rig, the conversations between the characters who work within its walls and the game's uncomfortable parallels with the real world that are honestly scarier than any imaginary monster ever could be.
Microsoft has announced the next wave of games arriving on Xbox and PC Game Pass this June.
EA Sports FC 24 is the headline game, which arrives on 25th June as football fans enjoy the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament.
Before that, out today, is The Chinese Room's oil rig horror Still Wakes the Deep - a day one release across Xbox Series X/S, PC, and cloud.
As horror locations go, an oil rig is a doozy. It's remote, claustrophobic on the inside, and no less oppressive on the outside, what with its thrashing storms and merciless seas. But for all its bleakness, there's warmth and life, a last bit of humanity and light at the edge of the world - and Still Wakes the Deep, the latest from Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture developer The Chinese Room, embraces all these wonderful extremities as its first-person narrative adventure unfolds.
It's 23rd December 1975, and electrician Cameron McLeary - Caz to friends - has just received a letter from his wife, begging him to come home. There's tension, we sense, and more to the story we don't yet know, but it's soon brushed aside as his duties call. And so begins one hell of a day on the Beira D oil rig, out in the churning North Sea.
Still Wakes the Deep might be playing in the register of horror, but it's horror with a very human heart, and The Chinese Room holds back the pyrotechnics for a good long while, providing ample time to ease into its richly realised reality before unknowable forces are allowed to take hold. The Beira D might be a grim period nightmare of gaudy fabrics and grubby linoleum, but - in the fag packs and dirty mags, the union missives and National Front fliers, the tragic tinsel trimmings and lovingly recreated baked bean breakfasts - there's so much life here too. Even if you've never stepped foot on an oil rig - or travelled back in time to 1975, for that matter - Still Wakes the Deep's lived-in spaces reveal so much about the people who inhabit them, even before they've properly said hello, it's easy to buy into the authenticity of its world.
When I wrote our Still Wakes The Deep review I mentioned the true-to-life Scottish slang used by the oil rig workers of this North Sea horror. It was wonderful, but all these slang terms were being translated in the subtitles for some reason. "Gobshite" became "bastard". The "polis" were localised as the "police". And every "yersel" sneering out of the machismo-ridden workers became "yourself". Well, turns out that's the result of the game defaulting to "International English" for its captions. But if you want to immerse yourself in Scottish vernacular as deeply as protagonist Caz McCleary immerses himself in hazardous chemical spills, good news. There's another option, says one of the game's developers.
Scottish petrochemical horror is not exactly a genre, but maybe it ought to be. From the opening moments of Still Wakes The Deep you know life on its 1970s North Sea oil rig is precarious. Leaky ceilings, busted panelling, faulty drill machinery - the omens pile up as you spend your first thirty minutes wandering through the colleague-packed canteen and over the platform into the boss' office for a severe dressing-down. It's a classic pre-disaster setup for a mostly traditional monster story, yet the game sticks expertly to the first-person horror form, and its voice actors' performances are so spot-on, that it'd feel churlish to judge this foaming fear simulator for sticking to type. It also has some markedly unsettling use of the shipping forecast, a famously dull feature of British radio I definitely did not expect to freak me out in a video game.
Sumo Group, the British video game collective which owns developers Sumo Digital, publishers Secret Mode and more - including Everybody's Gone to the Rapture devs The Chinese Room - is laying off hundreds of staff, cutting 15% of their workforce “to better navigate the upcoming challenges expected in the coming months”.
When I wrote our Still Wakes The Deep review I mentioned the true-to-life Scottish slang used by the oil rig workers of this North Sea horror. It was wonderful, but all these slang terms were being translated in the subtitles for some reason. "Gobshite" became "bastard". The "polis" were localised as the "police". And every "yersel" sneering out of the machismo-ridden workers became "yourself". Well, turns out that's the result of the game defaulting to "International English" for its captions. But if you want to immerse yourself in Scottish vernacular as deeply as protagonist Caz McCleary immerses himself in hazardous chemical spills, good news. There's another option, says one of the game's developers.
Scottish petrochemical horror is not exactly a genre, but maybe it ought to be. From the opening moments of Still Wakes The Deep you know life on its 1970s North Sea oil rig is precarious. Leaky ceilings, busted panelling, faulty drill machinery - the omens pile up as you spend your first thirty minutes wandering through the colleague-packed canteen and over the platform into the boss' office for a severe dressing-down. It's a classic pre-disaster setup for a mostly traditional monster story, yet the game sticks expertly to the first-person horror form, and its voice actors' performances are so spot-on, that it'd feel churlish to judge this foaming fear simulator for sticking to type. It also has some markedly unsettling use of the shipping forecast, a famously dull feature of British radio I definitely did not expect to freak me out in a video game.
