Hello, this is The Gemsbok, and today's topic is Dead Space,
a game developed by EA Redwood Shores and originally released in 2008.
To most potently deliver their intended mood, horror games generally need the player to feel
vulnerable and disempowered. As a result, the developers of many games in the horror genre
choose to cut out conventional combat completely, opting for puzzle or stealth gameplay instead.
Developers aiming to include more robust combat gameplay without losing too much horror potential
tend to impose harsh limitations on weapon usage, such as sharply limited ammo or tight mechanical
restrictions. When a developer cranks the lever all the way to the other end by providing a full
arsenal of relatively unrestricted firearms, the result is usually more of a horror action
blend, like Bioshock or Left 4 Dead, rather than a straight horror game like Silent Hill or Resident
Evil. But is there any way to eat your cake, and also have it? Is there any way to include powerful,
full-featured, and reasonably fluid combat without significantly diluting a horror game's genre?
By now, you've probably guessed that I think the answer is 'yes,' and that the original Dead Space
provides an excellent example of just how to do it. Dead Space tells the story of Isaac Clarke, an
engineer who is part of a repair crew sent to address a communications blackout aboard a deep-
space mining vessel known as the USG Ishimura. After crash landing in the Ishimura's hangar bay,
the repair crew quickly realizes that downed communications are the least of the miners' woes.
The few surviving members of the repair crew— often through grunt work assigned to Clarke—
"YOU FIX THE TRAM."
set about discovering the nature of the cataclysm that has overtaken the Ishimura,
and repairing enough ship systems to mount an effective escape. For Clarke to make
his way around the Ishimura without being killed, he must regularly fire tools and weapons at the
creatures overrunning the ship. Additional tools, weapons, armor, and ammo can be purchased at stores.
Weaponry can be upgraded at workbenches. And he can wield up to four weapons at a time. Sure, it's
set in a dark spaceship, but this just sounds like a third-person shooter with light RPG elements.
So, why is it that I would feel comfortable claiming that most people would probably consider
Dead Space to be principally a horror game, before anything else, when superficially similar titles
like Bioshock usually wouldn't be? In answer to this, I have basically three key reasons.
The first way that Dead Space sidesteps the potential pitfalls of being both a third-
person shooter and a horror game is through its unique enemy design and enemy progression.
Many of the enemies in Dead Space are vaguely humanoid, ravenously violent beasts with a necrotic
infection spread throughout their bodies. But humanoid or not, the animating tissue being spread
throughout the creatures means that their torsos and heads don't contain their vital organs. Thus,
dealing the most damage to them is accomplished not by firing at the center or top of them,
but by dismembering them—quite literally tearing them limb from limb. The result of this is a
legion of enemies who continue limping, crawling, or pulling themselves toward you with partial bodies
well after you may expect, which leaves the player wary of every ostensibly defeated foe
and every stray corpse. Moreover, the enemies spawn from (and sometimes navigate through)
the ship's air vents. In addition to adding a touch of realism to aid the immersion I'll be covering
in the next section, this choice makes just about every wall and ceiling—as well as a fair number of
floors—into sources of dread. And when a fight does break out, and it's time to start shooting, there is
no immediate abatement of tension as a result, for one simple reason: when a so-called 'necromorph'
crawls out of a vent in front of Isaac Clarke, it's entirely possible that one could've crawled out
of a vent somewhere behind him at the same time. It fosters a natural player paranoia. And this design
decision does all of that while also paying homage to one of the greatest works of sci-fi
and horror ever made, the original Alien. As for enemy progression, while the game does introduce
new varieties of enemies and higher-health variants of existing enemies, it also crucially
introduces faster-moving enemies and variants as the game goes on—culminating in the introduction
of the stasis-enhanced infected soldiers aboard the USM Valor. Being rushed by increasingly
quick foes really never fails to make combat a more stressful prospect than firing at range.
The second way that Dead Space maintains its horror focus, despite empowering the
player, is by meticulously constructing and cultivating an immersive atmosphere.
When it comes to concrete steps taken by a development team to achieve player immersion,
Dead Space goes noticeably farther than the vast majority of games. Not just horror games. All games.
Except for its beginning and ending, gameplay- arresting cutscenes are non-existent. That is,
all narrative content and introduction of threats play out without taking control from the player,
in a manner reminiscent of the Half-Life games. Famously, and unlike the Half-Life games, Dead
Space has no traditional indicators hovering in the corners of the screen to display information
like health and ammo, instead opting to display HUD elements and menus as part of (or projections
from) Clarke's suit and weapons. No distractingly artificial camera effects are ever applied to the
screen—unlike numerous other horror games, which rely heavily on blurs, overlays, and aggressive
color grading to manipulate players. This point is especially laudable due to Dead Space's inclusion
of psychological elements in the story, which are often the excuse used to plaster such effects
all over other games. Similarly, no artificial restriction on movement is imposed during combat.
