INT: Dead Space

Last Updated on July 27, 2021

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PART 1 HERE –

PRE ORDER DEAD SPACE HERE

Ian Milham (Art Director)
– One on One Interview –

Tell
the people what you do on this game.

IM: I was
the Art Director- in short, I’m in charge of making sure the game looks good.
Sometimes it’s through drawings and paintings but mostly I hire other artists
and cast them in terms of their strengths.

So
you kind of oversee the whole process.

IM: Yeah,
it’s my job to ensure that the game comes out looking good, so that you can’t
tell that multiple artists worked on it. It needs to have a cohesive vision.

How
did you ever get involved with this crazy video game business?

IM: I
started off as a freelance illustrator, before computers, drawing with pencils
and paint. I ended up interning, trying to find a painting gig, since freelance
is a tough world to break into. I interned and did concept drawings for some ex-ILM
people, drawing monsters and stuff. This was about 14 years ago, and then the
original Playstation came out, a real leap from the SNES, where you could put
more stuff on a CD, like background paintings. So, I ended up doing background
paintings for several Playstation games. Over time, I moved to LucasArts and did
background artwork, working on Star Wars stuff. Moved to EA 3 years ago and have
been working on this almost ever since.

How
did you get to Dead Space specifically?

IM: I knew
the guys starting it up, our executive producer (Glen Schofield) put his career
on the line to make this horror game his own. I knew these guys a little bit and
they knew what I could do, with a sci-fi background, so they asked me to help
with early parts. We were a small team of less than ten, and we grew along the
way, trying new things. It was wild, a real R&D, skunkworks kind of vibe. Some
people think “Big bad EA, they aren’t into these things”, but we were trying new
gags, trying little ways to scare people, designing these throwaway vignettes
with the sole purpose being to frighten people. It started to build a bit, they
gave us 6 months and a few more people, and we made a little example and the
head guy jumped 3 times while playing it, and loved it.

So it
started very small, like a temporary idea.

IM: Yeah,
we thought we’d be cancelled every other month.

It
was never a sure thing.

IM: God no,
it’s really hard to get horror right. It’s all about timing- something can be
super scary, but if you change the timing just one second it falls flat. In a
video game it’s doubly hard, because a lot of other factors are present. You
know, if some executive is playing it, he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. A
player is invested in the game- they know the story, they know the vibe, and
some of the more subtle effects might be lost on an executive versus someone at
home. This is what made us so hungry, we felt we needed to prove ourselves to
keep going and keep outdoing ourselves to get more funding for the project,
especially in a place like EA, which at the time was unsure about it. Of course
now they’re way behind it and have given us nothing but support.

Which
is great.

IM: It’s
been fantastic, when John Riticello came back to EA, it was just starting. We
weren’t sure what he would think, but he literally came into the meeting and was
like “Oh my God, I’ve always wanted to make a horror game, this is going to be
awesome.” He really plays his games, and he just got the whole project. He was
familiar with conventions from other horror games like Resident Evil and Silent
Hill and he was like “Oh, can you strafe?” and had us fix things he didn’t like
about those games if they were to appear in ours.

And
that’s a huge shot in the arm.

IM: yeah,
it’s been huge.

I
think what you’re saying is really important. The fact that you guys are
constantly going the extra mile to give horror fans their just due. Horror is a
tough genre to break through, anyone can make a horror movie, but there aren’t a
lot of great ones. To make a great horror atmosphere on film is one thing, but
to do it in the interactive medium of video games that involves timing and
countless other important factors is a true feat.

IM: Dude,
I’ll be honest: it was way harder than I thought it would be. We knew it would
be tough and that we’d have to iterate a lot, but I can’t tell you how many
horror setups we thought would be awesome that turned out to just be terrible in
the game. Especially with your point about movies, we’d recall our own favorite
horror films and we’d try to deconstruct them and then institute them just like
you’d see them in the films. We’d get the timing and the vibe working, and it
would just be lame, you know? You don’t know where the player’s looking, what
about the camera? We had to learn our lessons and learn what works specifically
for games. We needed to have more dialogue with the player and let go of control
a bit and sort of figure out how to get the dance between the viewer and the
player.

