EA's new slate of original games might have been a hit with critics and hardcore gamers,
but they didn't exactly set the sales charts on fire.
Mirror's Edge and Dead Space both had "some degree of success," according to Frank Gibeau,
head of the EA Games label, but "they didn't quite meet our expectations".
So Redwood Shores - now named Visceral Games - would need to rework Dead Space its sequel,
with a stronger story, the bizarre addition of a multiplayer mode, and a move away from
horror - to focus on the action.
Perhaps the most obvious place to see this shift happen, is in the game's rollercoaster pacing.
Dead Space 2 has the breathless forward momentum of a Hollywood action movie - and so, if the
first Dead Space was Resident Evil in space, then Dead Space 2 feels more like Uncharted.
In space.
In this sequel, you dart around a space station, bouncing from area to area in a linear trek
through the game's breezy 9 hour campaign. And you leap from combat encounter to set
piece to cutscene to hacking minigame to zero-g section to simple physics puzzle... with little
breathing room in between.
Dead Space 2 moves along like the disc is coated in butter, with a hyperactive obsession
with never letting the player get bored. And it's easy to see how this can work against
the game's horror roots.
Take this section. Isaac is hunting for necromorphs in the shadows of a spooky, gothic church.
Only, he then opens a door and then finds himself stuck in a cutscene where he narrowly avoids
gunship fire, gets jumped by a big monster, crashes through a window, hurtles out into
space, and shoots an explosive barrel to blow the beast into smithereens.
All that, before being catapulted back into a window, and straight into a creepy, atmospheric
corridor with shifting shadows and unsettling noises.
Where Dead Space 1 ramped up tension through quiet moments and atmospheric sound design,
Dead Space 2 simply doesn't have time and just lashes back and forth between low key
dread and high octane thrills in a way that's more startling than scary.
Combat has shifted closer towards action, too, though the changes are a bit more subtle.
Isaac is now slightly faster and more responsive, with a speedy camera, dragging the game further
away from Leon's stop-and-pop rhythm in Resident Evil 4.
And where Dead Space 1's battles were about the nervous tension of not knowing how you
were going to deal with a creeping army of different necromorphs, using only a slither
of stasis and a handful of ripper blades, Dead Space 2's battles are much more often
about blasting away at anything that moves.
That's sometimes down to the level design. Many battles in Dead Space 2 take place in
completely cramped rooms including elevators and on top of a giant drill. Not much room
to manoeuvre there.
It's sometimes down to resources - your mileage may vary but I rarely ran dry on ammo in this
game, outside of the higher difficulty modes. And that's a shame - Dead Space has much better
kinesis this time, with lots of sharp objects that pin enemies to the wall, and hefty objects
that can knock necromorphs down on their arse. There's less need to use this when you're
stocked up on bullets.
But the more action-oriented combat is most often down to enemy design.
So while Dead Space 2 does feature almost every monster from the first game, the speciality
monsters like the pregnant and divider are way less common and you spend much more time
fighting packs of generic zombies like the slasher and leaper.
The only missing enemy from the first game is the twitcher - a late-game zombified soldier
who had fused with the stasis power-up in their suit, causing them to sprint at Isaac
much faster. Not necessary, when most enemies in Dead Space 2 are faster by default, and
make an absolute bee line for Isaac at every opportunity.
Enemies are also more plentiful, but each one is easier to kill.
This is clearly seen in one of the new enemies in Dead Space 2: the pack, which is a huge
group of child-like monsters who run full pelt at Isaac - but each go down in a single
shot, even on the super hard Zealot mode. Far from picking off a few limbs and then
running to a better vantage point to consider your strategy - you're just going to blast
away at these toddlers until everything on screen is dead.
There's certainly something scary about being set upon by dozens of fast-moving zombies,
while you're stood in the corner of a tiny room. It worked for Left 4 Dead, after all.
But this wide-eyed terror is a very different type of scare to the original Dead Space,
and one that is, conveniently, much more conducive to a crazy firefight. More like Serious Sam
than anything else.
Not every fight is like this, of course. Another new enemy, called the stalker, is like a raptor
from Jurassic Park. These scaly weirdos fight in groups and hide behind boxes. They'll poke
their noses out and, if they get a bead on you, barrel into Isaac and knock him down.
It makes for these brilliant moments of quiet, nervous tension that shift into spikes of
loud chaos.
Hopefully you're carrying the trip-mine-laying detonator gun - one of the new weapons for
Dead Space 2. Other new tools include a super fun javelin gun, where you can make your last-fired
harpoon electrified. And a seeker rifle, which is basically a sniper rifle and completely
impractical for this game's in-your-face combat.
