The use of the sea and oceans as metaphors for emotional struggle and reflecting on oneself is nothing new. We can find examples of this in all kinds of media, video games being no exception. Silt,Abzu, Song of the Deep, and A Memoir Blue are the first names that come to mind. Experiences that play with the idea of the depth, abysses made of water in which we can find mysteries, feelings, and thoughts that we don’t want to face. In the Freudian interpretations of dreams, the presence of water was something frequently associated with anguish.
Under The Wavestells the story of a middle-aged man named Stanley Moray as he returns to his old workplace of UniTrench, a drilling company. Why he decides to work again for a company that harms the environment when he strives to protect it is a mystery. However, he’s in a difficult place and needs some time to think about his current situation. Maybe going to therapy would have been cheaper and less dangerous, but thanks to Stan we have a video game.
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As we find out more about our protagonist, we must complete routine missions, exploring and repairing different facilities and devices, while speaking with our superior Tim Graham, the one giving orders. Tim has worked with the protagonist before, and he will play as our occasional radio companion while we go diving. If we don’t pay too much attention to what he does for a job, Tim is a gentle soul who tries to make us feel less alone.
A game about exploring the bottom of the sea can’t work if what we see on screen doesn’t catch our attention or if the actual diving feels janky. These aspects, initially, feel well-executed. Just looking at the aquatic landscape is thrilling, wondering about what can be found within these dark corners, while compositions that enhance this sensation of discovery play in the background. Seriously, some of these songs stuck with me long after the credits.
Controlling Stan feels okay, with the expected pressure and weight of being underwater, but without much of the clunkiness — I just wish you could pick stuff up faster, without individual animations that take their sweet time and stop your momentum. There’s an oxygen meter that will gradually deplete as you swim, but you may easily fill it by consuming oxygen sticks that you can stock in large quantities.
Fortunately, Stan can also drive Moon, a submarine that is perfect for doing long-distance trips in a few minutes. This vehicle can get damaged by crashing, but is easily repaired using kits you’re able to find or craft in your base. You can empty its fuel if you decide to use your boost for long periods of time, but this is solved by stocking a few fuel tanks that can also be crafted.
You have the tools to explore anything you want at your own pace, feeding your curiosity by opening the map and looking at several markers pointing at different objectives beside your main mission, just like any other open-world game. It’s a shame then that I had little to no interest in doing anything secondary after the first couple of hours; I just wanted to go through the main story and find out what was up with Stan.
The lack of focus and poor execution of some of Under The Wave’s ideas are what’s most wrong with this game. It was marketed as a narrative adventure in which we could explore why Stan is struggling with his mind and what happened with his family, but it doesn’t work when you spend hours just swimming around, opening chests, exploring abandoned planes, collecting resources for crafting, and looking for secrets. You don’t learn anything from Stan unless you continue the main missions, and the experience just becomes an outdated collect-a-thon that only dilutes the narrative.
The exploration falls short and fails to feel rewarding. Soon I found myself wandering around areas that felt more or less the same as the ones I already visited before. The items found can sometimes be of interest, like a craftable upgrade for your oxygen capacity or your vehicle fuel tank. But while all of these help with traversal, they aren’t needed to continue making progress. As long as you have a good stock of fuel and oxygen sticks, you’re able to finish the game without crafting, making the whole system mostly irrelevant.
I wrote “mostly” because Under The Waves tries to have a strong message on environmental awareness, and it is a respectable attempt. At first you’ll only read log entries from the Surfrider Foundation, a real-life organization that tries to protect the oceans of the world. You’ll read about pollution, the absurd amount of plastic being dumped into the sea, and other worrying matters that happen every day.
Leaving activism to optional notes that most players probably won’t take their time to read would have been a mistake, but gladly this was avoided. Different events that take place in the story have a direct impact on our explorable area, and we see first-hand the outcomes of harmful decisions and human greed. This doesn’t drastically change how you explore, which could have been interesting, but it’s still well-thought out. There are even small details that reinforce the message, like having the chance to collect the empty plastic recipient after each oxygen stick we consume.
The environmental aspect is intertwined with Stan’s personal journey in an effective way on paper, trying to say something like men are capable of going to absurd lengths and provoking immeasurable disasters in our ecosystem before being able to face the sorrow and grief in more healthy ways. In practice, it isn’t that great.
Stan’s journey is hardly remarkable. I only found the need to be empathetic towards him to make progress. All the available optional content didn’t help, and the unrefined focus on environmental awareness sometimes even hurt important moments.
For example, at one point you’re experiencing a turning point for Stan clearly intended to evoke a strong emotional response. However, as soon as the cutscene ends, we see plastic bottles lying around, waiting to be collected, before hearing Stan spit his cheesy one-liners like, “Hey, no littering now”.
While Under The Waves has good intentions and well-thought-out ideas, it’s a disappointment. There are moments when it’s beautiful and charming, striking you with its own visual style and excellent music and asking you to swim more miles to see what you may find. But this effect can’t stand on its own for long, and the result is an experience filled with the dumps and vices that it tries to fight against.
Score 2.5/5. A PlayStation 5 code was provided by the publisher.