It is necessary to first aim a weapon in order to fire it, but the player-character can still
move in any direction while aiming and firing. Dead Space creator Glen Schofield has stated that the
decision to allow the player to move while firing was explicitly aimed at maintaining immersion,
in contrast to one of the game's biggest inspirations, Resident Evil 4. "With Resident
Evil 4 [. . .] you walk, and then, you want to shoot, you got to stop. And that's what made it really scary.
But I also thought it just—that sometimes took me out. [. . .] I didn't want [Isaac] to stop and have to shoot;
I wanted you to be able to turn, shoot, just like you would in real life." And rounding out the game's
excellent and immersive atmosphere is its almost unparalleled sound design: the careful layering,
swelling, and fading of its musical score in tandem with the gameplay; the distinctive sound effects
associated with each enemy type; the whispers and songs which grow in prominence behind the music as
Isaac Clarke's mind becomes increasingly affected by the experience; the unnerving silence of the
segments outside airlocks; and the precisely tuned clamor and clangor surrounding the halls of the
badly damaged Ishimura—all sum together into a soundscape that feels like the mature work of a
team of veteran filmmakers, rather than the clumsy scoring and sound effects that are typical of most
games. Third and finally, Dead Space is able to provide ample chills and thrills by establishing
and varying a rhythm of tension. Each new chapter begins in the relative safety of a tram station,
often with an accompanying hub containing a save point, a store, and sometimes an equipment upgrade
bench. These safe spaces are consistent, although they are far from inviolable. At any rate, one sets
off from this state of relative safety into the unpredictable dangers of each section of the ship,
there to face mounting challenges, often under the duress of increasing amounts of thematic
and literal darkness. With a wider scope, one can observe how the entire game, much like the
individual levels, functions with a similar rhythm. Entire levels vary in their potential for stress
and dread. There are clear high points in the game's tension—coinciding with the introduction
of the regenerating hunter enemy in chapter 5; most of the segment aboard the USM Valor in chapter 9;
and the second interaction with the hunter in chapter 10. And there are clear low points in
the game's tension, coinciding with the boss fights in chapters 6, 8, and 12; the further turret section
in chapter 4; and the minigames in chapters 9 and 10. Of particular note is the fact that the
chapters featuring low-stress minigames are two of the three chapters I had just listed among the
highest-stress sections. By now, this technique is well-established in works of cinematic
horror, whose most successful creators know that carefully interweaving moments of true safety,
apparent safety, true danger, and apparent danger can most deeply delve into the fears of viewers.
There are many possible rhythms along these lines, with the most common formula being to begin
the work in a space of total safety, and slowly transition throughout the film until reaching a
climax and ending in a state of total danger. Films that attempt to be frightening in every frame of
every scene from beginning to end tend to fall flat. Concepts can be clearly conveyed by contrast.
Something can most clearly be scary in comparison to something that is not scary.
The longer one spends in a consistent atmosphere, the more likely one is to get tired or bored
rather than tense. To return to one of the reference games I've shown earlier in this video,
Amnesia: The Dark Descent gets less scary the more you play. I believe that—among other reasons, like
the utter simplicity of its puzzles and enemy AI—this is because Amnesia has a fairly stagnant
tone. It's certainly not a bad game. Relative to its budget, it's very impressive. Nor is
it an unstressful experience. In fact, it has an almost objectively spookier game concept
than Dead Space. But in effect, Amnesia is like a film that tries to be frightening in every frame:
good for a bit of tension in its first half, but running thin in the second half of the experience.
In contrast to this, the well-earned and well-executed tension of the hunter and
twitcher chapters of Dead Space succeed despite showing up hours after a full playthrough of
Amnesia would have ended. Even though all three of those chapters still allow Clarke to fight back
just as hard as ever, the set-piece moments of introducing a regenerating pursuer
and incredibly rapid assault enemies operate at such an extremity from the occasional safe spots,
and the less horrific action-oriented segments of the game, that they are truly effective.
There are great games all along the genre spectrum
from stealth horror to action horror. Every game from which I've shown footage in this video
is, at least in some respect, a great game. But Dead Space is special. What sets it apart is how—without
purposefully including highly clunky combat, like an early Resident Evil game—Dead Space
still feels much closer to the more foreboding stealth and puzzle horror titles than nearly all
of its pure action horror peers. It accomplishes this through its unique approach to enemy design,
its fidelity to immersion, and its rhythmic ebb and flow of intensity. Dead Space is not the
greatest game ever made; it has weaker segments here and there, including (unfortunately) its last
chapter. But it is a remarkable achievement, that has a lot to teach other horror action
developers—not to mention developers in general— about how to succeed. Especially when it comes
to topics like sound design, combat innovation, rejection of immersion-breaking HUD elements
and post-processing tricks, and incorporation of a proper narrative rhythm into the medium of games.