- It lights up the path and still keeps the top dark so there's a little claustrophobia from the light in there so I think that's a good call.

- [Demetrius Leal] - I'm not sure we saw, well we do set up a trap.

- Well you're getting better with the Dodges.

- [Atsushi Seo] - Did you notice?

- Yeah, I did. You got like three or four in a row there. [intense music] We're here in our dailies room where we go through the game, whether it's design or whatever. But today we're going to focus on lighting. We have to make sure that the lighting and the audio set the tone and the mood. That's so critical for us to make sure that we nuance this. And that's kind of what we're doing now, is making sure that the lighting is in the right place for the mood. All due respect to everything else in the game, lighting and audio are 80% of horror and so we spend a lot of time on them. Lighting goes in before audio. So lighting is our first glimpse at how tense the game is. How scary is it?

- We use Unreal as a basis, it's a fantastic foundation. It already has so much built into it that contributes realism. It was a good jumping off point for us. We are super fortunate in that we have an incredible rendering team out in Spain, full of some of the greatest rendering minds. And we have such a close collaborative partnership with them on the art side and the rendering side. What we did was took a look at the state of the art with the Unreal Engine. And then we took real reference and what we try to do was measure objectively the difference between the state of the art and what reality was.

- Our art director, Demetrius just gets it. He was on dead space. Our lighting director, Atsushi is a master at it.

- [Glen Schofield] He worked on Dead Space. He's been with me 12, 13, 14 years.

- So yeah, we did actually this exercise when I actually out with the USS Hornet in Alameda. And the punch up was actually did the photogrammetry and captured the [inaudible] video texture. And I actually, even actually measured how bright the light is, taking the light meters, taking a notes and values, come back to studio. We created in the game in Unreal Engine to make sure what we actually try and achieve as a visual goal is achievable by the scientific approach we do. In that sense, working with the rendering team in Spain really assured us to kind of make sure that they can provide us the tools and the rendering feature we need to be able to hit the realism that we actually need for this game.

- [Glen Schofield] Because it's sci-fi and because it's horror, it's all created from your imagination. We have to make sure that we use textures and lighting and sounds that are relatable. [fans rattling] If it's completely foreign, you might not be as scared you know, you gotta be, oh, I get that, you know, that's kind of scary. Or that lighting scheme is always scary in some movies or games like that. So here and there you gotta make sure it's believable and relatable.

- Well, you always want us to immerse the player so you know, that's part of immersing the player.

- [Glen Schofield] So in the garage, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we've talked a lot about the original Alien and that warehouse area with the chains hanging down. It was all blues and whites. And that was relatable because of the chains, right? Just because of the chains.

- Scott's influence, I mean your own influence from Dead Space one, I mean like, you know, we had a lot of browns in there, took cues from that as well as like you're saying Alien one is huge.

- [Glen Schofield] Alien one was a big one. Some of the browns also come from Carpenter's The Thing.

- We watch a lot of sci-fi horror movie, yeah. Prometheus is also pallets that we actually look into as well.

- [Glen Schofield] Yeah, there's a lot of Event Horizon in some of these and Pandorum. It's not a boatload of sci-fi horror because they're just so expensive to make in terms of movies, and not a heck of a lot of games either. Yeah, that was pretty cool. When you do light up the the snow cat, can we keep it in cool colors? I wouldn't mess with the browns in here. This has a really good look. If I can get the music a little more tense walking up I think it would be okay. Almost felt like it was too bright. [Atsushi Seo] - Too Bright?

- I, you know, I don't wanna mess with it.

- You mean walking up to it, you think?

- I think walking up, let's just try with the music first and then we may have to adjust the lighting.

- [Demetrius Leal] You know? Did you wanna add like a, a white hit there? Like a frame, A couple frames just white out.

- Oh, the whole thing?

- Yeah. Or you think the sound will be like you know--

- Let's try sound. Yes, let's try sound first on top of that. I think the sound with the light matched it really well. I don't think the timing was off on that. It's a scare that will get a few people. I may ask him to turn it up even more.

- Just 10.

- It should be a 10 leave, yeah. I know he doesn't always like to go there but when we do, we scare people. [feet stomping] [lightning striking] All right, this is good, this is a good scene. I almost think that light there, even though it's important to go there, it may be too bright. It may be taking away from the outside scene and it may be taking away from the lightning. Let the music get in there and then we'll take a, see what I mean? It's like we know to go there, but it may be just--

- It's almost twice too bright.

- [Atsushi Seo] Little bit, you want a softer, maybe like--

- I think so, I mean, you both agree?

- I agree, yeah for sure.

- I agree.

- That's kind of polished stuff.

- It's nice, it does lead your eyes straight to to the other control room right up there. It's a nice lineup.

- Yeah. And [Inaudible], you talk about the misleading, right? Misleading to kind of get you jump scared, to like you know--

- So you wanna wait until we put the music in, tense it up and then--

- Yeah. I mean definitely. I mean this is like, oh yeah, there's definitely, I mean--

- Well you know to go there but it's one of the brightest things in the--

- I agree with you. Like, you know, I think if we tone it down a little bit, because then it's kind of more balanced with what you're looking at in the background.

- Yeah.

- And you'll still know to go there. I mean, that hue is gonna be different than everything else in the room. Right. It is much different than the rest. All right. We'll have machine drop in the music leading up. We'll just pull it down about 30, 40 percent, okay. Everybody knows that my number one word is quality. What I ask of everybody is whatever you're working on if it's just the bark of a tree, if it's just, you know a shoe, just gimme your best work. Talk about your art bible for a sec.

- Oh my gosh. It was a great benefit to come out really early on in this project, having a really strong vision from Glen and understanding what we wanted to go for. That allowed us to spend a lot of time doing a lot of research and getting references of modern day applications, say of prisons or other things. We wanted to have that authenticity to make the game relatable. Like the game's supposed to be 300 years in the future. And immersion was so important for us especially in a horror game. That we wanted the user to always have a point of reference. And all that began with research. And looking for touchstones just in modern life and being able to extrapolate that into the future. So when the player was playing the game they would instantly feel grounded and they would understand the surroundings. That's really important because we would isolate the player with a darkness. So, and foreign technologies, foreign aliens. So we wanted them always to have a point of reference.

- But you guys did so much research that for a while there it seemed like every day you would send me like a thousand photos and you were like, this is the dark, this is the rim lighting, this is this. And then you guys put together an art bible that was fantastic right? It took us, it took a long time. And that art bible is how we're able to keep every artist looking like it's just one artist did the whole game.

- [Demetrius Leal] We had so many different looks sets, so many different environments, which helps because you want the player to feel like they've gone through a journey in the game. And so we wanted to give that, but it was a tremendous amount of work because with each of those different sets you have to do the amount of research that goes along with it. So like Glen was saying we would send him pictures all the time and--

- Finally I said, okay they're all good. Just put 'em in depth. You know, the other thing that we did that we hadn't done was we took it into concept art as well. Like we have thousands of pieces of concept art but there was times now where we're like, I need one just for lighting. Because lighting was so specific in some areas to get the scare or the monster or whatever, that we spent that extra time on concept art and that really helped. But that's really going the extra mile to get that scare right. A lot of work, a lot of research, a lot where we're like, nah, throw that one out, oh, that one's right. It all paid off, you can see it in the game right now. And just excited to have people play it.

- Certainly back to what Glen said, it's about the team. I think we have such a talented team. Certainly the most talented team I've ever worked with and it makes it feel easy. I'm excited that what we're making matches what we planned.

- Absolutely. Good job guys, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you. [intense music]