During its most recent live stream, Dead Space Remake confirmed that it will not be released in 2022. Motive Studio also illustrated progress in sound design with gameplay snippets.
Dead Space Remake promised to bring fresh news and it’s clear that it didn’t represent a rabbit for us. As you might guess from the teaser, Motive Studio has reserved the current developer diary for the sound design. Reworked environment and weapon sounds, exit window, we go around the announcements with a small summary.
A whole new world of sound
We’ll blow the bad news: Dead Space remake won’t land on PS5, Xbox Series X | S and PC in 2022. As journalist Jeff Grubb previously announced, Motive Studio is aiming for that a release for early 2023.
But the developers were mainly there to explain it to us in detail Sound design changeswith In-game comparisons between the original and the remake. The team returned to the concepts of audio occlusion and obstruction and 3D audio. The basic idea behind this was to illustrate how sounds may or may not be perceived depending on the hero’s position, an obstacle or the type of materials used by the scenery’s elements.
For example, if Isaac walks through a thick metal door but there is an adjacent window, the sound/music will continue to propagate through the glass. Conversely, an armored door with walls around it will block any noise. Despite the few crops, we can already see that the spatialization is much more precise than before.
Then we also had a short topo on weapons including the plasma cutter and the assault rifle. Like the general soundscape, the rendering of the two cannons has also been modified. On the plasma cutter we can better distinguish the plasma part when Isaac shoots.
Dead Space introduces the ALIVE system
The last big part of this dev diary has to do with that ALIVE. reflecting the mental and physical state of Isaac, the game’s hero. This system contains all the elements of the character’s breathing and heart rate, as well as the dialogue and other spoken sounds that are influenced by external components. Running, fighting hard, losing oxygen will affect Isaac. If he survived a jump scare, you’ll hear the fear in his voice.
As far as spatialization goes, Motive Studio wants to revisit outdated effects today, like what happened when Isaac was starved of oxygen. In the 2008 version, the character only had to refill oxygen or return inside the ship when confronted with it to instantly regain normal breathing. But there he will catch his breath gradually and therefore more naturally. Finally, the dialogues themselves will have three variations depending on Isaac’s condition – normal, tired, or injured.
