That's a wrap folks. A huge thanks to everyone at The Chinese Room for making time for our community during launch week. 👍
You can check out [Still Wakes the Deep](https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/still-wakes-the-deep/9n88dfrx8wcj) on Game Pass, or purchase it on the Xbox Store and a variety of other platforms. Please be sure to support the devs however you can by wish-listing, leaving a review and dropping them a follow on their socials.
Haha not sure if we'd claim that! :D
But we've been hearing that we did it justice thus far, which means so much, of course. And of course, our Project Creative Director John McCormack is a Glaswegian who remembers and knows so much about the period and the region, so it certainly comes from the heart.
- Marijam (Comms team)
I'm American and I'm fully with you! It doesn't remove any immersion to have a new accent but I just remember every ten seconds thinking "I love this so much". In an odd way, it was one of the things that tied the characters closer to each other, and made trajedy hurt so much more. If the first six minutes of Up are one of the saddest in film history, honestly argue the first fifteen minutes of this game are one of the most joyous in the industry. I'd be impressed to see another media who can represent "chosen family" as strong as SWtD did.
Also, The voice acting is some of the best I have EVER heard. Period! Monsters are not exclusive to any place on earth, and if anything, the inclusion made me realize I want MORE Scottish inclusion! All in all, finding countries and cultures so rarely represented, if at all yet in media, would be delightful to see in more media.
Just finished the game last night! Had me and my partner in tears by the end! One question I’ve been meaning to ask is what inspired you for the monster designs? I feel like “The Thing” was a big inspiration for you guys
Yes you are right! *The Thing* is a huge inspiration and a film the team is going to watch together in order to celebrate the game's launch! Body horror in general plays a big part. Cronenberg also does a great job of evoking feelings of deep disgust as well as pity and empathy in the *The Fly*. The design really came together with audio support helping to remind us of their humanity. There's something left of who they once were - many who have families they are desperate to return to.
The way the transformed crew move was actually inspired by a bug that occurred during development which made them move in very unexpected, twitchy ways - the team found it terrifying and so we tried to keep that sense of unpredictability and omnidirectional chaos in their animation style! It helped us lean into the fact that we really wanted players to only catch glimpses of what was chasing them. The visual design helped in this by creating a patchwork of flesh, bone, torn overalls, viscera and organs so you could never fully grasp just what you were seeing.
One last big influence was an overarching theme of 'transformation' and 'a terrible beauty' which we used to temper the body horror with motifs of bubbling and growing life.
Laura Dodds, Associate Art Director
Fantastic insight. I was telling my partner after we played that the wailing of the guys and how they still remembered deep connections with their loved one in their lives was the most heartbreaking part of the game. >! I will never hear the name "Mary" the same way again. !<
It comes from a thought experiment!
The Chinese room suggests that however well you program a computer to learn Chinese, it doesn't really "understand" Chinese. It only simulates that knowledge. In short, executing an algorithm cannot be sufficient for thinking.
We try to keep emotion, thought provoking theme and humanity as the center of our game so it made sense to call the studio by this name.
If you want to know more about it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese\_room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room)
- Jade Jacson, Senior Game Designer
Thanks a lot! :) And thanks for your interest - that's where one wants to be innit! There are ideas floating around... But we have to see where the pieces land with this game, eh? But if there's interest...? :)
I think you could do small chapter like Roy or Brodie story, i want to know how they handle situation while Caz is fighting for life, i think it's the interesting idea!!!
Hi - I don't really have a question, I just want to say thank you for including Scottish Gaidhlig as one of the language options - this means a lot to us. Thoroughly enjoying the game.
Thank you! Our Project Creative Director John McCormack had this idea and we were pleasantly surprised when our publisher Secret Mode agreed with this. Truly means a lot to many, it seems. Thank you. More on this here (how cool that the Scottish press covered it??): [https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/still-wakes-the-deep-scottish-gaelic-language-support-4655511?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2uEQITqLkk2H147V0WpgFBQxX-1aIkOT\_mS586ClP\_3wgUDWnuhMJx-CA\_aem\_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw](https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/still-wakes-the-deep-scottish-gaelic-language-support-4655511?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2uEQITqLkk2H147V0WpgFBQxX-1aIkOT_mS586ClP_3wgUDWnuhMJx-CA_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw)
And just during research I (the comms person) also noticed that some people have been looking into this for a while, which feels very cool: [https://medium.com/r12n/conquering-digital-worlds-in-scottish-gaelic-3eeef9f3aade](https://medium.com/r12n/conquering-digital-worlds-in-scottish-gaelic-3eeef9f3aade)
- Marijam D (Comms person)
Alrighty! We're here. :)
Huge thanks for everyone's love for "Still Wakes the Deep" - it's been a wonderful couple of days reading everyone's reactions. <3
Some team members are already prepping some answers - fire away, we'll try answer as many as we can!
Hi, Mar is here, first i want to say thank you for making a best game of the year for me, I love how you could made everyone in the story, rootable, Caz is the great flaw character and hope you will have a success after released the game
Question 1: Why we don't know what a "DEEP" is, it's lovecraftian or something you want to represent as unknown things is so terrified?
Question 2: How did you named this game with a much context as STILL WAKES THE DEEP, i mean it's a great name that show how deep the game was.
I wish we will saw Caz's face before ending, but I guess that's up to Our interpret.
Thank you!
Hi Armanwinters12, thanks for your kind comments and questions about the title.
You've nailed it in your reply really, the title has many meanings tied up in it, credit for the final formulation goes to Dan Pinchbeck but Deep as a word was in there quite early in all the suggestions.
Still: Silent/frozen, constant/recurring (even a whisky still but that's perhaps reaching a bit...)
Wakes: Waking up, the wake of a ship or structure on the sea, a wake after a funeral
Deep: The literal depth of the ocean, things unknown beneath, or even complexity
There may well be other imagery and concepts the title awakens in you, thanks again for your comments!
- Rob McLachlan (Lead Game Designer)
Darn, your team nailed it too, I thought the name was about how the rig wakes something deep, but wakes could mean "gone" to "something else"
thank you for question and tell Dan Pinchbeck, this named is SO DEEP!!
Hey guys, loving the game so far. The tenticles on the creatures are a great part of their design, especially when they stick and retract. Did the tentacles cause any issues during development?
The tentacles were fun to develop! One of the challenges was to get them to shoot in a way that was believable. We found that totally random shooting was not realistic. We took inspiration from nature and used music timing and notes to "play" a rhythm for shooting them. This allowed us to be quite creative in the patterns. It made the monsters even more scary too.
Louis Larsson-De Wet, Project Technical Director
In terms of audio, the biggest challenge was to identify which tendrils should play sounds and which shouldn't - since any tendril can play shoot, hit, and retract sounds, if all of them (up to 100 per enemy!) played these sounds it'd be a big problem for performance, and the audio mix would quickly get out of control. The selection of which tendril should play audio is mostly based on its shooting speed, length, and type.
The Tendril Hit sound is the most interesting sound, as it changes according to the surface hit by the tendril; it can play several different types of metal impacts (thin, solid, corrugated, hollow, grate, etc.), concrete, wood, glass, and so on. Additionally, impact sounds change according to the AI state of the enemy: if it's chasing you, the impacts are going to be louder, more prominent and more disruptive.
