One of the breakout successes of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era of gaming, the Dead Space franchise, is back – a remake of the first game is on the way.
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The game was unveiled at EA Play Live in July 2021, and we already know a few key facts about it, so read on to find out everything you need to know.
Dead Space trailer and release date
The trailer above is the one that EA and developer Motive showed off during EA Play Live, and while it’s light on details, you can tell that it gives a pretty good sense of what the finished game is going to feel like – it’s creepy! There’s a far more lengthy and detailed developer diary that you’ll find a bit further down, too.
While that teaser didn’t end with a release window at all, we now know that the game will arrive on 27 January 2023, thanks to the announcement below.
January 27, 2023 #DeadSpace pic.twitter.com/gjbCTQ7FY3
— Dead Space (@deadspace) May 12, 2022
That means it’s actually not as far off as we thought it might be given the techy nature of the showcases we’ve seen so far.
Dead Space platforms
One very interesting detail confirmed in the details of that trailer is about the platforms Dead Space is coming to.
This is a next-gen-only experience, people! It’s planned for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and the PC – that’s it. If you’re still on the PS4 or Xbox One, you’re out of luck, although there’s still plenty of time to upgrade before it comes out.
Dead Space story
While the new Dead Space is being rebuilt from the ground up from a technical perspective, we can assume that the story of the game will remain very similar to the original.
That means that we’ll once again be taking on the role of Isaac Clarke, a 23rd-century engineer sent to help fix the stranded spaceship Ishimura. Upon arrival, it quickly becomes clear that things are very wrong on the ship, with hideous necromorphs taking control of it and roaming its corridors and bays.
We won’t spoil any more in case people haven’t played the original game, but suffice to say that things get pretty dark as Isaac has to use his mining tools to defend himself from various hideous fates. We also know that Isaac’s original voice actor will be returning to the role, with some expanded dialogue and a more natural script.
Secondary characters will also seemingly get a bit more screen-time to humanise them and make them more believable and likeable, something that could definitely improve the original’s harsh approach to killing people off.
Dead Space gameplay
Gameplay is where things get very interesting for this remake. We know that EA Motive is building the game from the ground up – it’s a total remake, not a remaster or port, so they’re starting from scratch.
That means that while the main elements of Dead Space’s gameplay will presumably remain similar, there’s the scope for plenty of change. The game will be entirely remade in the Frostbite engine like most of EA’s major titles now are.
In a big interview with IGN, the developers clarified some of how going next-gen only is going to impact the game, too. For one thing, 3D audio will make its sound even more harrowing and scary, with pinpoint echoes and clatters keeping players unnerved.
This was expanded on massively in a series of developer deep-dive videos in March 2022, and we’ve embedded the last in that series below, an atmospheric walkthrough of an environment:
Through three more audio featurettes, you can get a sense of how much more accurate audio is going to be. It’s pretty clear at this stage that playing Dead Space with a headset on is going to be an extraordinarily stressful experience.
The game will also make use of the newer consoles’ super-quick SSDs to ensure that there are no loading screens whatsoever throughout Dead Space, letting you play the whole thing through without any interruptions if you’ve got the stamina.
They also briefly touched on the core combat of the game, which sees players carefully dismember the Necromorphs staggering at them using cutters and lasers. It sounds like this is going to be slightly iterated on, to make it gorier and even more modular, so it might not be quite as simple a task as in the original. That’s been fleshed out in the first developer diary, above – the addition of “peeling” will make it easier to see how much damage you’re doing to enemies, in a typically gory way.
We might get whole new sequences, too, with the zero-gravity elements that made Dead Space 2 so special potentially getting more of an airing in this remake as well, and letting players move around in zero-g with more freedom. In fact, there are apparently plenty of small pieces of cut content from the original game that might now be possible due to more powerful hardware.
This has been explored in some detail in a new developer blog about the game, which features more peeks under the hood at the challenges and rewards of updating a classic like this, which you can check out right here.
From a raw technical point of view, of course, the game is simply going to look far, far more impressive than the original did, with lighting and volumetric effects that would never have been possible when it first released.