It’s
all about context.

IM: You’re
right. And not even to mention, the time! Keeping people on their toes- what
percentage of a horror movie is actually spent trying to scare people? Maybe a
half an hour? How long do you need to do this? Our game is (hopefully) scary
from moment one, and most people will play through in the mid-teens of hours.
That’s a long, long time. It’s a lot of work, and letting people rest, finding
the rhythm of the emotional beat through that long of an experience? That’s hard
work, man. I’ve never worked so hard on anything in my life.

I
think that shows in the product, and to do it in a game that is slightly less
traditional- there’s no HUD, and there are very few moments when you’re not in
control of the player- to institute all of these things while the character is
in control of the environment and its surroundings, and still have it be
effective, is a real feat.

IM: Yeah,
that no HUD thing turned out to be tough. We were angry with ourselves for sort
of putting that line in the sand, but I’m so glad we stuck to it, trying to make
it all work. How scared can you be with a glowing picture of a gun on top of the
screen? You’re always reminded that you’re playing a game. We were dedicated to
that from the start, but we’d constantly have trouble with it, because gamers
need hints from time to time. You can’t have a big arrow on screen, that was
tempting, but we found solutions to the problem. It was way harder, but it
really paid off. How scary can you be with a HUD? I’m really proud of it.

As
well you should be. It’s one thing to implement a no-HUD system, but to get all
the ins and outs and not take a cheap way out is tough.

IM:
Exactly, and it’s not like no game has done it, but one of two things happen:
They break down when lots of info comes to the player, or they stick to it but
you don’t know what’s going on and you can’t see what’s happening.

It
becomes too subtle.

IM: That’s
right, and the whole thing is “oh, he’s panting so he must be hurt”, and the
whole thing becomes just as contrived as it would if there were a HUD.

So
that’s why the Sci-fi things work out so well, the elements you need can be
created with a lot of work.

IM: Yeah,
you kind of thread the needle and it did take a lot of work. The color of
Isaac’s mask, the ultra marine color, you’ll never see that in the game anywhere
else. First of all, it’s the complementary color to the burnt-umber style the
game brings, it pops. Also, you need to be able to see your health and see it
from your peripheral vision. You wouldn’t be able to see it if that color was
anywhere else. There were a lot of decisions like that we had to think about.

From
what I gathered, there’s been a lot of horror influence in this game, but no
particular one shines through. I know there is a concerted effort to not look
like “Alien”. As an art director, does your horror experience bring anything to
the table?

IM: I knew
the horror would be tough to get across, and Sci-FI works against horror in many
ways. I knew we had to dedicate our art to horror, you need to think of the way
the monsters in the Thing make you feel. A lot of monsters can be creepy or
violent and maybe a little scary, but few are horrific. You’re not repulsed by
them like you are in The Thing, that whole “What the F is that?” feeling. We
didn’t rip off the thing, but we did want to replicate that vibe. What I was
really trying to do is think of horror on an elemental level, like things in
daily life like the dentist’s office. There’s a way people feel about compound
fractures with bones sticking out.

And
there’s a LOT of that in the game.

IM: It
makes you shudder, and it’s very relatable. Getting shot isn’t as bad as getting
your teeth all busted out, getting a bottle opener taken to your mouth. A lot of
our monsters have mutilated teeth and that makes the player squirm. We were
trying to get that feeling going.

It’s
like a cerebral, universal, instantly relatable feeling.

IM:
Exactly.

What was
the toughest part of the whole experience?

IM: Horror is a personal thing, and people respond to different elements.
Getting people to come along and know where we were going with the game was
hard. You can’t just watch the game, it’s pretty but watching it is different
from playing it. Only one guy could play it at a time and it’s tough to get that
momentum going. It forced us to develop the game with no BS, we knew that
nothing short of really scary gameplay would get someone convinced. It forced us
to do it and make sure the game was frickin’ scary. In the end, that turned out
to be profoundly valuable. It was really hard, but it worked out.

Thanks a
lot for your time man, best of luck with the game’s upcoming release.

IM: Thank
you man, for taking the time out to travel such a long way to get here and for
playing our game!

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