What you can imagine is really scarier
than what you actually see.
When I'm on my own, in an unfamiliar place
I'm listening to see what there is around me.
It's an instinctive thing that we all have,
Your first-line of defense when it comes to fight or fright, is sound.
[THE SOUNDS OF DEAD SPACE 3]
[WTH KILLSCREEN]
What is the sound of fear?
Is it a monster directly in front of you? Or is it your imagination gone wild?
Survival Horror makers of Viceral games have mastered the art of turning
terror into audio with their hit franchise Dead Space. We traveled here
to Redwood City California to talk to the audio team about manufacturing fright
for their forthcoming Dead Space 3.
Dead Space follows an engineer named Isaac Clark as he battles human corpses infected
by a parasite known as necromorse.
The classic vibe of Dead Space, is you're walking through these corridors with not much
going on, you know room to room.
And you know some studies, say something, someone
is going to jump out.
The sound of fear to me is all about building the tension before that moment happens.
I believe that the Folle sounds, if they're right you know, just the mundane sounds the characters
make when they're moving around the it connects them with the world and helps you
to empathize with the world completely
It all goes back to creating a reality
for the horror to exist in.
Take anything that you have a media whether it's video game or movie or
television turn off the sound all the emotional content is removed from that scene.
The audio is the component that will add to the immersion that really
allows players believe that they're in a place.
It allows them to get lost in what they're doing.
Our sound designers for our games have to be aware that the player
could be looking anywhere at any given time.
That challenge means, that if I'm going to put a bunch of stuff in the room,
you know what, all this stuff better work and it all better have
sounds because that's really going to add to the experience.
So our audio team has done a bunch of different things over the years
to kind of capture and create the sounds that we use in Dead Space.
As long as it comes out and it sounds believable and it sounds unique
then I don't really care where it comes from.
A melon is a nice thing, because it's got a kind of boney other shell
and a very squishy, watery inner.
So if you hit it hard enough, you get the kind of crack of the shell
and then you get the splurge of the liquid inside.
And that probably has more of the sense of smashing a skull
and mushing the brains inside than actually doing it for real.
We do a lot of that.
Snapping sticks and celery to get bone breaking sound
We wouldn't normally choose this kind of thing outside.
The studio that we would normally record this is unavailable.
It's been booked out by the SIMs.
On this game, for the necromorse stuff in particular
we've done a lot of voice recording
I started with a pretty heavily manipulated sampling of
one of my coworkers screaming down in our recording room.
Bit by bit I will start adding in plug-ins and audi processes
and other samples.
Animal noises.
Little growls. It's the little stuff right.
And then you get the entire composite terror sound of
a necro screaming.
There's been a few things I've heard out in the world
unintentionally have made it into the game
One of them was in my little niece she had this scream
that was completely singular
and I had to have it. And it's in one of the creatures.
Pretty other worldly.
Fear is kind of tough in an interactive environment. One of the advantages that a
horror movie has is you're controlling the time line.
whereas we have Isaac
running around completely under the player's control.
Obviously a lot of our game is scripted. We know exactly what we are gonna do,
but parts of the game which are interactive we have the fear system.
The fear systems important because it tells audio what to do to
make the player afraid.
It controls the kind of physiological responses of Isaac,
particularly aware of his breathing and heartbeat.
Up there at the top we can see the Isaacs fear value.
He has only .1 fear of a possible one.
That means Isaac's pretty relaxed.
No we've got some fear.
The music is louder.
The breathing is louder. Heartbeats at full rate.
I'd like to think that that fear system adds to the intensity of the combat.
You know, with the staccato background,
The necropmorphs kind of with their vocalizations chiming
You're starting to create this symphony of destruction.
And that fear music is degrading and getting quieter,
and there's this exhalation, you're like phew, I did it.
And it just feels like you survived something that was significant.
The past audio wasn't at the same fidelity level and wasn't
as complex and wash't as capable.
I think now people are starting to think of it as a real important component.
Uh, I don't care if players don't notice what I'm doing.
Uh to be honest, I mean, you know
it sounds like a cliche, but if players don't notice
but notice that you're doing your job right