Heights, drowning, hypothermia, immolation, suffocation, being hunted, isolation, parasitic infection, body horror and a loud angry Scottish boss! This game certainly hits a lot of phobias.
One thing that I love about this game is that every NPC is named and they each have their own personalities, which only makes it more depressing watching them die
It reminded me very much of SOMA in that sense, every single crew member of Pathos II has a name and backstory. One of my favourite parts of that game was discovering how each person passed. Of course, by the time you meet them they’re all long dead. Unlike this game where they’re dropping like flies as the game progresses.
Yeah, everyone has their own personalities and their own personal story if you think about that. Like they actually do protagonist stuff separate from us. Like, for example Roper. Roper shows up once in the beginning. He’s supervising the rig on site, and the main character even notes that he’s surprised to see him down here before he goes on his way. He is clearly some sort of skilled technician or administrator. I get the vibe he’s the skilled actual day to day administrator and Rennick is just the paperwork admin and the overall face of the rig to the company. Now, you don’t find him until the last part of the game. I assumed he must of died immediately since he was at ground zero. But, you find him fused at a desk in the water control section. This alone tells us a couple of things. 1. He survived ground zero, at least for a bit. He must have been one of, if not the only person to have seen what happened directly. That already is crazy. He is like a Gordon Freeman of this universe. The fact that he isn’t hostile immediately when you see him and he isn’t fully ambulatory tells me he might have only been turned recently. 2. Why would he be in hydrologic control? I bet, and this is a head canon but he could have been doing exactly what we were. Either trying to stabilize the rig remotely, or even trying to flood the rig with Oil, like we end up doing. That one character that was only seen at the start could have had his own protagonist story. Arguably more fitting as a protagonist in a traditional story. He would have seen ground zero and been better as a traditional protagonist. But no, we’re just a person in this world. We never understand or see ground zero, and there are dozens of other characters like Davro, Brodie and Roper who had their own protagonist story. Its awesome and amazing writing.
@@Kazako83in the beginning, I really liked Scooby and it was really sad hearing him break down over the phone saying "He's hunting us..." and "He's gonna kill me, he's gonna kill me!" Until the line went dead. They did an amazing job with the simple characters and the voice acting was so phenomenal that it helped a ton. But no one is better than Roy, absolutely loved him and Caz together.
The voice acting is nuts, genuinely nuts. How does every single person put on such a believable character? Especially the moment with Brodie's death had me crying.
only thing i noticed was the dissonance between the player and the guy behind the door lol AAAAAAHHHH HELP ME GOD FUCK dude i cant hear you youve gotta speak up are you thirsty you need a drink?
My three reasons for loving this game; 1. Oil rig setting 2. Characters are Scots 3. Being a type 1 diabetic like Roy, I know what it feels like for Roy when his blood sugar levels were spiking
I'm type 1 too and because of insurance bullshit ended up in DKA and spent nearly a week in the hospital so I know it takes several days without insulin to be life threatening not just hours. I mean it makes you feel crappy and probably have to pee every 20 minutes but it's just silly to have him die that because of it that fast.
It was cool to see another diabetic in game and to see him go DKA was such a pity but glad he didn’t turn into a monster. Nearly died from DKA myself so I know damn right what the poor fella is going through.
@@Vicerion17 This could just be an oversight, but two potential things here: One, we do see constant signs that there's some kind of divine intervention at work. Caz keeps surviving things he shouldn't be able to. Roy being the only nonviolent death seems very intentional. But the other, more mundane thing is that elevated blood sugar significantly increases your risk of things like heart attack and stroke and I think also makes them more likely to be fatal. As you get older, the potential consequences of not managing your blood sugar get much worse.
It is so fitting that when Rennick who mainly got the crew into this situation because of his huge ego, when corrupted his head doesn't even fit in the room
spoilers!!! him having a huge head is so fitting. i love how the infection affects every character differently. rennick who has a huge ego n is an angry man = becomes a monster with a huge head and is the most aggressive monster (most if not all of the monsters talk about their lives and loved ones, rennick though is a hater) the guy you approach before or after entering leg a is scared and talks about his life, so like some other monsters he’s just stuck in the creature roper obviously tried to survive and/or hole out in the marine room, but i assume he was already infected then attacked by rennick after the heli crashed. so he’s not aggressive, and he’s also stuck in place, he was probably a good guy before dying and talks about keeping rennick away. the big spider guy i forgot the name of didn’t want to die and cries out for help, he doesn’t want to be alone and is afraid, so he snatches any survivors he sees for his comfort the guy in the laundry room is notably insane, you can see him slamming the laundry machine door closed over and over. the stress and infection were probably messing with his head, making him more weak willed than our main character caz, as he’d most likely gone insane even before being turned. possibly was turned from his own stress n lack of will?
@@Hotmomoclock spoilers squared yeah, you see Muir ( spider guy infected ) deceased, crushed by a pile of rubble, with his fleshy tendrils cradling Innes ( the guy who got abducted in the elevator ) even in death and infection, Muir still holds onto their close friendship, even in a twisted way, though you only see a dead Muir in the late stages of the game
This game was terrifying and heartbreaking. The realization at Finley’s last words: “This THING cannot reach the mainland,” and Caz’s thoughts of his family brought tears to my eyes as I walked the final feet knowing the sacrifices a true HERO would make. A masterpiece IMO, 10/10!
The only thing I disliked is that bitch robbed us from our hero title. Ofc the one female in the ship who did NOTHING has the altruistic idea of sacrificing the ship to "save the mainland". Very Jesus-savior-like if you ask me, and forced.
@daggersmctimbers6962 exactly, I'd been more realistic if HE wanted to kill it after taking Roy and realizing he was not going home anyway. Instead we get the only useless female in the ship call us "no balls"
That was probably the only bit of dialogue that wasn’t good. Eeeeeeeverything else was fucking phenomenal, but good lord, Caz is not the brightest. To be fair, he had likely sustained a concussion by then, and several more after that 💀😭
doubtful. The whole sacrificial self-destruction thing is a pretty common trope in this sort of horror, but realistically it's unlikely to ever work. For one, it came from under the sea and spread, rapidly, so even if the entire oil rig were to blow, it's still under the sea and has been released, awakened, whatever. (so it can just start spreading again under the ocean) For two, and the issue whenever this trope is used against a "biomass" type horror, you can't kill *_all_* of it with a simple explosion. From what we see it grows, and it grows insanely rapidly, generating what would be literal metric tons of biomass in a matter of hours. Where it's getting the energy/nutrients to create all of that mass is unclear and _could_ be favourably relevant (for instance maybe it could only grow as fast as it could because it could somehow absorb the compressed hydrocarbons from the oil or something, and now that the rig has blown up it's not getting all of those nutrients fed to it) but there isn't any explanation or evidence to suggest so. This, in essence, means that even if we assume it was lying dormant under the sea, it's lair/prison/cocoon got drilled into, it woke up, *_moved_* onto the oil rig, (leaving it's original safe hidey-hole) and then the oil rig exploded, then if even a single chunk of it's flesh survived the explosion and was thrown into the ocean it can regrow. And, the flesh of it that *_did_* die, would still have a large number of chunks that are at least vaguely intact, meaning people investigating the area can identify what happened. A nuclear blast can turn everything around it into molten dust but, while oil rig explosions may be incredibly dangerous, they don't completely erase everything and it's kinda easy to recognize "oh, uh, there should not be this many skulls connected to this one dead body... what the fuck happeneed to this thing, or these people". So it's likely still safe in whatever hole it started in, it almost certainly survived the blast, and anyone who does eventually come to investigate the site will immediately discover about as much about it as we know. (A : "it probably was from the oil drilling", B : "it grew rapidly", C : "it was violent", D : "everyone died", E : "it seems to horrifically mutate people") Really the only parts of it that they're unlikely to be able to sort-out are the psychological components of it, like people near to it hearing voices of their past or the infected still being "alive", just twisted and confused - likely unaware that they're even hunting people. The biological aspects however would be information that's all available from dead samples and context. These self-sacrifice & destruction plays against "biomass" type threats are very rarely capable of having the intended effect. (in a cruel irony the information even one lone survivor could provide to the world about the threat may outweigh destroying one affected location) If you have a species of squirrel in a forest, and then you set the forest on fire, you don't kill the entire species of squirel - you just force it to move to another area of the forest. What this most likely would do is just stunt it's spread, giving humanity a headstart in fighting it by killing it's first major biomass deposit and giving people a chance to analyze it. (alternatively, now it might be growing under the ocean where humanity neither knows it's there nor has the means to fight it. We don't even have the depths of the ocean mapped and going down there is in many ways more dangerous than going to space, if it can survive the ocean's depths it's hard to imagine a world where humanity outlives it without just trying to bum-rush for the moon or mars or something)
@ATypicalDayHere there is no significant evidence it's an "infection", as far as we see people only begin to change after being captured and mutated directly. Everyone at the rig would have been exposed within a matter of minutes to each other yet many people lasted hours dying due to natural causes and still showing no visible signs of infection whereas others were 5 story tall monsters from minute 1. Eitherway, my point is that blowing up the rig is unlikely to have actually killed it at all, it's still been released, all that blowing up the rig is likely to have done is put a spotlight on it and weaken it.
The voice acting sounded particularly great. Usually, scottish characters have the VA playing into and giving an extreme scottish accent. But the characters in this game sounded genuinely scottish
happens 4 times through the game, honestly i dont think the auditory hallucinations are from the monster, i think its just his brain losing its shit at the multiple concussions and stress hes under.
Its surprising that there are not many horror games explore the potentials of setting in Oil rigs as they are way more interesting/terrifying than some buildings like schools, hospitals etc
The voice acting, particularly in the optional phone calls you can listen to during a playthrough, is genuinely some of the best I've heard in years. That call with Innes when Miur transforms in particular sticks with me. Speaking of optional phone calls, there was one person who _potentially_ got off the rig unless I missed something. A crewmate named Davros somehow got on a lifeboat, though Caz tells him he's gonna have to come back up to find anyone else, and considering how everyone treated one another (besides Addair), I wouldn't be surprised if he went back up to help and got himself killed, but of the reachable bodies needed for the Body Count achievement, it doesnt seem like any of them were explicitly identified to be him. I could be wrong, though. I probably am wrong, but the idea that someone got away just makes me feel better.
Must be very uplifting for John Carpenter to have The Thing be such an inspiration for so many sci-fi and horror stories after if flopped and was critically panned on release.
While I don’t think he hates the movie, he’s balked at how it became a cult classic… since that doesn’t really help him. The Thing was such a box office bomb, and received such scathing hatred that it nearly killed his career and tanked his confidence for a good while.
@@KJ-ud9ufwrong timing in many ways. Lots of sci -fi and fantasy at the time was coming out and they were typically positive and optimistic at a time when people were struggling through recession and needed some optimistic films. The Thing was crushingly visceral and nihilistic, which there simply wasn't much of a market for at the time.
I actually really like that the game didn't explain what the thing was. Games like this are fond of a big reveal that it's some entity directly out of Lovecraft, and that often feels very shoehorned in to me. It's a nice change that we as the players are just as in the dark as the characters.
