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Had UK-based developers The Chinese Room wanted a bit of a rest on their laurels after the ecstatically received <\/span>Still Wakes the Deep<\/span><\/i>, well, the sheer number of laurels available would have made for a pretty comfy nest. They hit best of the year and game awards lists with equal regularity, scooping, among others, best indie at the 2024 Horror Game Awards, best creature design at the NYX Awards, a 2025 Bafta for best new IP, and a <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i> best of the year pick. Luckily for us, they\u2019ve wasted little time getting back to work, and just over a year after <\/span>Still Wakes<\/span><\/i>\u2019 release, we can submerge ourselves once more in the mystery filled waters around the cursed oil rig with new DLC\u2014<\/span>Still Wakes the Deep: The Siren\u2019s Rest<\/span><\/i>. Sagar Beroshi and Patrick O\u2019Halloran from The Chinese Room came by Intel Gaming Access to dish on their literal deep dive into the horror genre.<\/span><\/p>\n Rolling in the Deep<\/b><\/p>\n Sagar, the lead on narrative for the title, explains the gripping plot of this new chapter. “<\/span>Siren\u2019s Rest<\/span><\/i> is set a decade after the events of the base game. The main character is Mhairi, who is the leader of a saturation diving expedition to a wreck at the bottom of the North Sea. People died in this disaster, and Mhairi is trying to record as much as she can of their passing (plus trying to make sense of what went wrong) as she carefully swims her way through a heaving, rusting twisted wreck. Mhairi has her own reasons for going, and she may well find more than she bargained for.”<\/span><\/p>\n As Mhairi, you\u2019re tethered to a diving bell by a cable carrying both oxygen and comms from your team. It\u2019s your literal lifeline, and, without giving too much away, figures heavily in the tension stakes. Patrick led the development of new features required for the DLC, and, when asked for a particular development challenge, did not hesitate. “The umbilical cable! Creating an umbilical cable that attached to the player all the way back to the bell, which would behave physically, was a big technical challenge. We used a hybrid approach of a skeletal mesh with ragdoll physics close to the player, and further away using a breadcrumb system that used spline meshes.” It pays off, with the cable underlining how vulnerable the divers are in what feels like a completely alien\u2014and hostile\u2014world.<\/span><\/p>\n “Most of all, this game is influenced by the feeling of thalassophobia,” Sagar affirms. “That\u2019s a five-dollar word, but it represents a feeling many of us have felt when swimming in the sea, and realising with dawning dread that there is an entire universe lurking in the murk below. It\u2019s fundamentally a Dante\u2019s <\/span>Inferno<\/span><\/i> story: the deeper our protagonist goes into the sea, the deeper she goes into her psyche, and the more the horrors emerge.” And we\u2019re right there with her.<\/span> Don\u2019t Let Me Down<\/b><\/p>\n This psychological dimension\u2014playing with our deepest fears of open water as well as the terror of might be lying in wait in the rig\u2014relies on total immersion, and PC performance really matters there. “We really want players to be able to play the game with great performance as that will always be the best experience,” Patrick agrees. “We also want to create beautifully realized environments and effects for our game. Frame generation and upscaling technologies allow us to push visual fidelity while also having great performance. For this reason, we tried to give players on PC as many options as possible so they can get the best possible experience on their hardware.”<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/game.intel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/swd-sirens-call-newsletter02-1920x1080-1.jpg\")
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