No Escape

Distance is going to be an impor­tant theme in this arti­cle, and so I’d sug­gest read­ing the arti­cle in which I intro­duce the con­cept, located here.

Low lev­els of dis­tance con­tribute to any nar­ra­tive expe­ri­ence in video games, but it is absolutely essen­tial to a hor­ror game. Because of the nature and aims of a hor­ror game, it is very easy to iden­tify games that fail to lessen dis­tance. Such games can be played with­out expe­ri­enc­ing fear, usu­ally because of fail­ure to prop­erly immerse the player in the avatar char­ac­ter. This means that, in order for a hor­ror game to suc­ceed, it must demon­strate less­ened dis­tance. This is never an easy thing to achieve, and cer­tain other tropes of video games make it excep­tion­ally dif­fi­cult to main­tain through­out a hor­ror game. I’m going to ana­lyze Dead Space, a game that does a lot to decrease dis­tance. It’s not a per­fect game, but its slip-ups are slip-ups because they increase dis­tance, and so this cri­tique will be use­ful for deep­en­ing our under­stand­ing of dis­tance and the neces­sity of main­tain­ing low dis­tance through­out a hor­ror game. Oh, and if you don’t hear spoil­ers creep­ing about in the vents of this arti­cle by now, Unitology help you.

Was That The Crew?

If you’re not famil­iar with the Dead Space story-line, here’s a short sum­mary. Isaac Clarke, space engi­neer, a pair of secu­rity offi­cers, Kendra Daniels, who is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist, and Zach Hammond, senior secu­rity offi­cer, are sent to a huge planet-cracker called the USG Ishimura, which has appar­ently lost its com­mu­ni­ca­tions out­put. Upon hit­ting a piece of debris and crash-landing their ship into the hangar bay of the Ishimura, the crew dis­cov­ers that the ship has lost more than com­mu­ni­ca­tions. There’s nobody to greet them, for one thing, and the ship has suf­fered exten­sive dam­ages in pretty much all of the core sys­tems. The team is then beset by gaunt and clawed crea­tures that looks like they were maybe once human, result­ing in the quick deaths of the secu­rity offi­cers and the frag­men­ta­tion of the repair crew.

Most of the rest of the game is lonely. You cor­re­spond with Hammond and Daniels through your suit’s audio and visual links, and they send you hither and yon to repair the fail­ing sys­tems and bring the ship to oper­a­tional sta­tus. However, it soon becomes obvi­ous that you’re mostly doing so for your own ben­e­fit, and the ben­e­fit of Hammond and Daniels. The ship is almost entirely devoid of sur­vivors. The new pop­u­la­tion of the Ishimura, indeed once the crew, are the result of an alien life­form that has spread through­out the ship in excit­ing and unfor­tu­nate ways. Its arrival cor­re­sponds with the removal of an ancient marker from the planet Aegis VII, which the Ishimura was har­vest­ing. This marker is the center-piece of a huge con­spir­acy involv­ing the Unitology cult and the gov­ern­ment, and Isaac even­tu­ally man­ages to place the marker back on Aegis VII and foil the secret plans of Kendra Daniels, who is revealed to be a gov­ern­ment agent sent to retrieve the marker. However, Isaac’s san­ity is in ques­tion; he sees his old flame walk­ing around and advis­ing him on courses of action, but as Daniels reveals in the end-game, she is quite dead. In the end, Isaac sur­vives. Nobody else does.

No, Hammond, This Changes Everything

One of the chief sell­ing points of Dead Space is the com­plete lack of exter­nal HUD. Look at this pic­ture below for an exam­ple:

The fel­low in the armor on the left is our avatar char­ac­ter, Isaac Clarke. The thing that he is aim­ing at is a necro­morph, appar­ently mutated from the body of an engi­neer who was wear­ing a gas mask. The blue bars on Isaac’s back rep­re­sent his health. The object in his hand is a plasma cut­ter, use­ful for fix­ing doors and other space-engineer pur­poses, but also, as Isaac dis­cov­ers, unpar­al­leled in sep­a­rat­ing limbs from tor­sos. When one aims a weapon in Dead Space, the holo­graphic equip­ment in Isaac’s suit gen­er­ates lines to indi­cate where the shot will fall. In addi­tion, the suit also dis­plays how much ammu­ni­tion is left in the weapon, as seen in the pic­ture (it’s the 10 float­ing above the cut­ter). What’s impor­tant to note here is that, while these nec­es­sary details are read­ily acces­si­ble to the player, none of them are obtru­sive and, in fact, con­tribute to the immer­sion of the game.What is even more impres­sive is the way that cor­re­spon­dence with sup­port­ing char­ac­ters fac­tors into the expe­ri­ence. When Daniels or Hammond con­tacts Isaac, a holo­graphic video dis­play of their face usu­ally appears in front of Isaac. It looks like this:

“Help me, Isaac Clarke; you’re my only hope.” Cool, right? It’s worth not­ing that video chat tech­nol­ogy in the future hasn’t got­ten much bet­ter. These sequences are well-implemented. The facial ani­ma­tion in Dead Space is pretty good, so the character’s expres­sions suc­cess­fully con­vey relief, fatigue and fear, some­times with­out or even in spite of match­ing dia­logue. These nar­ra­tive inter­rup­tions are impor­tant to the game, not only as an easy method of direct­ing a silent pro­tag­o­nist but also to show the player how other char­ac­ters are deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion, since Isaac is mostly a blank slate. These videos assist the game, but it is the way they are pre­sented to the player that decreases dis­tance.

