STACK #219 January 2023

FEATURE GAMING

Every animation, every texture, every effect or piece of enemy behaviour has been rebuilt from scratch

Now that the Ishimura is fully interconnected, you can walk from point A to point Z, and revisit locations you’ve already completed to pick up things you might have missed. We’ve added a layer of systemic unpredictability in the encounters and the ambience – we call it the Intensity Director. While you’re exploring the Ishimura , the Intensity Director can spawn systemic encounters, jump-scares, change the ambience of a room, switch off the lights, and more to always keep the player tense. Even in an area of the ship that you’ve already visited. What are you most hoping that fans new and returning will take away from their time with Motive’s take on Dead Space? I hope that the remake will be as good as they remember the game to be, and that they’ll feel more scared and immersed playing Dead Space than they’ve ever been playing a game!

bringing together the visual, audio, and tactile inputs to scare players in whole new ways. The new hardware also

and collisions, character design, AI behaviour, etc. So, if you’re a fan of Dead Space , you’ll feel in a familiar territory. But be ready for some big surprises... Dead Space is at its best when you don’t know what to expect, and we wanted to give that experience again to returning players.

allows us to add a lot more elements, such as dynamic props and dynamic bodies moving around. You can use that to your advantage – pick them up with kinesis, throw them at enemies, use Beyond improvements visually and sonically, what other big new things have you brought to the original Dead Space experience? The first is improved dismemberment. The approach from the original of cutting off limbs to kill enemies is something we wanted to keep. But we also wanted to improve it in terms of the mechanic, and that’s where we started talking about adding a visual marker of the progress you’re making and damage that you’re doing on those limbs. That’s where them as shields, etc.

Actor GunnerWright is back voicing Isaac Clarke, who didn’t have a lot to say in the original Dead Space .Will he remain a man of few words, or have you evolved his story with more dialogue? When creating Dead Space , we wanted to make more than just a simple modernisation of the original. We looked at the lore of the whole franchise, which is a lot wider than the original game. For example, we’re happy to have Gunner Wright back to voice Isaac, who originally didn’t speak in the first Dead Space.

the Peeling System came from. Each Necromorph has been reconstructed around the new system, which introduces layered flesh, tendons, and bones that break, tear, and shatter in shocking new ways to create a more dynamic and strategic experience. And while strategy is key, there are increased opportunities for creativity as well. The other big focus was the Ishimura . We started

Roman hinted at a special surprise in store for Dead Space fans… “We’ve completely reimagined the ADS cannons sequences of the game. They’re now taking full advantage of the new zero gravity navigation.”

with the actual, original game as the basis for level design, for encounters, for level art, and really tried to think about how the Ishimura and select rooms would have been designed if the team had access to today’s technology. We wanted players to immerse themselves within the space, so we recreated the Ishimura no longer as separated levels, but as one big, interconnected ship, walkable from end to end with no loading or interruption. With the changes we made to the Ishimura , the whole game is now one sequence shot. From the intro cinematic to the end credits, the camera will never cut, unless you die… What one thing would you pinpoint as the coolest in the updated game from your personal point of view?

We did this because we wanted to give more agency to Isaac. He’s the engineer and the main character, and he should play a bigger role in the events unfolding around him. Also, we loved the idea of being able to bring Gunner into the original Dead Space . How have you found developing exclusively for PC and the newest generation of consoles? Has it freed you to try anything in particular that the PS3/Xbox 360 era just couldn’t deliver? The latest consoles enable us to deliver a visually stunning game with the use of ray traced reflections, volumetric effects, fluid simulations, and dynamic lighting. With the use of these features, we’ll provide an incredible atmosphere that will immerse players in our world and give them all the chills they need. With the power of these consoles, we’re also able to dramatically reduce loading times, which will help us provide uninterrupted exploration in the game. For PS5, specifically, the haptic feedback controls make everything feel more real by

• Dead Space is out on Jan 27

Did you know? The working title for the original Dead Space was Rancid Moon .

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