Interviews// Ian Milham, the art director of Dead Space 2

SPOnG: That sort of direction really reminds me of the age-old argument, are video games art? What do you think, working in the artwork side of games development?

Ian Milham: They can be. I don’t exactly share the view that games are art because of the amount of creative people involved in it. That’s more like the craftsmanship of the medium, and I would say that’s the key distinction - the difference between art and craft. Craft can be creative and it’s about technique, or artistry, or a bunch of creative people working together on an object that undoubtedly required a tonne of effort. But that to me just gets you the craft.

Art - although many people smarter than me have tried to define art, so I feel I’m going to do a poor job - to me, is about intent and communication. When you think of pop art you think of Mark Rothko’s ‘Colour Field’ - it’s just a big field of colour. Is that art? Well, I think most people have said now - although they challenged the idea at the time - that it is, because he was challenging concepts. He’s challenging the idea of art and he is communicating an idea and provoking a response.

To me, that’s what art is, and I think games fall somewhere in that art-craft spectrum depending on the game. There have been some very interesting games that in my eyes are indisputably what I would call art. But more games are pop entertainment, and that’s fine too. So I think games are capable of being art, especially when they tackle issues, make commentary and communicate ideas. To me, that’s the barometer of art, not just the craftsmanship, which is there regardless.

SPOnG: How did you go about re-imagining Isaac? He’s got many different suits this time around - how do you make it look fresh and different without compromising his character?

Ian Milham: One of the advantages we have with Dead Space 2 is that people now for the large part have more of a sense of the character anyway. So we can stretch our legs a little bit more, we can try some more interesting things. Isaac’s outfits and essence is a lot more under the player’s control this time around. Before it was just about five upgrades of the same suit, now they’re quite different. Players can choose one that they feel best suits their style.

We do cover the bases, where we stay pretty conservative and include an upgraded version of the first suit, but then we’re free to cover some really different bases. So you see the advanced suit, which is on the box - the idea there is you get the advanced suit towards the end of the game when Isaac has accepted his destiny and the job that lays before him, and now he’s moving forward. He’s going to cut through his challenges.

That’s why all of the forward-facing surfaces of that suit have a crease. He looks like a knife, an arrowhead. He’s moving forward, cutting through all the bullshit, and now he’s going to make it happen. Similar to our other influences, the first thing in our minds when designing new suits was how they should make you feel when you put it on and why someone would choose one suit over another.

SPOnG: And the big thing, obviously, is that Isaac has a voice now. I remember you guys saying that there won’t be any monologues.

Ian Milham: No, this isn’t Final Fantasy (laughs).

SPOnG: So Isaac’s changed a lot since the first Dead Space really. How much of a challenge was it to pick a voice that you thought wouldn’t piss off your fanbase a little bit?

Ian Milham: Well, it was always going to be tricky, given that he hardly talks in the first game. Giving him more of a voice and personality is of course going to… for some people it’s going to be different than they imagined. But I think a couple of things happened about the first game with a faceless, mute avatar.

It put a cap on people’s emotional involvement, because it felt weird that someone in these extreme situations didn’t have more to say about it. He felt notably mute, and on top of that it had an effect of isaac feeling like an errand boy. Everybody in the world was telling him what to do and he never talked back - he just sort of unquestioningly accepted all these tasks.

So we determined that, yes it was tricky, but we had to do it. We had to give Isaac a voice and have him drive the action. To have him decide where he’s going, have him tell some other people what to do, and be much more of a driving force for moving the story forward. I absolutely think that was the right call. I’m quite proud where we ended up.

SPOnG: Did you listen to any of the fan feedback from Dead Space 1 and apply that to Dead Space 2?

Ian Milham: We did, and they said all sorts of things. The good news for us is that Dead Space 1 had quite positive feedback, and so we felt good there. Basically, people just wanted more of the same but bigger, better and taken to new places. We tried to do that on more levels than I think they realised.

For instance, I don’t think anyone would notice that we completely redid the controls. People were also really intrigued with the zero-gravity gameplay, they wanted more of that. To do that, we had to revamp and expand the zero-gravity controls as well.

SPOnG: As art director, you probably had a big part to play in map design for the multiplayer mode too right?

Ian Milham: Yeah, a little bit. I mean, certainly when it comes to testing. Those maps go through a lot of iterations. I helped choose the setting, and suggest things and help things visually - but we had a dedicated team of designers who were fine-tuning all the layouts and created those in the first place.

SPOnG: Does it require much of a change in design philosophy when making a multiplayer map compared to a story mode/campaign level?

Ian Milham: I will say that art direction there takes a little bit of a different role in that there’s a lot more gameplay information that the art direction needs to convey. Multiplayer is about quick-twitch and fast movements and not so much about mood and slow exploration.

We needed to provide a lot more subtle clues about the way out, or where this important bit was or use lights to illuminate things more specifically to give people a chance to navigate better.

If you’re playing as a Necromorph, we also needed to give players some creepy shadows to hide in - and yet not make them so dark and impenetrable that the other side didn’t have a chance. The art and gameplay are much more intertwined in multiplayer.

SPOnG: Thanks a lot for your time.

Ian Milham: Thank you very much!