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“In general we're thinking about how we make this a more broadly appealing franchise, because ultimately you need to get to audience sizes of around five million to really continue to invest in an IP like Dead Space”, Frank Gibeau recently told CVG when talking to them about Dead Space 3. Those are difficult words to swallow for anyone who has invested in the Dead Space franchise over the last few years, and they come mere weeks after having to choke down another sideways pill: the announcement that Dead Space 3 will feature drop-in/drop-out co-op.
You can argue whether the Dead Space franchise is “horror” or just an action game in a horror setting, but the games have always thrived on the claustrophobic intensity of having one man pitted against a legion of relentless monsters in small, dimly lit corridors. Adding another person- and therefore another body of firepower- seems like a poor design decision that will neuter the game’s greatest strength.
Is it all really as bad as it sounds? Don’t worry; the game's executive producer Steve Papoutsis is here with 20 minutes of gameplay footage to allay your fears about the direction of the Dead Space franchise!
...or not.
If nothing else, the new snow bound setting shows that Dead Space is being more upfront about its obvious debt to John Carpenter’s seminal 1982 film The Thing. Beyond that, the footage in the video doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement.
It’s full of bugbears that have started to infect action games like a virus. There’s a section between 12:25 and 13:00 that descends into frighteningly generic cover based shooting. How much of that will we be seeing in the final game? The characters swear profusely and pointlessly. There’s a boss battle with a huge, noisy cockroach thing that carelessly exposes its glowing yellow weak points, yet Isaac still somehow manages to lose against it and wind up in an awkward battle with its digestive tract.
Then there’s the issue of that dreaded co-op. I don’t have a problem with co-op play when it’s kept as an entirely separate entity to the single-player (like with Portal 2), but that’s not the case here. Papoutsis promises that players who have enjoyed Dead Space as a single player game will still be able to enjoy Dead Space 3 solo, but here’s the damning sentence about the co-op play: “What you’re going to see is actually some different dialogue, some changed around cutscenes, some new story details that you wouldn’t normally get. So you’re kind of getting two games for the price of one.”
Or how about one game you only half play when there’s no-one else around to share it with? Locking story details away in the multiplayer seems a bit unfair on the players who have come to appreciate Dead Space as a series of single player games, particularly when the multiplayer has been confirmed as “online only” by John Calhoun in an E3 interview with GameTrailers. According to Papoutsis, “There’s a motivation now to share Dead Space with a friend.” Sounds great from EA’s marketing perspective. 2 game sales for the price of 1!
EA and Visceral's justification for the new direction is all over the place. You’ve got EA's VP of marketing strategy Laura Miele telling Gamasutra that co-op was introduced because people were too scared to play the last two games alone. The idea that a horror game (or action-horror or whatever) failed because it succeeded in horrifying its audience is logic so twisted it could only have come out of marketing research. Then you have Frank Gibeau's miserably straight-faced line of reasoning: they are making the game more "broadly appealing" to make more money. Finally there's Papoutsis, who degenerates into some sort of unhinged teenager trying to hype up the game in the video, with its "super epic" "giant freakin' drill", which ends up "pulping" necromorphs, which is "super awesome" and "freakin' cool", but it can also "pulp you", which is also "cool" and "awesome." Is anyone else reminded of that cringe inducing "Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2" advert campaign? All it does is generate the impression that the game is made by the immature for the immature, and yet will end up with a Mature rating on the front of the box.
I would be the last person to suggest that a developer can't shake up an old formula simply because the fans don't like it, but my ultimate question is: why Dead Space? Is it painfully mutating like one of its necromorphs into the thing it has always threatened to become, a beige third person action shoot-em-up? Is EA's only justification for the game being so heavily co-op focussed that it wouldn't sell if it was any other way? They have gone to pains to make it clear that people who play for the singleplayer are under no obligation to play co-op if they don't want to, but they have made it equally clear that they have designed the game as a co-op experience from the ground up.
But who knows, maybe that experience, co-op or otherwise, will be fun. Maybe it will retain the panicky, sweaty-palmed thrills that helped set Dead Space and its sequel apart from the crowd, even when playing with company. Maybe it will be, in Papoutsis' words, "super awesome". From what I've seen so far, though, this direction for Dead Space looks like a dead end.
Comments
12 years, 5 months ago
EA is possibly the biggest reason why the gaming industry is failing, plain and simple. Although a good portion of the blame lies with us for buying into their crap.
12 years, 5 months ago
I'm kinda of scare of where this is going because you cannot maintain a fear factor in a co-op game. This is harming to watch. I'm not completely against the idea, but not on the main story. Doing it on a side story would be more acceptable.
12 years, 5 months ago
"Is EA’s only justification for the game being so heavily co-op focussed that it wouldn’t sell if it was any other way?"
Online pass.
12 years, 5 months ago
Should we have even expected anything other than disappointment?
12 years, 5 months ago
Survival horror tends to not be co-op, cover-based shooting with regen health. You could potentially pull off co-op survival horror if you're thinking, just not this way.