This game has probably the best, most genuine, realistic character reactions and dialogue of any game I've played. Caz doesn't just get told to do things and runs off doing them. He has actual reactions to why he isn't going to and tries to make smart legit decisions. I absolutely loved this game
@@IsaacFilikitonga-g7kI mean if you are literally seeing flesh monsters that are made out of your friends with half of their consciousness still intact, only repeating words that were on their last thoughts, you will say "Jesus Christ" a couple of times and yes I do love it
The real horror to me is at the start of the game Trots mentioned more oil rigs being set up in the North Sea. We don't know how big or wide spread the creature is, any other rig that is set up there could have the same thing happen to them and it may not be contained.
@@Honkious5824 More likely they will. What's left of the rig probably attracted serious British and very likely American attention because of the possibility of Soviet involvement in its destruction in their eyes. It is the 1970s after all, and the SAR and Military investigation teams and their sonar boats and ROVs are likely going to find a burning sunken mass of metal that looks like it was torn apart from the inside out before it exploded. It's entirely possible the British government quarantines the North Sea after realizing this.
So one theory i had is that this uses a living earth theory where basically the earth itself is a living organism the drill basically went to deep and pierced into the muscle and what we are seeing is the white bloodcells attacking the foreign thing that just harmed the organism.
I have a personal theory that the creature wasn't trying to grow and expand by creating biomass monsters, i think it was try to turn the rig into a body of sorts.
Or it just was a natural responce to the drill, that was perhaps hurting this creature. Perhaps it just tried to kill and absorb/ eat the "enemy" / pedator to defend it self. Maybe it is not even really sentient and just some sort of agressive, prehistoric and forgotten plant/ fungus. Maybe it is one of the first komplex lifeforms that has ben formed on earth billions of years ago. Maybe it is some kind of leviathan, or Chuthullu ( it has no real form) like creature.
@@denisedesireeannaneumann9804 To say it's a leviathan of some kind would imply it's intelligent at all, and I'd honestly deny that. The way it behaves is similar to that of some kind of disease. It's possible nobody was safe, caz was probably immuno compromised at some point, and that nobody here was going to make it. It's possible what Finlay did was the bravest and most responsible decision to have made in those final moments. It had gotten so fucked that she wasn't willing to let this thing break loose, to spread its influence. This thing is clearly not sentient, but that doesn't meat it doesn't have profound effects on the psyche. Even a plant can cause vivid hallucinations. The question is; was this thing rooting up into your brain and fucking with your right/left hemisphere with chemicals, merely as a response to stimuli? Or was it trying to control the host? It clearly wasn't trying to emulate on purpose, but it might've been a side effect of its destructive, viral nature. Like mercury or lead poisoning.
@@denisedesireeannaneumann9804 I thought the same at first, but in the beginning of the game we see one of those tendrils suddenly teleport and appear out of thin air right in front of caz, combine it with the fact that the growths seem to emit strange lights and patterns from themselves and are capable of mind control(hearing the noise of loved ones when near it and and possessing people) and bending gravity(we can see floating particles and rig's pieces specially at the end of the game) suggests that it's not a normal biological entity and has supernatural origins.
My theory is that It produces oil. They are some weird entities living underground for years, making large oil deposits around the place they reside in.
This game seems to have a pretty dim view of the oil industry. Rennick refusing to go off schedule even when the drill operators can clearly sense something is off is what causes them to hit the flesh creature and doom everyone aboard, and even taking into account they had no way to know there was a monster lurking beneath the seafloor, the company cheaping out on the lifeboats is still a horrific level of apathy towards human life. The flesh mass might not even be attacking the rig out of malice but rather because it was wounded by the drill and is retaliating out of fear, it’s purely Rennick and his bosses’ negligence and greed that lead to the disaster.
Deep water horizon seems to be a huge inspiration for this game. Overly greedy managers hoping for bonuses by cutting corners get tons of people killed. Really good movie, tragic accident in real life.
Utter terror, loosing crew members one by one, assimilation, the growth, you have to fix everything while the whole vessel is falling apart and of course the girlfriend troubles... You sure the main character is not named Isaac Clarke?
@@nikolakaravida9670I mean in dead space Issac had many weapons to fight back, here they didn’t have anything to fight back and I’m pretty sure in the same case Issac would struggle too.
11:32 As a Diabetic, I can confirm that It is worth risking your life to get some insulin while being hunted by horrid beyond comprehension, since that stuff is EXPENSIVE, and also mandatory for my continued survival.
@@callmeturg1590 Diabetics need insulin, which is what allows the body to regulate its blood sugar levels. Adding more sugar from jam would just make it worse.
The bit when Finlay was flicking the lighter in the background as Caz was talking to Brodie was genius. Hearing it, I knew exactly what was going to happen, even before Caz turned around and saw it.
At the end of the game, when you are in the room with Suze, there's a painting hanging on the wall that shows what the entity could be. It seems like an egg undersea with the entity inside of it.
Duuude that's a good catch. Good thing I took screenshots so I could go back and find it. It looks like an eyeball but the tendril things match the entity too closely to just be a coincidence.
Something else I noticed is that most of the 'monsters' were people who tended to have very aggressive personalities. People who tended to not let anger get the better of them seemed to last longer, and the more Angry/abrasive people were, the bigger the monster they became.
Brodie probably had the worst death out of anyone here. Slowly drowning in literal fucking oil sounds horrific. He didn't even get his last words out before the line cut
I’m Scottish. From Glasgow, to be exact. I’ve also family up in Aberdeen: the coastal city that’s closest to these North Sea oil rigs. My wee cousin used to work out on one. So to say this game’s setting and its characters hit close to home would be an understatement. I have never _ever_ played a game that’s so successfully captured what normal Scottish people actually sound like. Not a broad stroke stereotype that the world knows. Not a classically trained actor doing an accent. Not Mel Gibson doing fuckin Braveheart. An actual representation of what my home and the people in it sound like. A note perfect one, in fact. It’s surreal, honestly. You get so used to shite characterisations in media that when one comes along like this, you don’t really know how to handle it. The fact there’s a Gaelic language setting for this is icing on the cake. The devs demonstrate what appears to be a genuine respect for Scottish culture and history. It’s very touching and very welcome. Means a lot, honestly. Needless to say: love this game.
Underrated what u on about just come out haha I’m playing it right now as I type this comment. And it’s amazing so far love it. Big fan of my horror games and this has put a big smile on my face! :)
@@Camper2625i doubt The Chinese Room is going anywhere. Its been a decade since their last original game, and their previous games have all been ignored due to being "walking simulators".
I wasn't really all to bothered by Roy's death despite liking him. Brodies death though? Cried when I watched it and cried again watching it here. I think it was because we were actively in call with him when he died while Roy died off screen.
It's also the fact that Brodie's death was as preventable as Roy's. If they had contacted him before flooding, they would've known he wasn't out yet, but Finley was so sure that he got out already that she gave the order to flood.
As an Englishman, I love how my fellow Brits are getting time in the spotlight. Tired of all games set in the UK be in London, or one of the other Old English towns
English isn't my native language, so it really took all my attention to keep up with the Scottish accents lol. At some point it was just "Sure, whatever your words mean, my guy!", haha. But I loved listening to the cast, the accent made everything so much more alive.
Getting insane 'Virus' vibes from this, the whole assimilation thing and whatnot. Although, the entity or hivemind in Virus was an actual evil force, trying to destroy humanity (or at least the ones it came into contact with). The one in the game seems more like it was disturbed or hurt and retaliated with force. And the voice acting is spectacular, I must say!
I feel like it's giving the dying peace in their own mind so they can relieve something less painful, but they prob dead from the outside already. I can see this how prob from what I can see a more saccharine version of Caz's memories, just feels too selective and contradictory to what is actually happening with him and Suze. Reminds me how SOMA did something with the mind coral which I def can see similarly with the things around the rig. Altho there seems to be how it prob turns what you call an a-hole a more worse versions of themselves, esp with Rennick. Seemingly karmic than we think it could be.
Gives me eldritch vibes honestly. The monster itself is like the thing where it assimilates and mutates people but a giant unknown being deep underwater that was woken up because they dug too deep gives me eldritch horror vibes.
Is Virus the one about the electrical alien entity on the Russian ship? I've never seen it as out to destroy humanity, but simply trying to survive I've always assumed that it was sent to Earth to get rid of it by who knows who and its trajectory was in line with our planet As it said to the captain Edgerton, "Help me to survive"
Another theory: The monsters. When they take control of whoever they kill, it seems that the persons personality or their character always stays. For example how Rennick was the Manager for the Rig, and ends up being the only monster Caz has to evade from at the very end.
I think what happens is that it makes the negative parts of the people worse and obviously turns them into fleshy monsters. But personality wise it brings out the worst parts of them and amps it up to 11 and making them murderous.
Personally I think some of them r still aware but unable to control their bodies anymore because that mass is in control instead. Especially in gibbo's and O'Connors case. The former kept saying he didn't know y he did it, he didn't mean to, and how he's sorry. O'Connor kept calling for someone named Mary
idk it's like they're stuck in the state they were before being completely turned. that's why some are crying out in fear, confusion and pain, while others are filled with rage...
I like to think the very end in the bedroom with Suze was actually his spirit going back there, people sometimes say they've seen/heard loved ones before knowing they've passed, i think she woke when he closed the door and sensed him, making her suddenly think to write the letter, Caz hears her formulate the letter in her head which is how he knows what it says
Just finished the game and I like how each of the monsters Caz encounters have different attributes and abilities as well as weaknesses: *Gibbo* while not fully seen, is able to maneuver through tight spaces but is more timid than the other monsters and acts like he wants you to just leave him alone. *Trots* is the smallest of the monsters thus allowing him to slither through small spaces like air vents with relative ease. However, him moving through vents is only triggered when Caz made noise near them which alerted Trots to his position. So as long as Caz stayed hidden in vents and under tables without making any noise, Trots couldn’t find him. He also seemed to stay in accommodations throughout the game which means either his movement is limited to the structural damage preventing him from leaving or he just made accommodations his territory. *Muir* has tall gigantic spider legs which lets him move easily around rugged open terrain. His height allows him to easily spot prey from above and snatch them with his appendages. Muir also has enough strength to knock over a cargo crate. Despite these feats, he seems unable to climb structures taller than him like an actual spider leaving him trapped moving around the main deck. His size also prohibits him from moving into large crates while looking for Caz. *Rennick* uses his size to his advantage by smashing through walls when chasing Caz. However, this size acts as a double-edged sword for him due to the fact that the tight hallways of administration restrict his speed and movement forcing to him rely on apendages to squirm around like a slug. Caz also easily outran Rennick due to this disadvantage. *Addair* with more appendages than the other monsters allow him to climb and maneuver throughout the entire rig like a jungle gym. And with his massive size rivaling Muir’s and Rennick’s, it can be safe to assume that Addair’s strength is equal to theirs. Despite his size, he is also incredibly fast. However, unlike Gibbo staying in Engineering, Trots in Accommodations, Muir on the Deck, and Rennick in Administration, Addair actively pursues and hunts Caz throughout the rig following him from the Generator Room all the way up to the Processing Quad. These feats make him arguably the most dangerous monster in the whole game.
