Has it really been ten years since Dead Space 3 completed the trilogy’s lackluster, but not entirely without dignity? Despite everything, I really enjoyed playing the third part, which was problematically stretched and ugly, but ultimately monetized without consequences. But it wasn’t really surprising that it ended after that, with a series whose debut once caused a great deal of excitement as a new horror hope.
This early highlight in an otherwise rather bleak time at the end of the 00s (00 was not the abbreviation for “WC” for a long time) probably also remembered by EA, which entrusted its Motive Studio with the implementation of a remake of the first Dead Space. A week before release, I chatted with Isaac actor Gunner Wright and EA Motives Realization Director Joel MacMillan – and found out a few things that are making me want to upgrade.
Responsible for the big picture: Realization Director Joel MacMillan.
First, I tried to get a little inside Gunner Wright’s head. The charismatic man in his late forties spoke to Isaac in the second and third parts. In part one, however, the ship’s engineer was still a silent protagonist. When I ask Wright if he might have sat before the first part in the past to put a few possible lines of dialogue in Isaac’s mouth, the former motorcycle racer laughs. “No, I actually didn’t do that. But thanks to YouTube, I was able to relive various aspects of all three games. I also still have my scripts from parts two and three and have definitely returned to my world of preparation for both games. Just to get back into my version of Isaac. That really grounded me in the run up to production.”
Since it’s rare that you have to play a younger version of your character, the next thing I wanted to know was how to reverse the evolution of a character whose world of trauma and experiences you’ve nested in for a few years. Is it enough to imagine an inexperienced, less hardened Isaac as a starting point? “Great question,” replies Wright. “Because I wasn’t Isaac in the original, I naturally took creative liberties. But the team was so incredibly kind and helped me get started at the beginning. But the DNA was still there and it wasn’t too hard to go back from Dead Space three and two to the first part.”
It already looks chic!
Still, the question of course remains where to start when developing a script for a character who has never spoken in this environment before. Wright was able to fully rely on the Motive team in this regard. “We met early on on Zoom to chat about her [Motives] Maintaining a version and perspective of Dead Space 1, which helped a lot. But from my side, this is how I saw it: Aside from his girlfriend being on that ship, my character loves the Ishimura. The ship means something to him because he knows what it stands for.” Wright likens that to someone developing a particular passion for a particular sports car. Although it is also a routine job for Isaac, just work. But he also loves the Ishimura. Secretly, Isaac is looking forward to being part of the ship.
Joel MacMillan, Motive’s realization director, agrees with Wright, “One reason we were so excited about Gunner’s return to the role was the grounded believability he instilled in the character. It was important to be able to relate to Isaac quickly because the player experiences this adventure through him.” The feeling of being in Isaac’s shoes is of the utmost importance. “Gunner opens a window for that in a great way. [Deine Performance,] Gunner feels very relatable and brought credibility to this character.”
Modern visual effects should provide an even denser atmosphere in Dead Space Remake.
Nevertheless, it was important for the team to follow a few rules. Creative director Roman Campos-Oriola, head writer Joe Berry and MacMillan agreed with Wright that this version of Isaac would not fall into the action hero trap of commenting on everything in the game, MacMillan explains: “This is for a lot of games, who do it, often great because it can bring lightness and humor into play. But that’s not what we wanted. We wanted the antithesis of that.” The player can better empathize with Isaac’s loneliness if there is no excessive camaraderie with the game character. “If the character talks too much, it instills a level of confidence and security in the player that we didn’t want.” So the rule of thumb was that Isaac would not speak until someone else spoke to him.
“And Gunner can correct me if that’s not true, but I think we stick to that 90 to 95 percent of the game,” MacMillan claims. “Isaac only reacts verbally when spoken to and that takes away the player’s security. He should feel alone with Isaac.” Of course, given that it’s been over ten years since the last voice over recordings, it certainly stands to reason that Wright’s aged vocal cords might have been software-rejuvenated a bit (and I may ask that because I’m in my mid-40s too)? “Good question,” Wright smiles. “I’m not sure about the effects. Ten years have passed since all the death scenes and screams of death, which is probably why a little warm tea was the order of the day this time [lacht].
Isaac only speaks when spoken to. At least in most cases.
“I personally love the timbre your voice brings Gunner,” MacMillan chimes in. “I don’t think there was any post processing outside of our alive system.” What is that? Well, as MacMillan explains, from three different performances of Gunner’s same line of dialogue, this system chooses the one that best suits Isaac’s condition. “If Isaac is hurt or exhausted in your game, that’s what he’ll sound like,” MacMillan says. “And Gunner did a particularly great job on the languid versions of his lines of dialogue. I liked that very much.”
