The first Dead Space originated from producer Glen Schofield’s desire to create the scariest horror game ever made. The strength of the original prototype that EA Redwood Shores worked on convinced Electronic Arts to greenlight the full game.

Dead Space was released in 2008 to massive success. Combining creative gun combat, an unnerving atmosphere and absorbing world-building, the game caused ripples across the industry, creating a legacy that is still felt to this day. The game spawned two major sequels, three spin-offs, a comic-book series and an animated film.

Handling the music for all games in the series was Jason Graves, who quickly became a household name in the industry after his contributions to the franchise. In keeping with the intentions of the team, Graves set out to make the first Dead Space “the scariest horror music you’ve ever heard.” This quickly meant eschewing a conventional approach in favor of a score much more in line with the abstract, textural and aleatoric style of the 20th century concert music pioneered by Krzysztof Penderecki, whom Graves mentions as a major influence in the crafting of the score alongside the music of film composers like Jerry Goldsmith and Christopher Young.

With the following installments, particularly the major ones, the music saw a gradual shift in focus from its horror roots, with an increasingly bigger emphasis on action so much so that, by Dead Space 3, the series had mostly shifted to an action game with horror elements, rather than the other way around.

This final installment in the series (at least until the release of the remake next year) was also co-scored with James Hannigan, a regular EA collaborator.

There is way too much history to cover with this series, which could probably merit its own article. However, today we’re here with another custom playlist, covering the three major installments.

As usual, join me after the jump to read the BTS!

TRACKLIST:
1. Lacrimosa (DS2)
2. Welcome Aboard the U.S.G. Ishimura (DS1)
3. I’ve Got You Devolving Under My Skin (DS1)
4. Much Ado About Necromorphs (DS2)
5. The Leviathan (DS1)
6. The Cassini Towers (DS2)
7. 200 Years Ago, on an Icy Planet… (DS3) — James Hannigan
8. Welcome to the Sprawl (DS2)
9. Apoplexia (DS3)
10. Nicole’s Farewell (DS1)
11. Rosetta Suite (DS3) — James Hannigan
12. You Go to My Head (DS3)
13. The Necromorphs Attack (DS1)
14. The Quick and the Dead (DS3)
15. Come Rain or Come Convergence (DS2)

Behind the Scenes

The original plan for October when I launched the site back in March (!) was to write a proper article dedicated to the first Dead Space. I’ve already mentioned a particular subject I could cover, but there’s so much I could talk about that it feels almost criminal not to do it.

However, there is a lot of work to be done if I want to commit to it (mainly on the research front, since the work done on the music behind the scenes is complex as hell). So as the months drew closer, I figured I wouldn’t have the time to do it this year. A remake of it is coming, so maybe by then. We’ll see.

In the mean time, if you want a comprehensive account of the making of Dead Space’s first score, click right here to head on up to a series of vlogs from Jason Graves himself, detailing every part of the process, from composition, the fascinating sampling process, and implementation.

However, in place of an article analyzing the scores, doing a playlist for the trilogy on Halloween month felt like too good an opportunity to pass up, so here we are.

A caveat should be added here, because while I know the first two scores like the back of my hand thanks to my tradition of playing the two games yearly, I’m much less familiar with the third one. That is as much because of its reputation as it is because of the fact that EA quickly shelved the franchise after it underperformed.

Nevertheless, the opportunity afforded me the chance to finally dive into Dead Space 3’s score, which is where my work on this playlist began. I probably listened to this one album more than the other two combined when working on this, just for the sake of picking the appropriate highlights (I already had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted from the other two).

Opening the playlist with the fabulous Lacrimosa from Dead Space 2 was far too delicious an opportunity not to take it, so that was a no-brainer. Its rich, intimate string-quartet setting not only felt like an off-kilter way to introduce listeners to the score, but the track is also a suite that showcases the thematic ideas that recur throughout (more on that later). To follow that with Welcome Aboard the U.S.G. Ishimura, the Dead Space album opener, felt like the natural move. From there, the approach for this was much more of a toss-up.

I initially tried to mirror the sonic evolution of the trilogy with the playlist, but that ended up creating a disjointed experience, as the final third of the playlist suddenly jumped into a very different style with no prior warning. Obviously, the move had to be to incorporate Dead Space 3’s sound into the playlist with a bit more tact.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room. Because the thing is that, while Graves’s contributions to 3 felt like a natural evolution of his sound from the previous two, Hannigan’s music stands in stark contrast to all of what Graves did before. His music is much more modern, more akin to something from Hans Zimmer and his signature style (and occasionally very expressive and melodic) than the avant-garde, atonal sensibilities from Graves’s scores.

Given all of that, I had to choose how much I wanted the playlist to veer into Hannigan’s music, at the risk of it sticking out like a sore thumb (if it veered a little), or worse, it undercutting Graves’s own sound (if it veered a lot).

My next cut was an attempt to seamlessly integrate Hannigan’s sound with Graves’s… to disastrous results. The vicious string slashing of The Necromorphs Attack or The Leviathan and the aleatoric cluster writing of I’ve Got You Devolving Under My Skin or The Cassini Towers stood at odds with the modern ostinatos in A Broken Past or the Zimmer-esque percussion writing in The Lunar Express. The more I added from Hannigan, the harder it was to balance the two styles.