Also, EA had the most boring conference.
12 years, 5 months ago
took the words straight out of my mouth, all these things they're doing, adding another player, opening the areas up, fighting generic soldier enemies, wtf man.
you lose all the claustrophobic and athmospheric tension of the first two games, and now the sense of isolation and disempowerment by adding in another player controlled buddy to fight along side you.
As soon as I heard the "awesome, super cool, EPIC moments" and the drill that "pulps your enemies" I knew they were going for a way different audience than the ones who loved the first dead space games =/
12 years, 5 months ago
They need to make a co op horror game where the players are too afraid to split up, and wanna stay together for dear life..... Not shoot up some fleshy screaming things
12 years, 5 months ago
Dude-bro game. Co-op is the least of the problems, can always play just single player. The game is just not scary anymore. I also think they use rifle as a weapon in this demo on purpose to attack new players. Who the hell uses rifle in Dead Space? It's all about upgrading your Plasma Cutter to the max and then cutting limbs.
12 years, 5 months ago
Where's mah Plasma Cutter?
Is Isaac some kind of space marine to use rifles now?
In a true survival horror (single player), you hear a noise and think: "shit, something is coming to kill me!". In co-op you think: "shit, that dumb-ass partner is stuck in a corner again..."
12 years, 5 months ago
its fucking EA being EA....multiplayer in dead space 2...(-_-") dead space 2 wasnt even scary...a far cry from the original dead space.
dead space 3...co-op, even though they say you can play it single player....come on, they made the game for co-op. its not gonna be scary. there is cover based shooting and freaking people shooting back at you. COME ON!
12 years, 5 months ago
Thank you EA first you destroy and Mass Effect and now Dead Space. Now I'm frightened for any other franchise they plan on destroying that I love.
12 years, 5 months ago
I don't play multiplayer so no, I won't buy half a game for the full price. Count me out of your "needed 5 millions".
EA, tell me once again how great your Dead Space 2 multiplayer experiment went... and we definitely need to work on your definition of "survival horror".
And is it just me or EA IPs are all slowly being bumped off my to-buy list?
12 years, 5 months ago
Wow this is pathetic, EA apparently has the need to fuck up EVERY-SINGLE-FRANCHISE they have. Won't buy this, won't buy the next Mass Effect and probably won't buy the next Dragon Age either if they continue their fucked-up trends with the third iteration of that franchise. Pretty disappointing really, those games all used to be some of my favourites, once...
12 years, 5 months ago
I remember when Dead Space first came out and it was like a breath of fresh air in the gaming world. I appreciated so much of what made it unique, and now I'm also sharing your disappointment in this final piece.
12 years, 5 months ago
How fucking sad. Same could be said about the Resident Evil series, which even saddens me the most. My favorite franchises are leaving their uniqueness in favor of blatant accessibility in the name of "change" by becoming generic run-of-the-mill shooters. Dead Space may not have been the most horrifying of horror experiences, yet it had a wonderful atmosphere full of dread and tense, nerve-racking gameplay.
What's funny is that after RE5 came out, I saw Dead Space as the series that would carry RE4's stellar mixture of survival horror and tense action that was ditched for pointless serious plotting and dull action gameplay in RE5. And look at Dead Space now, having taken evolution nicely in it's sequel and now drowning itself in a sea of mediocrity in it's third installment.
How fucking saddening.
12 years, 5 months ago
Atlas, it happens to the best of franchises. What used to be a Sci-fi Horror with vibes that screamed inspiration from The Thing mixed with ALIENS, turned into a Chest High Wall straight line, with HUMAN heroes who have Regenerating health who swear only to appeal to the youth perception of "Cool". Now it's another Gears of War.
Dead Space 1 was popular because it was a relatively rare setting for a Horror game.
"No one can hear you scream in space." is a fitting phrase for the game. While it was a little predictable, it was more of a jumping scare, than an actually Scary game that made you FEEL scared, as most horror games as of today tend to do.
Dead Space 2 almost got rid of horror altogether. The game was far more Predictable than the first and the locations blended together even more. It failed at pulling heart strings and terror right off the bat with the opening cinematic of person transforming into a Necromorph in a matter of seconds killing all seance of urgency and I never had any sad/scared feelings every time I walked through another identical nursery. (Plus the last Boss was just badly made.)
And now Dead Space 3 seems to be continuing the Trend 2 has made. Calling it a horror game is no longer a fact by genre, but an opinion. The footage speaks for itself and the biggest criminal factor is the boss. A random monster with glowing "Fuck Me" lights. Instead of letting the player figure out how to beat the boss themselves, they had literal glowing weak points, thus concluding no thought is necessary to even defeat a boss, something that is suppose to challenge you by testing your skills as a player.
12 years, 5 months ago
I'll say it a million times! DEAD SPACE WAS NEVER SCARY!
12 years, 5 months ago
Ok yeah. I'm disappointed.