Wright seems to have enjoyed it in particular: “It was great as an actor. Think about it: You’re thrown into a situation, you have the script, and now you’re saying your lines. But then you say the line once neutrally, then again exhaustedly, and then again like you’re on the brink of death. To process that as an actor is great. And what was really cool, because I have an athlete background: At the beginning of the preparation I did breathing exercises. Breathing as if you were at rest, then at an increased heart rate, and then in a way that kind of goes in the opposite direction… so it’s not just about the dialogue itself, it’s also a lot about how the player feels. And I think it’s going to be fantastic.”
The transformation of this corpse into a necromorph up close is a chilling feat – and one that didn’t actually happen in the original.
Now that part one is a good 15 years old, it’s interesting to see if there were any other fundamental design changes that needed to be made – and how far one can go without dishonoring the legacy. MacMillan’s answer is as plausible as it is respectful of the template. “Whatever aspect of the game we were looking at, the rule of thumb was, ‘Do we have to make this change?’ When we were first entrusted with this franchise, we had all these dreams of what we were going to do with it. But once we started and looked under the hood of this game, we realized how smart this game was constructed.” This realization was not without consequences: “It gave us a little humility, we realized that certain things were the way they were for very specific reasons,” laughs MacMillan. “Maybe we didn’t need to change this or that – but we’ve always wondered how we could improve things a bit, upgrade them for modern audiences.” And despite the immense respect gained for the template, that’s obviously still a lot. It starts with setting up the scene, as MacMillan vividly explains:
“One change is the now contiguous ship. Now you can seamlessly travel through the Ishimura from stern to bow without seeing a loading screen between chapters. In order to achieve this, we had to connect various areas of the ship. Those transitions just didn’t exist in the original.” At that time, short train journeys connected the individual chapters and decks of the gigantic spaceship. A smart way of getting the upcoming environments into the limited memory of the old consoles. But today it would seem a bit from yesterday. Rebuilding Ishimura as an interconnected, seamless place makes the setting more vivid and authentic. “We, on the other hand, are building corridors and walkways that act as interconnections between areas to really have a coherent ship. There are also some side rooms for optional content and sidequests,” says MacMillan.
Now it shouldn’t be so predictable which lamp will light up to remind you to change your underwear!
So it’s sort of the Resident Evil 2 school of a remake, going a little deeper to keep a game relevant and playable today. Not only is this difficult without content enrichment, you also deprive yourself of the opportunity not only to present fans of the original just warmed up from the day before yesterday, but also to really surprise them. “Part of our archaeological research into the original was to look at the Jump Scares,” says MacMillan. “You know that: you approach a dead slasher who’s on the ground, who jumps up and gives you a scare.” Yes, I know it well, and was one of the reasons why I personally often yawned over the first Dead Space. Mac Millan does not see it completely differently: “It works once, maybe twice, but the third time you expect it.”
While most of these scarers would have had great timing, composition and positioning, there was room for improvement. “We have developed a system that we call the ‘Intensity Director’. It dynamically spawns new jump scares, new content, and encounters based on how the player plays,” explains MacMillan. “We did that for a number of reasons: The thought was that players looking to play the title again would expect the same jump scares. That way we don’t let them rest. It defies their expectations. And of course we have him [diese Intensitäts-Regie] also implemented because Ishimura is now a cohesive, connected place that can be traveled in any direction.” Returning to rooms you’ve already visited is designed to keep subjects that exciting, even if you’ve previously cleared them of enemies. “So that’s more content for the players.”
… you can still exercise a bit of caution.
That aside, the art team did a great job: “They stuck to the core principles of the original direction and added more detail to the environment,” MacMillan says. “They dug deep to add the nuances and extra tactile details that make this world feel real and inhabited. On the lighting, effects and sound side, we added a lot more atmosphere to the game. Sound plays such a big part in creating the atmosphere on the Ishimura. Using modern fog, haze and lighting technologies, we were able to enrich the atmosphere compared to the original.”
I have to admit: I only really became friends with Dead Space in the second part. The first one was a tad too monotonous for me, especially in terms of the kind of horror it cared about. After only twenty minutes of speaking with MacMillan and Wright, I am now very much looking forward to giving him a second chance.
Dead Space Remake is coming to PS5, Xbox Series and PC on January 27th.
