I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream Soundtrack, John Ottman, 1995
Point-and-click adventure games arguably reached the height of their popularity in the mid-1990s. Unsurprisingly, this was also the period when the genre began venturing into darker subject matter, even if such material was not always handled with the necessary maturity or taste. The best-known example of these more adult-oriented adventures might be Sierra’s Phantasmagoria, but arguably more confronting – and more thought-provoking – was I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.
Based on Harlan Ellison’s short story of the same name, the game presents a bleak science-fiction scenario in which a supercomputer eternally tortures humanity’s final five survivors after a nuclear holocaust, simply for its own pleasure and out of limitless hatred for mankind. Ellison’s direct involvement in the adaptation ensured that the game’s writing was far stronger than that of most contemporaneous video games. Even so, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream suffered from enough design issues to keep it from becoming a full-fledged genre classic. Still, decades later, it remains notable for its unflinching engagement with deeply unpleasant material, articulated through the repellent and tragic life stories of the five survivors whose perspectives the player inhabits.
Musically, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream posed both a formidable challenge and an unusual opportunity. The task was to underscore an overwhelmingly bleak narrative in the restrained style typical of adventure-game scoring, while doing justice to characters and dramatic situations richer than what most games of the time attempted. Fortunately, the developers secured a composer more than capable of meeting that challenge: John Ottman, who would break through that same year with his score and editorial work on Bryan Singer’s neo-noir landmark The Usual Suspects.
Arguably, Ottman is best known for his large-scale, near-symphonic scores, including several of the X-Men films, Superman Returns, and Jack the Giant Slayer. Seeing him score a gloomy mid-1990s adventure game may therefore seem surprising, but only at first glance. Before those orchestral showpieces, Ottman had cut his teeth by rescoring the student films of friends, which likely gave him valuable experience with the kind of MIDI resources used in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. It is also worth remembering that several of his early film scores were written for works with strong horror elements, especially Snow White: A Tale of Terror. In that sense, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream fits more naturally into Ottman’s output than one might assume.
And while this soundtrack lacks the abrupt mood swings of Snow White, it shares the same pervasive sense of morbidity, a quality that seems to seep into every note. Ottman makes imaginative use of chamber-sized textures, relying heavily on woodwinds, including saxophone, and percussion. The resulting palette generates a mood that is both claustrophobic and haunted, yet also capable of intimate expressions of regret and hope, which are essential if the protagonists’ conflicted and deeply damaged personalities are to register properly.
What makes the I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream soundtrack more intriguing still is the fragmented nature of Ottman’s melodic and harmonic writing. His cues may rarely deviate from their languid pacing and oppressive atmosphere, but they are anything but predictable. The harmonies, heavily chromatic throughout, continually take unexpected turns, while the jazz-inflected melodic language displays a complexity and maturity rarely encountered in game music. This is a soundtrack that invites, and rewards, repeated close listening under headphones. Like very few other game scores, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream keeps the emotions it expresses unstable and ambiguous. In doing so, it mirrors perfectly the murky moral and emotional condition of its protagonists.
There is no question that the soundtrack feels overwhelmingly claustrophobic, as though underscoring a doomed search for answers in some subterranean, dimly lit cavern. Yet Ottman still finds distinct tonal identities for each protagonist, and this has the additional benefit of preventing monotony. Nimdok’s past as a Nazi scientist conducting grotesque medical experiments is subtly but effectively suggested through the inclusion of snare drums. The mock-medieval pomp and stateliness of Ted’s music comments brilliantly on his former life as a conman supported by wealthy lovers. Garrister’s crushing guilt, born from an abusive marriage and his wife’s institutionalisation, produces cues dominated by disorienting percussion. For all their gloom, these pieces retain a thread of humanity through Ottman’s melodic writing, however challenging that writing may sometimes be.
The I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream soundtrack is not easy to embrace, but it is never emotionally cold. It always preserves its connection to the broken people at its centre. It is in the individual “Redemption” tracks that these glimmers of empathy are finally allowed to shine strongly enough to push back the darkness of the past. What is fascinating is how Ottman manages to steer these cues into hopeful, sometimes even grandly affirmative major-key territory without sacrificing the music’s ambiguity or its elusive sense of progression. Even “Win”, which accompanies the game’s extremely difficult-to-obtain ‘good’ ending, offers not jubilation but relief, though it still builds patiently towards a grand conclusion that somehow remains fully consistent with the rest of the score. A little-known gem, the I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream soundtrack stands as one of the most intricate and compelling adventure-game scores ever written.
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