Sound is perhaps one of the least publicized aspects of entertainment. I'm discounting the music industry from this claim, for the obvious reason that it's fundamentally about sound, but when we look at the likes of television, cinema, and video games, mediums that rely on the sum of many parts to make a project, often sound is a craft left near the back of the consumer's conscious mind. Our reception of a film is often judged on what we see, and the audio supplementing this is taken for granted. If we were to watch someone being stabbed or shot, then the act of watching that take place seems all the more shocking than hearing it. I guess when you seperate the two parts, audio and visual, we associate far more with what we're seeing than what we're hearing. For instance, we're watching an object forceibly enter someone's body. That object is penetrating skin, and potentially puncturing organs. The blade/bullet withdraws/exits and blood begins to pour. Mentally we're connecting a lot of biological images with the act of that person being stabbed/shot, and we're all the more jarred as we turn the situation on ourselves and dare to consider how that horrible situation would feel had we been in th victim's situation. To then take away those visuals, and focus solely on the audio is disturbing, but the feeling is far more disconnected. We hear that shot, or the horribly organic sound of a blade entering flesh, but we can only guess the journey that weapon is taking. If you're a medical professional your mind will probably sketch a very accurate account, but for any one of us average Joe's lucky enough never to have witnessed these things happen, our interpretation is limited.
Any person born with the ability to see and hear grows up constantly associating the audio and the visual, and as such we cannot imagine a world where the two should seperate. For every car we see we anticipate the roar of an engine, and whenever there's rain there's the expectation of a subtle pitter-patter. It's when one arrives without the other that we begin to get confused. The following is a clip from Mulholland Drive that plays with the severance of audio from visual (you don't have to watch it the whole way through, you can tune-in from 2:00 and still get a sense of what I'm saying, although it's an amazing scene and worth viewing as a whole.)
We assume that Rebekah Del Rio is singing live, within the World that the film presents. When we learn otherwise it leaves us feeling betrayed, despite the fact that we were the ones who assumed the circumstances - the scene does not make us believe anything. In any fiction film we're watching a series of scenes that have been constructed for us, and yet, because so many of these fictional places and scenarios present a consistent marriage of sound and vision we accept that as being the standard.
Last year Call of Duty 4 was a title that crafted diegetic sound to near-perfection, and the key to its effectiveness is that it does not just focus on a war happening within your own space. There is always the sense that you are part of an active warzone, as bombs, gunshots, and battle cries can be heard faintly in each direction. It is also in the more subtle aspects of combat that COD4 excelled, as a grenade will literally deafen you, and a soldier on his last stand will be more aware of his or her heart struggling to take another beat. As visually impressive as the game is, without its effective use of sound it would fail to connect with us as players, and we would not believe in the war we're being ordered to fight.
Now as we face the back-end of another solid year in gaming, we have yet another consistent stream of exceptional sound design, but it is Dead Space that has arrived to take our ear buds to heightened levels unreality. In the game you play an engineer by the name of Isaac who's been sent to make routine repairs to a space ship, but is also there in search of a ladyfriend by the name of Nicole, who has sent out a video log detailing some peculiar goings on. Within 10 minutes on-board the ship we soon learn that it has been invaded by extra-terrestrial life forms who are slaying the crew members and transforming them into frightening deformations of the human figure. Couple this with their insatiable bloodlust, and deceptively sneaky knack for bursting through every other air vent you pass, and you're at party central.
While EA Redwood Shores did an entertainingly cerebral job with their visuals, their experiments with audio are masterful. Horror relies on the idea of immersive sound, more so than any other genre, as it wants to be able to play with you. Engaging a gamer on any level gives the developer a lot of room for exploitation, as, like I've mentioned, we assume certain standards of gaming. We connect the audio and visual and assume that marriage will not faulter, that we're safe. In Dead Space, however, we're far from safe. The game presents a far less concrete sense of reality than that which we're used to, and it mixes together sounds from both sides of diegesis to confuse our faith in the World we're a part of.
Throughout the experience as a player we hear the organic sounds of the ship, from the echoed footsteps of Isaac to the mechanial sliding of doors, and these become a source of comfort. We can believe in these sounds, because they belong to this place. It is when the World begins to whisper to you that you question whether you're hearing something that belongs to the reality Isaac is a part of, or something that belongs to another sense of being entirely. These subtle voices ask questions of the player, the character, and the ship. Naturally we want to know the source of the voice, who it belongs to, and why it's talking to us. In narrative terms it leads us to find our own understanding of the World, and doesn't define one, particular conclusion. As a result of this we feel closer to Isaac, as we're just as lost as he is.
Going back to the idea of organic, natural noises, the game presents another twisted sense of reality. Often throughout the game you hear much scuttling in and around your area, and it is revealed very early in the game that the Necromorphs, your foes, use the air vents to move around the ship. On one level this acts as a nice vehicle for some cheap thrills, as a Necromorph can suddenly burst out of a vent as you pass by, scaring the fecal matter right out of you. On a deeper level the game uses these vents as a maintenance for tension, as you're never allowed to dictate what these noises stand for. The game convinces the player to believe that an attack looms, but more often than not we make it through a section with no issue. So then we question whether that noise was in fact a product of some unseen evil, or perhaps just this rickety ship trying to throw up some air conditioning. We encounter the noise again, this time with a loose sense of comfort and understanding, and sure enough a Necromorph bursts forth to completely shake our beliefs up one more time.