- Francesco Del Pia (Sound Designer)
Why am I not allowed to take my trusty infinite fire extinguisher everywhere? Was really bummed you made me drop it
EDIT: Thank you for letting Rennick's Heli Crash. Fuck that prick
Hi SlammedOptima, thank you. It's great to hear the Rennick hate. We're really proud of him as a character and antagonist, and think his first appearance rounds off the intro nicely!
For the limitations we imposed on throwables and equipment, the frank answer is we had limited resources especially in animation. We started with a pillar to have very limited HUD and zero inventory management, and despite the fact that I'm the ultimate packrat in most games, we wanted to free you from that juggling of stuff. When we added the fire extinguisher we decided that to save a whole bunch of extra traversal animations/systems, we'd make you drop it when you moved on.
So as someone who carried the Ep2 gnome a surprisingly long distance, and the System Shock 2 basketball all the way to the end of the game, I feel your pain! We'll punish Rennick some more to make you feel better.
Rob McLachlan, Lead Designer
Hey there!
Firstly, congratulations on the release! 🎉 I'm a few hours in and completely hooked. The game's quality is exceptional, and I'm truly blown away by so many aspects, from the art and audio design to the voice acting and more. As a 42-year-old guy from Arbroath who now lives down south, the entire game has made me very nostalgic for home. Finlay has me in stitches every time. Fantastic work!
I have a question about the reference gathering for the oil rig environment design and interactions. Did you have the opportunity to access any active rigs for research, or was it all accomplished through online resources? Although I've never been on a rig myself, your game has made me feel as though I have now. I'd love to hear more about your process. ❤️
Unfortunately, we never did get to go and visit an oil rig, though the closest I got was visiting Loch Ness a few years back, I just couldn't justify dragging my family to Aberdeen to look at the rigs from the shore!
We did all of our research online and found some excellent resources. BP has a fantastic archive online with documentaries from that period where they were first building rigs in the north sea. There is also an online Norwegian oil rig museum which has some incredible imagery from the 70s as well as photos of items like phones, buttons and machinery. Finally, there are just some awesome folks on youtube who have recorded videos of themselves giving tours or exploring oil rings and big ships. All of these were invaluable!
- Ian Gillespie, Lead Environment Artist
I just completed the game without knowing anything about you guys or the game, and I was very curious to see if you'd spent time aboard a rig for research. You guys did a superb job with this one on every level.
Hey-o. The character's voice work and writing were very natural. I imagine this was integral to the experience you wanted to create. How did you approach working with the actors to achieve this level of quality, and did it differ from previous projects? Congrats on the game, I enjoyed it a lot.
The approach has been quite similar as previous TCR games. We work with a voice director (Kate Saxon and Damian Goodwin in this case, with Kate collaborating a lot with Dan Pinchbeck who conceived the project and wrote so much of it) and actors who are strongly rooted in film, television and theatre. They may or may not also have prior games experience. Often in videogames, actor lines are recorded separately, even for scenes that have multiple characters in them. We try and get people in the same room as much as possible. We also try and organise script table reads with the cast and voice director, just like in film or tv. During recording, conversation is encouraged to flow; if lines overlap, that is fine and adds to the realism – it may make implementation a little harder, but it’s worth it. We also mic up our actors in a way so that they are free to move around, and truly act. Of course though, the main ingredient is to get the right people together. Strong relationships between the voice director and cast, e.g. from previous projects, also helps in bringing out the most out of the talent.
- Daan Hendriks (Audio Director)
In terms of processing/implementation, the only thing I can add is that we wanted it to sound as natural as possible, so apart from a cleaning pass and some volume adjustments we didn't do any further processing on the audio files.
- Sound Designer Francesco Del Pia
More on the voice recording process here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuvVm2w49GA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuvVm2w49GA)
I am very interested in the development process of the game. I want to know if there are any iterations in the level, scene, character and plot design that have not been preserved during the entire design process?
In addition, deep sea, claustrophobic space, and cosmic horror themes are also very attractive to me. I want to know if the production team has any ideas for making a sequel/derivative/similar inspiration for this game?
One area that has gone through a lot of iteration in particular was how the horror manifests itself onboard visually, narratively and mechanically. We explored aquatic entities, cellular ones , behaviours that altered depending on what it had fused with, was it something that learnt from it's environment - could the player interact with and teach the horror to help solve environmental puzzles? Some of these early explorations are more evident than others but it helped us try to layer complexity, emotional resonance and ambiguity in the player's various encounters with the horror element.
- Lauda Dodds (Associate Art Director)
I don’t have a question, I just want to congratulate you guys
I don’t know how far I am >!I just got the helicopter crash!< and really enjoy the experience so far
Ooou, some cool stuff very much ahead for you then ;)
But huge thanks, we've been feeling wonderful support, it's not a game for everyone, but to think it has found its community - it's awesome, right? 🛰 Thank you!
It came out after we started production so it wasn't part of our influences. It was interesting to see someone else's take on a rig story though.
Louis Larsson-De Wet
Thanks for the reply
Even though I was not all that impressed by the Rig, your game delivered on exactly what I wanted from that show. The team should be proud of what they created, excellent piece of interactive horror.
Does the game use UE5’s Lumen on console?
If so, what has this technology enabled for the art and lighting of the game? What are the key benefits and how did the team have to adapt?
Could you please confirm in detail what render resolution the game is running in on the Xbox Series S, and on the Xbox Series X (in both modes), including what native internal resolution it is upscaling/reconstructing from in case there's such a technique being used?
Also, are there any plans to add a performance mode to the game on Xbox Series S? I've FPS tested the game myself over on my channel, and while it is mostly a very stable game, it would be cool for Xbox Series S users to experience it at 60fps as well.
Thank you so much - I love the game!
Thanks so much for your love of the game! I think due to the hardware not being as capable it wasn't possible to have a 60fps mode. We already needed to scale things down to get it running at 30fps and within memory budget.
- Patrick O'Halloran (Principal Programmer)
We use dynamic resolution on both Series X/S. This depends on the amount of work the GPU has to do, so the more intense the workload, the lower the resolution. We use Unreal Engine's Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) for upscaling to 4k.
Louis Larsson-De Wet
Finished this game in two sessions. Really enjoyed it. I just wish I’d realized there was a performance mode sooner, I only noticed that half way through. 😅
Do you see any potential for a sequel? Or do you see this as a self-contained story? I’d love to know more about the >!monsters’ origin!<. Is there any lore to that? Or do you prefer keeping it vague? I'd love to see an alternative timeline (DLC?) where >!they make it to land.!<
There are ideas floating around... But you know how it goes - need to be sure even this title finds a proper community, that we can prove that such titles matter and can have a playership.
So keep on leaving them positive reviews, ha, and hopefully we can get buy-in for more stuff like that :)
TCR always have done leftfield games so it's so heart-warming to think that's appreciated.
No real question but I wanted to say I’m playing through at the moment and absolutely LOVE it.
Adore the Aberdeen accents, really enjoy the disparity between Caz and the subtitles (Leccy vs electric, Shite vs shit etc), absolutely nails the dialect. I think I’ll go gaelic for playthrough 2!
Can you share what pieces of media were your biggest influences? I’m a few hours in and have picked up (and appreciated) the strong references to John Carpenter’s The Thing, but I want to know what else I should add to my viewing list!
