Sound & Immersion II (Left 4 Dead)

Originally posted 28 November 2008.

Life is ridiculous.  You set yourself a couple of reasonable, attainable goals with a sensible deadline, and then The Powers That Be pop out of the cupboard where they've been hiding for the past three months and smack you with all kinds of lovely surprises.  Time-consuming volunteer projects, distant in-laws having accidents and needing help; ill health; crazy weather; and to top it all off? - NO BREAD.  I just wanted some toast, dammit.  Anyway, I thought if I didn't write this article now, I was never going to get around to it, so I've put everything else on hold for an hour or so.  Also, gamerDNA appears to have eaten my last post.  It wasn't much, just a heads-up that I'd been busy but hadn't died, and a quick list of the things I wanted to write about in the next week.

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The L4D logo.  Image courtesy of VALVe; click to go to the game's official website.

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The reason this article isn't simply titled "Left 4 Dead" is because, like Baldur's Gate (which was the primary example in my original Sound & Immersion article), L4D does the whole 'immersion' thing very well and it's worth noting how that was achieved.  Also, I wanted to clarify some things I stated in the first article.

I originally said that immersion was about how much you forget that you're playing a game and feel that it is, instead, 'real'.  That's true, and relates mostly to how well a game tells its story, but immersion can also be defined as how involved you get in a game, despite knowing that it's a game; how engaging the game is even if you're constantly calculating and considering the behind-the-scenes mechanics in your head.

Allow me a brief digression.  The thing that always strikes me the hardest about the Forgotten Realms games is the transparency of the entire AD&D system.  They have laid bare the bones of their games - bones that other games share to some extent - and made those bones an integral part of playing.  You don't play an FR game without knowing about attack rolls and hit dice, and the knowledge of those things is at the core of every encounter you have.  And, surprisingly, that stuff is quite interesting.  Knowing you just got a critical because you rolled an 18 for attack and your weapon allows you to GET criticals on a roll of 18 is kind of cool, albeit extremely nerdy.

Anyway - Left 4 Dead, as I said, does well in this department.  As with almost any multiplayer game, the first definition of immersion is suspended somewhat (you can never quite forget that you're playing a game when you have people yelling at you over Vent to turn your torch off), but despite the fumbles and foolish behaviour of your fellow survivors, it is very easy to be sucked into the world of the zombie apocalypse.  (Yes, I know they're not technically zombies, but some of the game's achievements call them that, so don't be snarky, or I'll incapacitate you.  In the face.)

I listened to a bit of the director's commentary last night - not a great deal, about ten minutes' worth, but it was enough to re-impress upon me VALVe's commendable dedication to providing immersive and engaging games.  If you've not actually listened to/walked through the commentary yet, I'd recommend it.  Quite interesting.  They talked about all of the ways they strove to immerse the player in the game, e.g. unusual lighting, believable survivors, etc.  The sound, however, outstrips everything else for atmosphere.  I'll get back to that in a bit - first, some background info.

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Bill, the Vietnam vet, picking off infected in the distance.  Image courtesy of VALVe; click to go to the L4D media page.

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I may have mentioned before that I am severely easy to scare.  I once had nightmares for three weeks about the voodoo guy from Live And Let Die - a James Bond film, for heaven's sake.  An overactive imagination has stood me well in all of my creative classes, projects and work endeavours, but it's also been responsible for ruining several hundred nights of sleep and general peace of mind for a great percentage of my life.  I can, for some reason, watch horror films without too much of a problem (Hannibal grossed me out, but I didn't have nightmares about it), but thrillers and anything with sudden scary moments are a no-go.

So when Digit told me he wanted to get L4D, I made it very clear that he was free to do so, but I wasn't going to join him.  Leading up to its release date, my clan forums went a bit nuts with L4D news and discussion.  Most of them ended up pre-ordering it, and I saw a major shift on my friends list from TF2 to the new infected menace.  I forced myself to watch him play for a bit.  It was pretty much as disgusting as I'd expected, and scarier to boot.  Yet this was my clan, and I wanted to keep playing games with them.  There didn't seem to be much of a choice, but I still held out.

