For many horror film fans (myself included), it takes a lot for a movie to really unsettle or scare. However, horror video games resonate and terrify on a whole other level. Due to their interactive nature, these games engage physically, raising the stakes and amplifying every move, decision or scare. While many factors contribute to a horror game’s successful execution, few are as emotionally powerful and manipulative as music. And when it comes to masterful video game score musical manipulators, few are as knowledgeable or prolific as composer Jason Graves.
Graves, a multi-award-winning composer, has been composing for video games since 2003, with years of composition and performance experience before that. Known for his creative musical thinking that pushes the boundaries of what game music can do and how it operates, Graves has helped shape soundscapes for dozens of games. While perhaps best known for his hauntingly atmospheric score for the original DEAD SPACE trilogy, Graves’ other credits include UNTIL DAWN, TOMB RAIDER, MOSS, FAR CRY PRIMAL, and THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY developed by Supermassive Games.
Now with four installations, THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY is a series of horror survival games, each influenced by a unique horror aspect and featuring a supremely atmospheric setting. For MAN OF MEDAN, the story involves paranormal elements and centers around a ghost ship and aquatic environment. In LITTLE HOPE, folk horror and witchy vibes abound. Then in HOUSE OF ASHES, the story blends sci-fi and history while set during the 2003 Iraq War. Finally, the anthology concludes with THE DEVIL IN ME.
For this final chapter, THE DEVIL IN ME moves to the present time while remaining heavily influenced by the 1800s-era evil perpetrated by the infamous H.H. Holmes. As the game follows a crew of documentary filmmakers visiting a replica of Holmes’ murder hotel, things quickly go from spooky fun to deadly serious. Keeping the pace and setting the tone every step of the way, Graves’ music for the game stitches it all together with gritty rhythms, spooky synths, sinister strings and devilishly playful melodies. Engaging and suspenseful, Graves fuses classic sounds with his own modern musings into one wonderful soundscape that will have you on the edge of your seat, clutching the controller.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. I recently had the privilege of speaking with Graves, where we chatted all about THE DEVIL IN ME, DEAD SPACE, why he loves working in the video game industry, how it’s changed over time and the classic films that influenced his music.
DG: You’ve been involved with THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY for a while now, with THE DEVIL IN ME being the fourth installation in the series. Because of your established record and relationship with Supermassive Games, what are those early creative conversations regarding the musical direction like now?
Jason Graves: That’s a very timely question because I literally had one of those conversations this morning. A lot of it, especially with Barney Pratt, who is the Audio Director at Supermassive, is through the lens of all the previous games that we’ve worked on. You have this anthology of games that are different from each other, but you want them to have a thread of ownership through the whole thing.
So we usually start talking about what is different this time in terms of story and plot. They’re such an amazing developer. They’re really doing completely different stories, completely different settings and completely different times.
So much of it is, “How do we make the music follow suit with everything that’s different about this while also tying it in musically to what we’ve done in the previous games?” It’s anything from what instruments we want to use to what instruments we know we don’t want to use. Are there going to be melodies and themes for this? Are there any major characters?
The big trick with DARK PICTURES is there’s so many relationship options and so many plot lines that you can follow. So a lot of times, we don’t do specific music for one character as much as we do like, a positive relationship idea versus a negative one. All those surface-level things would be the same kind of discussion a composer would have with a director if they’re working on JAWS 13 and they’ve worked on the four previous JAWS movies. It’s, “How can we keep it going? How can we make it interesting? How can we elevate the gameplay while still being consistent and honorable to all the games that we’ve worked on before?”
Each DARK PICTURES game has a very evocative setting. Even THE DEVIL IN ME has a strong historical influence. Did that period or the H.H. Holmes of it all influence your palette or instrumentation choices?
Definitely. One of the things I love about the way that Supermassive explains the game is [through the] prologue like a horror movie would have. I always think of the original SCREAM with Drew Barrymore, the poster girl. Then, everyone went and saw the movie, but it was very PSYCHO-ish, where the main character died. Sorry, spoiler alert. [Laughs] She gets killed in the prologue. Those kinds of surprise prologues are always a lot of fun.
In HOUSE OF ASHES, it was some B.C. time that the prologue was in, but then it becomes relevant to our current date later on in the game, which is in the late 90s. Most of the game for THE DEVIL IN ME takes place in the current time, but the prologue takes place in the late 1800s.
So Barney and I both thought that the origin story of H.H. Holmes was a really interesting lens to view the potential for the score. We both agreed that we didn’t want it to sound like it was from the 1800s. He already knew they wanted to use a lot of diegetic classical music in the game; diegetic meaning music that exists in the world of the game. So it’s the killer playing an old record, and he’s got a microphone [attached] to the old gramophone, and it’s playing through the PA of the building where our heroes are trying to escape in the present day.
