“We are all gathered here, for the funeral of the Dead Space series. Press F to pay res…. What’s that? BY GOD! IT’S EA WITH A DEAD SPACE REMAKE STEEL CHAIR!”
That was how I and most likely everyone else felt about the announcement of the remake of Dead Space, a beloved first entry to the space horror shooter franchise with innovative strategic dismemberment game mechanic. Dead Space series ended on a flatline with Dead Space 3 and its Awakened DLC, no thanks to waning interest reflected through its less-than-stellar sales which may have prompted EA to de facto axed the franchise and eventually Visceral Games because they were not making a giant mountain of money after Triple-A-ing the bejeezus out of it.
With Motive Studio at the helm for the remake, they set out to re-imagine Dead Space in all its glory and more in a modern package through the power of Frostbite Engine. But I was very skeptical of how EA and Motive will handle this “remake” in good faith or just a visual upgrade only worthy of a “remaster” tag instead.
My skepticism pretty much vanished with how transparent Motive was with the development progress and the creative direction they planned to take. Now that the remake is fully fleshed out and released, how does my return to the Ishimura (Stone Village in Japanese, just a fun trivia) fare to my admittedly excessive Dead Space fanboy expectation?
PRESENTATION
No cap, when they said “Remake”, they meant it. This is not merely a low-effort remaster exercise with upgraded texture and models while keeping the overall game same and slapping the “remake” moniker on top. It is on the caliber of the recent Resident Evil remakes and dare I say Bluepoint’s Demon Souls. Everything feels fresh and new, from textures, models, lighting and even sound. Gone are the 2008 level of graphics, we 2023 now baby.
The textures and models are highly detailed, and done well enough that even on lower graphical settings are still pretty to look at with great details. New visual feature for the game is the “Peeling System” damage of the Necromorphs. Dealing damage to limbs will progressively reveal layers of flesh, tendon and bones to indicate damage taken and how many more shots will take to dismember it. It is simultaneously intuitive and adds the wow factor in gore details.
The lighting system is the most noticeable upgrade of the remake, completely upping the ante on atmospheric feel. With fully dynamic lighting and highly contrasting shadows, alongside the ray-traced lighting option for those with hardware capable of doing so makes the dark and grim USG Ishimura on the verge of total failure looks even more unsettling.
My only gripe with the lighting is that it gets too dark sometimes. And with only your weapon flashlight in total darkness, contrasting too brightly against the pitch-black surroundings makes aiming for enemies especially the small ones very challenging.
Personally, I am still floored by the sound design of the remake just like the original was. It really sells the notion of USG Ishimura as a falling-apart mega spaceship with monsters running within its walls and ducts. Creaks, scuttles and whispers always keep me on edge with how stressful it feels. Not that the Necromorphs are scary, but the anticipation that these abominations can burst out at any time while navigating through the tight corridors of the Ishimura keeps the adrenaline rush going all throughout the early stages of the game. Cue screeching violin music for a cheap but effective stress inducer that keeps my butt clenching in fights.
GAMEPLAY
Our formerly mute protagonist Isaac Clarke is now fully voiced and actually interacts with other characters instead of being Hammond and Daniels’ silent errand boy. Isaac’s voice actor Gunner Wright for Dead Space 2 and 3 reprised his role for a reimagined storyline dialogues in the remake.
Story-wise, it is still the same overall plot. Planetcracker-class megaship USG Ishimura on a mining exploration at Aegis VII colony got overrun by alien-like creatures called Necromorphs. Repair vessel USG Kellion carrying Isaac Clarke and the crew inadvertently crashes onto the ship and they get unwittingly stuck trying to unravel the horrifying crisis, survive and escape the nightmare.
What changes is how the story is recontextualized and retold. Minor characters mostly known through their voice or text logs are now given emphasis through holo-logs and revamped cutscenes with Isaac that fleshes them out as a more important character in the USG Ishimura’s downfall. The background “evil org” of Unitology faith is also given more exposition here that reflects the universe’s lore as a whole.