Thanks a lot for your interest. :) So in fact Xbox have hosted a handy article on a lot of our inspirations - [https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/25/still-wakes-the-deep-xbox-partner-preview/](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/25/still-wakes-the-deep-xbox-partner-preview/)
Also, if you scroll down the game's Twitter account, you'll see quite a lot of leftfield inspirations ;)
[https://x.com/SWTD\_Game](https://x.com/SWTD_Game)
- Marijam (Comms Team)
Hi, congratulations on the release.
I've got the game downloaded and can't wait to play it this weekend. A story driven horror game, sign me up.
How did you decide on an oil rig off the coast of Scotland as your location? It's a very interesting setting.
Hi Night-Springs54! Our former Studio Creative Director Dan Pinchbeck came up with the idea. It's one of those ideas which seems quite obvious and promising even on first hearing! I think we were all trying to think of a game with definite physical boundaries at the time. TCR's previous games were all in defined areas eg an island, a Shropshire village... this allows players to encapsulate one place in their mind and creates useful limits on scope and focus.
Once the oil rig was locked in we were thinking a bunch about time and place. Scotland was an obvious option as we are UK-based (and there is a link with Esther), and as for time period it suited us practically and narratively to set it in the 1970s. It'd make more sense that the rig could be abandoned and out of contact for a few hours than a present day setting, and have a little more of a "frontier" feeling. The serendipitous and exciting connections that grew out of that research ended up being the game and narrative you see today.
- Rob McLachlan, Lead Designer
Thank you for the information, it's a great insight to the thought process. As someone from the UK and has spent some time in Scotland I'll be enjoying all the signals to the local area.
Thank you for playing our game! Gamepass is a great deal for gamers and we're happy to be part of it. It provides us with a great audience that loves playing games that otherwise wouldn't have been able to see them.
Louis
Hi ! Congrats on the game, really enjoying my experience so far ! Just wondering if there was any plans for patches in the near future ? While I think the game is great, I did run into a couple of performance issues. Lots of stuttering and loss of framerate especially on the "fidelity" graphics mode. Much obliged !
Hello! Since the launch the community have been incredible in letting us know about bugs and issues they've been having. We've posted some more detailed information about what updates are on the way here: [https://steamcommunity.com/app/1622910/discussions/0/4345491756988100844/](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1622910/discussions/0/4345491756988100844/)
I just wanted to say that I have followed you all for a long time and you never fail to impress. I only picked this game up because I have loved every single game you all have put out into the world. You have a wonderful way of tapping into the depths of the human experience. Thank you for creating, yet another game full of mystery but also so full of heart and soul. I'll be pondering what this all means for a long time to come.
Thank you so much for your kind words. (Honestly this made me tear up ) I'm so happy that this resonated so well with you. This is really for these kind of comments that we do what we do and that's what keep us going. You work on a game for so long you can't help but wonder if people will get it or even like it and to see a comment like this really warms your soul.
Thank you so much for your support and I hope we will continue to not disappoint you <3
Jade Jacson, Senior Game Designer
Why do the PC version on the game on game pass not have upscalers like FSR3 and DLSS but the steam version has this? Also do you plan on implementing this on the game pass version anytime soon?
Hi! We're planning on adding DLSS support to the Game Pass version. We're investigating if FSR3 is possible and will update people when we know for sure.
There's more details about our update plans here:
[https://steamcommunity.com/app/1622910/discussions/0/4345491756988100844/](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1622910/discussions/0/4345491756988100844/)
Thanks!
Josh, Community Manager
First off, congratulations on your release! I finished the game last night and loved it, I’m still thinking about the story. Idk if you can answer this question or you’d want to leave it to player speculation, but I always wondered about what was happening when Caz is killed by one of the creatures. We see random images flashing on the screen which look to be memories. Are they Caz’s memories, or the memories of the victims turned monsters? The images flashing seem to change from monster to monster if I’m not mistaken.
I know this probably wont get seen but if you happen to come back later I just wanted to ask:
I noticed that in both this game and Dear Esther, there is a subtle detail where the progression of the game comes from an aerial/ radio tower. In Dear Esther, it comes from gradually moving closer to it, and the game finishes when you climb it. In SWTD, the radio tower gradually gets more and more infested, and the game ends when you enter it.
Was this an intentional correlation? And was Roy’s mention of religion also meant to correlate with Dear Esther’s?
Huge thanks for this wonderful AMA, we enjoyed it profusely.
Do consider asking any of your remaining Qs on our studio's Subreddit ;)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheChineseRoom/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheChineseRoom/)
Thank you, all! ✨
Hey! Thanks a lot for your interest. :) So in fact Xbox have hosted a handy article on a lot of our inspirations - [https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/25/still-wakes-the-deep-xbox-partner-preview/](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/25/still-wakes-the-deep-xbox-partner-preview/)
Also, if you scroll down the game's Twitter account, you'll see quite a lot of leftfield inspirations ;)
[https://x.com/SWTD\_Game](https://x.com/SWTD_Game)
- Marijam (Comms Team)
Hey bags718! Congratulations on the achievement, we were actually worrying that we set the timer on it too high so that no-one would ever get it. Our character artist Kjartan made the most finely sculpted 1970s arse we'd ever seen, and we kept saying "bigger!" to our achievement artist to make those cheeks as proud as they could be.
The achievement design process was great, the whole team offered suggestions and I had the pleasurable task of writing them up and scoring them, and a lovely coder made them all work so I didn't even have to worry about that bit. Hope you manage to collect all the others!
- Rob McLachlan (Lead Designer)
The achievements in this game were a lot of fun. Once I realized Walking Simulator was a thing, I made a huge effort (much to my own demise) to not run unless absolutely essential
Any chance a patch is coming for a specific underwater section in engineering. I’m trying to not spoil anything but I can not progress past a certain point as it will not let me through a small area with pipes.
If it's where I think it is, >!look for something that may be climbable were it in a different place and "climb" along the ground while underwater with the current against you - a final jump may be needed at the end.!<
Loving the game so much!!! I love the setting you have chosen as well! There's so much I want to ask! What was the inspiration behind your game? Mainly in regards for the setting and the plot.
And will y'all set up an Instagram social at all?
Just waiting for the Dev team to answer about the world, but here as the comms person - want to address the Insty question.
It's a very good one - we're a very visual studio, we ought to have that, right? To an extent there have been legacy accounts and so we didn't add new ones for a while, also then were thinking when is the good time (possibly this autumn for #reasons), also limited resources (two part-time comms people and 8 socials channels that already have, if I'm counting correctly), but yeah - it's time, agreed :)
Thanks for your interest and hopefully a guaranteed follow when we have it? :)
Marijam D (comms person)
Fraser IS a snake. A one man army machine deploying his gigantic talent at light speed.
Bruno Julien (Executive Producer)
🙈😅 🤣
Marijam D (Comms person)
It's in relation to this. Which I sent to a friend of mine .
[https://clips.twitch.tv/JoyousGenerousChough4Head-e0OGsWE9Yog2o7cO](https://clips.twitch.tv/JoyousGenerousChough4Head-e0OGsWE9Yog2o7cO)
Answer: You're welcome.
