‘Trapped on an oil rig with an unknowable horror’: Still Wakes the Deep is a dark 70s throwback
How do you fancy making a 1970s horror game set in Scotland? That was the question that art director John McCormack recalls being asked by Dan Pinchbeck, co-founder of the Brightonbased studio The Chinese Room, when he joined the company a few years ago. McCormack’s response was immediate: “Well, as a Scotsman from the 70s, I would say that you’ve got me: I’m in.”
McCormack had been attracted to work for the studio by its reputation for storytelling and authenticity. The Chinese Room made its name with the cult hit Dear Esther in 2012, and went on to create the Bafta-awardwinning Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture in 2015, featuring an incredibly detailed recreation of a mysteriously deserted English village. Still Wakes the Deep carries on that tradition of faithful reproduction, although this time the setting is a North Sea oil rig rather than the bucolic English countryside.
McCormack says the team has spent hours talking with people who used to work on Scottish rigs to gain an idea of what life was like. In addition, as one of the few members of the team who was alive in the 70s, McCormack has found himself acting as an adviser on what things looked like then. Searching for 70s furniture is likely to bring up garish, highly stylised pieces of the kind you might find in an American
catalogue, he says, but that’s not what Glasgow was like. “It’s very difficult for people who weren’t there to picture how brown things were.”
The game is set at Christmas 1975 on an oil rig off the Scottish coast, where, in McCormack’s words, the workers have “drilled into something: and it didn’t like it”. The studio is keeping the identity of that something tightly under wraps, and McCormack won’t be drawn except to say that the developers are hoping that as soon as players see it, they will turn and run. What follows is a mixture of the films Annihilation and The Poseidon Adventure, as the survivors attempt to escape the damaged, collapsing rig and its unwelcome visitor. The North Sea is just as much of a threat, and it is depicted here in all its toothsome fury, a roiling maelstrom of death ready to swallow up anyone unlucky enough to plummet from their fragile island of steel and safety. The audio emphasises the danger of the elements: opening a door to the outside invites a wall of noise, a constant, howling gale.
There is no combat in Still Wakes the Deep. “This isn’t a game where you fight back,” says McCormack. “We’re trying to do this as realistically as possible in the sense that it’s confusing, things are happening, people are dying, it’s bloody horrible, I’m scared, I’m crying, I’m broken, I don’t even know how to fight it: if there is a thing to fight.” The action is, instead, based on puzzle-solving and traversal, with the squeezable controller triggers representing the player’s shaking grip as they desperately cling on to rainslicked ladders and hang precariously from creaking beams.
To create a counterpoint to the sudden unleashing of horror, Still Wakes the Deep begins with the mundane, and the first hour is spent slowly getting to know the other oil rig workers. The guiding principle for this opening was: “What if Ken Loach was hired to film a BBC documentary about an oil rig in the North Sea in the 1970s?” says McCormack.
But even at its most mundane, the game’s aesthetic has an unsettling quality. McCormack cites Scarred For Life’s chronicles of the darker side of 70s pop culture as a touchstone, along with the twisted world of Scarfolk Council and 1970s British television in general. “Abigail’s Party, that was a huge influence as well,” says McCormack, who adds that a lot of work has gone into capturing the look of 70s faces, veering away from the temptation to make good-looking people with perfect teeth. “In the 70s, there’s a weird, liminal feeling when you watch even things like Sapphire & Steel and The Prisoner,” he says. “There’s something off about them. There’s something weird that makes you feel uncomfortable.”
Still Wakes the Deep will be out in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox
meeting: “It was our first opportunity to change the stink that’s been on this organization on the offensive side of the ball. You can have a Hall of Fame quarterback, you can have two $10m receivers, you can have a reigning offensive rookie of the year, you can have all kinds of skill in the running back room, none of it fucking matters until the big boys up front change who we are.” Ouch.
Not to worry. Our offensive underdogs quickly rebound with a strong display as they help backup quarterback Zach Wilson and the Jets to a 27-0 preseason win over the Panthers.
“That was us,” Saleh says with an air of celebration that ignores the obvious problem that both teams were almost solely constituted of backups. It is more difficult to get carried away with this arc than our overarching savior story but the Jets’ offensive second-string had a clear opportunity to show their worth and did so while making a case for first-team snaps. In Saleh’s grand listicle of the offense’s talents he reveals by omission that there are jobs to be had blocking for Rodgers, be they free agents or hungry outliers. Mekhi Becton is one such lineman who could benefit from the opportunity. He plays a role in the success over the Panthers and if he can stay healthy there is surely a chance to regain a starting spot after falling from a 2020 first-round pick to a roster also-ran. What is less apparent are the machinations behind Rodgers’ lunch invite for Becton but the cameras need something to film for next week.
The star – and the real reason to be excited for the new Jets season – is Quinnen Williams. The defensive lineman wreaks havoc on every rep on the practice field. Then rookie Will McDonald explodes from the same position against the Panthers in the shutout victory: Williams’s talent is apparently rubbing off on his teammates and doing so quickly. The edge is leading this wrecking crew just as Saleh must have hoped after the Jets gave the charismatic Williams a four-year $96m contract extension in the offseason. If the backups are this good – and being led by talent like Williams and defensive rookie of the year Sauce Gardner – then any struggles on offense could be masked, much like last season’s run to 7-4 with Wilson at quarterback.
While Saleh highlights a functional offensive line as a crucial change for New York, it is hard to overstate the importance of having an elite quarterback in the building. The Jets face Buffalo, Dallas, New England, Kansas City, Denver and Philadelphia in their opening six games, a seriously formidable set of fixtures. If they stumble in that opening stretch then the team will need Rodgers to deliver when it matters – and killer lines to camera won’t suffice.