87 - Dead Space

[matt]

In this dev diary, I discuss the Dead Space franchise and what they did to create a horrifying atmosphere.

[JPrice]

Ahhhhh Dead Space, I was curious if you'd get around to this series hahaa Funny enough I was just replaying the first Dead Space on PC just now before I saw this diary, what a coincidence!

I really love the series personally. Got the first game back on PS3 when it came out as it looked rather interesting, didn't expect such a quality title that's for sure! The graphics were great and it had a wonderfully realised atmosphere where the entire ship just felt cold and desolate, also added on top of that was the brilliant audio design with all the subtle musical cues and sound effects (Personal favourite being when you're out in space and you just hear nothing but inside of your suit and the muffled vibrations coming through it, brilliant ). Everything just came together to make the ship just ooze with character. The gameplay is pretty fun as well, I mean sure it's a bit bang bang shoot 'em up but it works and doesn't really detract from anything outlined previously. Also the idea of making the UI connected to the character was a great idea and really helps immerse you in the world. The only gripe I had was that the backtracking was a bit tiresome sometimes and there's one turret section that I dislike, aside from that everything else was great. The story was pretty neat, well acted and everything plus all the added text logs and audio logs gave a nice little insight into ship life before everything went south.
So yeah pretty great game overall defintely!

Dead Space 2 I got on PC and I equally enjoyed it I'd say but not for the same reasons. Whilst it wasn't really all that scary compared to the first everything just felt tighter, the character movement was smoother and the gameplay was improved upon to make it more of a fun action game with horror elements than it was before. Still a fun time though and I'd put it on the same level as the first, if for different aspects anyway

Dead Space 3 (Also got on PC) however whilst being pretty fun was really lacking. I actually liked the implementation of the creation of your own weapons system (Even if it was probably put it just for the micro-transactions), plus I played through co-op with a friend and it was a pretty enjoyable experience
But yeah there's no denying that the series is no longer even trying to be scary or horror based anymore. I mean you get a ridiculous amount of medkits and ammo for one, plus you encounter Necromorphs so often that they just turn into a normal enemy rather than a legitimate threat like in the first game. Plus the story itself is pretty bland and forgettable and does nothing really to expand on the universe of Dead Space in any interesting manner. Still had fun playing it though, just a shame they had to move away from what made the series stand out a little you know!

But regardless I still love the series and will probably replay through them sometime soon, like I said I'm replaying the first one now so hahaha

[matt]

Yeah, I was really impressed with some of the things they did like the sound in space and the in game hud. I'm not quite sure what was the first and what was the second, I think the second did play better and had some really great moments like the toy store or whatever it was and of course the eye scene. Awesome!

Dead Space 3 seemed like it was trying to be an action game, and it was quite meh at least to me (but I played single player). I wasn't nuts about the crafting because it seemed like it was designed to make you use microtransactions, and I couldn't figure out which of the thousand gun combinations I'd actually like. I was pretty disappointed with pretty much everything I built except one thing, which I used the entire game.

[JPrice]

Yeah the section you're probably thinking of is from Dead Space 2 when you're in a Day Care centre, it's pretty creepy! Especially with all the baby/child Necromorphs hahaa. Also yeah that eye scene is pretty cringe-worthy hahaha

Yeah it's a shame about the weapon system I felt as well that it was only made for the micro-transactions as well, I'd prefer the old 4 pre-built weapon set-up myself!

Also you were wondering about the PC versions of Dead Space, well basically they go in order like this:
Dead Space's PC port = Pretty bad but you can get work arounds and fixes to make it better if you spend a few minutes
Dead Space 2's PC port = Way better than the first, actually looks pretty great in spots
Dead Space 3's PC port = Same as number 2 really

If you're curious what they look like on PC I have some screenshots I took of the game on Max settings at 1920x1080
Dead Space (With the tweaks and such I did) - http://i.imgur.com/8kh6XFu.jpg
Dead Space 2 - http://i.imgur.com/c8Vr2lX.jpg (Plus that eye scene ) http://i.imgur.com/LgO7rpB.jpg
Dead Space 3 - http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/902 ... 0DDFB4169/

I think all three look pretty good on PC myself but I suppose that's up to you to decide haha

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Oh by the way here's a transcript of this video to:

Hello, so today I’d like to talk about ‘Dead Space’. ‘Dead Space’ and I have an interesting relationship, I think EA launched a ‘Dead Space’ cartoon/anime movie tie in when the game launched so I thought, as I didn’t have Gamefly, “Oh I’ll just Netflix this and I’ll judge the video game based on the quality of this” which in hindsight seems like a terrible idea but I was really busy and I was looking for an excuse not to play a game. Which sounds weird but I think that was during one of my numerous periods of crunch so I had a huge game backlog and so if I can say “Oh this is something that I don’t want to play” it’s like more time I can spend on other things or play other games, as there are so many games that I’ve never played or didn’t finish playing.

