Dissecting Dead Space Music with Composer Trevor Gureckis | Push Square

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Dead Space is one of the best horror games of the PS3 era, and we were lucky enough recently to sit down with Trevor Gureckis, the composer of the excellent remake of the 2008 classic. We got to talk about how to make a horror soundtrack stand out alongside much competition, how to make music more emotionally resonant, and why nursery rhymes are such a good fit for a horror game. Join us as we dive into the world of planet-crackers, Unitology, and a hapless engineer named Isaac Clarke.

Push Square: As a remake of a pretty iconic game with a rather memorable soundtrack, what was your approach to the music? Did you explicitly want to distance yourself from the work of Jason Graves? Or did you want to pay homage to it, keep everything very much in the spirit of the original? Some blend of that?

Trevor Gureckis: I started out with a very narrow focus for my role in the remake of Dead Space. EA and Motive Studios really wanted to explore narrative opportunities throughout the game, utilizing new themes and new textures. So, at first, my main goal was to achieve this.

For instance, there are new themes for Nicole (Isaac’s girlfriend) that he is searching for on the USG Ishimura. I also explored new sounds and textures for the ship which include things like solo violin, solo cello, and percussion noises on metallic instruments like a welded instrument called the Marvin. But I did all of this in the universe of Dead Space, which Jason Graves did such a great job of developing over three games. So, I have that big full orchestra smashing away doing extended technique processes, and exploring the ugly sounds that are very familiar to gamers and listeners of the original score. The further the score developed over 18 months I