There's some weird philosophical thing to be said about an artist being scared of their own art. And try as I may, I'm just not very philosophical. So I'll just give you the facts and let you play Socrates. As for the art in question – the upcoming remake of Dead Space, which is apparently so scary that technical director David Robillard cannot play it with headphones on after dark.
As you may already know, Dead Space keeps you on your toes by constantly making you think something is behind you or around the next corner. This sort of atmospheric horror is why the original game was such a success when compared to those merely filled with jump scares. True horror is flinching at each and every ambient sound, fearing that a Necromorph is going to drop down upon you at any moment. It seems that the team engineered this a little too well for Robillard.
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"When I'm playing it at night, I can't play it with headphones. It's just too fucking scary," said Robillard in a conversation with Play Magazine. "Just the amount of realism and, again, atmosphere. Not just visually, right? In the way we handle sound, ambience, effects, having systems that will try to spook you. These things, you know, could have been done [on PS4], but not to the level we're doing them today. And they really add a lot to this sort of genre and make the whole kind of experience come together even more."
One of the major goals for the Dead Space remake is immersion. Senior producer Phillipe Ducharme apparently played through the original multiple times in order to have a holistic understanding of the game.
"If we're able to get the player with the pad in their hands at the start and play throughout the entire game without putting their pad down, like to have them play for 12, 14, 15 hours straight, because they're so immersed, and they just don't even want to go to the bathroom," said Ducharme, "Well, it's not healthy." But it's all about keeping the player well and truly gripped. "Otherwise, like, that's because they jumped in and they don't want to leave, they don't want to put it down – then job done, we've achieved that, like we were able to deliver that immersion."