@@SpellboundSpectre No, that wasn't Addair. He said the name, which I forgot, but it wasn't Addair. He was confined to one spot, while Addair was moving all over the place and even came after you at the flare.
I still have no idea why Addair has a personal vendetta against us, is it just cause we're Not horribly mutated and he's jealous of us? I can kinda understand Rennick's hateboner for us since as far as he's concerned it's probably our fault somehow that everything happened right when he was trying to get us off his rig
Played this yesterday and i swear to christ they excelled themselves with the models. I swear i saw Addair trying to reach for me when i was hidding in a vent. “Still up your tricks, McLeary?!” He yelled as i dashed from cover and toward the pump room
I just like how its a mystery, nobody knows what it was and never will, the real horror being that it was a complete accident and you could just as easily be swept up in some freakish nightmare while you're blissfully unaware
Annihilation actually started as a book! The movie was pretty good but if you like horror novels you should totally check out the Annihilation series. It's super unnerving and I read the first book in one day cause it's small
@@tohruadachi6387 oh yeah!! Which was also a book called Who Goes There? Which is technically the prequel cause it's plot is what happens at the Norwegian Base
I got huge annihilation vibes from this game. The walking down into the legs and other areas below the main body in particular reminds me of when the main character walks down into the lighthouse.
This would fit right in with mystery flesh pit national park. Giant entities hidden underground that people really shouldnt be messing with, except this time one of them woke up.
I think the reason this game is so interesting for many is extremely simple. The entity comes from very deep in the ocean, something humans still know very little about, and that's exactly it: It plays on the fact that it is the only space on our earth we know almost nothing about, so in theory the whole game's concept could be very real because it cant be proven or disproven that this stuff exists down there
Caz took a job to run away from his problems but at the end, when all hope seem lost and knowing the potential danger, he finally faces the problem and ultimately apologize to his wife. It's just a sad and emotional thing that just hit me. There was no other way. I understand that; the moment we call help, we'll all be dead. Imagine what it can do when it reached the mainland; everyone will be dead. Humanity is finished.
In fairness due to the strike action 90% of the crew survived because they were on the mainland while the rig was kept running by a skeleton crew. The one issue here is that if the rig really was on low support then drilling should have been suspended, my guess is that Rennick was forcing the few folk remaining on the rig to keep drilling in order to satisfy the suits who pay his salary. Even more reasons to hate him.
@@krashd How many people normally works ln an oil rig? I always kept thinking if there were more people out there trying to survive, even if 90% of them were not there.
a small detail that i noticed in the "afterlife" bit at the end; you cant see yourself in the mirrors. it just shows the effort the devs put into the game. i always love seeing tiny details like this
Thank you for including the historical context of the game in the discovery of oil. As someone on the other side of the world (Australia) but with connections to Scotland (mum's a Scot) it's really interesting to me and makes me want to look more into recent history.
If you played other games made by this developer, "Everybody's Gone to The Rapture" in particular, you probably already know the answer about what this entity actually is. It is a much more sinister version of an extraterrestrial unified consciousness organism from that first game, which was brought to Earth with a meteorite. They are basically self plagiarizing themselves at this point. The entity consumes not only the flesh, but people's mind and memories most importantly, uniting them in it's own "mind bank". After being consumed, the human consciousnesses continues to live in the entity's mind net forever, with all their memories being saved there. It is presumed that at the beginning of the game, the protagonist is already dead, it's just his life memories being repeated inside of this net.
Finley loses all hope probably from the guilt of her getting Brodie killed. She told Caz with confidence he would be out by now but got him trapped in. Brodie probably told Finley and worried her guilt would make her give up and even tried to warn Caz about it, but it was too late. But in a sense, Finley's despair was the right call. If ships came out to investigate the rig, that thing would just take them over and make it back to the mainland, spreading itself more. Brodie's wish for the two of them to go home was a touching one, but it just couldn't happen.
Damn this game came out yesterday and you're already having a video out! I'm playing it right now but I haven't gotten very far but when I'm done I'll definitely watch it. I love your content, man!
What's funny is I had no idea this game came out yesterday and I saw it on game pass and played and beat it then saw this video and I'm like wait what😂
That's right. I commented before watching the video and then he said it in the first few seconds 😅, my bad. I don't know how early he got to play it, and I know this game isn't super long, but I imagine playing, recording, writing and editing still takes some time. @@moxiemaxie3543
This is one of the best stories I have ever played.. I wasn't even aware it was a brand new game, I just saw it in gamepass and thought it looked awesome. That's crazy to me finding how new it is, because they just don't make story games like they used to. This game is a gem.
From the standpoint of investors, a game like this would be considered a giant risk for a myriad of reasons and never released. Which is why I hate the AAA game dev as it is now. Treating a game like a business project rather than a piece of art is maybe a financially safe move but it filters out outstanding games such as this.
I love the added context at the beginning of this video about the oil in Scotland at the time. This is honestly one of the best games this year. Well paced, interesting story, unique setting, fantastic voice acting and dialog, and some of the nicest video game waves I've ever seen, loved it.
@@daveauburn1561 I think it's other way around, more like YOU are the one that listening to the wrong crowd. There's 2 movies that made about Oil Rig with the same name and the OP might be talking about the new one Stupid.
Being someone who lives outside Aberdeen, Scotland, it's insane that this is the game that's gonna be associated with us. And i'm all for it, I love The Thing and cosmic horror, and to have the idea that something like that's off the coast of where I live is both awesome and horrifying. Well done to The Chinese Room devs!
Theory: Rennick was infected early, and due to this, this is why we hear him make announcements for everyone to stay on the rig and get back to work. He knows what's going, but the entity doesn't want any potential future hosts to leave, so it makes him tell people to stay.
@@Scruggs69503 I'm not sure. I think there may have been a part of Rennick that was still him, or it was an early stage of infection, then when in the helicopter the entity takes him over completely and fully mutates?
@@thomasdeakin8486 i think your reading to much into it, i’m pretty sure he was just an asshole character and that’s about it, but i’ll admit that is a good theory, would explain why the helicopter crashed, ima think more on that
The stuff with Suze's voice suggests certainly that whatever it is starts getting into your head well before the physical transformation, and plays on your preexisting feelings, so... it seems plausible.
@@Nassifeh Yeah, when you are near an infected area you see melting film bubbling around your screen and if you die you see the film reel get melted completely with flashes of (childhood?) memories!
I just want to chime in since I’m never this early and say that I truly appreciate this series as I’m too chicken to play anything remotely scary but scary games always have the best stories.
13:24 if ya look at one of the keys, it says "Lab Samples", so it possibly suggests there's a lab on the oil rig, but idk, maybe its a lab to test the oil
Oh man, the internal struggle of “this game is amazing, I want to finish it before watching this video” and “this game is kicking my ass in real life, be a grown person and acknowledge it, give up and watch the video”.
I came across this on the Xbox this morning. Knew absolutely nothing about it. Turned it on…..and didn’t stop until l finished it. Loved this. A great achievement by the team behind. Had me gripped from beginning to end. Bravo. 👏🏻
What an excellent game! The growths on the rig and on its crew reminds me of the structure gel in Soma, from the way it behaves to the way it manipulated people’s way of thinking. I hope we can get more horror games centered around the sea/under the sea in the future 🥺
The scene at the end feels to pretty clearly be a flashback to when Caz left for the rig. He had a conversation with Suze that basically boiled down to him needing to leave while she was asleep.
I love horror based in oceanic locations, and underwater research base, an oil rig, a giant boat, they make for excellent set pieces especially when things start getting otherworldly in the horror. I got massive Color Out of Space vibes for the corruption of the human form and Anihilation with how alienly beautiful the entity(?) at the center of it all was. Also, I really appreciate you providing the real world context, be it the history, culture, politics, etc, that get included in games. It really does add and makes me appreciate the game and the work that went into it so much more. Thanks!
I think this was a really well constructed video. This is also an amazing narrative horror game which I really appreciate. The world building, fleshing out all of the characters on the rig, the incredible voice acting, the unknown of what the thing is, all of it had a part to play in making this game great. Really appreciate the work by the team that made this and would love to see what they make next!
It just came out like yesterday, people are getting impatient on games that a day old. Saw the same comment on a day old game Alan Wake DLC. Like it takes time to write and editm. They get the game early
@moxiemaxie3543 I actually watched a friend play it yesterday but I'm not very good at looking underneath the surface for the lore. That's why I watch Harry. Because he dives deep, no pun intended, into the game for the lore. I could've waited weeks, I just knew Harry would make a video on this game
Fun design thing I noticed: people who intimidate Caz appear with their faces obscured by shadow or turned away. Finley is his senior whom he looks up to and wants to do well for, and every time we meet her? Her face is deeply shadowed and hard to see. Addair sits by himself with his back to a window in the galley, the strong back light focusing his Size as his key feature. Rennik shouts at you to enter his dark ass office, and spends 30% of the conversation with his back to Caz with his face clear and still to study only a few times in the exchange. I find that interesting. Later on both Rennik and Addair become monsterous in Much Less Subtle Ways, meanwhile Finley is humanized at the end by literally pinning her down with a tower so we can see her face at the end and know her as a Person she begs Caz To Be Brave
The monster came from the hole that was drilled on the sea floor. At 6:42 Rennik says that he doesn’t care that something is off with the Drill. Meaning that whatever was off, was likely the eldritch horror.
As a Southeast Asian who usually consume either American or British media for entertainment, I absolutely love that they made everyone in this game Scottish. To me, that and the fact that it's set in an oil rig is the selling point of this game. It's unique as I rarely hear Scottish accent and a game/horror media that's set in an oil rig. But ofc, the game as a whole is also pretty fantastic. The infected being able to talk to their prey and even making this weird call/howl despite looking like that is just really unsettling, the game design is the usual "sneak behind the creepy monster" and "hold to pull the lever" but it works so well since the game is super immersive and atmospheric, and the characters are all charming (except for Rennick. Fck that guy for being a prick and causing all of this) which makes you attached to them. Also, one thing that I keep thinking about is the fact that this is the type of diversity that's done right. Sure, it's just a Scottish accent, but communication is part of a culture. They're not forcing it. They're just showing you how these people from this cultural background react to a certain situation, in this case a life and death situation. It's as simple as that and yet it actually makes you interested in their language and care for them. Like how they casually say fck and cnt and bastrd with what most people thought to be in an angry tone even though that's just a friendly banter. Or how they say some slang/Scottish words that most people (like me) never heard. It effectively makes people curious and want to learn the language, which is part of their culture. Anyway, that's it from me. Sorry if it's long, I always get carried away when writing a comment. I just love this game so much, and I wish to experience more cool and unique games like this in the future. Much love from Indonesia 🇮🇩❤😄
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but the 1979 referendum wasn’t about Scottish independence. It was about devolution and setting up a local Scottish parliament or retaining unitary rule from Westminster. It passed very narrowly, by the margin of 51% mentioned.
