Still Wakes the Deep An Introduction to Worldbuilding

GameGrin

A trailer for Still Wakes the Deep

Transcript

00:00I'm sorry, I can't help you.

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00:39Hi I'm Rob McLaughlin.

00:40I'm lead designer on Still Wakes The Deep at The Chinese Room.

00:44Still Wakes The Deep is a first person narrative horror game.

00:46It's about the unknowability of the universe.

00:48You're on a cracking and crumbling rig in the middle of the North Sea.

00:52There's a storm going on that's extremely cold.

00:54If you fall in you've got a five minute survival time.

00:57Martin Lane's character is Kaz McCleary.

00:59He's a working class ex-boxer from Glasgow and he's run away to an oil rig to escape his problems.

01:04But he's becoming estranged from his family and his problems are catching up with him.

01:09The way we describe it to ourselves is if Stanley Kubrick lost his mind

01:13shooting a documentary aboard an oil rig this is how it would have looked.

01:17We took a lot of inspiration from sort of 70s naturalism like Loach and Lee

01:23and then we moved through to a more sort of transcendental experimental aesthetic

01:28from directors like Kubrick and Dario Argento.

01:32I think the thing that I was most interested in from the beginning was the isolation.

01:37The feeling that you're on the oil rig on your own.

01:41We actually just leaned into the oil rig environment.

01:44An oil rig is a kind of scary place anyway.

01:48The interiors are claustrophobic and hot.

01:52They're steamy, they're dark.

01:54With the exteriors you're outside against the elements.

01:57With the North Sea they're a crazy storm.

02:00So yeah, I mean we didn't really have to do too many tricks.

02:03Just imagine what it's like to be on an oil rig.

02:07And that's even before things get weird.

02:12Oh Jesus!

02:22So the Chinese Room is coming back to narrative horror.

02:24This has huge significance for us.

02:26It's part of an arc that started with Dear Esther and Rapture and A Machine for Pigs

02:31and we're really pleased to be carrying on that legacy.

02:33Still Wakes the Deep is an evolution of the Chinese Room's games.

02:38We've gone from Esther and Rapture which are very much in their walking sim style.

02:45And I love that. I really like those styles of games.

02:48But again what drew me to the Chinese Room was this kind of game.

02:51A much more first person narrative game.

02:54And when I heard about the plans for it and how they were going to expand on those things

02:58I was super excited.

03:00I think with all of the Chinese Room's titles, narrative is at the core

03:04and that guides the entire experience from how we're doing storytelling through the environments

03:09our characters, trying to build authenticity in our story.

03:13On Still Wakes the Deep we had three core art direction pillars.

03:17So the first was making it personal.

03:20The second was authenticity.

03:22And the third is a terrible beauty.

03:24We did a lot of research.

03:26I mean before starting this project I had no idea about how oil rigs worked.

03:31What they looked like, what the experience of living on one would be.

03:34We were really lucky because there was a lot of archive footage from the 1970s on oil rigs.

03:40BP have a huge online archive.

03:44It's amazing stuff which is almost exactly what we want about exploration in the North Sea

03:49and setting up oil rigs.

03:51It's really fascinating to learn.

03:53Another aspect of research which kind of plagues me a little

03:58is that I'm forever looking at and taking pictures of pipes, signs, things like this.

04:05My holiday photos are just my family, my wife, my son

04:09and then hundreds of photos of boats or cranes and things like this

04:15which do come in handy.

04:17We've created virtually a whole oil rig for you to explore

04:20and you'll gradually open up new areas.

04:22You'll visit a lot of the iconic places that you'd find on an oil rig.

04:25So you'll get to stand on the helipad in the teeth of the storm.

04:28You'll get to see the derrick stretching up into the fog

04:30and you'll get to clamber along the side of the flare stack

04:32out to the flames treading out over the North Sea.

04:35One of the challenges for us and one of the things that we spent a lot of time on

04:39was the evolution of the rig.

04:41So you'll return to places that you've seen before

04:44but they'll have been changed by the destruction of the rig,

04:47the gradual sinking and tilting of the rig,

04:49the flooding of the rig and the damage that happens as a result of the events that you witness

04:54during the course of the game.

04:56There were two quite big distinctions that we wanted to make

04:59when doing our research on oil rigs.

05:01One is to make sure that it didn't feel American and it felt distinctly British,

05:05particularly Scottish because that's a huge part of our game.

05:09But also things were very different in the 1970s

05:13so in Still Wakes of Deep our characters aren't typical glamorous,

05:17good-looking people necessarily.

05:19We took a lot of inspiration from BBC documentaries, news footage

05:24and even my stepdad features in one of the background characters.

05:27At the core of it, it's a very human story.

05:30Although there's a cosmic and horror element,

05:32it's really about getting to know the people on the rig, the crew

05:36and understanding how they care about each other and want to survive this event.

05:40So our third pillar, Terrible Beauty, I'll probably try and keep that mysterious for now

05:45but it's a lot about the duality between something that's fascinating and mesmerising

05:49but also something that's horrifying.

05:58Is it alright to say I'm kind of terrified?

06:01You know, now it's finally, people are actually going to see it

06:04and it's no longer this kind of like fun thing that I do every day.

06:09We're still making the game but what I think I'm going to be really proud of

06:12is the attention to detail in storytelling

06:15and explaining our characters through the environments.

06:18I think we've got a really strong pedigree here at The Shining's Room

06:21about working with horror and about working with narrative

06:24and I'm really pleased that we can continue this with Still Wakes The Deep.

06:27So much of our attention has gone into this game

06:31and now it's in a state that we're really happy with.

06:34Hopefully people will like it.

06:36We'd like as many people as possible to play Still Wakes The Deep.

06:40You don't have to be a hardcore gamer.

06:42You just need to be someone who's really willing to experience a new story

06:46from a new perspective in some extraordinary circumstances.

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