‘Still Wakes the Deep’: This Horror Game’s Entity is a Masterclass in Body and Cosmic Horror [Monster Mania]
This article contains spoilers for Still Wakes the Deep.
Monster Mania is a monthly column celebrating the unique and varied monster designs in horror gaming.
Regarding body and cosmic horror influences, no piece of media is more prolific than John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece, The Thing. Between Carpenter’s multifaceted craftsmanship and special effects wizard Rob Bottin’s grotesquely creative mind, The Thing would leave an indomitable mark on the next 50 years of horror. From a monster design standpoint, what made The Thing remarkable was the creature’s knack for treating the human body like meaty playdough. While assimilating itself with its victim, the creature would contort, mesh, and tear flesh while attempting to replicate its victim’s appearance. Should the monster’s transformation be interrupted, it would often retain a distorted semblance of its victim’s original form to horrifying effects.
As with anything, creatives across all disciplines have attempted to replicate the magic of Carpenter’s film, but sadly, many took the wrong lessons from it. Much in the way that adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s work often result in “It’s Lovecraft because there are tentacles,” body and cosmic horror have been misinterpreted to no end over the decades. While emphasizing the horrifying exterior of characters and monsters alike, the best examples of body and cosmic horror examine the inner workings of characters who we come to care for, emphasizing the inherent horror of it all.
Fortunately, contemporary creatives such as developer The Chinese Room understand what makes these subgenres timelessly terrifying and prove it with Still Wakes the Deep.
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The player boards the oil rig, the Beira D, in December of 1975 in the rugged work boots of electrician Cameron “Caz” McLeary. Caz isn’t just here for the pay, as he’s running from a rash act he committed on the mainland, an act that could have disastrous repercussions for the life he has built with his wife, Suze, and their children. Naturally, just as Caz is settling in, disaster strikes the Beira D, as the rig’s drill awakens an entity beneath the surface that invades the rig and begins to change those on board.
The cosmic and body horrors of Still Wakes the Deep are threefold: Tendrils, the changed, and the consumed. Technically, the horrors are fourfold when you consider the reality of the steel behemoth that is the Beira D crashing down around the player’s ears, but I digress.
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The entity’s tendrils are just that, fleshy tentacles and masses that have risen from the ocean floor, wrapping themselves around the rig’s drill and support beams and quickly spreading. These pulsating organic limbs spread, much like cancer, throughout every nook and cranny of the Beira D, taking ownership of its halls and corridors like the tinsel holiday decorations that hang from its leaky ceilings. These fleshy veins have a bioluminescent quality as they illuminate the dreich corridors with a phantasmagoric glow, reminding the player of their alien origins. The tendril’s purpose is further to deteriorate the integrity of the already worn-down rig while attempting to change those who come into direct contact with it.
The changed are the unfortunate souls who fell into the aquatic horror grasps of tendrils. Still Wakes the Deep goes to purposeful lengths to ensure the player becomes engrossed in oil rig life and its crew in the game’s opening hour, elevating the emotional core of the game’s body horror elements. When a crew member is changed, they often resemble a massive flesh sack with tendrils sprouting from their body to help their new cumbersome bodies maneuver the station with horrifying speed. Now, for as grotesque as these abominations of meat have become, the absolute horror is remembering who they once were.
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Throughout Caz’s journey, each change he encounters was once an identifiable crew member. While their body composition has drastically been altered, a piece of them always remains. Whether their upper body protrudes from their new bloated, fleshy body or face, a physical piece of their old life remains. And yet, it isn’t simply the monster’s design but also their sound design that The Chinese Room utilized to stop the player from forgetting the horrors stalking the corridors of the rig were once human.
The changed retain a semblance of their humanity, calling out and either chastising or pleading with Caz to reveal himself so they may end their hunt for him. Caz recognizes even the most disfigured of the changed, whether through their voice or something they’ve said, a nagging reminder of their relationship, however short or informal.
An essential quality of body and cosmic horror that’s most haunting is portraying monsters not as beasts but as tormented souls. Just enough of the humanity lingers behind that our hero could potentially give pause to finally slaying the beast, given their humanity is exploited purposefully by the entity. It’s a nasty nail in the coffin for a creature to utter one last shriek or chide at Caz before it erupts into flames or falls off the rig back into the ocean, but it stands as a reminder that even if you have been changed, your suffering may not indeed have ended.
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Finally, the tendrils have assimilated the consumed crew members but have not entirely changed. Think about the colonists of Hadley’s Hope in James Cameron’s Aliens who have been webbed to the wall, but instead of webs, it’s fleshy tentacles that have rooted them to walls and floors. They still live, but only to serve this cosmic entity as horrifying set dressing, if you will. While these interactions with the consumed are brief, they add to the suffocating and all-encompassing threat of Still Wakes The Deep’s entity.
As for the entity’s origin, The Chinese Room smartly abides once again by its sacred text, The Thing: No answer will be given to you. By never explaining the horrors that invaded the rig, the player is left to create their horrifying origins from what they have experienced. While some may lament a lack of answers, it exemplifies the best of cosmic and aquatic horror. Something unexplainable has presented itself, manipulating its victims both physically and mentally, using brute force, and exploiting the deficiencies of its victims to complete its primal objective: absolute assimilation.
Categorized:Editorials