Anyway I didn’t really like the animated movie. I’m sure it was rather low budget and I doubt it would inspire anyone to play the game, I don’t know why they did it although now I’m almost tempted to re-watch it now that I quite enjoy ‘Dead Space’ to see if I have a finer appreciation for the animated tie in. The thing about ‘Dead Space’ is Joe, our artist, was a big fan and those are some of his favourite “horror” games and I say “horror” in quotations because I feel they’re too action heavy, at least for my tastes. I think a lot of people do like the action horror fusion but to me if I’m like superman with super powers and cutting limbs off enemies left and right it’s not as scary, I don’t feel as threatened. I think they had a really great idea with Issac Clarke being an engineer and so it’s like “Hey I’m an engineer, I have a degree from the college of engineering at Michigan”. I mean I suck, I suck at everything right so if you put me in a room with aliens then I’m just going to get destroyed it’s going be a joke. Then unfortunately the engineer well I guess he seems more like a handyman and all his tools are super laser weapons that can destroy enemies, which works for the action set-pieces but again it’s not as vulnerable as I’d like.

I played through all three ‘Dead Space’ games but I don’t want to talk about ‘Dead Space 3’ it’s dead to me! But I sort of played through the first two rather begrudgingly whilst grumbling to myself “Oh this action-y, grrrr I’m an old curmudgeon this isn’t true horror” but I couldn’t stop playing them. I played through them both very quickly over a week or two which is pretty impressive for me, really should have been a sign that I was digging them but even still afterwards I was like “Grrrr Dead Space, action-y, not my thing”. But it kind of is my thing because I find myself thinking about the games and what they did well. I think they did a really good job with the audio, they had some scary and tense environments and they did a lot of smart things with their setting. I think that they really sort of explored the scariness of space which I think is terrifying and I haven’t seen the movie ‘Gravity’ yet but I’m really excited to and I think that’s sort of falling in those lines of “Space can be scary” with all of its vast nothingness and the things they did with the audio whilst you were in space in that game.

Even the story was smart. The whole, I don’t know if they deliberately said if it was based on Scientology I thought they said that somewhere, but it did have that sort of Scientology cult feel with the Unitoligists even though their end game was bizarre. I don’t know what sort of religious beliefs wants to merge into a giant pillar of humans or something, I forget which game that was anyway but still that added an extra layer of depth made the world more interesting and feel more real. I mean people are always going to have religious beliefs even two million years in the future, so making that a part of your Sci-Fi world is a smart idea and it certainly plays well into the plots which you know aren’t super compelling by themselves but I think they definitely held the game together quite well and were interesting. Oh yeah and the eye scene in Dead Space 2…That’s all I’m going to say, was pretty awesome.

So anyway if you can stomach the action aspects of horror game and I think the core gameplay is done well, but again its like “Ahhh you got action game in my horror pudding”. That said the ‘Dead Space’ games are worth a try. It’s kinda funny I was thinking like “Man I wish they ported those games to the Xbox One and PS4 with higher res textures and everything” but I guess I could play the PC versions as I played the Xbox versions, I’ve heard the PC ports weren’t all that special though like they didn’t make it much better. Still the idea of playing a better graphics ‘Dead Space’ was really sort of appealing to me but I don’t know if that will happen, I can still dream though. I do think we’ll see a lot of ports from last gen to this gen, especially from Sony who was the most pro-active about it but I think that’s a wise business decision as there’s no backwards compatibility and it’s a lot cheaper than creating a new game with the ability to generate interest in a franchise. Still I think EA has more or less given up on ‘Dead Space’ anyway.

