It’s rare that a pistol gets to be the star of the show
in a video game, but that’s exactly what happened in Dead Space.
The 2008 survival horror classic made the Plasma Cutter,
a handgun-like tool that shoots vertical or horizontal projectiles,
the most essential tool for dismembering your necromorph enemies.
When it came to remaking Dead Space,
developer EA Motive knew that it had to do right by this iconic weapon.
And so it’s exactly as you remember.
Who wants to change the Plasma Cutter?
It's perfect as it is.
Anybody that played any Dead Space before,
remembers that weapon, remembers the distinct click, click when it turns.
Remembers the sounds of it, the impact of it on any creatures,
and just how it feels playing with that weapon.
So for us it was really important to keep that memory,
But while the form and function of the Plasma Cutter is just how you remember it,
the weapon model itself - and all its rotating components - had to be
completely rebuilt from scratch in EA’s modern Frostbite engine.
With the visual fidelity, both in terms of graphics but also in
some of animations that we have today, we had to go much more in detail,
in terms of concept art, on how that thing actually works.
What is each piece?
What are those little elements really doing?
Whether or not we're using that afterward in game,
we had to really define
how that thing would move and behave if it was a real tool.
It’s not just the gun model that’s brand new, though.
EA Motive has overhauled
weapon upgrades, and so the Plasma Cutter has a few new tricks up its barrel.
Every weapon has an upgrade part.
So every weapon you can find a new section for the weapon
that you can plug in it and physically attach to the gun.
So we have added all those functionalities
that look logical to the gun and that type of function.
One thing we've
been bringing from Dead Space 2 and expanding a little bit on is
the concept of special upgrades. So one of those upgrades coming straight from DS2.
It's the fact that when you shoot with the Plasma Cutter,
if you have that upgrade, the limb of the enemy that you shoot at,
he is going to catch fire,
and so it’s going to burn the flesh and do a bit more damage.
Despite its cool new upgrades, you can be safe in the knowledge
that the Plasma Cutter is exactly the weapon you love and remember.
That can’t be said for the rest of Dead Space’s armoury, though,
which has been significantly redesigned.
We wanted to rebalance a bit the weapons to make sure
that each weapon felt powerful in their own way.
For most of the weapons, we kept exactly the primary fire because they’re iconic
and they serve different functions in terms of the way you fight enemies.
But we found out that there is something we could push
even more, is to give more tools for the player
to do some crowd control with enemies, when you have multiple enemies.
For example what we did with the Pulse Rifle is that we took an element
which in Dead Space 2 it was a grenade launcher,
We adjusted slightly because now it's a proximity mine.
The Force Gun we completely changed the alt fire,
Now the Force Gun creates a gravity well that attracts everything to it.
What is super interesting is that you can combine it with another weapon.
So with the primary fire of the Force Gun itself, with the trap of the Line Gun.
So you can have fun
putting a trap, attracting the enemy to this place and putting them together,
With the proxmity mine of the Pulse Rifle.
So basically the idea was to create new tools
to be able to play with enemies and create new strategy.
This rethinking of Dead Space’s guns means that all of your favourites
are still here but have been changed to be more useful and creative.
That seems to be the general idea behind all of the remake’s changes,
which we’ll be looking at in more detail this month as part of IGN First.
For more, check out the opening of the game in 4K,
as well as a comparison between the remake and the original game.
And for even more exclusive Dead Space videos, stick with IGN.