Jason Graves explains how the cult horror game’s score began as a modern, Hollywood soundtrack, but ended up drawing on a 20th-century orchestral technique to create something much scarier
What does “horror” sound like to you? Is it the slow thump of a heartbeat, gradually speeding up as adrenaline and cortisol start to flood the nervous system? Is it the wet thwack of meat on metal as something, somewhere, gets rent asunder? Or is it more understated – a soft whisper in the ear when you weren’t expecting it, half-heard shuffling footsteps, the suggestion of a breeze when the air is supposed to be perfectly still?
Dead Space, the horror game from EA and Visceral that launched for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC back in 2008, managed to get into your head, and under your skin. Complementing the game’s extra-terrestrial, Cronenberg-esque body horror was the mental deterioration of protagonist Isaac Clarke; an engineer stranded aboard the USG Ishimura. He’s not a warrior. He’s not a soldier. He’s just some guy, on a ship teeming with hostile alien lifeforms, whose poor little brain is starting to unravel. For the entire game, you never leave his heavy, blood-soaked boots.