I work with the crew support for oil rigs. So I was really excited for this game. I am delighted at how this looks like a real rig and like any other crew I worked with. Rigs just be like that sometimes tho. Eldritch horrors and one crew mate that might be escaping jail time.
Couldn't wait for Harry to cover lore from this game and then, there it is! You're awesome! Game gave me such a throwback in about first 5min of playing about movie called Deepwater Horizon but with the weird little twist vibe from The Thing and I absolutely loved it! Best horror story experience so far in 2024. Thank you Harry for covering the lore in detail. Keep up the good work!
Very good. I have already played the game and I appreciate your the historical context. I love that everyone was scottish in the game, not something you see that much. The voice actors did a tremendous job
What I love about this game is that it isn't one of those cosmic horrors that smacks you in the head with the "Whoops the character's sacrifice didn't matter and the world ended LOL" endings. Cas's efforts weren't in vain at the end, they mattered It's a sad ending, but not a hopeless one. With Cas's soul being allowed one last moment with Suze before passing on, it felt like the games way of saying, ' everything is okay again'.
One of the reasons i think this game hits so hard is because it has such a beautiful sense of tragic humor. I love that before Brody dies, him and Caz share a genuinely funny exchange, a wonderful moment between two friends before the inevitably of death. While the game itself is pretty basic, it's made a great, memorable experience by its writing.
I reckon Archie turned the helicopter to come back for Caz after seeing him on the deck but Rennick wanted to keep leaving. So he struggled with Archie inadvertently causing them to crash.
I love how it's never explained what the monster is or where it came from. Is it an alien? Parasite? Has it always been there? We flat out know nothing other than it eats/assimilates people. Too many horror games try to overexplain what the monster is, but the fear of the unknown is just much better imo
i think it was a dumb choice, they should’ve gone more into detail, we know literally nothing about it, why does it transform people but sometimes kill others? why do others just cling to life in delusion? is it a hive mind? why does it make you hear your loved ones? what’s its weakness? why did it make the sky red? why was it changing the wind? what’s its purpose? some details needed to be given as their are too many questions left unanswered, they did the bare minimum with explaining it
@@Notfakeultra It's so obvious that it's just as obvious that the op is clearly asking where it originates from, not how it contextually appears in the story. We all know it came from them drilling oil, but did it come from outer space? The planets core? Was it a Frankenstein of a sort? Is it a metaphor for the environmental impacts of oil drilling? Is the game anti-oil propaganda? We just don't know.
@@Scruggs69503 I think explaining a monster, especially an almost love craftian entity like this one, takes away some of the mystery. How would the crew possibly even learn it's purpose? how could they realise why it makes you hear your loved ones? The weakness question, I can get, like someone could get lucky and find out it's weak to fire or electricity or what not, but questions on the creatures' nature are something way outside the realm of possibility for some poor sods working an oil rig to be able to find out, you'd need consistent observation over a long period of time and a way to experiment with the creature and unfortunately none of the crew have that sort of luxury
@@Scruggs69503best part is that they didn’t explain it. Not knowing makes it even more upsetting, like a force of nature that you have no control over.
I think in the sequel (simply called The Deep 2) two things will happen: the oil rig will be discovered by a search party but it will be deep underwater with the mysterious entity the sole dominant force on the rig.
The voice acting in this game was absolutely insane. It felt like the first real game that people put care and love into. Roy and Brodie's actors were incredibly. Genuinely felt emotional when they passed.
I don't know but anything with the ocean, makes me feel like Cthulhu has something to do with it. Like that is a plant from whatever dimension cthulhu is from.
My original theory to explain the entity in this game was that Caz simply didn't survive falling off the top of the rig, he fell for at least five seconds so that's over 120 meters, falling from even half that height has a mortality rate of 85% so it's odd that he is unscathed by such a fall, and the hallucinations of a dying man could explain what he experiences in the game.
That was my reaction. He goes overboard twice in the game and incredibly 'survives' both times. The entire game is about a man who has ran away and, in death, tries to take responsibility for his actions.
I watched a playthrough of the game, and i cried through alot of portions even though feeling a bit on edge. Truly a great story, that was brought to life by the voice actors. Whats wild is that the game bears little to no explanation of what exactly is going on, and the story before Caz is on the rig. I think that adds to the draw of the story. Because youre pretty much in the unknown with the characters. Overall, thrilled to see that there is still amazing story telling within video games.
Heights, drowning, hypothermia, immolation, suffocation, being hunted, isolation, parasitic infection, body horror and a loud angry Scottish boss! This game certainly hits a lot of phobias.
Heavy on the loud angry scottish boss, cosmic horrors aint got shit on him
If it don't calm down it'll be cancelled by Twitter
🇯🇪🇬🇬✊✊
The monster under my bed is a loud angry scottish boss
@@eclipsehorizon7655 nah, it's just my cousin Borris
One thing that I love about this game is that every NPC is named and they each have their own personalities, which only makes it more depressing watching them die
It reminded me very much of SOMA in that sense, every single crew member of Pathos II has a name and backstory. One of my favourite parts of that game was discovering how each person passed. Of course, by the time you meet them they’re all long dead. Unlike this game where they’re dropping like flies as the game progresses.
Yeah, everyone has their own personalities and their own personal story if you think about that. Like they actually do protagonist stuff separate from us.
Like, for example Roper. Roper shows up once in the beginning. He’s supervising the rig on site, and the main character even notes that he’s surprised to see him down here before he goes on his way. He is clearly some sort of skilled technician or administrator. I get the vibe he’s the skilled actual day to day administrator and Rennick is just the paperwork admin and the overall face of the rig to the company.
Now, you don’t find him until the last part of the game. I assumed he must of died immediately since he was at ground zero. But, you find him fused at a desk in the water control section.
This alone tells us a couple of things.
1. He survived ground zero, at least for a bit. He must have been one of, if not the only person to have seen what happened directly. That already is crazy. He is like a Gordon Freeman of this universe. The fact that he isn’t hostile immediately when you see him and he isn’t fully ambulatory tells me he might have only been turned recently.
2. Why would he be in hydrologic control? I bet, and this is a head canon but he could have been doing exactly what we were. Either trying to stabilize the rig remotely, or even trying to flood the rig with Oil, like we end up doing.
That one character that was only seen at the start could have had his own protagonist story. Arguably more fitting as a protagonist in a traditional story. He would have seen ground zero and been better as a traditional protagonist.
But no, we’re just a person in this world. We never understand or see ground zero, and there are dozens of other characters like Davro, Brodie and Roper who had their own protagonist story. Its awesome and amazing writing.
@@Kazako83in the beginning, I really liked Scooby and it was really sad hearing him break down over the phone saying "He's hunting us..." and "He's gonna kill me, he's gonna kill me!" Until the line went dead. They did an amazing job with the simple characters and the voice acting was so phenomenal that it helped a ton. But no one is better than Roy, absolutely loved him and Caz together.
Only NPC we didn’t get a name for was Naked Dude. RIP 😂
RDR/2 was good in this regard.
The voice acting is nuts, genuinely nuts. How does every single person put on such a believable character? Especially the moment with Brodie's death had me crying.
Scottish :D
BRODIE HAD ME SO FUCKED UPPPP 😭😭😭😭 I really thought he was gonna live man
Some of the best voice acting I have ever heard in any game. It's so authentic and really does wonders with the immersion.
only thing i noticed was the dissonance between the player and the guy behind the door lol AAAAAAHHHH HELP ME GOD FUCK dude i cant hear you youve gotta speak up are you thirsty you need a drink?
the voice acting and the music. You really feel like it's the end of the world.
My three reasons for loving this game;
1. Oil rig setting
2. Characters are Scots
3. Being a type 1 diabetic like Roy, I know what it feels like for Roy when his blood sugar levels were spiking
truly terrifying how just hours without the stuff changes everything, hope you got a steady and affordable supplie
I'm also a diabetic. I was wondering how roy died, though.
I'm type 1 too and because of insurance bullshit ended up in DKA and spent nearly a week in the hospital so I know it takes several days without insulin to be life threatening not just hours. I mean it makes you feel crappy and probably have to pee every 20 minutes but it's just silly to have him die that because of it that fast.
It was cool to see another diabetic in game and to see him go DKA was such a pity but glad he didn’t turn into a monster.
Nearly died from DKA myself so I know damn right what the poor fella is going through.
@@Vicerion17 This could just be an oversight, but two potential things here: One, we do see constant signs that there's some kind of divine intervention at work. Caz keeps surviving things he shouldn't be able to. Roy being the only nonviolent death seems very intentional.
But the other, more mundane thing is that elevated blood sugar significantly increases your risk of things like heart attack and stroke and I think also makes them more likely to be fatal. As you get older, the potential consequences of not managing your blood sugar get much worse.
It is so fitting that when Rennick who mainly got the crew into this situation because of his huge ego, when corrupted his head doesn't even fit in the room
I thought the same!
spoilers!!!
him having a huge head is so fitting. i love how the infection affects every character differently.
rennick who has a huge ego n is an angry man = becomes a monster with a huge head and is the most aggressive monster (most if not all of the monsters talk about their lives and loved ones, rennick though is a hater)
the guy you approach before or after entering leg a is scared and talks about his life, so like some other monsters he’s just stuck in the creature
roper obviously tried to survive and/or hole out in the marine room, but i assume he was already infected then attacked by rennick after the heli crashed. so he’s not aggressive, and he’s also stuck in place, he was probably a good guy before dying and talks about keeping rennick away.
the big spider guy i forgot the name of didn’t want to die and cries out for help, he doesn’t want to be alone and is afraid, so he snatches any survivors he sees for his comfort
the guy in the laundry room is notably insane, you can see him slamming the laundry machine door closed over and over. the stress and infection were probably messing with his head, making him more weak willed than our main character caz, as he’d most likely gone insane even before being turned. possibly was turned from his own stress n lack of will?
@@Hotmomoclock oil up lil bro
A big headed form for an equally big headed old codger
@@Hotmomoclock spoilers squared
yeah, you see Muir ( spider guy infected ) deceased, crushed by a pile of rubble, with his fleshy tendrils cradling Innes ( the guy who got abducted in the elevator ) even in death and infection, Muir still holds onto their close friendship, even in a twisted way, though you only see a dead Muir in the late stages of the game
This game was terrifying and heartbreaking. The realization at Finley’s last words: “This THING cannot reach the mainland,” and Caz’s thoughts of his family brought tears to my eyes as I walked the final feet knowing the sacrifices a true HERO would make. A masterpiece IMO, 10/10!
"I loved this big man, you hear!?" absolutely devastated me. That whole section made me feel sick with sadness.
this whole game fucked me up fr 😭😭
The only thing I disliked is that bitch robbed us from our hero title.
Ofc the one female in the ship who did NOTHING has the altruistic idea of sacrificing the ship to "save the mainland".
Very Jesus-savior-like if you ask me, and forced.
