Dead Space Remake team opens up on how the game "came into being"
"It really is a personal project for us; it's a game made by fans, for fans."
Dead Space Remake developer Motive has revealed how the team set about filling the "giant boots" it needed to fill in order to "honour the beloved original game whilst making technological improvements for modern audiences".
In its sixth dev blog, this one entitled "Back to the Beginning", senior producer Philippe Ducharme, art director Mike Yazijian, and creative director Roman Campos-Oriola reflected upon the project's earliest days "and its iconic inspiration" to reveal how "exactly" the Dead Space remake "came into being".
"The Star Wars Squadrons team was starting to wrap up the game," said Ducharme, "and they were looking for the next project. And Patrick [Klaus, General Manager of Motive] was brainstorming with the team leads, and one of them was Mike Yazijian, who was the art director for the Montreal portion of Dead Space 2. Mike was keen to make more Dead Space."
"This was a dream come true for me, to have the opportunity to revisit my favourite franchise," Yazijian added. "I was on board right away.
"Many of our team members came to Motive specifically to work on Dead Space because they were big fans of the original. So it really is a personal project for us; it’s a game made by fans, for fans."
"It has a really unique mix," Campos-Oriola added. "It has that mix of sci-fi, zombie themes, and the kind of psychological horror you see in things like Lovecraft. Usually, you get a mix of maybe two of those elements. But the mix of all three, these really popular kinds of horror, that’s really unique to Dead Space."
Despite Dead Space's "unparalleled immersion" and "flawlessly executed audio and visuals", the team believed that in fifteen years of technological advancements would allow a remake to "really push the experience much further".
"[W]e wanted a whole new generation of gamers to experience the same feeling we had back in 2008!" Yazijian explained. "We want new players to be able to experience Dead Space for the first time with all the recent technological improvements like 4K resolution, no loading, volumetric fog, 3D audio, raytracing, fully dynamic lighting, and 60 frames per second. All of this to deliver an experience that is even more immersive for our players. But we also wanted to give returning audiences new surprises, additional lore, and maybe a few Easter eggs – along with the same satisfying gameplay as the original."
"While this is a meticulous and appreciative reworking, a little too much of it seems designed to get in the original's way, to blur its focus and mutate it into an appendage of the omnivorous franchise operation it would become, where everything needs to be written into an on-going narrative backdrop, and genuine ambiguity is minimised," Edwin wrote in Eurogamer's Dead Space Remake review.
"Rather than rescuing the past, it represents a franchise reaching its tendrils backward through time to become its own progenitor. The results can be compelling, but make sure you play the 2008 game first."
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