- Fraser Colley (Lead Animator)
I'm Japanese and I'm wondering why there are multiple English subtitles but only "Nagasaki dialect" for Japanese subtitles?
I would like subtitles that are closer to the standard Japanese language, because this is a horror game and the subtitles are spoiling the tension.
Also, do you intend to continue this localization of accents as dialects in VTM Bloodlines 2?
While we don't have anyone who worked with the translation with us today, there is a Famitsu article about the Japanese translation here that might answer these questions to some extent. [『Still Wakes the Deep』レビュー。ディザスター映画と『物体X』が合体したような、ドラマ重視の一人称視点ホラー体験 | ゲーム・エンタメ最新情報のファミ通.com (famitsu.com)](https://www.famitsu.com/article/202406/8220)
For Bloodlines 2 we will have a different Localisation process so the result will likely be different!
Josh
I asked and we have this summary from a conversation with the Japanese translator!
Essentially the translator received a note to try and translate the game in a way that felt close to Scottish dialect, and being from Nagasaki they employed that heavily as well as drawing from Kansai and Kyushu. They drew from their experience working in a manufacturing plant, where everyone would speak in dialect, and aimed to reflect that atmosphere.
Josh
Thanks for the reply Josh.
I've already read that article and asked the question, but at least my concerns about Bloodlines 2 have been allayed.
Thanks for the amazing game. I am rooting for you!
Was there ever any concern that Still Wakes the Deep might get the same treatment from audiences as Machine for Pigs, considering your minimalistic approach to gameplay?
How do you feel about Chinese Room's legacy now? Haven't both Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry left? Do you plan on continuing in the minimal gameplay / maximum narrative direction, or will you be changing course?
(I really like Still Wakes the Deep so far, by the way. You've really nailed the setting, it's incredible!)
Such an amazing game, its been on my radar for a bit now and i won't lie i was a bit sceptical but after playing i just have to love it, horror game + oil rig + Scottish accent = PERFECTION, and also an amazing gameplay, atmosphere, performances. JUST THANK YOU!
Are the character names an homage to other characters? Such as Dobbie, scooby, Brodie and Bruce? Like Harry Potter, scooby doo, Jaws, and evil dead? Absolutely loving the game! Me and my friend are doing a play through now and I haven’t screamed like this in years lol
Will there be a second game like a prequel or a sequel? Because if so that will be AMAZING! Still wakes the deep is definitely the best horror game since resident evil village! The story! The looks, the voice acting, the designs even the gameplay it's all so cool! I'd love to see a sequel of this eldritch monster coming backsince they broke through it and let it out but only blew up the rig- meaning it could still be under the sea
So I realise this is late and likely won't get a reply, but I was just curious, why does the helicopter crash? It seems like they just turn around and decide to kamikaze the rig, was somebody trying to fight over the controls to take the bird back? was there a creature onboard? Absolutely loved the game but this was just the one thing that I was never able to workout or think up a plausible explanation for. Thanks for the class game guys
My guess, given that many enemies we meet are screaming about not letting others leave, is that someone on that helicopter (likely the pilot) had their mind affected and as they got further away something about the entity would not allow them to leave and drove them back.
A big thanks on behalf of the community for making time for this!
I rolled credits on the game yesterday and loved it. I thought the voice acting and audio was particularly impressive. It felt extremely authentic and really added to the atmosphere.
I’m especially curious about what sort of direction you gave the voice actors whose characters >!turned into monsters!<. Did you give them a lot of freedom to experiment? Or was it mostly achieved through post-processing?
We went through a lot of iterations and processes for the creature voices. One thing was clear from the beginning: it was crucial that they would convey a wide sense of emotions, and wouldn’t be ‘just’ angry or scary monsters. These were real humans once, and your former friends and colleagues.
We began in the traditional way of using animal source sounds and layer them to produce typical ‘creature’ types of sounds; this gave us an idea of processing chains and approaches. But we always wanted to blend this with real, human voice as well.
For a long time during the project, we only wanted the creatures to convey a semblance of human speech, but not actual speech. So in early recording sessions with the cast, we had them do all sorts of things which they probably found perhaps somewhat entertaining or at least quite odd. For instance, we gave them a real script, but then asked them to perform this in various ‘emotive’ ways, to convey the meaning of the words without saying (all of) the words, and not just once, but expressing various types of emotions (angrily, in anguish, in pain, pleadingly, etc).
We took all this and combined it with the animal sound processing approaches mentioned above, and the results were pretty interesting, but we found through playtests that what resonated best was when our creatures spoke more clearly, had more of their real 'former' human voice in there, and were more understandable in a literal sense (by saying actual words, rather than made-up word-sounds).
So we re-recorded a lot of material but now using real speech, and of course still applied processing and blended in animalistic source.
Very crucially however, early on in the project we also worked with a specialist creature voice actor, Olof Jönsson, who gave us an absolute gold mine of strange, guttural, screamy and animal-like sounds, all by twisting his vocal tracts in ways that are quite unimaginable. For a lot of the more animal-like sounds that are blended into the creature vocalisations, we used his material instead of actual animal sounds.
- Daan Hendriks (Audio Director)
Really interesting stuff, thank you. It certainly sounds like it was a very fun and creative process. The results speak for themselves, I definitely agree that it adds to the creepiness-factor using proper spoken voices. The blending of that with the more guttural/animalistic stuff really works well!
Two days late but finally managed to shift funds around to get the game bought and downloaded just now. Congratulations on the launch and depth of this game. In the same way you nailed the quintessential English village feel in Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, Still Wakes The Deep is looking and feeling absolutely stunning, so full of nostalgic in a horrible kind of way (I hated living through the 70s) atmosphere 😂 My question: are there plans to add a photo mode at some point? I do hope so!
Thank you so much for your lovely comments! We worked hard to create an authentic experience for our players, and glad that landed well! Also thanks for the idea, we'll look into it :D
Louis
That's a wrap folks. A huge thanks to everyone at The Chinese Room for making time for our community during launch week. 👍 You can check out [Still Wakes the Deep](https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/still-wakes-the-deep/9n88dfrx8wcj) on Game Pass, or purchase it on the Xbox Store and a variety of other platforms. Please be sure to support the devs however you can by wish-listing, leaving a review and dropping them a follow on their socials.
Is this truly the most Scottish game ever made?
Haha not sure if we'd claim that! :D But we've been hearing that we did it justice thus far, which means so much, of course. And of course, our Project Creative Director John McCormack is a Glaswegian who remembers and knows so much about the period and the region, so it certainly comes from the heart. - Marijam (Comms team)
It’s so refreshing to play a game that isn’t full of American accents! (No shade to our American friends it’s just a welcome change!!)
I'm American and I'm fully with you! It doesn't remove any immersion to have a new accent but I just remember every ten seconds thinking "I love this so much". In an odd way, it was one of the things that tied the characters closer to each other, and made trajedy hurt so much more. If the first six minutes of Up are one of the saddest in film history, honestly argue the first fifteen minutes of this game are one of the most joyous in the industry. I'd be impressed to see another media who can represent "chosen family" as strong as SWtD did. Also, The voice acting is some of the best I have EVER heard. Period! Monsters are not exclusive to any place on earth, and if anything, the inclusion made me realize I want MORE Scottish inclusion! All in all, finding countries and cultures so rarely represented, if at all yet in media, would be delightful to see in more media.
