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In 2008, publisher EA took a punt on a new game it had no idea would succeed. Dead Space, created by industry veterans Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, was an ultra-violent, third-person sci-fi horror slow-burn hit that spawned two sequels and achieved cult status amongst its players. Much like its inspirations (Event Horizon and The Thing are just a few) it was far more influential than its initial sales of just one million copies would imply, carrying the torch for a genre while Capcom's Resident Evil franchise descended into bombast and tedium in equal measure.
Still, the decade following 2013's Dead Space 3 saw publisher EA sit silently on one of its most exciting creative properties as revenues from sports franchises such as FIFA and Madden swelled its coffers. But now, finally, with EA’s first-ever remake, the hellish mining spaceship USG Ishimura has been granted a new lease of limb-lopping life.
Now fully explorable, with new audio effects, updated graphics for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, does Dead Space hold up 15 years later? GQ spoke to Phil Ducharme, senior producer, and Roman Campos-Oriola, creative director, from Studio EA Motive to find out.
The expectations of horror have changed significantly over the last 15 years. How do you contend with that?
Phil Ducharme: The first thing that we set out as an objective to the team was that we need to honour the legacy of the original game. We were extremely cautious not to go in and say 'Oh, we can do better' and start ripping it apart, breaking the essence of what made Dead Space so special.
Roman Campos-Oriola: Our pillars came from the original experience: sci-fi horror, unbroken immersion, and creative gameplay. Any novelty, enhancement, enrichment, or whatever had to fit inside one of those pillars. So for example, the decision to have the Ishimura fully interconnected with no camera cut, comes from [us saying] how we can improve on that unbroken immersion. Everything you see can be seen by your character, the UI is diegetic. But every hour or so you were pulled out of that experience, because of the loading screens.
Were there moments when you realised you had gone too far and had to pull back?
RC-O: Definitely. Dead Space has a specific feel, in terms of the weight of the character. You're in that big armour with these huge guns, but still you feel really vulnerable. It's really a precise gameplay alchemy to nail. So when we first started recreating Isaac and stuff, we're like, ‘OK. We’ll improve a bit on the camera and the reactivity on the controller.' And at some point we're like, ‘Well, we should put a quick turn in, because more modern survival horror games are doing that.’
We did that and immediately had to remove it. The recipe of Dead Space is that there's something coming at you and you need to stop him before it's too close. And if it's too easy to move away from it, well it's a different game.
One thing we love is how you’ve added moments of self-inflicted scares – they're deeply unpleasant.
PD: That was the intention. I can't wait to look at the analytics. One of the chapters if you've gotten there, there's oxygen or lights. You choose your poison.
RC-O: We were like, 'What's the worst thing that can happen to the player in Dead Space? Put you in the dark.' The fact that you do this to yourself, you're like 'Fuck, I know what's coming and I don't want to do it.'
When Dead Space arrived in 2008, horror games were in a bit of a lull. Resident Evil was at a low point. Now that series is at a real peak, with its own remakes having been a driving force behind that success. Was that at all an inspiration to remake this particular game?
PD: For sure, back in the mid-2000s, horror was more niche. Now you get national releases for horror movies and they make very big box office successes, so I think Dead Space helped push horror in that direction before it disappeared off the map. So for sure, for us. I think the timing is right for us to bring back Dead Space and make it relevant again, for people to experience it in a newer fashion and with a taste that's a little bit more 2023.
It’s funny you touch on it disappearing off the map. EA itself basically left the series to do nothing for 10 years. Do you have ideas for what you could do with it next?
PD: For sure, it's, it's a hope that we have. There's interest on my side and I think on Roman's side – you can see his smile – in exploring Dead Space more. There are ideas, that's for sure. We're finishing this week, we're going to be making sure that that launch goes well and that there are as few technical issues as possible. We're gonna be heading out on vacation and then we'll sit down and we'll have those discussions within EA to say, 'Well, what's next?'
What was your relationship to the original before working on the remake?
RC-O: This was the reason I came to EA. I remember when the first Dead Space came out, I was working on Ghost Recon at Ubisoft. And we were blown away by the shooting, the camera work. So I have very fond memories of that game, and I loved Dead Space 2 and 3. I was like, 'Yes, there's no way I'm not making that.'
PD: For me, the thing that was differentiating Dead Space from all the other games was that it was starting to blur the line with controls, where you really felt like you were the character. All the other games had jump scares and a very tense environment, but there was still a clunkiness to them. Dead Space was really the first one that made you feel like, 'OK, I'm turning off the oxygen' and I stopped breathing the same way.
The remake turns the game’s location, the USG Ishimura, into a fully explorable space with an AI-controlled ‘intensity director’. How does this tech work?
RC-O: Imagine it as a slider that level designers have access to, and it gives an intensity value to what you're experiencing whether it's scripted content or non-scripted moments. If it's intensity level one or two, it's just gonna play with the lights and have everything flicker. And then in the next room, we want something more intense like seven or eight. So now it's gonna spawn a fight. In chapter two, there's a huge fight with a lot of slashers. The number of slashers and the type of enemy is predefined, but the position where they spawn is not going to be the same every time. What we're trying to do is always keep the player tense.
We read you utilised the community fanbase in order to get the most authentic, respectful remake you could. Is that true?
PD: The first thing we did with everyone that joined the project was like, here are some codes for Dead Space 1, 2 and 3. If you haven't played it, go and play it. If you've played it, go and play because like your memory is gonna have faltered. But since we didn't want to fall into the trap of assuming that we knew better, we also kept the Community Council – these hardcore, passionate fans. We made a deal with them, ‘You're not here to please us, you're here to say to us, you're stupid, you're making a mistake.'
They were getting undisclosed access to everything, work-in-progress things that usually you would never showcase to external people. They were getting all of it so that they could interrupt us and say, 'Hey, are you sure this is what you're trying to achieve?' The deal we had with them was that we're not always going to agree, but we have to be able to explain why we changed something. And if our explanation falls flat, then we have to question ourselves and say, ‘Is that actually a smart thing to change here?’
Dead Space is available from £64.99 for PS5 and Xbox Series consoles at game.co.uk