We knew we didn’t need to recreate that vintage music feel because the opera and all the dramatic music that was going to be diegetic was going to do that for us. However, we also both love film noir and that Alfred Hitchcock vibe of the ’50s and ’60s. And while we didn’t want people to listen to the music and go, “Oh. That sounds just like PSYCHO,” we liked the idea of the palette and the timbre of the instruments in the ‘50s and ’60s.
So there was a definite steer from both of us to make it feel nostalgic in terms of an old-school record that maybe was underneath a film or a television show in the ’50s. And then, spin it and make it modern by also including some very modern synth and over-the-top trailer and synthesizer sounds. The two of those fighting against each other would be the secret sauce that hopefully makes this score different from, say, HOUSE OF ASHES or LITTLE HOPE.
I can watch horror movies all day, but horror video games really get to me. The tension is on a whole other level, with the music playing a big part in that. Can you discuss how you effectively build tension throughout a game?
Totally. I think half of that equation is easily in the hands of Barney and the team at Supermassive and how they implement the music. You could just hammer the player over the head with all this really over-the-top music, and it would lose its potency quickly.
Particularly for THE DEVIL IN ME, the other thing that Barney and I talked about that I forgot to mention when we were strategizing in the beginning, Barney was very quick to explain to me that this wasn’t the kind of game like UNTIL DAWN where you run or hide and it’s very frenetic and someone’s chasing you and it’s an action-based speed sort of horror. He said that the killer in THE DEVIL IN ME actually doesn’t want to catch you personally. What he wants to do is lure you into a trap that he’s built in this murder hotel that’s a recreation of the H.H. Holmes murder hotel. He just carries an ax and very slowly and deliberately walks toward you, which is almost scarier.
Barney was very clear that he thought the vibe of the score should be tension and suspense over action. So a lot of the music cues, even if they have a super big hit that’s a scary stinger, it’ll drop back down, and then there’s all this tension that’s not releasing in the background, pulsing and steady. And what Supermassive can do is take the big hits out and just let the tense part sit there unnervingly wavering and then bring the hits in when they matter according to the gameplay, which is why I say it’s so important for the implementation to be properly done. But it would be hard for them to do that if we didn’t have that plan ahead of time.
Between the rooms and traps in this game, there’s a real sense of claustrophobia which your music captures well. How did you approach this aspect of the game and embody that feeling we see these characters experience with the music?
That’s a great observation, and that’s right in line with that ’50s-style music. Especially with ’50s TV like THE TWILIGHT ZONE, because they were using live musicians, they had a very small band, and they were in a small room. So when you listen to that music now, the instruments sound very up close and present.
That was something we both knew from the beginning. We wanted the original music to sound up close, claustrophobic and present because the diegetic music playing through the PA, there’s lots of reverb and ambiance in the game. That way, it would be another easy way to blend the two, the diegetic and the score, together. And when the score takes over, it feels like everything is getting closer and more present and in your face, subconsciously, right? It just makes you feel like something is too close for comfort. I’m glad you picked up on that.
The killer in THE DEVIL IN ME is a bit of a sadist, toys with his victims a little and lacks some of the supernatural or sci-fi characteristics found in the previous installments. Did that element influence any of your decisions or work its way into the music at all?
In the beginning, Barney had some emotional descriptors that he used to describe the main protagonist. He used words like flamboyant or showman. It was less about what he was doing to the people. Sort of like, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS with Hannibal Lecter. The fact that he’s killing these people is inconsequential. Why is he killing them? What is he getting through killing them?
That analysis perspective really helps open up some interesting ideas for the music. It allowed the music, at least the way I was hearing it in my head, to be a lot more grandiose with some of those big hits and the way it can get very dramatic and build up in a slow burn kind of way. As opposed to something that would be like a typical Hollywood action movie track. We kept everything very intentionally slow-paced, and if it got bigger, it was still confined within this, like, “Look at me!” Then the music would get quiet again.
It’s the sort of thing I would never expect a player to pick up on, but if it was done differently, it would have a different vibe for the game. And really, I do think that the music in a film, TV show or game is at least a third of the vibe, right? If there’s no music, that’s definitely a vibe. But when the music comes in, what it’s saying is influencing everything that you see and feel when you’re playing.
I also enjoyed the moments when it sounded like you used a toy or prepared piano. It reminded me of CHILD’S PLAY and helped make that showman aspect really unsettling.