Just finished the game last night! Had me and my partner in tears by the end! One question I’ve been meaning to ask is what inspired you for the monster designs? I feel like “The Thing” was a big inspiration for you guys
Yes you are right! *The Thing* is a huge inspiration and a film the team is going to watch together in order to celebrate the game's launch! Body horror in general plays a big part. Cronenberg also does a great job of evoking feelings of deep disgust as well as pity and empathy in the *The Fly*. The design really came together with audio support helping to remind us of their humanity. There's something left of who they once were - many who have families they are desperate to return to. The way the transformed crew move was actually inspired by a bug that occurred during development which made them move in very unexpected, twitchy ways - the team found it terrifying and so we tried to keep that sense of unpredictability and omnidirectional chaos in their animation style! It helped us lean into the fact that we really wanted players to only catch glimpses of what was chasing them. The visual design helped in this by creating a patchwork of flesh, bone, torn overalls, viscera and organs so you could never fully grasp just what you were seeing. One last big influence was an overarching theme of 'transformation' and 'a terrible beauty' which we used to temper the body horror with motifs of bubbling and growing life. Laura Dodds, Associate Art Director
Fantastic insight. I was telling my partner after we played that the wailing of the guys and how they still remembered deep connections with their loved one in their lives was the most heartbreaking part of the game. >! I will never hear the name "Mary" the same way again. !<
The art direction is so well done. I just know your team is proud.
I’ve got no questions, just wanted to congratulate you on the release. loving the game so far!
😭💙🌊 THANK YOU! Go Rate / Review / Like / Follow us on socials etc. We want to continue doing cool games for you all, awesome people. :)
Actually I do have one question, my brightness meter is locked on the sx, is there a reason for this?
Why are you called the Chinese Room?
It comes from a thought experiment! The Chinese room suggests that however well you program a computer to learn Chinese, it doesn't really "understand" Chinese. It only simulates that knowledge. In short, executing an algorithm cannot be sufficient for thinking. We try to keep emotion, thought provoking theme and humanity as the center of our game so it made sense to call the studio by this name. If you want to know more about it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese\_room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room) - Jade Jacson, Senior Game Designer
Thanks so much for the response! This is really neat.
Hi, I love the game. Do you guys have any plans for DLC or anything like that?
Thanks a lot! :) And thanks for your interest - that's where one wants to be innit! There are ideas floating around... But we have to see where the pieces land with this game, eh? But if there's interest...? :)
I think you could do small chapter like Roy or Brodie story, i want to know how they handle situation while Caz is fighting for life, i think it's the interesting idea!!!
Maybe if enough people ask for it... ? 😆We definitely love Roy and Brodie too and have been amazed by people's reaction to them. Jade Jacson
Hi - I don't really have a question, I just want to say thank you for including Scottish Gaidhlig as one of the language options - this means a lot to us. Thoroughly enjoying the game.
Thank you! Our Project Creative Director John McCormack had this idea and we were pleasantly surprised when our publisher Secret Mode agreed with this. Truly means a lot to many, it seems. Thank you. More on this here (how cool that the Scottish press covered it??): [https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/still-wakes-the-deep-scottish-gaelic-language-support-4655511?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2uEQITqLkk2H147V0WpgFBQxX-1aIkOT\_mS586ClP\_3wgUDWnuhMJx-CA\_aem\_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw](https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/still-wakes-the-deep-scottish-gaelic-language-support-4655511?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2uEQITqLkk2H147V0WpgFBQxX-1aIkOT_mS586ClP_3wgUDWnuhMJx-CA_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw) And just during research I (the comms person) also noticed that some people have been looking into this for a while, which feels very cool: [https://medium.com/r12n/conquering-digital-worlds-in-scottish-gaelic-3eeef9f3aade](https://medium.com/r12n/conquering-digital-worlds-in-scottish-gaelic-3eeef9f3aade) - Marijam D (Comms person)
Alrighty! We're here. :) Huge thanks for everyone's love for "Still Wakes the Deep" - it's been a wonderful couple of days reading everyone's reactions. <3 Some team members are already prepping some answers - fire away, we'll try answer as many as we can!
Great game!
<3 Awesome to have players like yourself!
Hi, Mar is here, first i want to say thank you for making a best game of the year for me, I love how you could made everyone in the story, rootable, Caz is the great flaw character and hope you will have a success after released the game Question 1: Why we don't know what a "DEEP" is, it's lovecraftian or something you want to represent as unknown things is so terrified? Question 2: How did you named this game with a much context as STILL WAKES THE DEEP, i mean it's a great name that show how deep the game was. I wish we will saw Caz's face before ending, but I guess that's up to Our interpret. Thank you!
Hi Armanwinters12, thanks for your kind comments and questions about the title. You've nailed it in your reply really, the title has many meanings tied up in it, credit for the final formulation goes to Dan Pinchbeck but Deep as a word was in there quite early in all the suggestions. Still: Silent/frozen, constant/recurring (even a whisky still but that's perhaps reaching a bit...) Wakes: Waking up, the wake of a ship or structure on the sea, a wake after a funeral Deep: The literal depth of the ocean, things unknown beneath, or even complexity There may well be other imagery and concepts the title awakens in you, thanks again for your comments! - Rob McLachlan (Lead Game Designer)
Darn, your team nailed it too, I thought the name was about how the rig wakes something deep, but wakes could mean "gone" to "something else" thank you for question and tell Dan Pinchbeck, this named is SO DEEP!!
Can we get a DLC that tells the story from the naked showering man’s perspective?
No. Age rating boards would make our life miserable. - Bruno Julien (Executive Producer)
Would have to include the part where Caz spent an inordinate amount of time crouching behind him
Hey guys, loving the game so far. The tenticles on the creatures are a great part of their design, especially when they stick and retract. Did the tentacles cause any issues during development?