@daggersmctimbers6962 exactly, I'd been more realistic if HE wanted to kill it after taking Roy and realizing he was not going home anyway.
Instead we get the only useless female in the ship call us "no balls"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAH GET OFF ME GET IT OFF ME"
"I can't hear you mate are you hurt?"
Ya i'm fine it's just this damd glitter it gets everywhere
@@gasmaskman1354ol wee man you alright man? Jesus…
@@FeWi-YTDon't let it get you.. it wont penetrating my goddamn hole over and over again!
That was probably the only bit of dialogue that wasn’t good. Eeeeeeeverything else was fucking phenomenal, but good lord, Caz is not the brightest.
To be fair, he had likely sustained a concussion by then, and several more after that 💀😭
@@Kingbimmy We get repeated flashbacks to Suze talking about what an idiot he is, so it still kind of works out.
Fun fact: The lighter that Finlay uses at the end of the game was the lighter that Caz gave her at the beginning.
Holy shit...
Yeah I thought that was pretty obvious bro
Me too@@foquitajeej2399
@@foquitajeej2399then don't reply?
@@foquitajeej2399 don't be a dick
I like the idea that the world just writes the whole event off just as a tragic explosion on an oil rig, without knowing the creature even existed
Even if they did know, d'you think people would give a dam if it wasn't an immediate problem for them.
IF they actually killed it
doubtful. The whole sacrificial self-destruction thing is a pretty common trope in this sort of horror, but realistically it's unlikely to ever work. For one, it came from under the sea and spread, rapidly, so even if the entire oil rig were to blow, it's still under the sea and has been released, awakened, whatever. (so it can just start spreading again under the ocean) For two, and the issue whenever this trope is used against a "biomass" type horror, you can't kill *_all_* of it with a simple explosion. From what we see it grows, and it grows insanely rapidly, generating what would be literal metric tons of biomass in a matter of hours. Where it's getting the energy/nutrients to create all of that mass is unclear and _could_ be favourably relevant (for instance maybe it could only grow as fast as it could because it could somehow absorb the compressed hydrocarbons from the oil or something, and now that the rig has blown up it's not getting all of those nutrients fed to it) but there isn't any explanation or evidence to suggest so. This, in essence, means that even if we assume it was lying dormant under the sea, it's lair/prison/cocoon got drilled into, it woke up, *_moved_* onto the oil rig, (leaving it's original safe hidey-hole) and then the oil rig exploded, then if even a single chunk of it's flesh survived the explosion and was thrown into the ocean it can regrow. And, the flesh of it that *_did_* die, would still have a large number of chunks that are at least vaguely intact, meaning people investigating the area can identify what happened. A nuclear blast can turn everything around it into molten dust but, while oil rig explosions may be incredibly dangerous, they don't completely erase everything and it's kinda easy to recognize "oh, uh, there should not be this many skulls connected to this one dead body... what the fuck happeneed to this thing, or these people".
So it's likely still safe in whatever hole it started in, it almost certainly survived the blast, and anyone who does eventually come to investigate the site will immediately discover about as much about it as we know. (A : "it probably was from the oil drilling", B : "it grew rapidly", C : "it was violent", D : "everyone died", E : "it seems to horrifically mutate people") Really the only parts of it that they're unlikely to be able to sort-out are the psychological components of it, like people near to it hearing voices of their past or the infected still being "alive", just twisted and confused - likely unaware that they're even hunting people. The biological aspects however would be information that's all available from dead samples and context.
These self-sacrifice & destruction plays against "biomass" type threats are very rarely capable of having the intended effect. (in a cruel irony the information even one lone survivor could provide to the world about the threat may outweigh destroying one affected location) If you have a species of squirrel in a forest, and then you set the forest on fire, you don't kill the entire species of squirel - you just force it to move to another area of the forest. What this most likely would do is just stunt it's spread, giving humanity a headstart in fighting it by killing it's first major biomass deposit and giving people a chance to analyze it. (alternatively, now it might be growing under the ocean where humanity neither knows it's there nor has the means to fight it. We don't even have the depths of the ocean mapped and going down there is in many ways more dangerous than going to space, if it can survive the ocean's depths it's hard to imagine a world where humanity outlives it without just trying to bum-rush for the moon or mars or something)
The black box, and wreckage pattern would trace a very interesting story.
@ATypicalDayHere there is no significant evidence it's an "infection", as far as we see people only begin to change after being captured and mutated directly. Everyone at the rig would have been exposed within a matter of minutes to each other yet many people lasted hours dying due to natural causes and still showing no visible signs of infection whereas others were 5 story tall monsters from minute 1. Eitherway, my point is that blowing up the rig is unlikely to have actually killed it at all, it's still been released, all that blowing up the rig is likely to have done is put a spotlight on it and weaken it.
The voice acting sounded particularly great. Usually, scottish characters have the VA playing into and giving an extreme scottish accent. But the characters in this game sounded genuinely scottish
Because they’re genuine Scottish Voice Actors
Oh didn't know that. Was just saying it's nice to not have the accent overplayed
Also a rare fact that all of these actors are actually high senior, most of them are 40+ aged and has played in many films.
Epic
Ok vodka man
The rate at which Caz gets knocked out the brain damage has to be enormous.
Nah bro, he's Scottish.
That's just an average tuesday evening for them.
@@itsmecrosby4723Chewsday innit
Can confirm, since 2 months old I've had brain damage.
happens 4 times through the game, honestly i dont think the auditory hallucinations are from the monster, i think its just his brain losing its shit at the multiple concussions and stress hes under.
Nah. Scotsmen are made of sterner stuff
Beat this game this morning and man was it insane. Actually cried at the roof scene and then Brodies call at the end
😭 Brodies death I’m crying again
@@snaky1107 they really were doomed from the start
Man what an ending it was indeed
Don't cry bro.
Sailors aren't really people.
They're like 75% fish
You are the definition of feminine
Its surprising that there are not many horror games explore the potentials of setting in Oil rigs as they are way more interesting/terrifying than some buildings like schools, hospitals etc
Agreed, it's a refreshing setting in the Horror genre
@@wolfidessdragondol
The Black by Paul E. Cooley.
You're welcome.
I'm bored to death with abandoned asylums
An Arctic research base would also be awesome
Similar to the Thing, but also involving environmental dangers
@@SamuelBlack84penumbra series sorta
@@Vextral4653 Never played it
The voice acting, particularly in the optional phone calls you can listen to during a playthrough, is genuinely some of the best I've heard in years. That call with Innes when Miur transforms in particular sticks with me.
Speaking of optional phone calls, there was one person who _potentially_ got off the rig unless I missed something.
A crewmate named Davros somehow got on a lifeboat, though Caz tells him he's gonna have to come back up to find anyone else, and considering how everyone treated one another (besides Addair), I wouldn't be surprised if he went back up to help and got himself killed, but of the reachable bodies needed for the Body Count achievement, it doesnt seem like any of them were explicitly identified to be him. I could be wrong, though. I probably am wrong, but the idea that someone got away just makes me feel better.
I could swear I found someone called Davros. In the Leg when Caz was climbing down it.
@@GamingHarryYT Which leg?
I think Caz says to him to come back, and he complains about just getting in the boat but follows caz advice
Caz literally tells him he needs to get back upside to the evacuation
It was Davros all along, and these are just his Dalek experiments gone awry.
The voice acting in this game is incredible. That call with Caz and Brodie is so emotional and everything mixes together so well.
Most of the actors are 40+ aged fyi
@@alt_screamz660Wdym?
@@alt_screamz660so?
@@-INSERT_FUNNY_HERE- dude im just spreading information are you guys getting choked?
@@alt_screamz660 its just the way you said it that sounded judgmental, can’t blame us for thinking it was
Must be very uplifting for John Carpenter to have The Thing be such an inspiration for so many sci-fi and horror stories after if flopped and was critically panned on release.
While I don’t think he hates the movie, he’s balked at how it became a cult classic… since that doesn’t really help him. The Thing was such a box office bomb, and received such scathing hatred that it nearly killed his career and tanked his confidence for a good while.
Carpenter's version was okay but I liked the original more.
Think this is more h.p. Lovecraft
The Thing was panned on release? Why?
@@KJ-ud9ufwrong timing in many ways. Lots of sci -fi and fantasy at the time was coming out and they were typically positive and optimistic at a time when people were struggling through recession and needed some optimistic films.
The Thing was crushingly visceral and nihilistic, which there simply wasn't much of a market for at the time.
I actually really like that the game didn't explain what the thing was. Games like this are fond of a big reveal that it's some entity directly out of Lovecraft, and that often feels very shoehorned in to me. It's a nice change that we as the players are just as in the dark as the characters.
if Cthulhu surfaced on a Scottish oil rig they'd just deep fry him
@@zootsanchez We have got deep-fried Cthulhu before GTA 6. 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️✨✨🗣️🗣️🗣️
@@zootsanchez delicious 😋
@@zootsanchez Thats why Cthulhu knew better than to reveal himself to the Scottish.
I agree for the most part, but I personally would have appreciated exactly one hint.
"But out here, I am the King!" said the man in yellow.
Oooooooooh.....😬😬😬
The King in Yellow? Hastur? 😱
...but he was wearing orange. That being said... the game is pure Old Ones vibes.
@@jotairpontesHe had yellow strips though. He had power, just not as much as he boasted.
@@Ranatosk
It's not Hastur. The King in Yellow doesn't have a name, nor a gender.
Simply, the King in Yellow.
This game has probably the best, most genuine, realistic character reactions and dialogue of any game I've played. Caz doesn't just get told to do things and runs off doing them. He has actual reactions to why he isn't going to and tries to make smart legit decisions. I absolutely loved this game
Don't you love it when Caz jumps and yells "Jesus Christ!"
@@IsaacFilikitonga-g7kI mean if you are literally seeing flesh monsters that are made out of your friends with half of their consciousness still intact, only repeating words that were on their last thoughts, you will say "Jesus Christ" a couple of times and yes I do love it
The real horror to me is at the start of the game Trots mentioned more oil rigs being set up in the North Sea. We don't know how big or wide spread the creature is, any other rig that is set up there could have the same thing happen to them and it may not be contained.
Let's just hope the people running those rigs aren't as stupid as Rennick and actually listen when their drill crews says there's something wrong.
@@Honkious5824 More likely they will. What's left of the rig probably attracted serious British and very likely American attention because of the possibility of Soviet involvement in its destruction in their eyes.
It is the 1970s after all, and the SAR and Military investigation teams and their sonar boats and ROVs are likely going to find a burning sunken mass of metal that looks like it was torn apart from the inside out before it exploded.
It's entirely possible the British government quarantines the North Sea after realizing this.
@@Honkious5824 bruh why not hope nothing goes wrong in the first place? lol
I'd like to think that one rig getting blown to shit with 100% loss of life may put a dent in Cadal's ability to deploy more rigs?
@@MaulyrThere were still other rigs already deployed
I cried so hard when caz opened outside his master bedroom and all of it was the ocean. very sad ending 🥲
All that fighting for him to ultimately sacrifice himself for his kids
@@grumpychiken2261 and the sad thing about this was no one will know his sacrifice not even his family.
