For the Dead Space remake, Motive Studio was forced to strike a balance between keeping the game authentic and improving the source material technically, narratively, and strategically to enhance the nostalgia.
Speaking with Phil Ducharme (Senior Producer) and Roman Campos-Oriola (Creative Director) prior to the game’s release, I wanted to gain insight into some of the biggest changes the team made, and why they were made. Is the so-called “respect for the original” verbal? Or is it really trying to freshen up Issac’s visit to Stone Village?
If there’s one most important Dead Space feature fans love, it’s stompOriginally built on the original Dead Space and reinforced in the sequel, the Stomp is to Dead Space what a bass guitar is to a band; without it you lose your soul. In the remake of Dead Space, a lot of work went into getting the stomp just right.
“I think from Phil’s point of view, we’re spending too much time,” Campos-Oriola said, and they both laughed.
“We know it’s important, and we want it to feel good,” Ducharme said. “In our first iteration, when you were pedaling consecutively, you couldn’t aim between the pedals. So if you pedaled in one direction, you’d keep going in that direction until you came to a complete stop. You’d progress a little bit , but cannot be corrected.
“We worked on capsules on corpses, so it’s a little more generous in hitting limbs and dismembering creatures, to reduce the number of times you miss. Then there’s the scaryness of it, the sound, the creak. It’s kind of layered approach: initially, it was just the mechanics, then the blood and its animations, the ragdoll’s reaction to being stepped on, stuff like that.” All these layers combined with the haptic feedback on the PS5 creates a feeling of being stepped on, which is great for Feels crisper – and feels great to use.
Pedaling isn’t the only aspect of Isaac’s gear that’s been significantly retouched, either. While the original Dead Space used certain weapons, such as the iconic plasma cutter and ripper, certain guns just didn’t live up to that standard. The skinning system, combined with weapon rebalancing and overalls upgrades, aims to level the playing field across the arsenal.
Campos-Oriola chimed in to explain why the hands-on approach was taken here: “For me, it’s the style of play. If you just want to play plasma cutter, you can still do it. It’s still satisfying, and it still feels Like the original. This was very important to us. We didn’t want to nerf the plasma cutter to make the other weapons more interesting.
“That’s why we’ve improved dismemberment with the skinning system. In vanilla, shooting with a weapon that cuts up a limb is pretty good, but with a weapon like a pulse rifle or a force gun, it can be hard to know what you’re really causing damage. Now in the remake, you shoot a killer, and like in the original, he falls to the ground. But now when he stands up, you see all the flesh, all the skin, All the muscle is gone, only the bones are bleeding. That may have caused some damage! Now that you’ve removed the layers, just use the plasma cutter once and you’re good to go [take them out]”
Fans of the second installment in the series’ approach to weapon upgrades will also be pleased, as the node-based workbench system has been given a familiar overhaul. Campos-Oriola continued:
“We still use nodes, but we don’t have empty nodes anymore. We also borrowed the concept of special upgrades from Dead Space 2 that could be applied to certain weapons and applied them to all weapons in the remake. Every weapon has There are three special upgrades, each of which has a huge impact on the weapon’s performance.”
And then obviously the fully vocal Isaac Clarke. With the return of Gunner Right as the voice and face of the engineer, many fans (myself included) worried that the silence and eeriness that permeated the original game would disappear: replaced by monologues and extra phone calls. This is not the case. While Isaac would occasionally speak out when talking to him, the two made it particularly clear that his opinions were kept to a minimum. This is not God of War: Ragnarok.
“The conversations with the localization team were fun! They were like ‘Oh! You’re localizing Dead Space! How many new lines are you going to create?’” recalls Ducharme fondly. “Then we looked at the total and were like, ‘Oh, just that one?’
“We didn’t want to have a filling line for no reason. A fair amount was added because it was zero before. But it’s definitely not a chatterbox; Isaac isn’t one to talk and fill in the blanks all the time.”
That means very, very, very little help with puzzles or sudden interruptions will keep you from the horrors of Stone Village. In fact, according to Campos-Oriola, it only happens once.
“We had some issues with playtesting, so if you spend too much time in that situation, Kendra will actually call you to check how you’re doing. All Isaac has to do is answer, and in that answer there’s something about A hint of what you have to do. This only happens once in the game!”
The developers knew why: to keep the core of the Dead Space experience isolated. “When you’re scared, you talk to yourself, and it’s reassuring. If there’s a room and the lights aren’t on, people talk to themselves, like ‘where the fuck is the switch’ or something. So We don’t want that! We want you to still feel that sense of isolation, that you’re still alone on that spaceship.”
But if there’s a perfect example in my mind of Motive Studio’s hands-on approach to recasting the original Dead Space, it’s Peng. This original meme from the original game was a fan favorite at the time. With a statuette hidden at the start of Isaac’s adventures, an achievement for someone waiting to collect it, and recurring world-building spread across Stone Village in the form of colorful advertisements, Peng is a bright light in a way. scary world.
It’s back in the Dead Space remake. But the statue wasn’t thrown in the same place as before. She was moved “don’t make it easy for us”. However, once you find Peng, you can take her all the way to Aegis VII: a dream in the minds of many vanilla players. Small but memorable bits of the original are picked up, dusted off, brought back to life and put back in place for fans and newcomers alike to enjoy.
With all of this in mind, I asked them what to expect from the game, and whether they saw it as a natural follow-up to the rest of the series, a direct replacement for the original. Both Ducharme and Campos-Oriola rejected the idea that they could replace older games. Instead, they recall an anecdote from an early player in the game:
“It feels like playing my favorite game again for the first time. That’s what we want people who played the original to feel when they play Dead Space Remastered.”
Dead Space Remastered is out now. You can read our review here.