Sumo Group, the British video game collective which owns developers Sumo Digital, publishers Secret Mode and more - including Everybody's Gone to the Rapture devs The Chinese Room - is laying off hundreds of staff, cutting 15% of their workforce “to better navigate the upcoming challenges expected in the coming months”.
With Still Wakes the Deep releasing on PS5 tomorrow, we wanted to highlight some of the inspirations for the environments of the upcoming first-person narrative horror. Early on we decided that Still Wakes the Deep would be set on an oil rig and the team wanted to play on different fears and phobias. One of the main fears is the ocean itself; another is being isolated.
One of the first levels I worked on from the ground up was a space inside the engineering section of the rig, with a lot of machinery inside these four echoey, metal walls.
I wanted to try and play with the fear of claustrophobia, which in hindsight was an odd thing, because it’s a fear that is very vivid for me due to my own personal experiences. In the end I found it quite useful and intriguing to use my own triggers to build an environment that might in turn trigger the same emotions within players.
I pulled from my core childhood memory of claustrophobia a lot while we were developing Still Wakes the Deep.
I remember being at an event with lots of kids outdoors and they put out this big wooden crate with lots of little wooden compartments for the kids to play and crawl through.
As I got halfway through, I remember the twists and turns becoming narrower and the angles becoming harder to navigate.
My heart was racing, and I started to hyperventilate. I still remember the feeling of the wood under my fingers, the sounds, the smells.
When our main character Caz enters the engineering sections of the oil rig, you immediately feel trapped. The halls are narrow, the ceiling is low, every surface is metal and there’s a lot of heat and moisture trapped in the air around you.
Since there are no windows, you lose that sense of where you are. Now imagine moving through this space, while you’re up to your knees in a mix of water, oil, rust, and dirt, and you realise there’s something else in there with you. All you want is to get back to the open top of the rig for a breath of fresh air, but the only way through is by entering even narrower spaces.
The audio team did the brilliant job of capturing these vivid nightmarish sounds of horror.
In trying to trigger certain emotions with dark eerie visuals and audio I started to imagine how terrible it must feel to have all that moisture in the air with oily, dirty water seeping into your overalls.
You have a constant mix of these engineering sections like hot pipes and machinery but then every time you come outside you have terrible cold weather, cold steel. I wouldn’t say it’s comforting but I think it will make for a thrilling story.
There lie the strengths of The Chinese Room. On one side, we have people that love storytelling, whether it’s through movies or writing, and on the other we have musicians and audio technicians all from different walks of life.
Would I say that working on Still Wakes the Deep has conquered my fears? Probably not. If anything, it’s intensified fears of what’s lurking in the shadows! Still Wakes the Deep launches tomorrow on PS5.
With Still Wakes the Deep releasing on PS5 tomorrow, we wanted to highlight some of the inspirations for the environments of the upcoming first-person narrative horror. Early on we decided that Still Wakes the Deep would be set on an oil rig and the team wanted to play on different fears and phobias. One of the main fears is the ocean itself; another is being isolated.
One of the first levels I worked on from the ground up was a space inside the engineering section of the rig, with a lot of machinery inside these four echoey, metal walls.
I wanted to try and play with the fear of claustrophobia, which in hindsight was an odd thing, because it’s a fear that is very vivid for me due to my own personal experiences. In the end I found it quite useful and intriguing to use my own triggers to build an environment that might in turn trigger the same emotions within players.
I pulled from my core childhood memory of claustrophobia a lot while we were developing Still Wakes the Deep.
I remember being at an event with lots of kids outdoors and they put out this big wooden crate with lots of little wooden compartments for the kids to play and crawl through.
As I got halfway through, I remember the twists and turns becoming narrower and the angles becoming harder to navigate.
My heart was racing, and I started to hyperventilate. I still remember the feeling of the wood under my fingers, the sounds, the smells.
When our main character Caz enters the engineering sections of the oil rig, you immediately feel trapped. The halls are narrow, the ceiling is low, every surface is metal and there’s a lot of heat and moisture trapped in the air around you.
Since there are no windows, you lose that sense of where you are. Now imagine moving through this space, while you’re up to your knees in a mix of water, oil, rust, and dirt, and you realise there’s something else in there with you. All you want is to get back to the open top of the rig for a breath of fresh air, but the only way through is by entering even narrower spaces.
The audio team did the brilliant job of capturing these vivid nightmarish sounds of horror.