THANKS FOR THE DAMN SPOILER ASSHOLE
@@grumpychiken2261reminds me of the boy from the little nightmares dlc
@@johnlawful2272 runaway kid?
So one theory i had is that this uses a living earth theory where basically the earth itself is a living organism the drill basically went to deep and pierced into the muscle and what we are seeing is the white bloodcells attacking the foreign thing that just harmed the organism.
That's a good theory, so we're all bacteria on an enormous testicle?
@@krashd ☠☠☠
Not those kinds of white cells mate @@krashd
Yes. @@krashd
I love this theory. 👍🏻
I have a personal theory that the creature wasn't trying to grow and expand by creating biomass monsters, i think it was try to turn the rig into a body of sorts.
Or it just was a natural responce to the drill, that was perhaps hurting this creature. Perhaps it just tried to kill and absorb/ eat the "enemy" / pedator to defend it self. Maybe it is not even really sentient and just some sort of agressive, prehistoric and forgotten plant/ fungus. Maybe it is one of the first komplex lifeforms that has ben formed on earth billions of years ago. Maybe it is some kind of leviathan, or Chuthullu ( it has no real form) like creature.
@@denisedesireeannaneumann9804 To say it's a leviathan of some kind would imply it's intelligent at all, and I'd honestly deny that. The way it behaves is similar to that of some kind of disease. It's possible nobody was safe, caz was probably immuno compromised at some point, and that nobody here was going to make it. It's possible what Finlay did was the bravest and most responsible decision to have made in those final moments. It had gotten so fucked that she wasn't willing to let this thing break loose, to spread its influence. This thing is clearly not sentient, but that doesn't meat it doesn't have profound effects on the psyche. Even a plant can cause vivid hallucinations. The question is; was this thing rooting up into your brain and fucking with your right/left hemisphere with chemicals, merely as a response to stimuli? Or was it trying to control the host? It clearly wasn't trying to emulate on purpose, but it might've been a side effect of its destructive, viral nature. Like mercury or lead poisoning.
@@denisedesireeannaneumann9804 I thought the same at first, but in the beginning of the game we see one of those tendrils suddenly teleport and appear out of thin air right in front of caz, combine it with the fact that the growths seem to emit strange lights and patterns from themselves and are capable of mind control(hearing the noise of loved ones when near it and and possessing people) and bending gravity(we can see floating particles and rig's pieces specially at the end of the game) suggests that it's not a normal biological entity and has supernatural origins.
@@denisedesireeannaneumann9804 ive heard that the story is inspired from lovecraftian, but i might be wrong
My theory is that It produces oil. They are some weird entities living underground for years, making large oil deposits around the place they reside in.
This game seems to have a pretty dim view of the oil industry.
Rennick refusing to go off schedule even when the drill operators can clearly sense something is off is what causes them to hit the flesh creature and doom everyone aboard, and even taking into account they had no way to know there was a monster lurking beneath the seafloor, the company cheaping out on the lifeboats is still a horrific level of apathy towards human life.
The flesh mass might not even be attacking the rig out of malice but rather because it was wounded by the drill and is retaliating out of fear, it’s purely Rennick and his bosses’ negligence and greed that lead to the disaster.
Sounds like a casual Industry CEO to me
I never even considered that the mass might be attacking out of fear. That's a good theory.
Deep water horizon seems to be a huge inspiration for this game. Overly greedy managers hoping for bonuses by cutting corners get tons of people killed. Really good movie, tragic accident in real life.
@garbearfar1394 Maybe a bit closer to what happened to Piper Alpha but yeah
@@garbearfar1394 This. I was constantly thinking about Deep Water Horizon during the Intro of the game.
Utter terror, loosing crew members one by one, assimilation, the growth, you have to fix everything while the whole vessel is falling apart and of course the girlfriend troubles... You sure the main character is not named Isaac Clarke?
man you legit got a point there
lol the thing even looks like the sht from deadspace
I'm sure. Isaac would single handedly kill whatever the fuck it is.
@@nikolakaravida9670I mean in dead space Issac had many weapons to fight back, here they didn’t have anything to fight back and I’m pretty sure in the same case Issac would struggle too.
Well, wife troubles in this case, but otherwise, spot on
11:32 As a Diabetic, I can confirm that It is worth risking your life to get some insulin while being hunted by horrid beyond comprehension, since that stuff is EXPENSIVE, and also mandatory for my continued survival.
It wouldn't have been expensive for Roy, it would have been free.
@@krashd darnit you’re right >:(
Me and my American frame of reference 😔
But what if that thing turned you into biomass, and had got diabetes because of that 👀
Why not just eat some jam or something?
@@callmeturg1590 Diabetics need insulin, which is what allows the body to regulate its blood sugar levels. Adding more sugar from jam would just make it worse.
Just beat this game last night and absolutely loved it. Was not expecting to cry at the end. Such an amazing experience
Chinese Room dont miss IMO, dear Esther is one of my all time favorite game
Same didn't die to a monster once
The bit when Finlay was flicking the lighter in the background as Caz was talking to Brodie was genius. Hearing it, I knew exactly what was going to happen, even before Caz turned around and saw it.
At the end of the game, when you are in the room with Suze, there's a painting hanging on the wall that shows what the entity could be. It seems like an egg undersea with the entity inside of it.
Timestamp if there's one?
@@frp3337 22:50, the blue frame at the left side of the bed. You would have to see it in game tho, it's too far away in the video
@@vicentetiburon thanks
Duuude that's a good catch. Good thing I took screenshots so I could go back and find it. It looks like an eyeball but the tendril things match the entity too closely to just be a coincidence.
Something else I noticed is that most of the 'monsters' were people who tended to have very aggressive personalities. People who tended to not let anger get the better of them seemed to last longer, and the more Angry/abrasive people were, the bigger the monster they became.
The fact the saddest death isnt from a monster kill its from not getting insulin its kinds realistic in a way
And drowning/crushed
Brodie probably had the worst death out of anyone here. Slowly drowning in literal fucking oil sounds horrific. He didn't even get his last words out before the line cut
Oh yeah, proper brutal.
@@GamingHarryYT Yeah bruv, pre'y bru'al innit
Sounds horrible.
I dunno, O'connor too had it pretty rough. He was swimming in dirty water with Bruce, hurt his leg then got taken by a creature
Yeah… I’m having nightmares tonight 10/10
I’m Scottish. From Glasgow, to be exact. I’ve also family up in Aberdeen: the coastal city that’s closest to these North Sea oil rigs. My wee cousin used to work out on one. So to say this game’s setting and its characters hit close to home would be an understatement.
I have never _ever_ played a game that’s so successfully captured what normal Scottish people actually sound like. Not a broad stroke stereotype that the world knows. Not a classically trained actor doing an accent. Not Mel Gibson doing fuckin Braveheart. An actual representation of what my home and the people in it sound like. A note perfect one, in fact.
It’s surreal, honestly. You get so used to shite characterisations in media that when one comes along like this, you don’t really know how to handle it. The fact there’s a Gaelic language setting for this is icing on the cake. The devs demonstrate what appears to be a genuine respect for Scottish culture and history. It’s very touching and very welcome. Means a lot, honestly.
Needless to say: love this game.
Severely underrated game. We all need to support this developer because we seriously need more stroy driven horror games like this
It’s came out two days ago 😂
Underrated? Idk man. It's barely been out, and all I've seen so far is love, love, and more love. I think it's being fairly rated so far 😅
Underrated what u on about just come out haha I’m playing it right now as I type this comment. And it’s amazing so far love it. Big fan of my horror games and this has put a big smile on my face! :)
Lol I'm just afraid this company will get closed down like other companies have in the past for low sales or lower than 85 metacritic review scores
@@Camper2625i doubt The Chinese Room is going anywhere.
Its been a decade since their last original game, and their previous games have all been ignored due to being "walking simulators".
I wasn't really all to bothered by Roy's death despite liking him. Brodies death though? Cried when I watched it and cried again watching it here. I think it was because we were actively in call with him when he died while Roy died off screen.
"I'm already back on Skye."
Hey Roy is a G great character
Idk man, I cried a lot at Roy's death cause their connection felt so genuine and how genuinely devasted Caz was.
It was the fact that caz was trying to keep him calm while it happened in my case
It's also the fact that Brodie's death was as preventable as Roy's. If they had contacted him before flooding, they would've known he wasn't out yet, but Finley was so sure that he got out already that she gave the order to flood.
As a scot it's really nice to see a Scottish based game!! And it's also so fun to hear the slang and accents!!!
And everyone talk so nice to each other. "Shut it, ya fookin gobshite", is such a nice scottish way to say good morning.
"hear" yes, understand...somewhat :)
As an Englishman, I love how my fellow Brits are getting time in the spotlight. Tired of all games set in the UK be in London, or one of the other Old English towns
@@That_Random_British_Dude"foinally, a rip gobsmacker of a game, it is."
English isn't my native language, so it really took all my attention to keep up with the Scottish accents lol. At some point it was just "Sure, whatever your words mean, my guy!", haha.
But I loved listening to the cast, the accent made everything so much more alive.
Getting insane 'Virus' vibes from this, the whole assimilation thing and whatnot.
Although, the entity or hivemind in Virus was an actual evil force, trying to destroy humanity (or at least the ones it came into contact with).
The one in the game seems more like it was disturbed or hurt and retaliated with force.
And the voice acting is spectacular, I must say!
I feel like it's giving the dying peace in their own mind so they can relieve something less painful, but they prob dead from the outside already. I can see this how prob from what I can see a more saccharine version of Caz's memories, just feels too selective and contradictory to what is actually happening with him and Suze.
Reminds me how SOMA did something with the mind coral which I def can see similarly with the things around the rig. Altho there seems to be how it prob turns what you call an a-hole a more worse versions of themselves, esp with Rennick. Seemingly karmic than we think it could be.
probably something similiar to the supercell in The Thing.
Gives me eldritch vibes honestly. The monster itself is like the thing where it assimilates and mutates people but a giant unknown being deep underwater that was woken up because they dug too deep gives me eldritch horror vibes.
Is Virus the one about the electrical alien entity on the Russian ship?
I've never seen it as out to destroy humanity, but simply trying to survive
I've always assumed that it was sent to Earth to get rid of it by who knows who and its trajectory was in line with our planet
As it said to the captain Edgerton, "Help me to survive"
@@freshlymemed5680 kinda reminds me of what happen in the film "Underwater"
I just realized that the two finalists of the "Dart Tournament" in the beginning (1:56), were the two last survivors of the oil rig, excluding Caz.
They were, indeed, the finalists
Another theory: The monsters. When they take control of whoever they kill, it seems that the persons personality or their character always stays. For example how Rennick was the Manager for the Rig, and ends up being the only monster Caz has to evade from at the very end.
What about Addair and Trots? They both appeared twice or more + we must kill them. The second time Rennick appeared, he died drowning and not killed
I think what happens is that it makes the negative parts of the people worse and obviously turns them into fleshy monsters. But personality wise it brings out the worst parts of them and amps it up to 11 and making them murderous.