[gagaplex]

Dead Space is curious. They did a ton of things right, but they totally overplayed the jumpscares. Way too little atmosphere building, even though the basis for it was there (dreary corridors, empty places, audio logs, little music but a focus on ambient sounds instead).
It was kind of weird that these power-tools he had were more effective weapons than, well, the actual weapons (especially the pulse rifle), but then the aliens are basically space-zombies. Normal rules need not apply, which is the reason for the dismemberment mechanics rather than going for the head and the like.
The audio is good, sure, but it also goes into the jumpscares. Those violin-stings and so on were awfully overdone, even though a rest of the sounds and ambience were great. They really should've tooled it back.
I actually saw that tie-in movie, too, and - yes - it's utter crap, but it's still enjoyable to a degree. A bit of a guilty pleasure, I guess.
Regarding the cult: Yeah, Scientology was an obvious connection, at least in name, but I was more reminded of Heaven's Gate. I mean, later in the game you encounter people who actually committed suicide/willingly murdered each other. Death, like in Heaven's Gate, was the path to their particular idea of enlightenment... or in Unitology's case, absolute - spiritual and bodily - unity.
I need to play the later games at some point. I heard they are even more actiony, which might suck. But I did like the first one overall, despite my criticisms.

[matt]

Jprice - No AA on your screenshots? Maybe the next time they go on sale, I'll pick them up on PC and bump the settings way up. Thanks again for doing the transcript! I'll post that on the blog.

Gagaplex - I agree that they could have done more atmosphere building, but it seems like action was their primary purpose, so they didn't want to do too much pure atmosphere building. Heaven's Gate or some other suicide cult are a good comparison. I'd say skip 3. They totally left the horror genre for that game as far as I'm concerned.

[JPrice]

Ahhhh yes AA and Dead Space are a bit weird hahaha
Basically it's like something to do with the deffered rendering the game uses, which makes the anti aliasing not work properly. Hence why the first 2 games look rather jaggy.

Dead Space 1 I tried to fix it by forcing AA through RadeonPro (A third party graphics control program) which does work out pretty decently. Didn't try it on number 2 hence why that one looks worse in terms of jaggys haha

Although I heard in number 3 they implemented a proper AA system which is why that one has the smoothest AA hahaha

[Grabthehoopka]

I have a love-hate relationship with the Dead Space series. I'm a fan of the series, and they do a lot right, but it could be so, so much better.

Mechanically, they rely way too much on jump scares, which bugs me. Thematically, the story is a horribly written, sloppy mess that is way more complicated than it needs to be, which bugs me a lot more. Each game presents you with a scenario that ideally could be summed up in one sentence. In a perfect world, the story of each Dead Space game would be:

Dead Space 1: A mining space ship unearthed a space virus that turned everyone into space zombies.
Dead Space 2: Someone brought a thing onto a space station that turned everyone into space zombies.
Dead Space 3: You go to a planet where there are space zombies.

That is each game's story, at the extreme core of things, but then they pile on all this unnecessary extra crap. Despite them trying to make the story simpler and simpler with each iteration, nothing is ever as simple as it should be! In Dead Space 1, I got the impression that they had a brain storming session at the beginning of production and came up with a list of creepy stuff to potentially have in the game (industrial environments, mad science, space zombies, cult rituals and religious iconography, hallucinations), and then they just threw in the entire list and sort of made it all up as they went along, and the result is an incoherent mess. It seems like Dead Space 1 was kind of a runaway success, so it's possible that nobody expected there to be any sequels, let alone a franchise, while they were writing it, and so, each game after the first is a room full of writers scrambling around, desperately trying to explain, simplify, and retcon the games preceding it into something that makes sense.

In my opinion, horror should be simple. Silent Hill is a good example. The parts that stick with you the most aren't the wacky cult shenanigans about gods and souls and souls turning into different souls that turn into gods and are reborn as real people that give birth to gods and also an illegal drug ring, everyone remembers the creepy stuff that otherwise goes unexplained. That's why Silent Hill 2 is widely regarded as the best one; it had a simple, engaging plot, and they didn't bend over backwards to come up with a long and winding backstory to explain and justify every scary thing that happened. We don't care WHY the otherworld exists, or why it is the way it is, we just want to get the hell out of it!

So while I should probably be angrier about the moment-to-moment gameplay needing improvement, I'm actually the angriest about the incompetency of the writers and the sheer scale of how horribly they failed at making an engaging, appropriate story.

[matt]

I think my favorite part of the story was the relationship between Isaac and his girlfriend. While it wasn't strictly necessary, I think it added a lot to the game.

I think Silent Hill 2 had a lot of story, but it wasn't forced on you through frequent cutscenes or in game book pages. The story is mostly furthered through the gameplay and the setting. I think that is the most elegant way to do narrative in games.

Neverending Nightmares is going to have a lot of story, but it's going to be very vague, and a lot of it is going to be subtext. We still have a while to go before we have a lot of the story elements in the game, but I'm really excited about it.

[Grabthehoopka]

That's good to hear I think the stories that foster discussion are the best kind of stories in games.