Fans of survival-horror games will get a fresh dose of terror this Halloween, with the October release of Electronic Arts’ Dead Space - a grisly third-person adventure that puts players aboard a desolate alien-infested spaceship.
The game marks the company’s first stab at the horror genre, and helping craft this gritty debut is Full Sail Game Development graduate Clayton Vaught, who’s working as a Software Engineer II at EA’s Redwood Shores studio.
“Dead Space is without doubt one of the scariest games I've ever seen,” Clayton shares. “We’ve had a lot of freedom to just have a blast and do what we thought would be cool. Pretty much anything we wanted was fair game.”
The developers took full advantage of that creative license, pushing the project’s dark tone as far as they could with gameplay features that heighten the tension and gore way beyond what fans of the genre have previously seen.
“It’s not just about creepy lighting, music, or even blood and guts – it’s about making the player constantly be on their toes,” Clayton offers. “With survival horror you have to have something special every time, and we’ve taken things a step further. For example, if you run through a level and don’t kill a particular enemy – they will climb through the air vents and come find you later in the game.”
“Plus, there’s no pause button in Dead Space,” he continues. “If you open up your menu to look at your inventory, it’s a live projection into the game, and monsters are still beating down – they’re going to come and kill you. The build up is incredible because you never get a break. It’s crazy.”
Clayton’s role as Software Engineer II had him overseeing many of these thrilling elements, including the monster implementation and boss A.I. As familiar as he was with the game’s biggest scares, though, the unpredictability of the game still manages to unnerve him after almost two years of development.
“We were actually sitting down in a team meeting not too long ago showing it off,” he shares. “And when it got to one of the scariest parts, even though I knew it was coming, I still jumped in the middle of the big group. So if it can still have that effect on me after all this time, I think that’s a good sign.”
Dead Space will hit the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows this October, and the early press buzz is also starting to rub off on the development team as they wait for the game to hit shelves.
“It’s an amazing feeling to have friends who are like ‘Wow, you worked on Dead Space?’,’” he shares. “I’ve been through the game more times than I can possibly count at this point, and it’s still so much fun. So as long as people enjoy the hard work we’ve put into it, I’m good. That’s what makes it all worthwhile in the end”
