Placing gamers within the sneakers of an engineer tasked with heading alone right into a darkish basement to restart an ailing generator is a tried-and-true trope in horror video video games. Whereas Nonetheless Wakes the Deep has so much that is very acquainted to horror followers, it is what it does with this trope of creating you the poor lone sucker who must flip all of the switches and face all of the hazard to do it, that units it other than a subject of horror titles. Different video games might be taught from what developer The Chinese language Room does with what has develop into a really well-worn premise.
On paper, Nonetheless Wakes the Deep is fairly customary as a horror story, and extremely recognizable for anybody who’s performed video games like Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, the developer’s earlier horror recreation. It takes place on an oil rig in 1975, and earlier than lengthy, spooky stuff begins kicking off. In its gameplay, Nonetheless Wakes the Deep riffs on Amnesia’s system of solely permitting you to run and conceal from its deadly terrors, sneaking round issues that may immediately homicide you and hoping they can not squeeze into the small areas that you would be able to.
You can too inform the place issues are going the second you meet protagonist Caz, the rig’s electrician–although, considerably hilariously, The Chinese language Room begins the sport by instantly subverting that premise. The primary couple of minutes of the sport see Caz defending his job, however all he can actually handle is insisting, “I am good with the lecky.” You possibly can guess fairly early on that the facility goes to exit, and somebody who’s good with the lecky is the apparent option to go flip it again on, even when Caz is definitely underqualified for the gig.
The lone protagonist going through near-certain dying to show the lights again on has develop into one of the crucial well-worn cliches of horror gaming. Lifeless House makes your engineering {qualifications} central to the entire recreation expertise. In Alien: Isolation, you are rattling close to the one competent particular person left alive on Sevastopol station with regards to fixing frequently ailing equipment. The Amnesia video games are all about wandering alone in darkish locations, and the newest, Amnesia: The Bunker, makes fueling a generator a relentless consideration as you discover the realm and keep away from the monster attempting to find you.
Even when there aren’t fuses to exchange or fuel tanks to fill, horror video games from Resident Evil 7 to SOMA all concentrate on a single concept: Stuff wants doing, and you need to do this stuff. Alone.
Nonetheless Wakes the Deep does ship you down into the depths of the oil rig to flip switches and repair machines on a couple of event. You are usually transferring slowly by flooded corridors, listening to terrible issues slithering round within the distance, earlier than they pop across the nook and it’s a must to sprint madly for a distant hatch, slipping by solely on the final attainable second. However the place it challenges the trope is in the truth that you are not at all times alone in doing these issues. In reality, you spend loads of time with different individuals on the rig, who’re simply as competent and in a number of circumstances way more certified than you are–and they’re serving to flip the lights again on, too.
The factor that made Nonetheless Wakes the Deep work for me wasn’t that it offered one other foray into sneaking and hiding and listening to spooky noises in a decaying catastrophe zone, though these issues typically work effectively and efficiently ship scares and pressure. It was the truth that it spent a lot time growing different characters, placing you in rooms with them, and sharing the workload between you. Whereas Nonetheless Wakes the Deep does not functionally change the system these horror video games depend on, it places a lot concentrate on different folks that it basically adjustments how the sport feels.
What works about Nonetheless Wakes the Deep is its emphasis on the truth that you are not alone. There are nonetheless different survivors on the rig, they usually’re working to reserve it identical to you’re. Two engineers, Brodie and Findlay, ship you on robust missions a number of times–you’ll restart the rig’s generator, drain the rig’s pontoons to maintain it afloat, and relight its flame stack to maintain the entire place from exploding–and it is not that completely different in follow from the orders you recover from the radio in Lifeless House or Alien: Isolation. However when you’re draining two of the 4 pontoons, Brodie is draining the opposite two. If you’re relighting the flame stack, he is ready within the management room to verify the operation is profitable, as a result of he is aware of the way it works. In gameplay phrases, you would possibly nonetheless be doing this stuff alone, however Brodie or Findlay’s presence in a scene adjustments its vibe. You are working collectively, you spend time with them, and because of loads of well-acted, well-written dialogue, you get a way of who they’re. You care about what occurs to them.