Yeah, that little rising four-note thing. I had that in the first demo I did of the first track. It was only half finished when I sent it to Barney, and he zeroed in on that immediately. It’s playful and a little childish, a kind of innocence, but innocence lost. He said, “I think you should do more with that. That could be something you thread throughout the entire score.” That’s why I love working with Barney, and that’s what I did. You hear it throughout the score, and it gets bigger and more dramatic throughout the game. But it is a nice thread. You’ve picked up on a lot of great things. I appreciate that.
Of course! The power of active listening, right?
Yeah, totally.
From what I understand, video game production has a much longer timeline when compared to film and TV. Does that at all impact how you choose to record things? Does time factor into the resources you tap into regarding recording or producing the music?
It can. The bigger or larger the scale of instruments you’re trying to record, the more you have to plan ahead, especially if you’re starting to look at recording at Abbey Road, Skywalker Sound or someplace in Los Angeles because those places are booked for months ahead of time. It makes it a lot easier a lot of times.
When I do smaller-scale projects, I’ll play as much as I can. And then I’ve got friends who have similar spaces, and they record themselves. It’s a lot freer to schedule one person than to try to schedule 90, let alone the studio.
For HOUSE OF ASHES, we were planning on doing a live string session, but the pandemic hit, and everything closed down. As a result, I just ended up playing all the strings myself. I probably never would’ve tried to play eight bass parts, six cello parts and eight viola parts. But, since we didn’t really have much of a choice and necessity being the mother of invention, it ended up being something that I actually do a lot now.
When I can, I do a lot of my own string things. All the textures and stuff from THE DEVIL IN ME, the string effects that you hear, that’s me playing all those string sounds. I wouldn’t have thought about doing that if I hadn’t been forced to do it for the previous game. That’s less time involved, but it is definitely a schedule planning, production sort of thing.
With games, especially when you write a cue, they want to put it in the game immediately. They want to see how it will play and need to take it apart, put it back in and program it. When you’re dealing with live musicians, it takes twice as long because they have to go back and do it all again because the first one that they did was sort of like the demo. Then it’s like, “Okay. Here’s the final version with the live musicians.” For example, with a big orchestra, they have to replace all the assets.
When it’s just me playing, or if it’s just me and some of my friends at home, the first round of music they get is basically the final because it already has the live performers on it. There’s no rule that it has to be done one way or the other, but it’s definitely something that’s taken into consideration for schedule. If there are two years, we have a lot more time to plan. If there’s six months, we better start writing music right now.
You’ve mentioned how critical other video game-related jobs like editors and audio directors are. How collaborative is your relationship with different roles or departments as the composer?
We work together as closely as possible as time allows. I think a great comparison for this is, if I’m working on a film, there’s the director, right? Now, there’s producers above the director, but the director is at the top of the list, and all decisions trickle down from the director to everybody else. As the composer, I would be talking directly to the director.
In games, everything, I mean everything, is made from scratch. The lighting is made from scratch. The trees are made from scratch. So much more needs to be made that it’s sort of like the director becomes about eight different people. So there’s an audio director, but the audio director is also talking to the art director. And sometimes, I’m interfacing with the creative director as well, because everything influences everything else.
Unlike film and TV, where the thing is made first and then the music is written, I think, with proper game schedules, the music is running in a simultaneous timeline as the game is coming on board. This is why it’s so amazing to be able to talk to the creative director or talk to the art director and have an open dialogue about the mood of a certain level. Sometimes I will have written something ahead of time before the art is finished, and a developer will say, “Is it okay if I share your music with the art department? They just started working on this level, and I think it can be really inspiring.” It’s like, “Yes, absolutely.”
That’s why I love the collaborative nature of making games. Everyone is just trying to do the best job for the game. I feel like in film and TV, everyone is just trying to do the best job for the director. It’s more like a singular vision from one person as opposed to this global community coming together to make a really cool thing.
I also want to touch on DEAD SPACE, as the new game has recently come out and utilizes much of your original music. How did that project impact or influence you, both creatively and professionally?
I was literally just talking to the CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE people that I’m working with right now. They had a question about how I deliver the stems because I was getting a lot of great mileage out of them. I kind of shrugged and said, “Ever since I did the first DEAD SPACE 15 years ago, I have this different mentality about how music can be delivered and implemented in the game.” Both of them were like, “Well, what do you mean?” And we talked about it. This was 30 minutes ago.
I mean, the original DEAD SPACE did, from a technical standpoint, what no other game could do before it came out. It had four layers of music, four stereo tracks of music playing all the time. It was physically impossible for a game to do this originally because it didn’t have the bandwidth or the machine power. EA had written a proprietary piece of software that allowed this to happen, and they were the first ones in the industry to do it.