It's unfortunate that there's a large number of people who claim not to have been effected by any aspect of Dead Space. Many who make the claim seem to wear it as some sort of badge, as if the rest of the gaming community will pat them on the back for being so undeniably manly. If anything your inability to draw from the experience is something to lament, not celebrate. And for those who did the former, I fully understand that we are all individuals who are excited and aggrivated by very different things; you have every right to be disappointed if you felt no connection. My experience with Dead Space led me to believe that games development, much like film had done in the past, is understanding the player's expectations of an experience, and is making an effort to redefine that experience so that the player opens his or her mind to the World outside an accepted and established structure.
Any person born with the ability to see and hear grows up constantly associating the audio and the visual, and as such we cannot imagine a world where the two should seperate. For every car we see we anticipate the roar of an engine, and whenever there's rain there's the expectation of a subtle pitter-patter. It's when one arrives without the other that we begin to get confused. The following is a clip from Mulholland Drive that plays with the severance of audio from visual (you don't have to watch it the whole way through, you can tune-in from 2:00 and still get a sense of what I'm saying, although it's an amazing scene and worth viewing as a whole.)
We assume that Rebekah Del Rio is singing live, within the World that the film presents. When we learn otherwise it leaves us feeling betrayed, despite the fact that we were the ones who assumed the circumstances - the scene does not make us believe anything. In any fiction film we're watching a series of scenes that have been constructed for us, and yet, because so many of these fictional places and scenarios present a consistent marriage of sound and vision we accept that as being the standard.
In film, sounds from inside the scene are diegetic sounds. For instance, a character in a movie slamming a door is making a diegetic sound. If the sound is coming from outside the scene, it is known as a non-diegetic sound. For instance, if two characters are doing battle and suddenly a John Williams-style orchestral score kicks in, then it is non-diegetic.Sound in gaming has come a very long way from the bleeps and blips of Pac-Man or Duck Hunt. What once was a novel compliment to running from ghosts or shooting birds has now evolved into cinematic, 5.1 audio and A-list voice overs. Our current generation of consoles are running games that sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into the refinement of sound design, and creating an audio backdrop that immerses us fully into the visual world.
Last year Call of Duty 4 was a title that crafted diegetic sound to near-perfection, and the key to its effectiveness is that it does not just focus on a war happening within your own space. There is always the sense that you are part of an active warzone, as bombs, gunshots, and battle cries can be heard faintly in each direction. It is also in the more subtle aspects of combat that COD4 excelled, as a grenade will literally deafen you, and a soldier on his last stand will be more aware of his or her heart struggling to take another beat. As visually impressive as the game is, without its effective use of sound it would fail to connect with us as players, and we would not believe in the war we're being ordered to fight.
Now as we face the back-end of another solid year in gaming, we have yet another consistent stream of exceptional sound design, but it is Dead Space that has arrived to take our ear buds to heightened levels unreality. In the game you play an engineer by the name of Isaac who's been sent to make routine repairs to a space ship, but is also there in search of a ladyfriend by the name of Nicole, who has sent out a video log detailing some peculiar goings on. Within 10 minutes on-board the ship we soon learn that it has been invaded by extra-terrestrial life forms who are slaying the crew members and transforming them into frightening deformations of the human figure. Couple this with their insatiable bloodlust, and deceptively sneaky knack for bursting through every other air vent you pass, and you're at party central.
While EA Redwood Shores did an entertainingly cerebral job with their visuals, their experiments with audio are masterful. Horror relies on the idea of immersive sound, more so than any other genre, as it wants to be able to play with you. Engaging a gamer on any level gives the developer a lot of room for exploitation, as, like I've mentioned, we assume certain standards of gaming. We connect the audio and visual and assume that marriage will not faulter, that we're safe. In Dead Space, however, we're far from safe. The game presents a far less concrete sense of reality than that which we're used to, and it mixes together sounds from both sides of diegesis to confuse our faith in the World we're a part of.
Throughout the experience as a player we hear the organic sounds of the ship, from the echoed footsteps of Isaac to the mechanial sliding of doors, and these become a source of comfort. We can believe in these sounds, because they belong to this place. It is when the World begins to whisper to you that you question whether you're hearing something that belongs to the reality Isaac is a part of, or something that belongs to another sense of being entirely. These subtle voices ask questions of the player, the character, and the ship. Naturally we want to know the source of the voice, who it belongs to, and why it's talking to us. In narrative terms it leads us to find our own understanding of the World, and doesn't define one, particular conclusion. As a result of this we feel closer to Isaac, as we're just as lost as he is.
Going back to the idea of organic, natural noises, the game presents another twisted sense of reality. Often throughout the game you hear much scuttling in and around your area, and it is revealed very early in the game that the Necromorphs, your foes, use the air vents to move around the ship. On one level this acts as a nice vehicle for some cheap thrills, as a Necromorph can suddenly burst out of a vent as you pass by, scaring the fecal matter right out of you. On a deeper level the game uses these vents as a maintenance for tension, as you're never allowed to dictate what these noises stand for. The game convinces the player to believe that an attack looms, but more often than not we make it through a section with no issue. So then we question whether that noise was in fact a product of some unseen evil, or perhaps just this rickety ship trying to throw up some air conditioning. We encounter the noise again, this time with a loose sense of comfort and understanding, and sure enough a Necromorph bursts forth to completely shake our beliefs up one more time.
It's unfortunate that there's a large number of people who claim not to have been effected by any aspect of Dead Space. Many who make the claim seem to wear it as some sort of badge, as if the rest of the gaming community will pat them on the back for being so undeniably manly. If anything your inability to draw from the experience is something to lament, not celebrate. And for those who did the former, I fully understand that we are all individuals who are excited and aggrivated by very different things; you have every right to be disappointed if you felt no connection. My experience with Dead Space led me to believe that games development, much like film had done in the past, is understanding the player's expectations of an experience, and is making an effort to redefine that experience so that the player opens his or her mind to the World outside an accepted and established structure.