Then Digit got me to play a campaign with Duko, one of our clanmates, using his own account.  He sat behind me giving tips every now and then.  We played on Easy, or Normal, or something like that, but I still found it quite hard.  It's obviously a very different game to TF2, so I had to redirect months of medic and demo practice into perfecting the role of a survivor.  Suddenly using only hitscan weapons, ones that worked differently to TF2's various guns and launchers, was a bit disorienting, as was having enemies charge at me in mindless waves, and being puked on and strangled.

There was a lot of blood, and a lot of vomit, and festy zombies, and yet - surprisingly - I had a lot of fun.  Maybe because I'd forgotten that the game was meant to be played with other people, and hearing other human voices always makes life (and games) less scary.  Digit badgered me for ten minutes after the game ended to buy it, and I rather pathetically gave in.  About half an hour later, I had it and was playing with both of them on Expert.

Back to the sound.  I get scared easily, so playing the game at night probably wasn't a great idea.  (That first game was played in the afternoon.  Things are a lot easier to deal with in daylight.)  They've done a fantastic job with both the ambient soundtrack and the music cues (riffs that only play when specific in-game events are occuring).  The problem was, they did it too well.  That night, I literally could not get to sleep for four hours because I was too petrified to shut my eyes.  I didn't end up having nightmares, but it's usually not the nightmares that are the problem, it's the getting-to-sleep bit.  The following night, I again couldn't sleep for hours.

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Watching each other's backs.  Image courtesy of VALVe; click to go to the dev blog.

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I was seriously beginning to regret buying, let alone playing, the game.  It was affecting my concentration and ability to operate normally after dark; my imagination wouldn't let up and real life events were sparking in-game reactions (my cat moved forward in my peripheral vision a week ago, and I threw something at her and yelped, "Left!" before I even stopped to think).

I spent an hour or so on the third day wondering how the hell to get around this.  I was having fun whilst playing the game, and since turning the low-violence option on, I'd not had as much of an issue with the gore (despite there being blood smeared all over every level) - yet I was still having trouble sleeping.  It occurred to me that during those wakeful hours, what went through my head was the music.  When the horde is on the way, or the Tank has been aggroed, particular tunes play that are unforgettable.  They're full of menace and warning and have a lot of panic built into them.

When I talked to him about it, Digit suggested that I turn off the in-game music and play my own MP3s instead.  I followed his advice that night, and with him and the others warning me whenever the horde or Tank was coming, I didn't miss the cues either.  It helped tremendously.  I had no problem getting to sleep that night.  Ideally, I'd like to replace the sound files used for the cues so that I can play with others (not everyone bothers to tell me when the horde is coming), but for now, this works.

I realise that the whole point of zombie games is that they're disgusting and scary and dark and creepy, and if the music adds to this, it's an intrinsic part of the game that I shouldn't remove if I want to experience it properly.  But I'm not playing Left 4 Dead because I like disgusting, scary, dark, creepy games - I'm playing it because I want to play with my friends.  For people like me, turning the music off is the only way to cope with a game that would otherwise simply be too terrifying.

(If anyone else has similar problems coping with scary games, I'd recommend some of OCRemix's more upbeat tunes as a free soundtrack - there are several good Street Fighter remixes, and my current list is also interspersed with remixes from Castlevania, Sonic, Secret of Mana, Mega Man, Metroid, Okami, Final Fantasy and Donkey Kong.)

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Each of the campaigns has a movie-style poster; this is the one for Blood Harvest.  Image copyright VALVe, sourced from Left4Dead411; click to go to L4D411's media page.

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At any rate - once I realised that the music was the problem, and had a good night's sleep for a change, I felt an even profounder respect for VALVe.  Whoever was responsible for the game's sound was a genius.  Even though I can't play the game with the music on, I can and do greatly appreciate the amount of effort that went into giving this game the best SFX possible.  I can't imagine L4D with any other music or cues; they work perfectly to set the mood and to enhance gameplay.

To wrap up, a question for you all:

Which games can you think of whose soundtracks really contribute to immersion and gameplay?