Dead By Daylight: Steady Pulse Features New Trans Survivor

Dead by Daylight, the online multiplayer survival horror game, has just released a new DLC chapter, Steady Pulse. The chapter features a new Survivor, Orela Rose. She is an EMT who finds herself caught up in a possible curse, and she also happens to be transgender.

Dead by Daylight: Steady Pulse

The official Dead by Daylight website describes the story of Steady Pulse and its new Survivor, Orela Rose.

“When Orela Rose’s best friend Emily died in a tragic accident, she dropped out of college to become an EMT. One day, she saved the life of a billionaire, who gratefully funded her dream project – a thematic dining experience called Screams in the Dark, inspired by the work of horror scribe Cliff Barra. Some believed his stories to be cursed, whisking readers into a strange black fog. Orela laughed off such superstitions – that is, until the fog came creeping through her door.”

Orela Rose and Representation Done Right

The trailer for Steady Pulse portrays Orela as a take-charge EMT who remains calm in times of crisis. It shows her as admirable, not because she happens to be trans, but because she saves people’s lives. She’s not “a trans character,” – she’s “a character who is trans.” In other words, being trans does not take over her identity. This shows that trans people are simply that – people, and they want to be treated as such.

The History of Trans Representation in Dead by Daylight

Orela is the second transgender Survivor to be added to Dead by Daylight, although the first one, Tubarão, was taken from another game, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Orela is the first trans Survivor that originates with Dead by Daylight. She is voiced by transgender rights activist Angelica Ross, who delivers a sharpness to her lines.

Representation Matters

Bigotry is a very real thing, no matter how much some people might want to deny it. Characters like Orela show that LGBTQ+ people are normal people, which helps to remove the stigma of being “other.” In an increasingly divided world, we need characters like Orela to remind us that we are not defined by what’s between our legs or which gender we choose to identify as.