The holo-logs and the revamped cutscenes specifically work very well in improving the storytelling of the remake. How Captain Mathius’ ultimately worthless attempt to isolate the Aegis VII outbreak from coming onboard, of Dr Mercer’s perverted devotion to the Unitology ideals and Nicole’s progressive discovery on the outbreak really gives more weight on these characters and their actions being real and not just flavor plot for plot purposes.
Furthermore, Hammond and Daniels’ story have also been altered a bit to give a more satisfying character arc and the endings reflect that. Hammond especially is given a more heroic conclusion instead of a meaningless one and Daniels is now a more sympathetic and less of a “Karen trying to save her own ass” like in the original game.
Game loop wise, it is still the same Dead Space zombie shooty-shoot we all know and love. Armed with improvised mining tools like the Plasma Cutter, Ripper and Flamethrower, you are tasked to face the horrors of vicious Necromorphs by strategic dismemberment of cutting off their limbs. Aiding your arsenal of weapons are Stasis for slowing down enemies and Kinesis for item pickups or use the surrounding items against enemies like launching other Necromorphs scythes to save on precious ammo.
The iconic and my all-time favorite the Plasma Cutter is still The King here. Motive knows this and they commit to “it ain’t broke so we won’t fix it “ so much so that the “One Gun Challenge” is still viable and encouraged by the team. Other weapons alt-fire are changed for the better in my opinion like the Pulse Rifle now shoots a deactivatable proximity grenade instead of radial fire in original or just a grenade in DS2. Force Gun is my new favorite toy now, it feels more punchy and visually impactful as it tears off Necromorphs skin thanks to the Peeling System. It’s gory, icky, slimy and I love it.
Dead Space’s diegetic UI is still the best in the business. Instead of a permanent HUD on screen, Isaac’s health is displayed as a bar on his RIG spine, ammo counts pop up when aiming and the inventory screen as a holo-screen projection. Definitely a winning formula in player immersion as it feels very natural and in-universe.
Extensive revamp on traversal through the Ishimura, with essentially new layouts that add new routes, rooms and floors for each deck. The tram system is also fully seamless now, with no loading screen plastered on between deck transports. But everyone knows the drill by now, these long enclosed sequences like tram and elevator rides are just disguised loading screens. Still, you can technically play the whole game in one sitting, no death or save reloads and not see any of them.
Puzzles have also been refreshed with fuse mechanics that require rerouting power to another mechanism to progress. One example of this is you may need to choose between powering lights or life support, presenting a tradeoff dilemma to the players whether they prefer being jumped upon in the dark or potentially suffocating.
My favorite quality of life improvement is gear Power Node upgrade rework. Gone are the stupid empty node points in the Bench that waste like 2 precious Nodes for nothing just for a teeny capacity upgrade, now every point is functional. The less wasting of Power Nodes also carry over to locked loot rooms. Instead of requiring a Node sacrifice to open, the rooms and plenty of lockers are now gated behind Security Clearance levels that upgrades as the story moves on.
To be honest, I feel the Security Clearance mechanic is very meh to me to the point of annoyance. Seems like it’s there to forcefully motivate backtracking and I hate backtracking outside of story purposes. With the Bench upgrade fix, I have plenty of Nodes to spare now and I don’t mind sacrificing a few for loot rooms. It is what the game is supposed to be, calculated risk.
A major change to the gameplay mechanics is undoubtedly zero-G movements. Instead of the original point-to-point zero-G jumps, Isaac is now a free bird with floating zero-G thrusters. Of course, this also factors in the reworks of sequences like boss battles against The Leviathan are now more fluid and new zero-G paths in some chapters adds more of a challenge in traversal dynamics because of how disorienting it can be especially in the heat of the moment vs Necromorphs.
CONTENT
Dead Space Remake took me around 20 hours to accomplish a completionist run, which included backtracking to previously locked areas and going through optional paths to collect resources, schematics and side mission items. If you just focus on completing the game and no care for the side stuff, you can probably cut it down to 18 or less.
I highly recommend doing the side mission stuff though and they are essentially just 2 missions: discovering Nicole and other ship crew’s story, and another one for unlocking Master Clearance security level. They do require backtracking and if you kinda forgot where the locked rooms are it can get annoying and disorienting to navigate through especially in Medical Deck.
