New Dead Space Remake Details

Jonathon Dornbush, from the IGN website, spoke with Philippe Ducharme (senior producer of the game) and Roman Campos-Oriola (creative director of the game), of EA Motive, about the remake of Dead Space, announced on EA Play Live 2021 for PS5, Xbox Series and PC.

They talked about how it’s been working on the remake and offer lots of details about how they’re thinking about the project, what they want to present versus what they want to keep the same, and what they can use to learn that the original game sequences did correctly and wrong.

As mentioned in the reveal trailer, the game is being built using EA’s Frostbite engine. The title is still in early development, although no release date has been cited or how much of the game has already been produced.

The team is “getting started” with the original game design level. The rest is being rebuilt from scratch to Frostbite rather than being ported, updated, etc. (textures, models, animations, sound effects, etc.).

“We don’t want anything to take him away from the experience and we don’t want any cuts”, explains Campos-Oriola. “[Os SSDs mais rápidos dos novos consoles significam que] there will be no loading. There won’t be any time we cut your experience, we cut your camera. You can play it from start screen to end credits perfectly.”

“[Queríamos] make sure the improvements we were making were within the DNA of what is Dead Space, and not just, ‘oh, we can add more texture resolution and more polygons, let’s just throw them into it’, I really wanted to convey that feeling of Dead Space. The addition of volumetric effects and dynamic lighting within these scenes add a big element to the atmosphere we’re trying to convey”, comments Ducharme.

“We wanted to use the sounds you’re used to as well and improve those sounds, and improve that immersion to the door sounds you’re listening to, the health bar sound, the creatures sound… we’re building on the original and recreating it. o, but we make sure it’s true to the original and that we’re honoring the legacy of the original game,” says Ducharme. 3D audio is being used for maximum immersion.

About the changes in history, Campos-Oriola said: “for us, the basis is the history of Dead Space 1. So, by default, this is what is canonical. But then there are some improvements we want to make to this story. And not necessarily improvements because these things weren’t really working in the original, but improvements because of what came after, and we’re like, ‘oh man, it would be interesting if we could reference that, or if we could link to it.” .

Dornbush says the team isn’t just looking at “what happened right away in Dead Space 2” as a reference, but also the expanded universe of Dead Space (novels, movies, etc).

EA Motive doesn’t plan for the game to have microtransactions, unlike previous titles in the series (in the video, Ducharme categorically says its inclusion in the past was a mistake).

The team is looking to refine the gameplay, such as “looking for advances in Dead Space 2 for zero gravity segments” and Campos-Oriola also said he is looking to “evolve” the game’s dismemberment system in some way.

EA Motive is working with community members every 2-3 weeks to test ideas, to ensure that nothing in the remake interrupts the experience or seems out of place.

You can check out the full interview on IGN site or in the video below.