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(Image credit: The Chinese Room)
I dunno about love at first sight, but I definitely feltsomethingjust a few seconds into the Still Wakes the Deep reveal trailer at last year’sSummer 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.
Raptured
(Image credit: The Chinese Room)
Big in 2024(Image credit: Future)GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
Big in 2024
(Image credit: Future)GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
(Image credit: Future)
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
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.
“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.”
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“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
(Image credit: The Chinese Room)
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.
(Image credit: The Chinese Room)
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.”
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
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4The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim review – “An uninspired expansion of the most iconic screen take on Tolkien”
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