Instead of hous­ing these bits of dia­logue in cutsce­nes or mak­ing them non-interactive, you still retain con­trol of Isaac while the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters speak. This means that you are never taken out of the “skin” of Isaac, if you will. As Isaac, you are either tak­ing the time to focus on the face and words of these char­ac­ters, or you are march­ing along to go eject that pesky aster­oid from the min­ing deck. It’s worth not­ing that, if you ready your weapon/tool dur­ing one of these sce­nes, the holo­gram dis­ap­pears, which makes sense as a RIG safety fea­ture. It also means that you can defend your­self with­out Daniels’ face obstruct­ing your vision. Never remov­ing the player’s con­trol over Isaac is a strong asset of Dead Space; it means that the immer­sion never gets shat­tered. It also means that there is no safe haven from the ter­ri­fy­ing sit­u­a­tion.

An even more pow­er­ful expres­sion of this almost suf­fo­cat­ing immer­sion is that text logs, maps, and the inven­tory, as shown below, are also in real-time.

This instantly makes a shift for the player. Whenever I played through Resident Evil 4, I remem­ber escap­ing to my inven­tory in tense moments to decide which weapon would be most effec­tive for the sit­u­a­tion at hand. In Dead Space, you can’t do that. If you run out of sta­sis (the lit­tle ring on Isaac’s right shoul­der rep­re­sents how much sta­sis he has left), then you can­not retreat back into your inven­tory to replen­ish it. There is a way to use med packs out­side of the inven­tory, but you don’t get to choose which med pack you use, so you may do some­thing tac­ti­cally disadvantageous.What this means is that you quickly learn to find a quiet, and in some cases defen­si­ble, loca­tion to hole up in order to check your map or inven­tory. If you’re caught unawares with your inven­tory hang­ing open, then it takes pre­cious mil­lisec­onds to close that inven­tory and bring your gun to bear, espe­cially since you were clearly not focus­ing on your sur­round­ings and will need time to get your bear­ings. It’s actu­ally a lit­tle suf­fo­cat­ing, and espe­cially at the begin­ning of the game there’s a tinge of fear every time you open up your inven­tory. If you start the game drink­ing from the river with your mouth, you’ll quickly learn to use your hands and to keep your eye on the sur­round­ing foliage. This suf­fo­cat­ing effect is really impor­tant for hor­ror games. It is the nature of fear to be unre­lent­ing, and if there are con­stant inter­rup­tions to the immer­sion of an expe­ri­ence, then it is impos­si­ble to main­tain that unre­lent­ing fear. Distance has to be kept as low as pos­si­ble for the best expe­ri­ence.

There are moments when Isaac is in a bad spot, and you still retain con­trol over him. These moments are tense, and are excel­lent ways of mix­ing up the core expe­ri­ence while still keep­ing the player embed­ded in the char­ac­ter. I won’t spend too much time on them, but here’s a pic­ture to illus­trate what I mean:

That Comms Array Is In Bad Shape… Let’s Get It Back On-Line

The verisimil­i­tude in Dead Space is pretty strong. Isaac’s tasks through­out the game are mostly focused on repair­ing the ship, which makes some sense. He is, after all, a space engi­neer. While the game doesn’t force you into any­thing too tech­ni­cal, and is usu­ally pretty clear about where you’re sup­posed to go and what you’re sup­posed to do next, the tasks of the game is pretty con­sis­tent with Isaac’s occu­pa­tion… with the major excep­tion of mon­ster killing. And that’s where the game proves to be pretty inter­est­ing.

The avatar char­ac­ter is well-chosen for Dead Space’s intended effect. Isaac is no sol­dier, and he does not behave like one. When Isaac takes a swing at a necro­morph, it’s a wide, untrained, and frankly inef­fec­tual swing. Even more telling are the weapons that Isaac uses to slay the necro­morphs. For the most part, his weapons are engi­neer­ing tools. There’s the con­tact laser, rip­per (remote saw blade… as awe­some as it sounds), force gun and flamethrower, all mod­i­fied from engi­neer­ing equip­ment. The only mil­i­tary weapon in the entire game is the pulse rifle, and you very quickly dis­cover that it isn’t really that good for dis­mem­ber­ing necro­morphs. Whether this is a func­tion of Isaac’s lack of train­ing is unclear, but I’d like to think thus.

In fact, Isaac Clarke isn’t really a “badass” sort of hero. The game doesn’t present him as a fel­low who over­comes all chal­lengers; in fact, there’s a num­ber of sit­u­a­tions where Isaac is being dragged about like a rag-doll or chewed on, and his escapes are always a lit­tle too close for com­fort. Isaac is a man who is barely sur­viv­ing the events of the game. He’s a lit­tle more every-man than most gam­ing heroes, and when he makes it off Aegis VII and flies away for good, you can’t help but root for the guy and feel a sense of accom­plish­ment your­self.