Personally I think some of them r still aware but unable to control their bodies anymore because that mass is in control instead. Especially in gibbo's and O'Connors case. The former kept saying he didn't know y he did it, he didn't mean to, and how he's sorry. O'Connor kept calling for someone named Mary
idk it's like they're stuck in the state they were before being completely turned. that's why some are crying out in fear, confusion and pain, while others are filled with rage...
I like to think the very end in the bedroom with Suze was actually his spirit going back there, people sometimes say they've seen/heard loved ones before knowing they've passed, i think she woke when he closed the door and sensed him, making her suddenly think to write the letter, Caz hears her formulate the letter in her head which is how he knows what it says
Maybe Brodie was experiencing something similar in his last moments... "I'm already back on Skye".
If true, then it's nice to know that they went to a better place after the nightmare they endured.
Just finished the game and I like how each of the monsters Caz encounters have different attributes and abilities as well as weaknesses:
*Gibbo* while not fully seen, is able to maneuver through tight spaces but is more timid than the other monsters and acts like he wants you to just leave him alone.
*Trots* is the smallest of the monsters thus allowing him to slither through small spaces like air vents with relative ease. However, him moving through vents is only triggered when Caz made noise near them which alerted Trots to his position. So as long as Caz stayed hidden in vents and under tables without making any noise, Trots couldn’t find him. He also seemed to stay in accommodations throughout the game which means either his movement is limited to the structural damage preventing him from leaving or he just made accommodations his territory.
*Muir* has tall gigantic spider legs which lets him move easily around rugged open terrain. His height allows him to easily spot prey from above and snatch them with his appendages. Muir also has enough strength to knock over a cargo crate. Despite these feats, he seems unable to climb structures taller than him like an actual spider leaving him trapped moving around the main deck. His size also prohibits him from moving into large crates while looking for Caz.
*Rennick* uses his size to his advantage by smashing through walls when chasing Caz. However, this size acts as a double-edged sword for him due to the fact that the tight hallways of administration restrict his speed and movement forcing to him rely on apendages to squirm around like a slug. Caz also easily outran Rennick due to this disadvantage.
*Addair* with more appendages than the other monsters allow him to climb and maneuver throughout the entire rig like a jungle gym. And with his massive size rivaling Muir’s and Rennick’s, it can be safe to assume that Addair’s strength is equal to theirs. Despite his size, he is also incredibly fast. However, unlike Gibbo staying in Engineering, Trots in Accommodations, Muir on the Deck, and Rennick in Administration, Addair actively pursues and hunts Caz throughout the rig following him from the Generator Room all the way up to the Processing Quad. These feats make him arguably the most dangerous monster in the whole game.
Theres also the guy with his wife, but that might be addair
@@SpellboundSpectre No, that wasn't Addair. He said the name, which I forgot, but it wasn't Addair. He was confined to one spot, while Addair was moving all over the place and even came after you at the flare.
@@TailsFan O'Conner
@@thomasfoster7387 Ah, thanks!
I still have no idea why Addair has a personal vendetta against us, is it just cause we're Not horribly mutated and he's jealous of us? I can kinda understand Rennick's hateboner for us since as far as he's concerned it's probably our fault somehow that everything happened right when he was trying to get us off his rig
Played this yesterday and i swear to christ they excelled themselves with the models.
I swear i saw Addair trying to reach for me when i was hidding in a vent.
“Still up your tricks, McLeary?!” He yelled as i dashed from cover and toward the pump room
Oh yeah, I'm not sure if it was random flailing or on purpose, but it was creepy as all hell.
him and muir we're my biggest nightmares in the game
I just had that happen last night!
While maybe not the most terrifying game I've ever played, it'll definitely be one I think about often.
That part where caz is holding Roy, and he looks up and says "i lohe this big man!" That was so cinematic and natural, just beautiful
drowning in literal oil is just a mega brutal way to die man 😭
I just like how its a mystery, nobody knows what it was and never will, the real horror being that it was a complete accident and you could just as easily be swept up in some freakish nightmare while you're blissfully unaware
Definitely inspired by cosmic horror stories/movies like Color Out of Space and Annihilation
Annihilation actually started as a book! The movie was pretty good but if you like horror novels you should totally check out the Annihilation series. It's super unnerving and I read the first book in one day cause it's small
The Thing as well
@@tohruadachi6387 oh yeah!! Which was also a book called Who Goes There? Which is technically the prequel cause it's plot is what happens at the Norwegian Base
I got huge annihilation vibes from this game. The walking down into the legs and other areas below the main body in particular reminds me of when the main character walks down into the lighthouse.
@@Sammy11611true
This is the kind of game you can build a world around.
A Secret World.
This would fit right in with mystery flesh pit national park. Giant entities hidden underground that people really shouldnt be messing with, except this time one of them woke up.
I would love a similar type of game set in an Arctic research base
If it had ended with a black helicopter with the SCP logo on the side buzzing over the wreckage, I would have accepted that.
@@SamuelBlack84
Why don’t we sit here….see what happens
I think the reason this game is so interesting for many is extremely simple. The entity comes from very deep in the ocean, something humans still know very little about, and that's exactly it: It plays on the fact that it is the only space on our earth we know almost nothing about, so in theory the whole game's concept could be very real because it cant be proven or disproven that this stuff exists down there
Those cutscene animations looked next fucking level holy shit just the energy in the motions alone.
The only person that lived was the one that left in the morning before the disaster
Caz took a job to run away from his problems but at the end, when all hope seem lost and knowing the potential danger, he finally faces the problem and ultimately apologize to his wife.
It's just a sad and emotional thing that just hit me. There was no other way. I understand that; the moment we call help, we'll all be dead. Imagine what it can do when it reached the mainland; everyone will be dead. Humanity is finished.
In fairness due to the strike action 90% of the crew survived because they were on the mainland while the rig was kept running by a skeleton crew. The one issue here is that if the rig really was on low support then drilling should have been suspended, my guess is that Rennick was forcing the few folk remaining on the rig to keep drilling in order to satisfy the suits who pay his salary. Even more reasons to hate him.
Dunno man, the military would absolutely bomb that thing@@ghostavinci104
@@krashd How many people normally works ln an oil rig? I always kept thinking if there were more people out there trying to survive, even if 90% of them were not there.
First time I saw the mass and energy it gave off, I thought of Nic Cage, based on H.P Lovecrats, “ the color from outer space”.
a small detail that i noticed in the "afterlife" bit at the end; you cant see yourself in the mirrors. it just shows the effort the devs put into the game. i always love seeing tiny details like this
Thank you for including the historical context of the game in the discovery of oil. As someone on the other side of the world (Australia) but with connections to Scotland (mum's a Scot) it's really interesting to me and makes me want to look more into recent history.
Holy shit, I’m an Australian with a Scottish mum as well.
If you played other games made by this developer, "Everybody's Gone to The Rapture" in particular, you probably already know the answer about what this entity actually is.
It is a much more sinister version of an extraterrestrial unified consciousness organism from that first game, which was brought to Earth with a meteorite. They are basically self plagiarizing themselves at this point.
The entity consumes not only the flesh, but people's mind and memories most importantly, uniting them in it's own "mind bank". After being consumed, the human consciousnesses continues to live in the entity's mind net forever, with all their memories being saved there.
It is presumed that at the beginning of the game, the protagonist is already dead, it's just his life memories being repeated inside of this net.
Finley loses all hope probably from the guilt of her getting Brodie killed. She told Caz with confidence he would be out by now but got him trapped in. Brodie probably told Finley and worried her guilt would make her give up and even tried to warn Caz about it, but it was too late. But in a sense, Finley's despair was the right call. If ships came out to investigate the rig, that thing would just take them over and make it back to the mainland, spreading itself more. Brodie's wish for the two of them to go home was a touching one, but it just couldn't happen.
Damn this game came out yesterday and you're already having a video out! I'm playing it right now but I haven't gotten very far but when I'm done I'll definitely watch it. I love your content, man!
What's funny is I had no idea this game came out yesterday and I saw it on game pass and played and beat it then saw this video and I'm like wait what😂
The game essayers and reviewers get early access. Thought most ppl would know that by now
That's right. I commented before watching the video and then he said it in the first few seconds 😅, my bad. I don't know how early he got to play it, and I know this game isn't super long, but I imagine playing, recording, writing and editing still takes some time. @@moxiemaxie3543
You know Harry is a wizard right? that's how he got it early
Brodies death made me cry, and I didn’t even play the game. The power of voice acting
This is one of the best stories I have ever played.. I wasn't even aware it was a brand new game, I just saw it in gamepass and thought it looked awesome.
That's crazy to me finding how new it is, because they just don't make story games like they used to. This game is a gem.
From the standpoint of investors, a game like this would be considered a giant risk for a myriad of reasons and never released. Which is why I hate the AAA game dev as it is now. Treating a game like a business project rather than a piece of art is maybe a financially safe move but it filters out outstanding games such as this.
@@aviannte and thats the type of thing why I hope earth gets hit by the passing asteroid tomorrow. It won't, but I wish it would.
I love the added context at the beginning of this video about the oil in Scotland at the time. This is honestly one of the best games this year. Well paced, interesting story, unique setting, fantastic voice acting and dialog, and some of the nicest video game waves I've ever seen, loved it.
Someone who sees the similarities with the rig, finally.
The Rig was so good.
The reviews so far mention the rig and The thing. Look at the different channels
There's no way any horror enthusiast would not see the similarities with the rig. You've been listening to the wrong crowd brother.
The Rig (2023) hopefully and not that The Rig (2010) movie, which was utter shite.
@@daveauburn1561 I think it's other way around, more like YOU are the one that listening to the wrong crowd. There's 2 movies that made about Oil Rig with the same name and the OP might be talking about the new one
Stupid.
Being someone who lives outside Aberdeen, Scotland, it's insane that this is the game that's gonna be associated with us. And i'm all for it, I love The Thing and cosmic horror, and to have the idea that something like that's off the coast of where I live is both awesome and horrifying. Well done to The Chinese Room devs!
Theory: Rennick was infected early, and due to this, this is why we hear him make announcements for everyone to stay on the rig and get back to work. He knows what's going, but the entity doesn't want any potential future hosts to leave, so it makes him tell people to stay.
so…why did he take off in the helicopter…
@@Scruggs69503 I'm not sure. I think there may have been a part of Rennick that was still him, or it was an early stage of infection, then when in the helicopter the entity takes him over completely and fully mutates?
@@thomasdeakin8486 i think your reading to much into it, i’m pretty sure he was just an asshole character and that’s about it, but i’ll admit that is a good theory, would explain why the helicopter crashed, ima think more on that
The stuff with Suze's voice suggests certainly that whatever it is starts getting into your head well before the physical transformation, and plays on your preexisting feelings, so... it seems plausible.
@@Nassifeh Yeah, when you are near an infected area you see melting film bubbling around your screen and if you die you see the film reel get melted completely with flashes of (childhood?) memories!
