[GameSpot] - Dead Space Remake Will Cut Some Elements That "Don't Work"

[343iBot]

Following the announcement of the Dead Space remake during EA Play Live, EA has shared more details on the leadership team working on the game and more about what to expect. The developers also spoke about staying true to the vision of the original game, but also cutting some elements that needed to go.

The game's senior producer is Philippe Ducharme, who spent nearly seven years with EA from 2003-2010 before moving to Ubisoft where he was a producer on Watch Dogs Legion. He re-joined EA in August 2020. Roman Campos-Oriola is Dead Space's creative director. He worked at Ubisoft from 2005-2020, and was the game director on For Honor. The art director on the new Dead Space remake is Mike Yazijian, who held that same title on Dead Space 2. He left EA in 2011 to join Warner Bros. where he worked on Batman: Arkham Origins before coming back to EA in 2018 where he was the art director on Star Wars: Squadrons.

(Left to right) Mike Yazijian, Art Director; Roman Campos-Oriola, Creative Director; Philippe Ducharme, Senior Producer

Yazijian said he was able to find his old notebooks from Dead Space 2, and that "comes in handy, seeing all the notes," he said in an interview on EA's website.

"We've got concept art, visual guidelines, source materials, notes on the conversations we had with them, the knowledge that they gained--it's all here. It's all going into this game," he said.

Also in the interview, EA made it very clear that the new Dead Space is not a reboot or a remaster. It is a remake where "everything" has been re-built from the ground up, running on a new engine, Frostbite. EA says the new remake will be "respectful" of the original.

"It's being fully rebuilt in Frostbite," Campos-Oriola said. "With all new assets, new character models, new environments--even though we're basing those on the original designs. There are new parts, new props, new collision models, and so on. We're rebuilding everything from scratch, but we're keeping the same story and the same structure."

Ducharme added that the new Dead Space--which won't be available on PS4 and Xbox One--will have better volumetric effects. "So instead of just having sprites, you're really able to feel the depth of a room, the thickness of the air," he said. "We're playing with shadows, with dynamic lighting, so not only does it create the mood and atmosphere, but it also has an effect on gameplay, because the player has the ability to control the lighting in certain areas of the ship."

In regards to audio, Ducharme said the team is "working on enhancing the experience and providing believable audio that focus[es] on objects' positioning and 3D sounds propagation."

Campos-Oriola went on to mention that the new SSDs in the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles allow the game to "load and unload really fast." There won't be any loading screens, it seems.

"Our intention is to offer a fully unbroken experience, it will be an uninterrupted sequence shot, from the start screen to the end credit, without interruption," the developer said.

Ducharme added: "The objective we gave to the whole team was to have players pick up the controller and completely lose track of time. Like, they play through the entire experience without putting the controller down. That's how immersive we want our game to be, that people just dive in and don't come out until the credits roll."

In regards to how the Dead Space remake will differ from the original, Yazijian said the studio will "do away with some things that don't work," though no specifics were mentioned. But overall, the goal is to follow the story, art direction, and "everything" else "out of respect for the original game."

To help make sure the new Dead Space doesn't stray from what fans want, Campos-Oriola said EA invited some members of the community to provide feedback on the game after just two months of development. "We want to treat the franchise with great care and respect, so we want to make sure the things we're doing are hitting home with our community," Campos-Oriola said.

The new Dead Space remake is likely still a long time off from release. In the meantime, you can play Dead Space 1-3, along with the spin-off Ignition, right now on Xbox Game Pass and EA Play. The new Dead Space game won't have any microtransactions.

If you missed EA Play 2021 Live, then go ahead and check out our recap of the show. Along with the reveal of the Dead Space remake, we also saw the announcement of Battlefield 2042's newBattlefield Portal mode, which brings different armies from across time together in large-scale battles, along with a showcase ofLost in Random's take on turn-based RPG combat.

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