“I don't get to play games very much; I have two kids under five, I run a studio, and I'm directing a game,” Gordon McGladdery, A Shell in the Pit’s studio director and singer/songwriter for Ghost on the Road, tells me. As a result, when it came to producing the first song in Pacific Drive’s radio soundtrack, he had to “go off vibes and trust direction for the most part." But that didn’t stop McGladdery from creating one of the best songs I’ve ever heard in a video game, as well as curating a soundtrack that goes above and beyond what I’d expected to find in a game like Pacific Drive.
The first time I heard Ghost on the Road in Pacific Drive, the new survival game from Ironwood Studios, was also when I got my first proper look at the Olympic Exclusion Zone, an area that players explore throughout the game. Driving through the dense pinewood forests under a night sky that shifted and swayed with absurd colors, I rounded a bend and saw the map in front of me open up just as Ghost on the Road kicked in. As the pine trees fell away, I saw the Exclusion Zone’s wall, dwarfing all that stood before it, including my humble station wagon.
