EA Motive gives us an appointment this Tuesday for the first images of the remake of Dead Space. The opportunity for us to summarize a little what it is about.
[Updated on October 03, 2022 at 5:42 p.m.] A little throwback to the past, it’s 2008, and a promising game is starting to make some noise. This is Dead Space, created by Glenn Schofield and the teams at Visceral Games, an ultra-violent futuristic thriller that transports you to the 26th century in the freezing and silent vacuum of space. Except that Dead Space is one of a kind, although it takes on some horrifying elements from Ridley Scott’s awesome Alien. The game plunges the player into an unpredictable hell by confiscating his usual feeling of impunity, of deus ex machina in power, and offering him in exchange a permanent danger carried by a monstrously sinister sound and visual atmosphere. An influence and scope quite similar to the Silent Hill games, while trading psychological violence for uncompromising gore. Which will make the first two Dead Space legendary games, propelling the license to the pantheon of the best horror games of all time. Well this franchise is back! EA Motive intends to present us with a next-gen sauce remake of the first Dead Space this Tuesday, October 4. We rub our hands about it, fourteen years later.
Before speculating on the images that EA Motive has in store for us this Tuesday, October 4, we can already remember everything we saw on this next remake of Dead Space. Including a summer presentation of the project by EA Motive. It was therefore for an hour and a half that the studio teams showed us the progress of this remake of Dead Space, next-gen style. On the menu, discussions, concept art, some 3D models and above all a detailed dive into the sinister world of USG Ishimura. At the time alone, Dead Space had shocked us all with its realism and terrifying silence, and we will think twice before setting off again through the corridors of the ship infested with necromorphs, this time in a universe carried by the technical capabilities of next-gen consoles.
Moreover, when it comes to soundscape, Isaac Clarke will not be silent in this remake. We will find his official voice actor in Dead Space 2 and 3, Gunner Wright. A decision announced with fanfare and welcomed by the many fans who obviously wanted the return of the original voice actor. More than a wink, it’s an ode to the original titles but also one more element that shows the will of the EA Motive teams to respect the legacy of these legendary games. It is true that it is not always easy, in this kind of project, to bring innovations while preserving the essence of the original games. But Motive Studio seems to be on the right track.
If you don’t know the story of Dead Space, we will try to present it to you without spoiling you too much. The action takes place in the year 2508. The Earth can no longer meet the needs of its inhabitants, Humanity goes in search of resources in the immensity of space, aboard immense mining vessels, the surface breakers. One of them, SG Ishimura, suddenly stops responding to communications. A small team of engineers is then sent on board to try to restore contact, and among them, Isaac Clarke, the character you play.
Confirming some rumors about a possible postponement of the release of Dead Space to 2023, EA Motive has set the release for January 27, 2023. We will then celebrate the return of this great classic more than 14 years after its initial release, before soon erase the smile from our faces, once confronted with the horrors that await us in the great void of space.
For the moment, we know very little about this remake. We know that it will be developed by Motive, the studio behind Star Wars Squadrons, and that it will be based on the Frostbite Engine, the flagship of graphics engines (Battlefield 2042, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Star Wars Squadrons, etc.) developed by DICE, and has become EA’s go-to choice. A remake that promises to be more realistic than ever and which risks haunting the nights of even the most seasoned players.
In an interview with IGN, Roman Campos-Oriola, the creative director behind this new project, said that the Motive teams are basing their work on the original Dead Space assets, while rebuilding them from scratch: “It’s not question of increasing the resolution of the textures or adding new polygons to the models. It is really a question of reconstructing all these elements, capturing the animations, and so on…” It is true that today there are two types of remakes, from simple graphic improvement (Skyward Sword HD, Age of Empires 2 HD) to total reconstruction (Resident Evil 2, Final Fantasy 7 Remake…) and it seems that Dead Space falls into the second category. Excellent news and an extremely welcome modernization for a game that had been a great success since its release, 13 years ago.
Although EA has revealed little information about this highly anticipated next release, we already know that it will be on next-gen consoles and on PC. A decision that seems logical if we take into account its probable release date. Indeed, if this title is released in 2022 or early 2023, it is very likely that next-gen consoles will dominate the market by then. It is true that the current situation of their stocks does not bode well, but if we are to believe some analysts, this permanent disruption of supplies should end during 2024.
