SummaryStill Wakes the Deep: Siren’s Relaxation arrives as we speak for Xbox Sequence X|S and Xbox on PC.The DLC enlargement is about 11 years after the unique recreation, with a brand new major character.Study in regards to the new inspirations behind this haunting new story.
Again in 2023, we shared a few of the inspirations behind our narrative horror Nonetheless Wakes the Deep, which impressed its themes and construction, each in its grounded ’70s setting and its extra fantastical horror components. We took inspiration from all kinds of sources, from traditional horror movies like The Factor and Annihilation to extra uncommon sources like Kes and Rosemary’s Child.
For our new story enlargement, Siren’s Relaxation, we wished to discover the Beira D oil rig in an entire new setting, which comes with its personal set of inspirations. Set in 1986, 11 years after the occasions of the unique recreation, you’ll play as saturation diver Mhairi, who units off on a journey beneath the North Sea to find what occurred on the Beira D. The ocean is a wealthy vein for exploring all types of tales, and these are just some issues that helped us craft this new story:
Thalassophobia
The concern of deep water is the origin of the complete psychological palette of Siren’s Relaxation. And for any gamers who haven’t felt this… we hope that Siren’s Relaxation will give them an opportunity to get a style of this phobia.
We trawled by way of a whole lot of articles of individuals experiencing this situation, individuals creating artwork about it, portraying it in a wide range of thrilling and sensual methods. One factor that struck us: many thalassophobic pictures juxtapose a human with some yawning abyss or some looming kind. The sensation you will have isn’t simply that it is a scary setting – reasonably, you’re feeling a way of enveloping dread for the particular person. Whoever that particular person is in that {photograph}, regardless of how nonchalant they seem… you’re feeling that they’re in approach over their heads (actually). They’re dealing with their doom. That sense of overconfidence in opposition to the unknowable depths is one thing we wished to seize within the recreation.
Even simply a picture like this we discovered on Reddit of an oceanic abyss will get the artistic juices flowing. Additionally, do you know {that a} thick mysterious cloud known as a brine pool can kind within the backside of the ocean that creates these unusual pictures? We wished to carry that stress, between magnificence and dread, on the coronary heart of each visible design alternative.
‘Final Breath’ (2018) and Saturation Diving
Saturation diving – named for the method used to increase how lengthy a diver can stay underwater – is a rare career. Harmful, meticulous, weirdly poetic – the whole lot deserving artwork to be made about it. It’s as harmful as an astronaut happening a spacewalk… however far darker and much much less well-known. You might be beneath super stress, actually, that messes along with your psychological state. You see issues. You hear issues. And all you might be is a tiny flickering flame amid the everdark. This stress, loneliness, and thrill are all portrayed superbly within the documentary ‘Final Breath’.
And for a extra day-to-day rationalization, simply try this Reddit AMA that was carried out a number of years in the past. Understanding what it means to dwell and work beneath such excessive circumstances helped floor our narrative in actual human stakes, even because the story veers into the surreal.
‘Blue Planet II –The Deep’
This episode of ‘Blue Planet II’ served as a strong entry level for us into the thriller and otherworldliness of the ocean’s most unreachable locations. Nature’s personal stage design and artwork design is off the charts! The unusual colors, mysterious beings. Our great Earth with its unimaginable underwater geographies offered us with a visible vocabulary for portraying the underside of the ocean not as some unusual spectacle, however with this all-consuming silent awe…
Dante’s ‘Inferno’
As clear a metaphor because it will get, proper? Dante’s descent by way of Hell, in gripping 14th Century poetic language, of accelerating delusion as one strikes additional into tender darkness – influenced how we approached the construction of Siren’s Relaxation.
“Love, which shortly arrests the light coronary heart,Seized him with my lovely formThat was taken from me, in a way which nonetheless grieves me.”
‘The Descent’ (2005)
This movie is 20 years previous and nonetheless stands up extremely nicely. It’s a Dante’s ‘Inferno’ story introduced as much as the modern-day. Undoubtedly not for the faint-hearted, for positive! Its traditional construction and masterful rhythm of constructing tense progress in unfamiliar, claustrophobic bodily areas is a big inspiration.
Submerged corridors, the pitch-black crevices of the story’s setting, technical, subtle characters whose psyches are run ragged, the combination of terror and hope and dread – it’s all there.
‘The Lighthouse’ (2019)
A latest darkish masterclass in isolation, craving, and the thoughts tips that these emotions can conjure up. The movie portrays two males (performed by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe) unravelling beneath the load of routine, myths, and their very own unusual firm. These parallel the emotional present working beneath Siren’s Relaxation – a deep, nearly delirious human longing – for connection, for redemption, for closure…
A central relationship between two characters who’re equally remoted, equally alone with their ideas and expectations – that caught with us. The surreal juxtaposition between the uncooked, unforgiving surroundings, the arcane chores wanted for survival, and the distantly heat conjuring of misplaced reminiscences… we actually hoped to seize that.
The Unexplained Ocean Sound, “Julia”
Generally even only a sonic phenomena can function an inspiration. A low-frequency sound, recorded by NOAA on March 1st 1999 and dubbed “Julia”, stays unexplained. The sound was loud sufficient to be detected throughout the Pacific Ocean and lasted for about two minutes and 43 seconds. An absolute treasure trove of unusual explanations exists, spanning from large sea creatures to aliens, naturally.
Julia’s inclusion in our early discussions round Siren’s Relaxation served as an emblem of the unknown – the uncanny concept that one thing could be on the market, large or silent, past our comprehension…
Màiri Mhòr nan Òran
The Hebridean poet Màiri Mhòr nan Òran shares a reputation with our protagonist, and her work includes a lot of the emotional tone of Siren’s Relaxation. Her verses, rooted in exile, land, and longing, communicate to the cultural and private ruptures on the coronary heart of this new story. They anchor the narrative in a Scottish id that feels each deeply native and profoundly mythic – a legacy we really feel extremely privileged to painting.
The Nonetheless Wakes the Deep: Siren’s Relaxation DLC enlargement arrives as we speak for Xbox Sequence X|S and Xbox on PC.