I love how each character feels like an actual human being, and the voice work in this game is amazing!
this game and the devs are ones to look out for. a love for horror seeps from every aspect of still wakes the deep
I hope so, Bloodlines is one of my top 3 favourite games of all time and The Chinese Room are supposedly making the sequel.
The voice acting paired with Jessica Curry’s as usual brilliant scoring creates such an intensely emotional narrative. Welcome back Chinese Room.
I love how perfect they encapsulated the general sentiment of scottish people and the slang, lingo, etc. perfectly in the game.
I just want to chime in since I’m never this early and say that I truly appreciate this series as I’m too chicken to play anything remotely scary but scary games always have the best stories.
Interesting! A cross between Outlast and The Thing set on an oil rig, essentially. Cool idea, and it looks beautiful.
All the good things about how outlast plays without having to worry about batteries
@@zeusthedrumlord547 Indeed - those bloody batteries, lol. :)
13:24 if ya look at one of the keys, it says "Lab Samples", so it possibly suggests there's a lab on the oil rig, but idk, maybe its a lab to test the oil
Oh man, the internal struggle of “this game is amazing, I want to finish it before watching this video” and “this game is kicking my ass in real life, be a grown person and acknowledge it, give up and watch the video”.
I came across this on the Xbox this morning. Knew absolutely nothing about it. Turned it on…..and didn’t stop until l finished it. Loved this. A great achievement by the team behind. Had me gripped from beginning to end. Bravo. 👏🏻
What an excellent game! The growths on the rig and on its crew reminds me of the structure gel in Soma, from the way it behaves to the way it manipulated people’s way of thinking. I hope we can get more horror games centered around the sea/under the sea in the future 🥺
You should check out The Rig (2023) and Underwater (2020) for the TV/movie equivalent of both games.
The scene at the end feels to pretty clearly be a flashback to when Caz left for the rig. He had a conversation with Suze that basically boiled down to him needing to leave while she was asleep.
I love horror based in oceanic locations, and underwater research base, an oil rig, a giant boat, they make for excellent set pieces especially when things start getting otherworldly in the horror. I got massive Color Out of Space vibes for the corruption of the human form and Anihilation with how alienly beautiful the entity(?) at the center of it all was.
Also, I really appreciate you providing the real world context, be it the history, culture, politics, etc, that get included in games. It really does add and makes me appreciate the game and the work that went into it so much more. Thanks!
You should check out the game SOMA, the TV show The Rig (2023) and the movie Underwater (2020).
@@krashd Thanks! I’ve seen SOMA and I know he brought up The Rig earlier in the video but I need to look into that
I think this was a really well constructed video. This is also an amazing narrative horror game which I really appreciate. The world building, fleshing out all of the characters on the rig, the incredible voice acting, the unknown of what the thing is, all of it had a part to play in making this game great. Really appreciate the work by the team that made this and would love to see what they make next!
Something told me to just wait, Gaming Harry is definitely gonna do a story explained on this one. I can always count on you for the bangers
It just came out like yesterday, people are getting impatient on games that a day old. Saw the same comment on a day old game Alan Wake DLC. Like it takes time to write and editm. They get the game early
@moxiemaxie3543 I actually watched a friend play it yesterday but I'm not very good at looking underneath the surface for the lore. That's why I watch Harry. Because he dives deep, no pun intended, into the game for the lore. I could've waited weeks, I just knew Harry would make a video on this game
Fun design thing I noticed: people who intimidate Caz appear with their faces obscured by shadow or turned away. Finley is his senior whom he looks up to and wants to do well for, and every time we meet her? Her face is deeply shadowed and hard to see. Addair sits by himself with his back to a window in the galley, the strong back light focusing his Size as his key feature. Rennik shouts at you to enter his dark ass office, and spends 30% of the conversation with his back to Caz with his face clear and still to study only a few times in the exchange.
I find that interesting. Later on both Rennik and Addair become monsterous in Much Less Subtle Ways, meanwhile Finley is humanized at the end by literally pinning her down with a tower so we can see her face at the end and know her as a Person she begs Caz To Be Brave
The monster came from the hole that was drilled on the sea floor. At 6:42 Rennik says that he doesn’t care that something is off with the Drill. Meaning that whatever was off, was likely the eldritch horror.
As a Southeast Asian who usually consume either American or British media for entertainment, I absolutely love that they made everyone in this game Scottish.
To me, that and the fact that it's set in an oil rig is the selling point of this game. It's unique as I rarely hear Scottish accent and a game/horror media that's set in an oil rig. But ofc, the game as a whole is also pretty fantastic.
The infected being able to talk to their prey and even making this weird call/howl despite looking like that is just really unsettling, the game design is the usual "sneak behind the creepy monster" and "hold to pull the lever" but it works so well since the game is super immersive and atmospheric, and the characters are all charming (except for Rennick. Fck that guy for being a prick and causing all of this) which makes you attached to them.
Also, one thing that I keep thinking about is the fact that this is the type of diversity that's done right. Sure, it's just a Scottish accent, but communication is part of a culture. They're not forcing it. They're just showing you how these people from this cultural background react to a certain situation, in this case a life and death situation. It's as simple as that and yet it actually makes you interested in their language and care for them. Like how they casually say fck and cnt and bastrd with what most people thought to be in an angry tone even though that's just a friendly banter. Or how they say some slang/Scottish words that most people (like me) never heard. It effectively makes people curious and want to learn the language, which is part of their culture.
Anyway, that's it from me. Sorry if it's long, I always get carried away when writing a comment. I just love this game so much, and I wish to experience more cool and unique games like this in the future.
Much love from Indonesia 🇮🇩❤😄
As a Scot myself, this wonderful comment was great to read! A lovely wee write-up on it.
Much love from Glasgow :)
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but the 1979 referendum wasn’t about Scottish independence. It was about devolution and setting up a local Scottish parliament or retaining unitary rule from Westminster. It passed very narrowly, by the margin of 51% mentioned.
I love how when you finish the game and go back to the main menu, the rig isn't there like it is usually.
6:15 call me a clatty gobshite one more time and you catching these oil rig hands lol
This is basically what I wanted "The Rig" series to be.
Same here!
So it’s not good? The series?
@@raminMTL it isn’t terrible, but if you’ve watched this you basically have seen the story
I work with the crew support for oil rigs. So I was really excited for this game. I am delighted at how this looks like a real rig and like any other crew I worked with. Rigs just be like that sometimes tho. Eldritch horrors and one crew mate that might be escaping jail time.
Couldn't wait for Harry to cover lore from this game and then, there it is! You're awesome! Game gave me such a throwback in about first 5min of playing about movie called Deepwater Horizon but with the weird little twist vibe from The Thing and I absolutely loved it! Best horror story experience so far in 2024. Thank you Harry for covering the lore in detail. Keep up the good work!
Very good. I have already played the game and I appreciate your the historical context. I love that everyone was scottish in the game, not something you see that much. The voice actors did a tremendous job
What I love about this game is that it isn't one of those cosmic horrors that smacks you in the head with the "Whoops the character's sacrifice didn't matter and the world ended LOL" endings.
Cas's efforts weren't in vain at the end, they mattered
It's a sad ending, but not a hopeless one. With Cas's soul being allowed one last moment with Suze before passing on, it felt like the games way of saying, ' everything is okay again'.
One of the reasons i think this game hits so hard is because it has such a beautiful sense of tragic humor. I love that before Brody dies, him and Caz share a genuinely funny exchange, a wonderful moment between two friends before the inevitably of death. While the game itself is pretty basic, it's made a great, memorable experience by its writing.
Excellent video! Was really good to have you touch on the period and the struggles going on in the area at the time.
I reckon Archie turned the helicopter to come back for Caz after seeing him on the deck but Rennick wanted to keep leaving. So he struggled with Archie inadvertently causing them to crash.
This game is probably the most "lived in" game ive played. Everywhere you go, it looks as if people were there. You dont see that very often.
I love how it's never explained what the monster is or where it came from. Is it an alien? Parasite? Has it always been there? We flat out know nothing other than it eats/assimilates people. Too many horror games try to overexplain what the monster is, but the fear of the unknown is just much better imo
was hoping for this to be a cthulu game, but a game inspired by The Thing is still good.
i think it was a dumb choice, they should’ve gone more into detail, we know literally nothing about it, why does it transform people but sometimes kill others? why do others just cling to life in delusion? is it a hive mind? why does it make you hear your loved ones? what’s its weakness? why did it make the sky red? why was it changing the wind? what’s its purpose? some details needed to be given as their are too many questions left unanswered, they did the bare minimum with explaining it
@@Notfakeultra It's so obvious that it's just as obvious that the op is clearly asking where it originates from, not how it contextually appears in the story. We all know it came from them drilling oil, but did it come from outer space? The planets core? Was it a Frankenstein of a sort? Is it a metaphor for the environmental impacts of oil drilling? Is the game anti-oil propaganda? We just don't know.
@@Scruggs69503 I think explaining a monster, especially an almost love craftian entity like this one, takes away some of the mystery. How would the crew possibly even learn it's purpose? how could they realise why it makes you hear your loved ones? The weakness question, I can get, like someone could get lucky and find out it's weak to fire or electricity or what not, but questions on the creatures' nature are something way outside the realm of possibility for some poor sods working an oil rig to be able to find out, you'd need consistent observation over a long period of time and a way to experiment with the creature and unfortunately none of the crew have that sort of luxury
@@Scruggs69503best part is that they didn’t explain it. Not knowing makes it even more upsetting, like a force of nature that you have no control over.
I think in the sequel (simply called The Deep 2) two things will happen: the oil rig will be discovered by a search party but it will be deep underwater with the mysterious entity the sole dominant force on the rig.
Did they say they're releasing a sequel? Am I the only one hoping they don't? It's well done as it is
I genuinely teared up during the Brodie call. My goodness 😢
The voice acting in this game was absolutely insane. It felt like the first real game that people put care and love into. Roy and Brodie's actors were incredibly. Genuinely felt emotional when they passed.
The colour from outer space meets the thing but set on an oil rig! I love it!
Its like the Piper Alpha disaster, but with a creature instead of man made.
I don't know but anything with the ocean, makes me feel like Cthulhu has something to do with it. Like that is a plant from whatever dimension cthulhu is from.
True.
Cthulhu isn't from another dimension.
My original theory to explain the entity in this game was that Caz simply didn't survive falling off the top of the rig, he fell for at least five seconds so that's over 120 meters, falling from even half that height has a mortality rate of 85% so it's odd that he is unscathed by such a fall, and the hallucinations of a dying man could explain what he experiences in the game.
That was my reaction. He goes overboard twice in the game and incredibly 'survives' both times. The entire game is about a man who has ran away and, in death, tries to take responsibility for his actions.
I watched a playthrough of the game, and i cried through alot of portions even though feeling a bit on edge. Truly a great story, that was brought to life by the voice actors. Whats wild is that the game bears little to no explanation of what exactly is going on, and the story before Caz is on the rig. I think that adds to the draw of the story. Because youre pretty much in the unknown with the characters. Overall, thrilled to see that there is still amazing story telling within video games.