New entries into the survival horror genre have some hefty competition. The Resident Evil and Silent Hill series have been horrifying gamers for years and have often set and raised the bar for spine-chilling, thumb-twitching gaming experiences.

Dead Space looks like one of the strongest new survival horror offerings in quite some time and it seems that a fair amount of research went into perfecting the heebie-jeebieness of the experience. Glen Schofield, executive producer on the title, says that one of the most challenging parts of the game was effectively creating the atmosphere.

The protagonist finds himself on a spaceship that’s already had a lot going on. A war was fought before Isaac even arrives so the developer wanted to effectively portray that. Not just with piles of dead bodies everywhere, but with “a lot of nasty stuff, corpses in various states of annihilation,” according to Schofield.

After the first few tries at creating horrific corpses were rejected they turned to a somewhat disturbing research resource: real life. The developers looked at pictures of war scenes, car accidents and the like.