Though it’s usually recognized for a particular kind of recreation, Quantic Dream is eager to verify its new indie label Highlight isn’t equally typecast.
Beneath the Waves is the primary of the French publishers’ indie titles to see a launch, and whereas it’s nonetheless very a lot a narrative-driven expertise, it’s clearly totally different to the kind of recreation you’d usually anticipate from Quantic’s inside workforce.
The work of fellow French developer Parallel Studio, Beneath the Waves places you within the position of Stan, knowledgeable deep sea diver working for an oil firm from an underwater base.
Stan has suffered a horrendous incident in his life – to say extra would spoil issues – and has determined that an prolonged interval of self-imposed solitude will assist him get away from all of it (fairly actually) and are available to phrases with what’s occurred.
Naturally, it wouldn’t be a lot of a recreation if Stan finds the peace he seeks with out incident, and so hallucinations, nightmares and different unusual goings-on are to be anticipated.
The overall construction of Beneath the Waves sees gamers controlling Stan over a set variety of days. This entails waking up within the morning, having a radio chat together with his employer and getting his duties for the day, which at first contain upkeep work on the corporate’s numerous underwater constructions.
The sport does an excellent job of portraying the isolation of being alone underwater. Stan is ready to discover the water and its surrounding caves in Moon, his small one-man submarine, however is in any other case fully on his personal.
The one different people seen within the recreation are a reporter on TV and a handful of scenes close to the tip of the sport (which, once more, we received’t go into) – in any other case the one different interactions Stan has are rare chats together with his spouse, who stays at house whereas he’s off on his interval of isolation.
There’s a reasonably linear path by the sport, as every mission develops the plot additional, however there’s additionally scope for some side-quests dotted round right here and there, which encourage additional exploration and even the occasional images task. These are fully elective, and it’s doable to finish the sport with out straying off the set course as soon as or taking a single picture.
By way of the principle missions, Beneath the Waves walks a line between guiding the participant and making them determine issues out for themselves. When you’ll initially be proven the place your subsequent location is in your map, most of the time while you get there, you encounter a problem – possibly the doorway is blocked, possibly an merchandise is required – and from that time, it’s as much as the participant to determine the following step.
The answer isn’t one million miles away, however in the event you’re the form of participant who prefers the way in which many trendy video games adapt to such ‘surprising’ modifications of plan and inform you the place to go as a substitute, chances are you’ll initially wrestle with being left by yourself at occasions. However then, after all, being left by yourself is the entire level of the sport.
Regardless of the sometimes distressing subject material of the plot, Beneath the Waves is usually fairly stress-free. The character of the setting means most issues are carried out at a comparatively sluggish tempo – Stan can solely swim so quick, in any case – and there are hardly ever any threats to the participant.
Sharks swim round you however by no means assault, harmful ‘it’s gonna blow’ set-pieces by no means truly blow, and the one major means it’s doable to die is to expire of oxygen, which shouldn’t occur in the event you preserve a provide of oxygen sticks (that are plentiful, and could be crafted in the event you one way or the other run out). This can be a recreation with a narrative to inform, and it needs to be sure to attain the tip of it.
The sport’s laidback nature is accentuated by its unimaginable soundtrack by Nicolas Bredin. The entire thing’s already on Spotify, and we’ve been listening to it on loop since we completed the sport – not solely does it know precisely when to evoke surprise and when to tug on the heartstrings, nevertheless it’s additionally splendidly ambient music in its personal proper.
“The sport’s laidback nature is accentuated by its unimaginable soundtrack by Nicolas Bredin. The entire thing’s already on Spotify and we’ve been listening to it on loop since we completed the sport.”
Different components of the sport might show extra divisive, however a lot of this can rely upon style. We have been extraordinarily distracted by the voice performing, attributable to Stan’s tendency… to pause at… dramatic moments with practically each line of dialogue.
The lip-syncing isn’t remotely near the dialogue, both. Whereas that is comprehensible, given the sport’s native language is French, it’s reasonably excessive – virtually each time we see a close-up of Stan throughout conversations, his mouth will proceed to maneuver lengthy after he’s stopped speaking. This, coupled with the reasonably low-quality character fashions, regularly broke the immersion for us.
It’s a testomony to Beneath the Waves, then, that regardless of our points with the dialogue and the character design, we nonetheless discovered ourselves blubbering like infants as the tip credit rolled. This recreation nonetheless has the facility to have an effect on you profoundly. There’s subject material on this recreation that might make it extraordinarily tough for some individuals to play.
One thing much less distressing however nonetheless troublesome is the sport’s efficiency. We encountered quite a few bugs within the PS5 model, from music stopping abruptly to dialogue looping time and again, however whereas we’ve been assured that a number of the extra egregious points – notably the loopy quantity of screen-tearing within the hub part – will probably be addressed in an upcoming patch, it’s price mentioning them however. One specifically is at the moment stopping us from seeing an alternate ending, which means we might must play by the entire recreation once more to see it.
The factor is, we most likely will anyway. As a fairly transient journey – we beat it in just below eight hours, however that was with out doing any side-quests or exploring for collectibles, so anticipate something as much as 15 in complete – this can be a recreation we will see ourselves coming again to once more, as soon as we recover from that ending.
Just like the ocean flooring itself, Beneath the Waves has loads of tough edges. However, it additionally has a magnificence that – do you have to select to dive in – will stick with you for a very long time.