So working on that game was like working on four soundtracks at once. I needed to write four different pieces of music that could basically play on their own but also could be mashed together for the ultimate, horrific nightmare experience. I learned so much about interactive music and how to put it into the game seamlessly so that it becomes part of the atmosphere.
What annoys me about some games is when you walk into a room and all of a sudden, you hear combat music start, and you’re looking around like, “Oh, wait. Here comes somebody. I guess I’m supposed to fight them.” I like the idea of music being more a reaction to the gameplay happening as opposed to a trigger that happens when you cross a threshold. It’s more of a film mentality, I think. That was the biggest takeaway I took from that first DEAD SPACE, besides all the crazy textures and everything that I ended up writing from a technical standpoint.
I grew to really love implementation in general, which is why I keep talking about it. You can have the most brilliant music in the world that’s implemented poorly into a game, and people are going to be playing the game and be like, “What’s wrong with this music?” Because it just doesn’t work. It’s either too repetitive, or it’s not doing enough. Well implemented music is the key to everything for a game.
They did a unique thing with this new rebooted DEAD SPACE version—fusing your original score with Trevor Gureckis’ new musical contributions. What was your initial response to this decision and seeing the renewed attention it has brought to your original work?
Lord knows there’s plenty of games out there for everybody to be working on stuff, so I’m happy that Trevor was given the chance to spread his wings into games and write the stuff that he was given the freedom to write.
When the original came out, I wasn’t expecting it to be the hit that it was. I thought the music was too dark, too scary, too non-melodic and was too over-the-top all the time, but that’s what the game needed. I didn’t think the music would get a lot of attention. So it was a very big surprise when it did. And then I was equally surprised and triply honored when they were doing a remake and mentioned that the original score was going to be kept intact. I would assume they would just remake the whole thing, right? So keeping any of my music in there is such a huge compliment.
To be able to stand a 15-year-old score next to a current score in a game and have them stand shoulder to shoulder, I think that is really, really great. And I’m just tickled that DEAD SPACE is a thing again. It’s hard to believe, but you’ll never hear me complain about it being popular.
As you have been heavily involved in the gaming industry for a while now, how has the landscape of game music changed — whether that’s reception, opportunities, acclaim, technology or something else you’d like to mention?
Well, it’s a very interesting question. I think after what is probably 20-plus years in games, there’s an inevitable throughline of similar thoughts of how much I love game music in general, how creative it allows me to be, how amazing the people that I get to work with are, how collaborative, friendly, giving and kind everyone in games is. That’s always consistent and has been since I first started.
There’s also what I would like to think is an emotional and musical maturity for me personally that’s occurred over the last 20-plus years. Originally, I had to make DS music, triggering the little bleeps and bloops that they always start interviews with — “Video games are the bleeps and bloops they used to be!” I was there in the late 90s doing the bleeps and bloops, right?
Stepping away from that, especially the last 10-15 years of my career, there are no limitations to what I can do. And part of that comes from people seeing things that I’ve done previously. DEAD SPACE would be a great example. This is another reason I love the game industry. If it were a film and DEAD SPACE were a movie, I would be inundated with calls to do the DEAD SPACE score for their film.
In games, I think I’m doing three horror games right now, but none of them sound like DEAD SPACE, and none of them requested to sound like DEAD SPACE. What the game people say is, “We loved that score.” They’re not talking about DEAD SPACE now, but originally after the game came out, they said, “We love DEAD SPACE. We love how iconic it sounds. Can you do that for our game, but make it unique the way you made DEAD SPACE unique?”
In the same way that we’re not restricted to bleeps and bloops any more creatively, and the sky’s the limit, I keep trying to find new ways to simultaneously torture and inspire myself for instrument limitations and ideas. I love learning, and gaming is really the place to be for finding like-minded people.
I just went to this video game music conference in Minnesota a week ago. It happens every year, and it was three days of people walking around with huge smiles on their faces. They had three simultaneous stages playing music, like, 12 hours a day. It was just this huge celebration of video game music, both past and present. I love that; paying tribute to the history games of yore from back in the 1900s, but also looking forward and embracing the technology and the future. Because that’s what games are. They’re all technology, and the music is going right there with it. The people in games are just the best people in the world.
THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: THE DEVIL IN ME is now available on various platforms. You can find more information on the game and availability on their website here. In addition, Graves’ score for the game is now available on all major streaming platforms.
Tags: History, Interviews, Jason Graves, music, Rachel Reeves, Supermassive Games, Video Games
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