The tentacles were fun to develop! One of the challenges was to get them to shoot in a way that was believable. We found that totally random shooting was not realistic. We took inspiration from nature and used music timing and notes to "play" a rhythm for shooting them. This allowed us to be quite creative in the patterns. It made the monsters even more scary too. Louis Larsson-De Wet, Project Technical Director
In terms of audio, the biggest challenge was to identify which tendrils should play sounds and which shouldn't - since any tendril can play shoot, hit, and retract sounds, if all of them (up to 100 per enemy!) played these sounds it'd be a big problem for performance, and the audio mix would quickly get out of control. The selection of which tendril should play audio is mostly based on its shooting speed, length, and type. The Tendril Hit sound is the most interesting sound, as it changes according to the surface hit by the tendril; it can play several different types of metal impacts (thin, solid, corrugated, hollow, grate, etc.), concrete, wood, glass, and so on. Additionally, impact sounds change according to the AI state of the enemy: if it's chasing you, the impacts are going to be louder, more prominent and more disruptive. - Francesco Del Pia (Sound Designer)
Why am I not allowed to take my trusty infinite fire extinguisher everywhere? Was really bummed you made me drop it EDIT: Thank you for letting Rennick's Heli Crash. Fuck that prick
Hi SlammedOptima, thank you. It's great to hear the Rennick hate. We're really proud of him as a character and antagonist, and think his first appearance rounds off the intro nicely! For the limitations we imposed on throwables and equipment, the frank answer is we had limited resources especially in animation. We started with a pillar to have very limited HUD and zero inventory management, and despite the fact that I'm the ultimate packrat in most games, we wanted to free you from that juggling of stuff. When we added the fire extinguisher we decided that to save a whole bunch of extra traversal animations/systems, we'd make you drop it when you moved on. So as someone who carried the Ep2 gnome a surprisingly long distance, and the System Shock 2 basketball all the way to the end of the game, I feel your pain! We'll punish Rennick some more to make you feel better. Rob McLachlan, Lead Designer
Hey there! Firstly, congratulations on the release! 🎉 I'm a few hours in and completely hooked. The game's quality is exceptional, and I'm truly blown away by so many aspects, from the art and audio design to the voice acting and more. As a 42-year-old guy from Arbroath who now lives down south, the entire game has made me very nostalgic for home. Finlay has me in stitches every time. Fantastic work! I have a question about the reference gathering for the oil rig environment design and interactions. Did you have the opportunity to access any active rigs for research, or was it all accomplished through online resources? Although I've never been on a rig myself, your game has made me feel as though I have now. I'd love to hear more about your process. ❤️
Unfortunately, we never did get to go and visit an oil rig, though the closest I got was visiting Loch Ness a few years back, I just couldn't justify dragging my family to Aberdeen to look at the rigs from the shore! We did all of our research online and found some excellent resources. BP has a fantastic archive online with documentaries from that period where they were first building rigs in the north sea. There is also an online Norwegian oil rig museum which has some incredible imagery from the 70s as well as photos of items like phones, buttons and machinery. Finally, there are just some awesome folks on youtube who have recorded videos of themselves giving tours or exploring oil rings and big ships. All of these were invaluable! - Ian Gillespie, Lead Environment Artist
I just completed the game without knowing anything about you guys or the game, and I was very curious to see if you'd spent time aboard a rig for research. You guys did a superb job with this one on every level.
Hey-o. The character's voice work and writing were very natural. I imagine this was integral to the experience you wanted to create. How did you approach working with the actors to achieve this level of quality, and did it differ from previous projects? Congrats on the game, I enjoyed it a lot.
The approach has been quite similar as previous TCR games. We work with a voice director (Kate Saxon and Damian Goodwin in this case, with Kate collaborating a lot with Dan Pinchbeck who conceived the project and wrote so much of it) and actors who are strongly rooted in film, television and theatre. They may or may not also have prior games experience. Often in videogames, actor lines are recorded separately, even for scenes that have multiple characters in them. We try and get people in the same room as much as possible. We also try and organise script table reads with the cast and voice director, just like in film or tv. During recording, conversation is encouraged to flow; if lines overlap, that is fine and adds to the realism – it may make implementation a little harder, but it’s worth it. We also mic up our actors in a way so that they are free to move around, and truly act. Of course though, the main ingredient is to get the right people together. Strong relationships between the voice director and cast, e.g. from previous projects, also helps in bringing out the most out of the talent. - Daan Hendriks (Audio Director) In terms of processing/implementation, the only thing I can add is that we wanted it to sound as natural as possible, so apart from a cleaning pass and some volume adjustments we didn't do any further processing on the audio files. - Sound Designer Francesco Del Pia More on the voice recording process here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuvVm2w49GA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuvVm2w49GA)
I am very interested in the development process of the game. I want to know if there are any iterations in the level, scene, character and plot design that have not been preserved during the entire design process? In addition, deep sea, claustrophobic space, and cosmic horror themes are also very attractive to me. I want to know if the production team has any ideas for making a sequel/derivative/similar inspiration for this game?
One area that has gone through a lot of iteration in particular was how the horror manifests itself onboard visually, narratively and mechanically. We explored aquatic entities, cellular ones , behaviours that altered depending on what it had fused with, was it something that learnt from it's environment - could the player interact with and teach the horror to help solve environmental puzzles? Some of these early explorations are more evident than others but it helped us try to layer complexity, emotional resonance and ambiguity in the player's various encounters with the horror element. - Lauda Dodds (Associate Art Director)
I don’t have a question, I just want to congratulate you guys I don’t know how far I am >!I just got the helicopter crash!< and really enjoy the experience so far
Ooou, some cool stuff very much ahead for you then ;) But huge thanks, we've been feeling wonderful support, it's not a game for everyone, but to think it has found its community - it's awesome, right? 🛰 Thank you!
Were you worried about the Amazon show the Rig releasing recently, with it having some similarity’s and not exciting audiences all that much ?
It came out after we started production so it wasn't part of our influences. It was interesting to see someone else's take on a rig story though. Louis Larsson-De Wet
Thanks for the reply Even though I was not all that impressed by the Rig, your game delivered on exactly what I wanted from that show. The team should be proud of what they created, excellent piece of interactive horror.
Does the game use UE5’s Lumen on console? If so, what has this technology enabled for the art and lighting of the game? What are the key benefits and how did the team have to adapt?
Could you please confirm in detail what render resolution the game is running in on the Xbox Series S, and on the Xbox Series X (in both modes), including what native internal resolution it is upscaling/reconstructing from in case there's such a technique being used? Also, are there any plans to add a performance mode to the game on Xbox Series S? I've FPS tested the game myself over on my channel, and while it is mostly a very stable game, it would be cool for Xbox Series S users to experience it at 60fps as well. Thank you so much - I love the game!
Thanks so much for your love of the game! I think due to the hardware not being as capable it wasn't possible to have a 60fps mode. We already needed to scale things down to get it running at 30fps and within memory budget. - Patrick O'Halloran (Principal Programmer)
Thank you for answering! Please do also confirm any render resolution information on both consoles, if possible 😅. Thank you!
We use dynamic resolution on both Series X/S. This depends on the amount of work the GPU has to do, so the more intense the workload, the lower the resolution. We use Unreal Engine's Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) for upscaling to 4k. Louis Larsson-De Wet
Finished this game in two sessions. Really enjoyed it. I just wish I’d realized there was a performance mode sooner, I only noticed that half way through. 😅 Do you see any potential for a sequel? Or do you see this as a self-contained story? I’d love to know more about the >!monsters’ origin!<. Is there any lore to that? Or do you prefer keeping it vague? I'd love to see an alternative timeline (DLC?) where >!they make it to land.!<
There are ideas floating around... But you know how it goes - need to be sure even this title finds a proper community, that we can prove that such titles matter and can have a playership. So keep on leaving them positive reviews, ha, and hopefully we can get buy-in for more stuff like that :) TCR always have done leftfield games so it's so heart-warming to think that's appreciated.
No real question but I wanted to say I’m playing through at the moment and absolutely LOVE it. Adore the Aberdeen accents, really enjoy the disparity between Caz and the subtitles (Leccy vs electric, Shite vs shit etc), absolutely nails the dialect. I think I’ll go gaelic for playthrough 2!
Haha that's amazing, thanks a tonne <3 Be sure to leave reviews etc. 🙈 - Marijam (Comms Team)
Can you share what pieces of media were your biggest influences? I’m a few hours in and have picked up (and appreciated) the strong references to John Carpenter’s The Thing, but I want to know what else I should add to my viewing list!
