Still Wakes the Deep doesn’t really feel like how we anticipate video games to really feel. Fresh from seeing model new gameplay in the course of the Xbox Partner Preview present, this sport is in some way concurrently a panicky horror expertise, a ‘70s interval piece, a deeply British, deeply private character examine, and even perhaps an oil rig explorer. It’s more and more uncommon to see a sport that merely doesn’t really feel prefer it’s drawing on the identical pool of inspirations as the remainder of the medium.
That’s why I requested the builders at The Chinese Room to place collectively an inventory of the assorted inspirations that they had coming into this undertaking – the outcomes are a “studying record” of films, TV reveals, books, and extra that assist piece collectively this extremely surprising sport. On this record alone, you’ll by no means have performed something fairly like this…
The premise is impressed by… The Thing
Our undertaking elevator pitch was: ‘”The Thing” on an oil rig’. This brief phrase, uttered in a couple of seconds, touched off a spark in those that heard it, immediately getting them creatively excited within the sport. John Carpenter’s 1982 movie “The Thing”, and its predecessor novella “Who Goes There?” by John W Campbell, are touchstones for the general ambiance of Still Wakes the Deep. A gaggle of execs, lower off and alone, and going through what seems like an undefeatable enemy, creates simply the form of character drama wanted to help the rate of our story. Paranoia, worry, isolation, and brutal destruction of the human crew are our backdrop. – Lead designer Rob McLachlan (He/Him/His)
The ambiance is impressed by… Rosemary’s Baby
There is one thing about some ’70s media that feels inherently improper, as if the artefact itself is cursed. Every body of “Don’t Look Now” and “Rosemary’s Baby” is imbued with a way of dread. Domestic or innocuous scenes during which nothing overtly scary is occurring turn out to be all of the extra unsettling, as if one thing is lurking just below the floor. As effectively because the interval aesthetic, these movies have influenced Still Wakes the Deep in how now we have explored reoccurring imagery and motifs to unnerve the participant. – Associate artwork director Laura Dodds (She/Her/Hers)
The authenticity is impressed by… Kes
Ken Loach’s early movie work had an virtually documentary model that grounded its story and characters in a method that felt startlingly real looking to the viewers of the time. This capturing model and the naturalistic performances (in native dialect and language) broke down the partitions between the world and the viewer in order that we might higher empathize with the protagonist. This is one thing we’ve tried onerous to include into the sport expertise. To convey a humanity to it by grounding the participant in an genuine world, crammed with actual individuals residing actual lives. – Creative director John McCormack (He/Him/His)
The sport construction is impressed by… The Poseidon Adventure
From the start of the undertaking our artistic course had us think about a second enemy: the North Sea. We need our gamers to worry the waves, and to really feel trapped above the chilly darkish water because it floods the rig. The 1972 movie “The Poseidon Adventure”, created by the ‘Master of Disaster’ Irwin Allen knowledgeable each our dramatic construction and the depth of our gameplay. The ominous lead up – the place the viewer is aware of one thing goes to occur, however the characters don’t – is a superb little bit of narrative pressure to maintain our gamers engaged. Gene Hackman’s Reverend, swimming and swinging by way of the upturned environments of the SS Poseidon, is an ideal archetype for our unathletic hero, Cameron McLeary. – Lead designer Rob McLachlan (He/Him/His)
The magnificence and transformation in horror is impressed by… Annihilation
One of our improvement pillars was ‘a horrible magnificence’. We checked out media which managed to seize this dichotomy between disgust and captivation. A standard thread between very totally different visuals – the rainbow shimmer of “Annihilation”, the burst of florals and brilliant colors in “Midsommar”, and the sumptuously staged dioramas from “Hannibal” – was the theme of transformation. Body horror was typically tempered by this theme, whether or not by human artistry (sculpture, show) or by way of motifs of progress and life we discover lovely in nature. – Associate artwork director Laura Dodds (She/Her/Hers)
The audio is impressed by… The Southern Reach Trilogy & the pure world
Jeff Vandermeer’s vivid descriptions of a supernatural occasion that has twisted nature had been extremely inspiring to the sport’s audio course. He typically describes literal sounds, reminiscent of when he writes about an ‘basically indescribable’ creature and “the sound that it made, as if the wind and the ocean had been smashed collectively, and within the aftershock there reverberated that very same sonorous moan.”
We additionally took a number of direct inspiration from nature. For occasion, the sounds that elephants make, which may vocally specific an enormous vary of feelings, and in some way be concurrently endearing and terrifying. Or how synchronicity in the end establishes itself in nature after a chaotic occasion, reminiscent of planets orbiting after the massive bang – this idea has pushed a few of our audio techniques. The similar goes for a way sounds in nature don’t are inclined to occur in isolation: a contact name will elicit a response, an occasion will set off a warning; this drove the way in which we considered and applied our ambient audio. In abstract, although we’re on an oil rig, remoted and alone, we all the time thought of this humongous metallic man-made construction as a residing, respiration entity. Audio director Daan Hendriks
The darkness of the ’70s was impressed by… Sapphire & Steel
There was one thing in regards to the science fiction that Britain was producing within the ’60s and ’70s that made it stand out. There was an in-built, oppressive darkness operating by way of every present from “Doctor Who” to “Doomwatch” that left a everlasting mark on the viewer. None extra so than “Sapphire and Steel”, which was each impenetrably baffling and unnervingly hypnotic to expertise on the time. The ‘alien forces’ being battled within the present felt extra like cosmic ghosts that haunted the surreal, liminal world with a creeping dread that appeared inconceivable to understand. There’s a side of this that we’ve tried to convey into our antagonistic power on the rig. Creative director John McCormack (He/Him/His)
The sense of actuality unravelling is impressed by… Suspiria
For Still Wakes the Deep we took inspiration from movies of the ’70s the place the mise-en-scène turns into more and more psychological in its expression of terror and actuality coming undone. Suspiria’s lighting was seminal notably for its use of color, principally garish reds and vibrant blues, to create hypnotic and terrifying sequences. As the protagonist Suzie descends additional right into a nightmarish world, the set design and areas within the dance academy begin to tackle a dream logic additionally. Flashes of this may be seen in Kubrick’s maze sequence in “The Shining” and, to a a lot bigger extent, in “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Associate artwork director Laura Dodds (She/Her/Hers)
