If you’ve been itching for more details on the recently-announced Dead Space remake, EA has dropped more details on the game in a new interview with new developers Motive Studios. The devs appear to be making all of the right steps, going so far as to bring on former Visceral Games staff for guidance, as well as consulting the previous games’ notes and development docs.
In the interview with art director Mike Yazijian, creative director Roman Campos-Oriola and senior producer Philippe Ducharme, the trio discuss how the remake is a “passion project” for Motive. “I’d never had the opportunity to work on a survival horror game, which is one of my favorite genres as a gamer,” explains Campos-Oriola. “So the opportunity to work on Dead Space was like, ‘Yes, you can stop talking, I’m on my way.’”
Yazijian, who also on board for Dead Space 2, said that he was able to find his old notebooks from that project. “I actually found my old notebooks from Dead Space 2! So that really comes in handy, seeing all the notes from the sequel, everything the Visceral team had shared with us as we were making the game with them. 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.”
Speaking of the game, it will be “fully rebuilt in Frostbite, with all new assets, new character models, new environments — even though we’re basing those on the original designs,” explains Campos-Oriola. “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.”
That being said, the game will be its own beast. According to Yazijian, while Motive will be following the story, art direction, “everything” from the original game, Motive is also making some decisions regarding things that “don’t work”, and to make sure that the game “stays relevant to modern audiences”.
Yazijian didn’t elaborate on exactly what those “things” were, but Ducharme echoes Yazijian’s thoughts, saying that the team needs to match its inspiration “to the inspiration of the community”. “What the fans want, what people expect out of the game — we want to be able to match that, to deliver the game they want. And the thought of them confirming that we did it right? That’s a huge inspiration.”
Dead Space is currently in development for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC. No release date as of yet.