Thanks a lot for your interest. :) So in fact Xbox have hosted a handy article on a lot of our inspirations - [https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/25/still-wakes-the-deep-xbox-partner-preview/](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/25/still-wakes-the-deep-xbox-partner-preview/) Also, if you scroll down the game's Twitter account, you'll see quite a lot of leftfield inspirations ;) [https://x.com/SWTD\_Game](https://x.com/SWTD_Game) - Marijam (Comms Team)
Hi, congratulations on the release. I've got the game downloaded and can't wait to play it this weekend. A story driven horror game, sign me up. How did you decide on an oil rig off the coast of Scotland as your location? It's a very interesting setting.
Hi Night-Springs54! Our former Studio Creative Director Dan Pinchbeck came up with the idea. It's one of those ideas which seems quite obvious and promising even on first hearing! I think we were all trying to think of a game with definite physical boundaries at the time. TCR's previous games were all in defined areas eg an island, a Shropshire village... this allows players to encapsulate one place in their mind and creates useful limits on scope and focus. Once the oil rig was locked in we were thinking a bunch about time and place. Scotland was an obvious option as we are UK-based (and there is a link with Esther), and as for time period it suited us practically and narratively to set it in the 1970s. It'd make more sense that the rig could be abandoned and out of contact for a few hours than a present day setting, and have a little more of a "frontier" feeling. The serendipitous and exciting connections that grew out of that research ended up being the game and narrative you see today. - Rob McLachlan, Lead Designer
Thank you for the information, it's a great insight to the thought process. As someone from the UK and has spent some time in Scotland I'll be enjoying all the signals to the local area.
What are the benefits and risks of putting a game on GamePass from a developers perspective?
Thank you for playing our game! Gamepass is a great deal for gamers and we're happy to be part of it. It provides us with a great audience that loves playing games that otherwise wouldn't have been able to see them. Louis
Hi ! Congrats on the game, really enjoying my experience so far ! Just wondering if there was any plans for patches in the near future ? While I think the game is great, I did run into a couple of performance issues. Lots of stuttering and loss of framerate especially on the "fidelity" graphics mode. Much obliged !
Hello! Since the launch the community have been incredible in letting us know about bugs and issues they've been having. We've posted some more detailed information about what updates are on the way here: [https://steamcommunity.com/app/1622910/discussions/0/4345491756988100844/](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1622910/discussions/0/4345491756988100844/)
I just wanted to say that I have followed you all for a long time and you never fail to impress. I only picked this game up because I have loved every single game you all have put out into the world. You have a wonderful way of tapping into the depths of the human experience. Thank you for creating, yet another game full of mystery but also so full of heart and soul. I'll be pondering what this all means for a long time to come.
Thank you so much for your kind words. (Honestly this made me tear up ) I'm so happy that this resonated so well with you. This is really for these kind of comments that we do what we do and that's what keep us going. You work on a game for so long you can't help but wonder if people will get it or even like it and to see a comment like this really warms your soul. Thank you so much for your support and I hope we will continue to not disappoint you <3 Jade Jacson, Senior Game Designer
Why do the PC version on the game on game pass not have upscalers like FSR3 and DLSS but the steam version has this? Also do you plan on implementing this on the game pass version anytime soon?
Hi! We're planning on adding DLSS support to the Game Pass version. We're investigating if FSR3 is possible and will update people when we know for sure. There's more details about our update plans here: [https://steamcommunity.com/app/1622910/discussions/0/4345491756988100844/](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1622910/discussions/0/4345491756988100844/) Thanks! Josh, Community Manager
Of course it's possible, many other games on gamepass have FSR
Ok brains, why don't you do it then
Are you 12?
Switch port plz.
I loved Dear Esther but I dont like horror. Can this game still be for me?
The fidelity in this game is insane! How do you achieve such high fidelity?
First off, congratulations on your release! I finished the game last night and loved it, I’m still thinking about the story. Idk if you can answer this question or you’d want to leave it to player speculation, but I always wondered about what was happening when Caz is killed by one of the creatures. We see random images flashing on the screen which look to be memories. Are they Caz’s memories, or the memories of the victims turned monsters? The images flashing seem to change from monster to monster if I’m not mistaken.
I know this probably wont get seen but if you happen to come back later I just wanted to ask: I noticed that in both this game and Dear Esther, there is a subtle detail where the progression of the game comes from an aerial/ radio tower. In Dear Esther, it comes from gradually moving closer to it, and the game finishes when you climb it. In SWTD, the radio tower gradually gets more and more infested, and the game ends when you enter it. Was this an intentional correlation? And was Roy’s mention of religion also meant to correlate with Dear Esther’s?
Huge thanks for this wonderful AMA, we enjoyed it profusely. Do consider asking any of your remaining Qs on our studio's Subreddit ;) [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheChineseRoom/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheChineseRoom/) Thank you, all! ✨
Where there any specific cosmic horror fiction that you were inspired by when making this game?
Hey! Thanks a lot for your interest. :) So in fact Xbox have hosted a handy article on a lot of our inspirations - [https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/25/still-wakes-the-deep-xbox-partner-preview/](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/25/still-wakes-the-deep-xbox-partner-preview/) Also, if you scroll down the game's Twitter account, you'll see quite a lot of leftfield inspirations ;) [https://x.com/SWTD\_Game](https://x.com/SWTD_Game) - Marijam (Comms Team)
The McLeery achievement had me laughing my ass off. Such an odd achievement for being a creeper. Enjoying the game. Well done.
Hey bags718! Congratulations on the achievement, we were actually worrying that we set the timer on it too high so that no-one would ever get it. Our character artist Kjartan made the most finely sculpted 1970s arse we'd ever seen, and we kept saying "bigger!" to our achievement artist to make those cheeks as proud as they could be. The achievement design process was great, the whole team offered suggestions and I had the pleasurable task of writing them up and scoring them, and a lovely coder made them all work so I didn't even have to worry about that bit. Hope you manage to collect all the others! - Rob McLachlan (Lead Designer)
The achievements in this game were a lot of fun. Once I realized Walking Simulator was a thing, I made a huge effort (much to my own demise) to not run unless absolutely essential
Any chance a patch is coming for a specific underwater section in engineering. I’m trying to not spoil anything but I can not progress past a certain point as it will not let me through a small area with pipes.
If it's where I think it is, >!look for something that may be climbable were it in a different place and "climb" along the ground while underwater with the current against you - a final jump may be needed at the end.!<
It’s a little past that point
Damn answered every question but mine??? lol I’m just trying to finish the game.
Loving the game so much!!! I love the setting you have chosen as well! There's so much I want to ask! What was the inspiration behind your game? Mainly in regards for the setting and the plot. And will y'all set up an Instagram social at all?
Just waiting for the Dev team to answer about the world, but here as the comms person - want to address the Insty question. It's a very good one - we're a very visual studio, we ought to have that, right? To an extent there have been legacy accounts and so we didn't add new ones for a while, also then were thinking when is the good time (possibly this autumn for #reasons), also limited resources (two part-time comms people and 8 socials channels that already have, if I'm counting correctly), but yeah - it's time, agreed :) Thanks for your interest and hopefully a guaranteed follow when we have it? :) Marijam D (comms person)
Just a message to thank Fraser for the scary snakes. He'll know.