In trying to trigger certain emotions with dark eerie visuals and audio I started to imagine how terrible it must feel to have all that moisture in the air with oily, dirty water seeping into your overalls.
You have a constant mix of these engineering sections like hot pipes and machinery but then every time you come outside you have terrible cold weather, cold steel. I wouldn’t say it’s comforting but I think it will make for a thrilling story.
There lie the strengths of The Chinese Room. On one side, we have people that love storytelling, whether it’s through movies or writing, and on the other we have musicians and audio technicians all from different walks of life.
Would I say that working on Still Wakes the Deep has conquered my fears? Probably not. If anything, it’s intensified fears of what’s lurking in the shadows! Still Wakes the Deep launches tomorrow on PS5.
I never thought I’d find the open sea air more terrifying than navigating through a confined, flooded bulkhead… but here we are. I think part of that comes from the fact that as you look upon the open ocean that surrounds the Beira D oil rig – the central location of The Chinese Room’s (Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs) upcoming horror game Still Wakes the Deep – it’s an ever-present and cold reminder that you’re trapped here with just a handful of crew standing between you and impending doom.
There’s no getting off this ride; the terror on board is something that you must contend with at some point, and I love that part of the game so far. This mix of tension, dread, and inevitable horror is clicking so well that it’s going to be excruciating having to wait a few more weeks to finish my tour of duty in Still Wakes the Deep when it launches June 18, 2024, for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and day one with Game Pass.
We’ve previously covered some of the many cinematic inspirations the team has brought to Still Wakes the Deep. Now having played through the first third of the game and seen many of those films, I think they’re nailing the look, feel, and inspiration for many on that list. In particular, “The Thing” and “Annihilation.”
Another that came to mind while playing — which is a different type of horror — is Craig Mazin’s excellent “Chernobyl.” That’s felt most especially in the early stages –an accident on the mammoth oil rig sets off a cascade of events, rocking the station and everyone on board, and the crew springs into action trying to make sense of what just happened. Before they know it, the situation has continued to spiral further and further beyond their control, shifting from containment to one of survival mixed with fleeting thoughts of escape.
But crucially, before that moment arrives – the calm before the storm – the game opens with the chance to explore a good chunk of Beria D and interact with what feels like every member of the crew in some capacity. Each one is given a moment with your main character, Cameron “Caz” McLeary, mixed in with a fair bit of swearing and ribbing. With the oil rig located off the coast of Scotland, it’s well written and believable, allowing you to develop a rapport with this crew before things start to fall apart.
Time with everyone early on might be brief, but it’s immersive, and it’s handled with great effect — like how the spoken dialog leans heavily on UK English and the regional dialects (I had to play with subtitles to catch everything said accurately). In just a short amount of time we’re brought into Caz’s predicament and how that feeds through the entire crew in the lead-up to the accident. It also gives you a good sense of the crew’s bond with each other — they care a lot for one another. This makes the latter parts of the demo land particularly emotional, once many of them become distressed (and much, much worse).
As shown in the gameplay footage from last year, we’re asked to navigate through bulkheads, flooded passageways, and very dark corridors with nothing but a screwdriver and a headlamp. The design of the interior of the Beria D is very impressively modeled – you can practically feel how cold it is to walk through the station, or when placing your hands on the wheel of an airlock, as the sound of the wind rushes through you once you step outside. It’s a great contrast to the silence that comes when all the hatches are locked down tight, letting any little sound reverberate through the station.
The… let’s call it the terror here as we’ve been asked to avoid spoilers, is… well… terrifying. I’ll leave it at that. If that’s not enough, Caz finds himself at times falling into a bizarre hallucinatory state that seems connected to the events around him, which is another mystery I’m eager to explore further, and see how the story brings all these events together.
We only experienced a taste of what Still Wakes the Deep has in store for us, but it’s clear The Chinese Room appears to be firing on all cylinders here — they’re on the cusp delivering another masterpiece of gaming horror. Look for Still Wakes the Deep to launch June 18, 2024, for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and day one with Game Pass.
The post How Still Wakes the Deep Makes You Care for a Doomed Crew appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Set in 1975 on an oil rig in the Scottish North Sea, horror game Still Wakes The Deep is less about supernatural events, and more about the people who experience them. Here, that’s Scottish electrician Caz McLeary and the crew of the Beira D rig. In bringing the rig to life, The Chinese Room turned to archival footage, oil and gas legislation, blueprints, and photographs. For lead designer Rob McLachlan, though, it was conversations with former platform workers that painted the clearest picture of what life on the rigs was really like.
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