Dead Space (2023)

In last year's January, EA released a remake of their 2008 third person survival horror shooter, Dead Space. The remake was developed by Motive Studio, which I believe is the place BioWare Montreal's people were largely shuffled into after they were shutdown in the aftermath of Mass Effect: Andromeda. How many of the actual same people were involved, is unknown to me. But like that game, does this remake too run on EA's in-house Frostbite engine.

An excellent remake

It is nice to have a proper PC version of Dead Space for once. The original had a selection of issues, including physics problems at high framerates and negative mouse acceleration. The latter plagues the whole original trilogy. This remake has none of that, although I did have to max mouse sensitivity because of how slow turning felt. Unfortunately the fancier visuals do come with the cost of requiring more powerful hardware as well.

The game pretty much requires to be installed on an SSD. It can technically run from a fast HDD but loading times will obviously be considerably longer and the game can be unstable. I saw a comment of someone saying they felt there was less traversal stutter due to the game having spent more time loading first but that sounds dubious. I think my desktop's CPU is also simply too old for this game and so I tried playing it on my laptop instead.

Its GPU is however less powerful than on my desktop, definitely below what the game lists as minimum. But with all the rendering scaling options set to maximum performance, the remake did run quite smoothly while at times looking almost like it had the retro pixel filter that you can unlock in Dead Space 3 after beating it on Hard Core. I had to up lighting and shadows settings to High, however, because the game was almost unplayable with them on Low due to how dark it was everywhere. I still got 60 fps in tighter spaces but in certain few spectacle fights the game ran below 30 fps.

Touched with sophisticated, modern sensibilities

Someone familiar with the original will start noticing differences in the remake right away. Nicole looks way older, Kendra doesn't miss a chance to mention her girlfriend in her second line, and Johnston has been race and gender swapped into a black woman and gets a whole new scene to die in. The Kellion crew now consists of a white man, a lesbian white woman, a black man, a black woman, and an Asian man -- such diversity! Bathrooms are now unisex too. The remake is without a doubt made for 'modern audiences'. This kind of pandering doesn't always go as intended: BioWare Montreal got flak for one NPC casually dropping their dead name in conversation back in ME Andromeda.

Another immediately noticeable thing is that Isaac speaks like in the sequels! He also looks like his returning voice actor Gunner Wright. And that I don't like. Isaac's face now reminds me of Ellie's jealous boyfriend in the third game; I highly prefer Isaac's original appearance. I dislike this, what feels like an ever more common trend of having characters look like their voice actors. The last parade until machine learning replaces them, I guess.

The dead speak!

But Isaac now being voiced is an undeniably positive change. It adds so much to the experience. I chuckled out loud at the exchange with Dr. Kyne after the third time Isaac survives an encounter with a tentacle.

"Do you read me, Mr. Clarke?"

"Fuck this ship."

"You're alive! Altman be-- I mean..."

"Fuck Altman too."

Despite the pandering, the writing of the narrative and characters is much better than in the original. It is more fleshed out with additional and altered scenes. The Kellion crew feels like an actual team; in the original they were hostile to each other from the get-go. I enjoyed noticing all the differences -- at least the ones I could remember. While I have beaten the original at least twice, and did recall all the key events and locations, I didn't quite remember the order of things. With Isaac now conversing with other characters, the sequence of events is more memorable.

Feature complete

Gameplay feels familiar Dead Space. I liked but also disliked that they kept the classic inventory user interface, having to take hand off mouse to use the cursor keys. At least the original's features and mechanics saw a score of improvements. Suit and weapon circuits no longer have empty nodes. In fact, the game showers you with so many power nodes and credits that it is clearly intended for players to try all the weapons. Sticking to the plasma cutter is still very viable: the One Gun achievement is in this one too.

The other weapons had some changes made to them. The pulse rifle, for instance, had its useless secondary fire replaced by the second game's grenade launcher. I would say though that the pulse rifle is still, even upgraded, pretty ass with its primary fire on Hard/Impossible. It is not as effective as in the second game.

Before the remake's release, I watched streams of the original being played and people were suggesting the streamer to use the necromorphs' pointy limb parts with telekinesis to save ammunition. But that wasn't a proper thing until the second game -- appears to be common to misremember that. Motive added the feature to this one, though, and now you can throw all kinds of sticks. On Hard/Impossible it's almost required.

Zero-G parts also got the second game treatment: no more lunging at surfaces to latch onto; you can freely float around with the suit's thrusters. One short vacuum section in the original has a power node floating in space. It is pretty visible if you look out the broken hull but it is also easy to miss. Of course, I was trying to pull everything from the void the moment I got into a similar section in this one. But there was nothing there. However, later in another short vacuum walk, I did find a ruby semiconductor floating out there to be grabbed.

A similar detail was the Peng. I saw something in the spot it was supposed to be and already thought it was good that there's always Peng. But instead there was something better: a text log informing me it had been relocated, to be found later into the game. I appreciated such a nod to veteran players.

In the remake you're not limited to the part of the USG Ishimura the current chapter takes place in. Instead you can backtrack to pretty much anywhere you've been to. It is more immersive and there is a reason to do so as well because the remake introduces security clearance locked containers and doors you can't open right away. That is also kind of a nod to the original that has orange-lit lockers that you can never open. The remake also has few side missions which with the backtracking lengthen the game. My first run took about twice as long than in the original.

Wandering aboard the Ishimura aimlessly for things you missed can be counterproductive because the game keeps sending necromorphs at you -- they seem to be almost on a timer. You might end up spending more resources than you will find. On my last run, I made the effort to write down where all the initially inaccessible stuff was and kind of figured out the optimal times and routes to visit them out later. I faced very few unnecessary spawns that way.

Worth a replay or two

Technically it could take only two playthroughs to unlock all the achievements. However, that would require you to play on Impossible on your first run, which is quite the challenge. Regular combat is not that dangerous after few upgrades but it's all the instant kill hazards that will end your run (although you can then continue the save on Hard). For some reason -- to make it easier? -- they changed the malfunctioning floor gravity plating to deal shock damage instead of being instantly lethal. The turret sections were altered as well.

For beating the game on Impossible, you get the Burnished Suit and the foam finger "Hand Cannon". Like in the second game (and the third game's Devil Horns), Isaac makes "bangs" and "pew-pews" when the hand cannon is fired. It kills everything instantly, which is fun but kind of pointless as well, after having so truly and utterly beaten the game already. Although, if you actually did beat the game on Impossible first, the foam finger will make New Game+ very easy. There's a new, alternative ending on NG+, provided you manage to find all 12 Marker fragments and place them on their pedestals on the crew deck.

I wonder if Motive will be remaking the second game as well. Dead Space 2's PC port had a handful of minor issues too, as I recall; I wouldn't mind a bug-free version. And if they do remake it, they might as well continue to the third game and completely reboot it, to not have the series be written into a dead end like that.

Edited 2024-03-04: Fixed few errors.