I dunno about love at first sight, but I definitely felt something just a few seconds into the Still Wakes the Deep reveal trailer at last year's Summer Game Fest. Terror? Sure. But also unbridled excitement. I was definitely unsettled, a wee flurry of butterflies rising in my stomach in concert with the choppy waters, the rumbling steel shifting in the North Sea wind, and the coarse screams of whatever the fuck the first-person protagonist was hiding from on that seemingly abandoned oil rig. It's been some time since The Chinese Room turned its hand to horror, but, wow, does the wait seem worth it at this juncture.
I was so taken by that short 61 seconds of footage, that at the time I suggested Still Wakes the Deep could be the pinnacle of the current survival horror boom. A measure of this admittedly lofty assertion several months on is that I still feel the same today – something bolstered in my mind by the three evocative Unreal Engine 5 gameplay clips that surfaced during Gamescom 2023.
It's not just that Still Wakes the Deep looks bloody terrifying, it's that it comes with The Chinese Room's signature deference to seemingly mundane settings that have, one way or another, found themselves blighted by the extraordinary. 2013's Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs was the studio's last proper horror game, and Still Wakes the Deep looks every bit as scary.
"We do feel like we've picked up and carried a torch, one that was lit by lead creative director Dan Pinchbeck," explains Still Wakes the Deep lead designer, Rob McLachlan. "Dan conceived the idea for Still Wakes the Deep – “The Thing on an oil rig” – and his expertise was invaluable to us, to start on a high path, to take what was strongest and most unique about TCR’s previous games and to bring new interactivity and immersion to the experience. We feel Still Wakes the Deep is a bright milestone on our mission to make the very best narrative games."
Raptured
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Two years after A Machine For Pigs, The Chinese Room released Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, a thoughtful yet deeply unnerving adventure-meets-investigation game wherein the player explores a small English village whose inhabitants have mysteriously disappeared. Like Dear Esther back in 2008 – a Half-Life 2 mod that was eventually released standalone, in essence kick-starting the walking simulator genre – Everybody's Gone to the Rapture explored a quintessentially British setting, this time around the lazy fields and quaint country roads of pastoral England. Still Wakes the Deep, on the other hand, unfolds on a North Sea oil rig – a staple of Scottish industry, and an unlikely setting for horror.
"Both Rapture and Still Wakes the Deep are part of a common thread, one that is typified by a focused evocation of a unique, iconic British setting – a setting where a horrific loop of the unknowable matter of the universe has reached down and warped everything," McLachlan continues. "For Rapture, I know that the team explored many layouts and features of an English village before settling on the layout that best served the story and flow of the game as a whole – while the village community wholly defined the narrative perspective."
"Similarly, in Still Wakes the Deep we created the Beira Delta and the story concurrently – they informed each other. Our narrative is nothing without the rig as its metal skeleton. Features of offshore platforms that excited us became key parts of our story – but we have been equally unafraid to enhance the oil rig environment where we needed the right gameplay or key dramatic moments. For us as well, the time period of the 1970s has been incredibly important to define everything from our visuals to our storytelling."
McLachlan says the credibility of all of the above is underscored by relatable, non-heroic characters. One thing I personally love about The Chinese Room's games is their uncanny ability to place (and often force) ordinary, everyday characters into extraordinary circumstances, in turn making us relate to and care about their protagonists and the quandaries they find themselves in.
"This was key right from the start," McLachlan says. "It’s the case for all our characters – ordinary folk, interesting and relatable as all ordinary folk are. Our hero Caz McLeary is not a cipher or an empty shell for the player to fill. He’s almost a third-person character in a first-person game. We wanted the player to feel like they are consciously playing as Caz, and for his character to be in the foreground. He’s no hero, he’s an unfit ex-boxer in the middle of a situation beyond imagining. His reactions are genuine, and, we hope, compelling and enjoyable. It’s really important to us that his dialogue is as socially and emotionally real as possible, and we think that with the script work of Dan and others, and the performance of our superb lead actor, we’ve achieved it."
Sleeping giant
The horror genre is in great shape at the moment, with everything from Dead Island 2 to Sons of the Forest, Lies of P, and the Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 remakes all launching in the last year alone. Looking forward, the genre is likewise due to welcome Silent Hill 2, Little Nightmares 3, Alone in the Dark, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 and, of course, Still Wakes the Deep in 2024. To be a part of such an exciting moment in video game horror, McLachlan reckons, is an honor – with The Chinese Room's latest earning its place at the table as a contained, narrative-heavy endeavor.
McLachlan continues: "The family tree of horror is bursting in all directions and it’s being driven both by evolution in the center and innovation at the bleeding edge. Recently, there have been breakout hits like Lethal Company, building on Among Us and Space Station 13; delicious remakes of classics like System Shock, and pitch-perfect interpretations of classic movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."
"The continuing ripples of P.T. and the SCP melting pot surface tremendous shakycam experiences almost weekly, while introspective psychological horror and mad slasher fics rub shoulders on itch.io. Our spiritual cousins at Frictional also released their splendid take on systemic horror, Amnesia: The Bunker. There is a maturity emerging that makes sudden horror all the more shocking, as in Immortality – while self-referential openness and playfulness makes Alan Wake 2 a game that takes joy in genre tropes."
Further to Still Wakes the Deep, The Chinese Room is also working on the long-awaited Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, the studio having assumed control of the game's abiding, somewhat beleaguered development last year. McLachlan says that with the Still Wakes the Deep team on one floor, and the Bloodlines 2 team on another, there's a tangible buzz around the office at the moment; an undercurrent of excitement and anticipation inspired by the fact two great project are being worked on concurrently under the same roof.
And through this, McLachlan says he and his teammates know exactly what Still Wakes the Deep is, what it hopes to accomplish, and how it'll fit within the pantheon of modern horror in 2024. It's terrifying, exciting and unsettling all at once. McLachlan says: "We’re really pleased to release Still Wakes the Deep into such a healthy genre. We feel we’re a complementary presence to many of the new titles of 2023 and this year, offering an experience that is creeping narrative horror rather than constant heart-in-mouth tension… though we do have a bit of that as well!"
"We want as many fans of [The Chinese Room], narrative fans and horror fans as possible to play Still Wakes the Deep; it’s a game that’s designed to be completed. It doesn’t out stay its welcome, it gives you a rich world to explore, and we’re incredibly proud of how it looks and sounds."
