I was a bit wary of Under The Waves. I wasn't sure if it was going to be another psychological horror game about repressed guilt or grief, which is a trope that I'm sick to death of. But the idea of playing a scuba diver at the bottom of the ocean was novel enough that I gave the game a chance.
I was pleasantly surprised that Under The Waves has a straightforward story about coping with grief. There's no mid-game or late-game plot twist, other than perhaps one late-game reveal which is a surprise to the protagonist as much as it is a surprise to the player. This isn't a "psychological horror" game about the protagonist's secret, repressed guilt manifesting horrific monsters or environments. Without spoiling anything specific, it is about grief and guilt, and it is a tear-jerker. I cried a little bit at several points throughout the game. But it's very direct and straightforward about the nature of the protagonist's grief, and his guilt is normal guilt for the situation he's in.
The primary story is about a man who takes a job maintaining an underwater oil rig, in order to get away from a home life that has him completely preoccupied with the death of his young daughter. Even after years, he hasn't been able to move on, and so he tries to escape to the bottom of the sea and drown himself in work. But his grief and sorrow follow him, and are manifested by a possible supernatural influence. Or maybe it's just nitrogen narcosis.
There might be things at the bottom of the ocean that the protagonist has not conceived.
Firewatch, under the sea
It's basically just Firewatch, but at the bottom of the ocean instead of a forest. So, "Firewatch by way of The Abyss". Under The Waves also diverges from Firewatch by being much more "video-game-y" than Firewatch. Firewatch can readily be dismissed by many players as just a "walking sim". Under the Waves is definitely not a "walking sim", even though it does have many of the trademarks of popular walking sim titles. This game has a small open world to explore, full 3-D underwater movement, crafting, collectibles, a guitar rhythm mini-game, dangers, and, of course, the risk of suffocating if you run out of oxygen.
Under The Waves heavily promotes
the Surfrider Foundation.
There's also a heavy anti-corporate and environmental theme, which I appreciated. In fact, the whole game is basically propaganda for a Non-Government Organization (NGO), called Surfrider that advocate for cleaning up and preserving the oceans. Unfortunately, none of the proceeds (as far as I know) from the purchase of the game goes towards the Surfrider Foundation. So if you want to actually support this organization, you'll have to donate to them or volunteer independent of buying or playing the game.
The ocean of this game is littered with garbage, ranging from discarded plastic bottles, to computer parts, to crashed planes and boats, and (somehow) cars that have been thrown into the ocean. Smaller garbage, such as bottles, electronic components, metal, and so forth can be collected by the player and recycled into crafting materials, such as oxygen refills, flares, submarine upgrades, and so forth.
In fact, whenever the player uses an oxygen refill or flare, the empty container is discarded, and the player can pick it back up in order to recycle it again. So not only are you picking up the garbage that society as a whole has thrown in the ocean, but you are also encouraged to pick up your own garbage that you leave in the sea. In fact, the game will even chastise you if you neglect picking up after yourself.
Furthermore, the plot revolves around the player maintaining, repairing, and cleaning up after an underwater oil rig owned by a massive corporation. You'll have to stop oil leaks and clean up after leaks in order to protect the local coral and wildlife. In fact, this corporation might even be up to evil shenanigans at the bottom of the ocean. Again, just like in Firewatch, there is a hint of some kind of conspiracy for the player to potentially discover.
The player must recycle trash as crafting materials.
The player character will also frequently comment on the ugliness of the oil infrastructure, and on how wasteful people are for throwing so much away into the ocean. Under the Waves takes every opportunity it can to throw shade at corporations and capitalist consumer culture, while also trying very hard to make the player more aware of your own wastefulness and thoughtlessness, in the hopes that we, the players, might take the hint and be more thoughtful about our own personal consumption and treatment of the ocean in the future.
Twilight zone
Under The Waves is also part of a growing sub-genre of "adventure" games that to discover and catalogue native flora and fauna. Think of games like No Man's Sky, or Pacific Drive. You're given a game-long side quest to take photos of some of the notable wildlife in the area. This includes sea turtles, different types of whales, different types of sharks, and more. Doing so unlocks some historic information about these animals, and the current threats that they face due to human pollution, climate change, and other factors.
You can also scan and catalogue the various wrecks that you find throughout the map. There are sunken boats, crashed planes, and more. They usually hide secrets and collectibles, and scanning them gives some flavor text about what the boat or plane was, and how it ended up at the bottom of the ocean.