The game por­trays Isaac very con­sis­tently. Even if he doesn’t speak, there is plenty of per­son­al­ity to his some­what hunched form, his shouts of pain, his heavy breath­ing after hav­ing barely sur­vived a necro­morph attack. His move­ments con­vey a man who is tired, and frankly a lit­tle beaten down, but who plans to trudge through and sur­vive this hor­ri­ble expe­ri­ence. Because he is so sym­pa­thetic, it’s not dif­fi­cult to empathize with the engi­neer, and this most cer­tainly decreases dis­tance by mak­ing it less dif­fi­cult to immerse your­self in the char­ac­ter. His lack of dia­logue may actu­ally allow the player to put a lit­tle more of him or her­self into Isaac, and may work bet­ter than if Isaac were actu­ally voiced. Of course, Dead Space 2, which just came to me, gives a voice to Isaac, so I’ll have a chance to exper­i­ment and report back on whether that is actu­ally the case.

For What It’s Worth, Isaac, You Did A Great Job

Dead Space is a fan­tas­tic game, but it also loses a bit of its good qual­i­ties about two-thirds of the way through. In my expe­ri­ence, that’s when I had got­ten a really good han­dle on the behav­ior of the necro­morphs, upgraded my guns and armor quite a bit, and was basi­cally mas­ter­ing the skills nec­es­sary to play the game well. However, because I had started to play the game well, and knew roughly what to expect from sit­u­a­tions, I found the game increas­ingly less scary. And, while the game doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily have to be fright­en­ing in order to be fun and good, it was def­i­nitely less enjoy­able after I had got­ten over my fright. I began to play it less like I was Isaac, a man in a hor­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion, and more like a game. The dis­tance between Isaac and I had increased.

This is a prob­lem that all hor­ror games share. The fear comes eas­ily early on, when the player is still learn­ing the con­trols, how weapons and ene­mies behave, and so forth. Like the char­ac­ter in the game, the player is in a new and some­what uncom­fort­able posi­tion. However, a player becomes more and more com­fort­able with a game, improv­ing his or her skills so that the game becomes less dif­fi­cult. At the same time, there is the game trope that the char­ac­ter should become more pow­er­ful through­out the game by gain­ing access to bet­ter weapons or sim­ply by learn­ing new skills. Dead Space allows the player to pur­chase new weapons (that, while not exactly bet­ter, are more spe­cial­ized and are use­ful for cer­tain sit­u­a­tions), as well as upgrade weapons and armor. This makes the game less chal­leng­ing, and at this point the player can eas­ily place most of their focus on per­form­ing well instead of on expe­ri­enc­ing the nar­ra­tive and expe­ri­ences of the game. Unfortunately, and espe­cially for hor­ror games, this is at a detri­ment to the mood of the game.

Dead Space does not main­tain the mood that it estab­lishes early on, but that is par­tially due to the trope men­tioned above. Isaac feels less help­less, and the player real­izes that destroy­ing these necro­morphs doesn’t have to be as fright­en­ing an endeavor. The game is designed to be enjoy­able along that trans­for­ma­tion, as well; there are less attempts to frighten the player as the game nears its end. The game then becomes about dif­fi­culty and chal­lenge

This steady increase in dis­tance is the game’s weakest point. It’s still a com­mend­able expe­ri­ence; it accom­plishes what it sets out to for at least five hours or so. It’s just excep­tion­ally dif­fi­cult to cre­ate an expe­ri­ence that main­tains such an oppres­sive mood for such a long period of time. It seems to me that the game trope of ris­ing char­ac­ter pro­fi­ciency does not nec­es­sar­ily suit the hor­ror genre. Certainly, games that instill feel­ings of help­less­ness, such as Silent Hill 2, may be bet­ter exam­ples of how to cre­ate a last­ing mood of hor­ror. If the avatar char­ac­ter of a game is con­stantly becom­ing bet­ter equipped to deal with the ene­mies of the game, then the game becomes less hor­ri­fy­ing and more chal­leng­ing shoot­ing gallery.

Make Us Whole Again, Isaac

The first half of Dead Space is qual­ity art. It’s an adrenaline-fueled fight for sur­vival, in which the player is grad­u­ally intro­duced to the scope and hor­ror of this virus. The game pulls out all the stops in its attempts to frighten you and keep you alert and ner­vous. In the sec­ond half, though, the ten­sion eases, increas­ing dis­tance and encour­ag­ing the player to treat the expe­ri­ence as a game. The nar­ra­tive of the game also begins to weaken. This makes me won­der whether Dead Space would have been bet­ter were it shorter.

For that first half, though, Dead Space is a great exam­ple of the right way to decrease dis­tance. The mechan­ics and pre­sen­ta­tion of the game are designed to keep the player embed­ded in Isaac’s skin, and allows the player to expe­ri­ence the game with fear and anx­i­ety. Dead Space serves as a good model for the hor­ror genre in regards to dis­tance, and I sin­cerely hope that Dead Space 2 fol­lows suit.