When it comes to variety, Dead Space Remake employs the help of Intensity Director subsystem. The Director will dynamically execute Necromorph encounters outside of scripted ones, like in corridors you’re backtracking through. I did try to see whether this is real and true enough, certain points where I reloaded vary in Necromorphs instances from none to several at once. So no two playthroughs will be the exact same and adds extra challenge for the super-hard Impossible mode challengers.
Like the original, the remake is split into 12 chapters keeping with the original chapter names. Hint: try to read the first letter of each chapter. The difference here is that the Ishimura is more open and you can freely return to unlocked decks to collect anything you missed like text logs, schematics or upgrades. Make sure you collect all you need before the point of no return in Chapter 11, or your only option is to reload previous saves or go through New Game+ for it.
Yes, like previous installments there is New Game+ mode. Except for Impossible difficulty mode, your upgrades and inventory will carry over to NG+ for your convenience. With NG+ you will also unlock extra contents like secret ending by collecting Marker Fragments, new suit upgrade to level 6 and enhanced version of enemies for harder challenges to the now-seasoned player. Pretty high replayability factor here just for the challenge and secret ending. Also hinted by Motive, completing the Impossible mode will unlock the troll weapon Foam Finger Gun from Dead Space 2. Hell yeah, Bang! Bang! away Isaac.
If you opt for the Deluxe Edition DLC, you will get 5 suit skins. Of which 3 are distinct models and 2 texture reskins. No stat differences for the DLC skins, purely visual. The Infected skin is my personal favorite, just a brutally gored Isaac with his innards and flesh splayed open plus his head actually cut off from the body and stays in the helmet during helmet-dismount scenes. Absolutely metal.
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT
As a die-hard fan of the Dead Space extended universe, I highly enjoyed my experience playing Dead Space Remake. It is said that rose-tinted glasses make past experience look better than reality and the remake is what a rose-tinted glasses view of the original Dead Space was. My return to the USG Ishimura is filled with dread, quoting CJ “Ah shit, here we go again”.
The overall technical upgrade with Frostbite Engine lends itself to extensive video options like AMD FidelityFX CAS and dynamic resolution scaling that assists lower specced machines to run this game in higher frame rates albeit at a slight tradeoff in moment-to-moment visual quality during busy moments.
My highly-not-recommended GPU struggles to hit 60fps most of the time with lower settings but that’s a criticism on my end rather than Motive and the video option tools greatly assist my enjoyment. Turning off VSync helps with input lag and keeping the frame rates above 48 fps is sufficiently fluid for me instead of targeting 60fps minimum. I want to upgrade my rig in the future (haha geddit, RIG?) so that I can experience the glory of Dead Space again in ray-traced ultra quality.
But I have one beef with Motive. Where are my self-deploy suit helmets? We have them in 2 and 3, I don’t see why not update it for the remake? I know you want to stick to how it was in the original but it’s already retconned by the Vintage Suit in DS2 and the 200+ years old Sovereign Colonies in DS3. Give me my Iron Man Isaac, hmm?
VERDICT
Motive Studio absolutely kills it with this remake, every change they commit to it is meaningful and adds value to the game in a more current games technology wrapper while keeping it very close to the original and its spirit. The retelling of USG Ishimura crisis, Isaac and all the other characters story through a more detailed lens, the revamped layout and gameplay mechanics, the changes to upgrade system and all others alongside the excellent graphical upgrade makes Dead Space Remake a love letter to fans of the franchise and the whole survival horror genre in general. Dead Space is whole again.
The magic of strategic dismemberment is back folks. Pick up your Plasma Cutter and let’s chop these pesky Necromorphs.
Review copy provided by EA.
Dead Space (2023 Remake)
Dead Space is a faithful remake that keeps the vision and innovation of the original game intact while improving gameplay mechanics, story and visuals that adds value and presents it as what would Dead Space be like if it is made today.
- Presentation 10
- Gameplay 9
- Content 9
- Personal Enjoyment 9