Audio Codes and Scary Sounds

Through playing survival horrors I have grown to really appreciate the fear induced by sounds and music in-game. The soundtrack to the Resident Evil series for example is one of my all-time favourites, not just because I find the music enjoyable to listen to, but because of how the music makes me feel while I listen to it. I believe that a survival horror without an effective soundtrack and sound effects is extremely detrimental to the game experience. Of course, silence can be a fantastic tool to create tension, but when the entire mood and atmosphere of a game is summed up in a musical score, playing the game becomes much more immersive, in my opinion. 

Looking at the article I previously read by Diane Carr, I found a helpful excerpt which notes about the use of sounds and music in the game Silent Hill. "Silent Hill uses suggestive and worrisome noises like footsteps, wing beats, bad plumbing. Harry carries a disconcerting radio that cracks with squeaky static when monsters are around. As Jonathan Ree has pointed out, spooky noises are an excellent way to give us the creeps as "the spatial indeterminacy of sound means that auditory illusion can be even more disconcerting than either optical or visual ones" (Ree, 1999). Silent Hill wants its players to be frightened, and the sounds of the game world move into our own space" [1][2]. Much like when the visual stimuli is cut off, limiting the amount of knowledge about a space through the medium of sound is an excellent way of creating a variety of images in the player's mind. The technical semiotics used allow our brains to ponder on what might be making certain sounds and whether we should be afraid or not. For example, you hear a groaning off screen, zombies are in the room with you but you don't know where yet. Another great example is the use of sound in the recent game Dead Space, where footsteps, falling pipes on metal and shouts are heard on a loop in the background. The tutorial narration is voiced over the spaceship's intercom system by a machine, amplifying the loneliness of the character. When I experienced this the audio kept me alert to every sound around me as I then could not tell which was in the current environment or just the soundtrack, heightening the fright level when I actually did see a grotesque alien running towards me. In addition to this, the collectable audio logs from the ship's now dead crew allow the player's mind to wander into the emotions of the characters as they face death, something which I believe the short musical pieces from the Biohazard (Resident Evil) Orchestra Album convey even without words.

The soundtrack in any game is something I always listen out for and I love to hear original and moving pieces which a relevant to the game. The two pieces I picked above are from Resident Evil (for music locations see below) and I found them to be both very memorable by how the pieces both tug at the heart strings while playing and create tension at the same time. "The First Stage" in particular, to me, has a mood of sorrow and sadness but changes to short, sharp notes which convey feelings of danger and evil. The inclusion of human voices through the use of an almost heavenly choir seems to thicken the atmosphere greatly, subverting the ethereal sound into something unsettling.  

To be continued... 

[1] Ree Jonathan, 2000, I See a Voice; A Philosophical History of Language, Deafness and the Senses, Flamingo

[2] GameStudies.org: Play Dead: Genre and Affect in Silent Hill and Planescape Torment, Diane Carr, retrieved on 18/05/2009

"The First Stage" is taken from the start of Resident Evil 3 when Raccoon City is at the height of it's destruction from the T-Virus. 

"Secure Place" is a leitmotif associated with the typewriter safe rooms in the Resident Evil series. These are usually the only guaranteed safe places in the games where no zombies are found. The music reflects the feeling of safety, tinged with the knowledge that you've got to leave and face the danger again to survive. 

Both tracks are by Kazunori Miyake and Masami Ueda.