That is the elemental component that elevates Nonetheless Wakes the Deep: caring concerning the different characters. A lot as I completely love each Lifeless House and Alien: Isolation, neither is especially good at characters. Each time I revisit Alien: Isolation, I discover myself wishing for a model that hewed nearer to the 1979 film it is adapting, not simply in visuals and gameplay however in character and storytelling. In Alien: Isolation, you are the one one who can repair something in virtually each case, and everybody else is type of a clown. It is within the title: You are remoted in opposition to the alien for hours. At a key second midway by, once you return to a beforehand secure place to seek out it ransacked and plenty of of your comrades lifeless, it is actually tough to really feel something about what occurred.
Lifeless House is slightly higher about this, significantly with its remake model by Motive Studio, however solely barely. The opposite characters are largely voices on the radio, or distant individuals you see in tableau for a second earlier than you return to engineering and monster-fighting. You by no means have time to actually bond with them, and many instances, they stand round ready when you head into hazard. In each video games, what different characters you do occur throughout are inclined to get ripped to shreds in entrance of you; they seem to be a instrument to point out you the extent of menace you are coping with greater than anything.
There is a motive for this, in fact. Being alone, with nobody to depend on, is horrifying. Going lengthy stretches wandering by empty darkish halls, after which lastly listening to one thing transferring within the distance and realizing that sound should not be there, sends a shiver down the backbone. Moments like escorting Ashley in Resident Evil 4 aren’t scary, and neither is cooperative play in Resident Evil 5, and loads of it has to do with the damaged pressure of realizing no matter you are going through, you are not doing so alone.
However what Alien: Isolation, Lifeless House, and numerous different video games like them are lacking is one thing that Nonetheless Wakes the Deep nails, and that is the concern of what would possibly occur to others. When a necromorph slashes aside Isaac Clark, or the alien chases down Amanda Ripley, the horrifying pressure these video games run on is, lastly and abruptly, damaged. As in lots of horror video games, there’s nothing to concern in both apart from getting killed–and as soon as that occurs, the character of video games immediately demonstrates that it is nothing to concern in any respect. You simply restart out of your final checkpoint and take a look at once more. Demise is a faux idea in most video games, and it is the presentation coupled together with your suspension of disbelief that makes them scary in any respect. The concern of dying drives these video games, however really dying breaks the spell.
In Nonetheless Wakes the Deep, spending time with different characters means you are fearful about them. If you and Brodie cut up as much as drain the pontoons, you recognize he is in the identical hazard you’re. When Findlay heads out to repair a fault within the energy traces so you may restart the generator, she’s in the identical space, with the identical monster, that you’re. If you spend time with different characters, once you see the connection they’ve with the Caz–or domesticate a few of your own–you concern not simply what is perhaps ready to get you. You concern what would possibly occur to them.
Basically, I do not suppose the near-constant isolation in Alien: Isolation, Lifeless House, or numerous different video games is critical, and in reality, I feel there are occasions when all that loneliness actively undercuts them. Isolation is not the one instrument these video games can use on gamers, and but it tends to be the one they depend on virtually solely.
Horror motion pictures, to borrow an instance from one other medium, operate on presenting issues that occur with a lot distance from the viewers that they personally are not any hazard, however we will nonetheless discover them horrifying. They’re scary due to our empathy, as a result of people are social creatures. Horror video games could make the scary issues way more quick, however loads of them are lacking out on that massive piece of the human expertise with horror. Nonetheless Wakes the Deep exhibits that being alone is not at all times important to creating horror scary in video video games. It may be simply as unnerving realizing that when the factor is not chasing you, it is as a result of another person has caught its consideration.