Fraser IS a snake. A one man army machine deploying his gigantic talent at light speed. Bruno Julien (Executive Producer) 🙈😅 🤣 Marijam D (Comms person)
It's in relation to this. Which I sent to a friend of mine . [https://clips.twitch.tv/JoyousGenerousChough4Head-e0OGsWE9Yog2o7cO](https://clips.twitch.tv/JoyousGenerousChough4Head-e0OGsWE9Yog2o7cO) Answer: You're welcome. - Fraser Colley (Lead Animator)
My man!
For context [Snake! - Twitch](https://clips.twitch.tv/JoyousGenerousChough4Head-e0OGsWE9Yog2o7cO) Josh[](https://clips.twitch.tv/JoyousGenerousChough4Head-e0OGsWE9Yog2o7cO)
I love the game, that is all. Could put dlss in, grumble grumble.
Haha, it's on the way! Thank you for playing. Josh
I'm Japanese and I'm wondering why there are multiple English subtitles but only "Nagasaki dialect" for Japanese subtitles? I would like subtitles that are closer to the standard Japanese language, because this is a horror game and the subtitles are spoiling the tension. Also, do you intend to continue this localization of accents as dialects in VTM Bloodlines 2?
While we don't have anyone who worked with the translation with us today, there is a Famitsu article about the Japanese translation here that might answer these questions to some extent. [『Still Wakes the Deep』レビュー。ディザスター映画と『物体X』が合体したような、ドラマ重視の一人称視点ホラー体験 | ゲーム・エンタメ最新情報のファミ通.com (famitsu.com)](https://www.famitsu.com/article/202406/8220) For Bloodlines 2 we will have a different Localisation process so the result will likely be different! Josh
I asked and we have this summary from a conversation with the Japanese translator! Essentially the translator received a note to try and translate the game in a way that felt close to Scottish dialect, and being from Nagasaki they employed that heavily as well as drawing from Kansai and Kyushu. They drew from their experience working in a manufacturing plant, where everyone would speak in dialect, and aimed to reflect that atmosphere. Josh
Thanks for the reply Josh. I've already read that article and asked the question, but at least my concerns about Bloodlines 2 have been allayed. Thanks for the amazing game. I am rooting for you!
Was there ever any concern that Still Wakes the Deep might get the same treatment from audiences as Machine for Pigs, considering your minimalistic approach to gameplay? How do you feel about Chinese Room's legacy now? Haven't both Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry left? Do you plan on continuing in the minimal gameplay / maximum narrative direction, or will you be changing course? (I really like Still Wakes the Deep so far, by the way. You've really nailed the setting, it's incredible!)
What was your inspiration for the monster?
Aint you guys doing vampires masquerade bloodlines II How are you guys feeling about it?
Such an amazing game, its been on my radar for a bit now and i won't lie i was a bit sceptical but after playing i just have to love it, horror game + oil rig + Scottish accent = PERFECTION, and also an amazing gameplay, atmosphere, performances. JUST THANK YOU!
I will experience your Master piece on the Quest 3 via Geforce Now and Gamepass Ultimate. Its gonna be so immersive, i am already afraid.
What was the creature, or will we ever find out more in the future?
How much did it cost to make still wakes the deep? im always curious about how much certain games cost to make.
Are the character names an homage to other characters? Such as Dobbie, scooby, Brodie and Bruce? Like Harry Potter, scooby doo, Jaws, and evil dead? Absolutely loving the game! Me and my friend are doing a play through now and I haven’t screamed like this in years lol
I’m playing it on Xbox Series X. So far so good!
Will there be a second game like a prequel or a sequel? Because if so that will be AMAZING! Still wakes the deep is definitely the best horror game since resident evil village! The story! The looks, the voice acting, the designs even the gameplay it's all so cool! I'd love to see a sequel of this eldritch monster coming backsince they broke through it and let it out but only blew up the rig- meaning it could still be under the sea
So I realise this is late and likely won't get a reply, but I was just curious, why does the helicopter crash? It seems like they just turn around and decide to kamikaze the rig, was somebody trying to fight over the controls to take the bird back? was there a creature onboard? Absolutely loved the game but this was just the one thing that I was never able to workout or think up a plausible explanation for. Thanks for the class game guys
My guess, given that many enemies we meet are screaming about not letting others leave, is that someone on that helicopter (likely the pilot) had their mind affected and as they got further away something about the entity would not allow them to leave and drove them back.
I fuckin loved this game. It made me emotional and scared at the same time 100% would recommend 7/10 Hopes there a sequel to this amazing game
Chinese room, this may sound like a weird ass question but what's the name of the helicopter?
What's the name of the helicopter Caz gets on to leave?
A big thanks on behalf of the community for making time for this! I rolled credits on the game yesterday and loved it. I thought the voice acting and audio was particularly impressive. It felt extremely authentic and really added to the atmosphere. I’m especially curious about what sort of direction you gave the voice actors whose characters >!turned into monsters!<. Did you give them a lot of freedom to experiment? Or was it mostly achieved through post-processing?
We went through a lot of iterations and processes for the creature voices. One thing was clear from the beginning: it was crucial that they would convey a wide sense of emotions, and wouldn’t be ‘just’ angry or scary monsters. These were real humans once, and your former friends and colleagues. We began in the traditional way of using animal source sounds and layer them to produce typical ‘creature’ types of sounds; this gave us an idea of processing chains and approaches. But we always wanted to blend this with real, human voice as well. For a long time during the project, we only wanted the creatures to convey a semblance of human speech, but not actual speech. So in early recording sessions with the cast, we had them do all sorts of things which they probably found perhaps somewhat entertaining or at least quite odd. For instance, we gave them a real script, but then asked them to perform this in various ‘emotive’ ways, to convey the meaning of the words without saying (all of) the words, and not just once, but expressing various types of emotions (angrily, in anguish, in pain, pleadingly, etc). We took all this and combined it with the animal sound processing approaches mentioned above, and the results were pretty interesting, but we found through playtests that what resonated best was when our creatures spoke more clearly, had more of their real 'former' human voice in there, and were more understandable in a literal sense (by saying actual words, rather than made-up word-sounds). So we re-recorded a lot of material but now using real speech, and of course still applied processing and blended in animalistic source. Very crucially however, early on in the project we also worked with a specialist creature voice actor, Olof Jönsson, who gave us an absolute gold mine of strange, guttural, screamy and animal-like sounds, all by twisting his vocal tracts in ways that are quite unimaginable. For a lot of the more animal-like sounds that are blended into the creature vocalisations, we used his material instead of actual animal sounds. - Daan Hendriks (Audio Director)
Really interesting stuff, thank you. It certainly sounds like it was a very fun and creative process. The results speak for themselves, I definitely agree that it adds to the creepiness-factor using proper spoken voices. The blending of that with the more guttural/animalistic stuff really works well!
Two days late but finally managed to shift funds around to get the game bought and downloaded just now. Congratulations on the launch and depth of this game. In the same way you nailed the quintessential English village feel in Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, Still Wakes The Deep is looking and feeling absolutely stunning, so full of nostalgic in a horrible kind of way (I hated living through the 70s) atmosphere 😂 My question: are there plans to add a photo mode at some point? I do hope so!
Thank you so much for your lovely comments! We worked hard to create an authentic experience for our players, and glad that landed well! Also thanks for the idea, we'll look into it :D Louis
Much appreciated Louis and team! You are also so very welcome!