The Dead Space Remake, Can EA Be Trusted With It?

Dead Space is the perfect horror game. It has it all, gore, and decapitated limbs, creepy monsters and a sci-fi setting. After years of agonizingly waiting for any new Dead Space content, EA finally reveals that it’s remaking the first game. Yup, you read that right, a fully-fledged remake of the perfect horror game, it’s a dream come true.

Well don’t get excited just yet. Let me first tell you about the story of the studio that developed Dead Space; Visceral Games. Dante’s Inferno and the Dead Space series were the studio’s most renowned games, and while they’re both excellent games, the Dead Space series blows Dante’s Inferno out of the water.

EA, being EA, decided to close Visceral Studios on October 17, 2017. Before their closure though, the studio was working on a single player linear Star Wars game, titled Project Ragtag, and with EA being the greedy corporate that it is, decided to sideline Visceral Games in pursuit of their holy grail of Multiplayer Microtransactions and loot boxes filled generic First Person shooters. Thus, the studio was closed, their Star Wars game was scrapped, replaced by the atrocious money grabbing schemes known as the Star Wars Battlefront games.

EA denied the allegations that the closure of Visceral Studios was motivated by their adoration for multiplayer games. Instead, apparently their decision was based on “Player Feedback” and “Marketplace Trends”. So player feedback and marketplace trends showed them that people wanted a First Person multiplayer Star Wars game, sounds totally legit to me.

Fast forward to 2019, and EA finally decided to get back to working on Single Player games, releasing the excellent Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, that was developed by Respawn Entertainment and announcing Skate 4. I’m assuming that the corporate cats at EA finally realized that instead of paying millions of dollars on lawyers to fend off the lawsuits they got thanks to their morally grey gambling-like loot boxes, they could just release a single player game, make some profits, rinse and repeat.

This is where my issue with Dead Space stems from. Visceral Games is shut down and one of the original creators of Dead Space is working on a spiritual successor for the Dead Space called The Callisto Protocol, which I’m ten times more excited about than the Dead Space remake. Now suddenly, out of the blue, EA decides to revive the series, after it screwed over the people that used to originally work on it.

Not only that, but it’s also being developed using the Frostbite Engine. The Frostbite Engine is notoriously rigid and is primarily built for developing FPS games, so it might not be the best engine for a Third Person Survival Horror game. Add to that the fact that Motive Studios are working on the remake, a company that has no background whatsoever in developing horror or single player games. There’s a bit of good news though, reportedly, the remake will be developed by Eric Baptizat, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s game director. Having a veteran like him helming the remake should be a bit of reassurance for fans of the horror series.

Overall, the news of the remake is definitely exciting, but it’s best if we keep our expectations in check for now. EA are far from redeeming themselves. I hope they prove me wrong, but life is too short to wait around for them to bring our favorite franchises back to life.

If you like our content and would like to support us, please consider donating to us by clicking here.

For more of our gaming coverage, check out our reviews and feel free to also follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Don’t forget to also subscribe to our YouTube Channel.