One issue that cropped up in Dead Space 1, was that you were rarely encouraged to switch
guns after you had purchased four weapons. Money was better spent on ammo and health,
expensive upgrades got locked into weapons, and you only ever found ammo for the guns
you were currently holding. That's no good: a designer should encourage players to use
all the tools at their disposal.
Dead Space 2 goes some way to fix this: power nodes are now given out like sweets, and you
can respec guns to get your nodes back. Plus, you'll find ammo for guns you don't have.
All this meant I naturally wanted to use different weapons throughout the adventure. Good stuff.
In fact, this sequel refines the first game in a number of ways. There are more interesting
puzzles this time around: like one where you have to find a corpse to open a door with
a retina scanner.
And there's a much greater variety of locations, including a memorable romp through a haunted
elementary school, an intriguing computer area that's run by a suspicious artificial
intelligence, and parts that take place way out in space.
Speaking of which, you can now fly about freely in Zero-G sections, rather than jumping from
wall to wall.
One less popular change from Dead Space 1 to 2, is that silent protagonist Isaac is
no longer silent.
In the first Dead Space, the developers really wanted to immerse you in the game, and so
did away with traditional gaming elements like a heads up display, and kept Isaac mute
so you could more easily put yourself in his big, stompy shoes.
Dead Space 2 keeps the diegetic HUD, but Isaac now kills the mood by dispensing snarky
quips like a second rate Nathan Drake.
ELLIE: They're swarming in through a hole in the medical deck. At least you won't have to go through there.
PA: Unexpected obstruction ahead. Shutting down. Welcome to the medical deck.
ISAAC: Crap.
Isaac's voice is also there to give Dead Space 2 a more fully fledged narrative - something
that the first Dead Space certainly struggled with.
Though, where that game was subtle with its storytelling - teasing out tiny details about
the necromorphs, the marker, and the unitology religion - Dead Space 2 is one of those games
that's been sniffing its own farts and thinks its lore is so interesting that you'll want
to endlessly hear it, read it, and even go to a friggin' museum dedicated to it.
VOICE: ...history. Buried at the impact site of a crater near the Yucatán Peninsula he uncovered a divine-
Uhhhhh booooring
But, someone out there must find this stuff fascinating, or else they wouldn't have released
two animated movies, three comics, two novels, and three spin-off games - including the rather
good light-gun game Dead Space: Extraction, for Nintendo Wii.
So while Dead Space 2 makes a lot of welcome changes to the series, and is - on its own
merits, a pretty good game with stellar pacing and intense variety - it does drag the series
away from the essence of Dead Space, towards something more focused on action.
You can see it in Isaac's more nimble movement, the faster and more plentiful enemies, the
removal of the map, the way stasis now has a dedicated reload button so there's absolutely
no need to visit your inventory during battles, and the fact that this game's spooky regenerating
enemy comes at the very end of the game when you're armed to the teeth and he's about as
threatening as a puppy.
But is that necessarily a bad thing?
It's not uncommon for a media franchise to change over time, after all. I mean, it worked
well for the first two Alien movies. The first Alien is a moody, claustrophobic horror film
about a woman who is being stalked by an extraterrestrial killer.
For the sequel, Aliens, Ripley essentially
gets her own back by leading a crew of marines to wipe out the xenomorph queen. It's still
a horror movie, but the story now demands a greater focus on action.
And you can see a similar thing happen in Dead Space 2. Isaac is much more confident
and he's a more capable warrior, who is less freaked out by the necromorphs.
DAINA: You have to dismember the creatures to stop them.
ISAAC: I know. I've had a lot of practice.
So action makes sense.
But - he's left mentally twisted by the events of the first game, and the loss of his girlfriend.
So she haunts him throughout the adventure, and there's this great bit where he has
to go back to the Ishimura ship from Dead Space 1 and you get hit by the same jump scares
as the first game - only for Isaac to realise he was actually having a PTSD-style flashback.
And I can kind of see that... but I think I would be giving the game a bit too much
credit with that reading. Dead Space 2 can't sit still long enough to really sell an interesting, singular vision
like that. For every psychological freak-out, there's another bit of body horror, a jump
scare, or an exploding baby - all presented with the subtlety of, well, a poke in the
eye with a sharp stick.
Mostly, the sequel just goes for gore and guts. Isaac's death animations are ridiculously
over the top, and in this game, Necromorphs don't drop items when they die - but after
you give them one last hit, encouraging you to stomp downed enemies, and turn them into
detached limbs and chunky tomato puree.
You can see this summed up in the game's marketing campaign, "Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2".
DEFINITELY NOT AN ACTRESS: It's gross! I hated it!
Sequels are hard to make though - fans want something that is new and different, but without
sacrificing what made the first game special. Expectations must be met, and exceeded, at
the same time.
I think Dead Space 2 just about threads that needle - but how much can a franchise evolve
and expand before it becomes unrecognisable to fans of the original?
Next time, Dead Space 3.