Under The Waves really wants the player to see the beauty of the oceans and the wildlife that lives within. The environment can be quite lovely and serene.
The ocean floor can be beautiful and serene, at the same time that it's terrifying and merciless.
Unfortunately, the game's dedication to realism hurts its desire to present the ocean as beautiful. The map has a variety of different areas, but too much of the scenery looks very similar. Lots of rocky trenches, seaweed, and oil pipes. There isn't enough colorful coral, or other such visually distinct scenery to distract from the bland, rocky sea floor.
The visuals often get too dark and murky, with the water limiting visibility and washing out a lot of the color and detail of the environment. There were also times when it got so dark that I couldn't tell where I was or what I was doing, let alone what I was looking at. Even with a flare lit, I could often barely see what was going on around me. This made navigating some of the tighter set pieces very difficult, such as some of the maze-like corridors of the oil refinery structures.
The game also struggles at a technical level. I experienced multiple crashes in the early hours of the game, as well as plenty of frame stuttering on the PS5. Oddly enough, these problems seemed to become less common later on in the game.
I suffered multiple crashes in the first few hours of play.
I'm not sure why the game would be struggling so much on a technical level. It looks fine, but the graphics and environments don't seem like they would be that demanding. There's a lot of wildlife, including pods of fish and seaweed swaying in the currents, as well as the occasional massive animal like a whale, but none of it is particularly high-fidelity. The ocean floor is a large, open world space, but the draw distance is highly limited by the darkness and murkiness of the water. Supposedly, this should be limiting what the game has to actually render, but I don't know, maybe it's poorly-optimized, and the game is trying to render the entire ocean floor map all the time. In my experience, these crashes always seemed to happen after I had completed a mission out in the sea, and was about to start heading towards the next mission, or back towards the central hub base.
Conventional conventions
I also feel like the game might be a bit over-designed in some aspects. There are mechanics and systems in the game that feel completely unnecessary, and which seem to exist simply for the sake of existing, because it's a feature that a bigger, more conventional game would have.
The biggest example is that the submarine burns through fuel whenever the player uses a speed boost. You can park at docking stations or craft fuel cannisters to refuel the sub, but I never felt like this was necessary. The game never puts a time pressure on the player to rush across the map, so using the speed burst was never necessary, and so I never consumed much of the fuel to begin with. The map also is not so big that moving quickly feels necessary.
The submarine has a speed boost that consumes fuel, but no reason to ever use it.
I just don't get why the developers felt that this was a necessary mechanic to include. I guess, at the very least, the inclusion of the docking stations fleshes out the world a little, since such infrastructure probably would exist in a real-world version of this undersea facility. But realistic or not, it's totally unnecessary in terms of game mechanics.
On the other hand, the character's scuba oxygen tank must be tiny, since I was constantly refilling my oxygen meter with consumable oxygen refills. I started crafting tons of oxygen refills in order to make sure that I wouldn't drown, but then ended up finding that they were unnecessary anyway. Midway through the game, I unlocked an oxygen tank upgrade, which doubled the supply of oxygen. Once I had that upgrade, I didn't need to use nearly as many oxygen refills, and I ended the game with a surplus of dozens of the things.
The character also has a consumable speed boost item, which at least feels a bit more practical and useful. Your swimming speed is much slower than the submarine, and you have limited oxygen when swimming. So rushing to get back to the sub or the safety of a pressurized building is actually something that the player might have to do if running low on oxygen without any refills. But the submarine never has any real reason to be in a hurry, other than simply to save the player's time -- time savings that are probably offset by the time you spend searching for materials to craft fuel, and on the time spent actually crafting the spare fuel.
The darkest depths
Under The Waves is a great example of the use of the video game medium to tell stories. It works as a metaphor for its central story, and its mechanics and environmental design do a good job of reinforcing its plot and themes. As a public service announcement about the state of our oceans, its affecting and informative. And it's equally as good as a public service announcement about coping with grief and the importance of moving on.
It's heartbreaking on multiple levels. Obviously, the story of a father coping with the death of his young daughter is horrible. But the effort that the game goes to show the destruction of the ocean at the hands of human civilization is also heartbreaking. Under The Waves wants us to reflect on our wastefulness and carelessness as a society, and also as an individual, and it is effective at that task (if a bit heavy-handed). And it really does hammer home that there is no running away from grief. There is nowhere on this earth that you can go to escape your sorrow, and the only way to out is to face it and move on -- or completely lose yourself in it.
I feel sorry for the character, and I feel sorry for the ocean life that has to suffer through our short-sightedness.