The penultimate cut was longer than the finished product (pushing 100 minutes, while my aim was always to keep it under 80), but it felt like a stronger listen. The better choice ended up being not to force the two sounds to coexist with each other, but to force one not to disrupt the other. Turns out that when one composer has written music for two and a half games and the other only for one half… you kinda have to respect the sound of the OG.

That made it much easier to pick selections from James Hannigan– 200 Years Ago on an Icy Planet…, Rosetta Suite, Convergence and Moon Crash. The process of assembling that cut was far smoother and yielded a somewhat satisfying listen, but one that still needed tweaking.

It’s here that I should probably start talking about thematic ideas. “Themes” aren’t really the point in the Dead Space franchise, always aiming for atmosphere much more than narrative, but there are still a handful there.

The ones relevant for the playlist are the one for Nicole from the first game, the one for Isaac himself and the general texture of the string quartet from the first sequel, and the motif that James Hannigan peppered throughout his portion of the score in the third (and one which I actually don’t know what it’s for, since I haven’t played the game).

The three of them recur throughout to varying degrees, but Nicole’s theme anchors the experience with the more accessible, tonal writing around it. It pops up for the first time in Lacrimosa (at the 2:09 mark) and opens the second track, but doesn’t return until the halfway point, opening Welcome to the Sprawl after our first taste of Hannigan’s score, and goes on to appear on Nicole’s Farewell, You Go To My Head and Come Rain or Come Convergence, built into the listening experience as periodic respites from the orchestral carnage and fiendishly dissonant atmosphere that is otherwise the rest of the music.

The only other moments like this were 200 Years Ago and Convergence, the latter of which ended up being cut for time. Convergence’s original placing was right after The Leviathan and before The Cassini Towers, and used to be a breather after the back-to-back action of Much Ado About Necromorphs and The Leviathan. The final version has the opening tracks now serving as a slow crescendo to the phenomenal action in The Leviathan.

As a side effect, axing Convergence turned the section from Lacrimosa all the way to The Cassini Towers into a perfect way of fully establishing the signature sound of the games before shifting gears to Hannigan’s more traditional approach.

Isaac’s motif, four notes spelling out D-E-A-D, isn’t really obvious unless you’re really looking for it (and indeed, most of its appearances are really hidden), so I wasn’t super concerned with creating a narrative around it. Its only prominent appearances in the playlist are during Lacrimosa (subtly hinted at during the first couple of minutes, then for the first time at 2:41 on the cello), You Go To My Head (during the first 30 seconds) and Come Rain or Come Convergence (extensively explored during the second half as a major-key, largely tonal motif).

Finally, Hannigan’s motif (though I really shouldn’t call it this) ends up appearing only twice due to Convergence and Moon Crash getting cut. Its original first appearance was actually in Convergence, since it was placed before 200 Years Ago. Ultimately, I think introducing it in the latter track was a better choice for reasons explained above.

Much like Convergence, Moon Crash was cut for time. Its original placing was between Nicole’s Farewell and Rosetta Suite, with the latter serving as a breather after Moon Crash, since much of it is action music, and it was a means of getting a bit of a rest before the action-packed finale.

Further tracks cut from Jason Graves’s portion were Manual Survival Mode Seven, The Cost of Living is on the Rise, Canonical Aside, Nice R.I.G. If You Can Get It and Spaced Out and Frantic. Most of them were cut for pacing, with the exception of Canonical Aside, which was cut simply because of me starting to feel like I was overloading the playlist with quotations of Nicole’s theme.

Another point of interest is the finale of the playlist, since it concerns a particularly troublesome track from the third game– The Quick and the Dead, this one by Graves. This track is as close as the trilogy ever gets to having traditional orchestral action music in it… and that instantly makes it a problem, since the brass fanfares and grandiose orchestral gestures seemingly have no place among the aleatoric dissonance and avant-garde action writing.

The solution to that ended up being to push it down to the end, as a climatic track. By pairing it with Come Rain or Come Convergence, it was almost like the entire experience was building towards these two moments where the music is finally allowed to be more traditionally expressive and even sentimental. A reward for making it through the plunge into darkness.

I could probably keep writing on and on about the choices I made here, but this paints a pretty complete picture of what the process was like. The ratio for tracks per album ended up being 5 from Dead Space, 6 from Dead Space 2 and 4 from Dead Space 3, which I feel it’s as balanced as I could make it.

Graves’s work here is an achievement in horror scoring for video games, and its influence can still be felt throughout the western industry. I can only hope that I’ve done it justice with my playlist and that this can encourage those of you who haven’t heard the scores or played the games to check them out.

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DEAD SPACE
Music composed, conducted, orchestrated and arranged by Jason Graves
Music preparation and orchestrations by Paul Taylor
Performances by Northwest Sinfonia Orchestra and Skywalker Symphony Orchestra

DEAD SPACE 2
Music composed, conducted and orchestrated by Jason Graves
Music preparation and orchestrations by Paul Taylor
Performed by Skywalker Symphony Orchestra
Featured performances by Quartet San Francisco:
Jeremy Cohen, violin I
Alisa Rose, violin II
Keith Lawrence, viola
Michelle Djokic, cello

DEAD SPACE 3
Music by Jason Graves and James Hannigan
Music conducted and orchestrated by Jason Graves and Allan Wilson
Performances by The Philharmonia Orchestra and Slovak National Symphony Orchestra