How do you remake a game that feels like it hasn’t aged a day? That was the only question on my mind when this new take on Dead Space was announced. The retro classic will be turning 15 later this year, but since it arrived 3 years after Resident Evil 4, it still controls like every other third-person shooter that got caught up in that game’s inescapable gravity. Then there’s the seamless, immersive interface that projects itself from our hero’s suit, the loading times masked by doors that take a few seconds to open, the all-consuming orchestral stings that took advantage of surround sound…even the “single take” camera perspective used (rather poorly) in Sony’s God of War reboot series happened here first!
So how do you justify remaking a game that’s still modern in every way that counts? Rather than reinvent an iconic 15-year-old romp through an interstellar haunted house, Motive Studio has essentially refurbished what was already there to begin with. Playing in front of a 4K TV with a nice set of headphones, I often found myself delighted over the changes they’ve made: plenty of care and effort went into preserving what worked, while tweaking moments that fell flat in the original. Still, once the credits started rolling, I realized that I had asked the wrong question. The “how” wasn’t important – the more pressing matter was “why?”
For those who haven’t played it before, Dead Space has a relatively straightforward premise. Hapless engineer Isaac Clarke heads out to the USG Ishimura for two reasons: investigate a communications blackout, and check on his girlfriend Nicole, who sent him a concerning video message. By the time Isaac and his crew arrive with a crash, the mammoth ship is infested with “Necromorphs,” reanimated corpses that can only be stopped completely by severing their limbs. Grappling with the undead, the Ishimura’s own failing systems and a few less-than-helpful surviving crewmates, Isaac must find a way to survive and escape, ideally with Nicole in tow.
I initially bristled at this remake’s controversial choice to take our once-silent protagonist and turn him into a chatterbox, but it immediately pays off. Rather than existing as a yes man for his crewmates’ ideas, Isaac has real agency – he’s often the first one to offer up a solution when shit hits the fan, and he comes across like a real engineer rather than a glorified button-pusher with a gun. Isaac’s rewritten role introduces welcome changes to his shipmates, too: Kendra and Hammond no longer devolve into shouting matches before the end of the first chapter, opting for a passive-aggressive tone that takes time to boil over.
These tonal changes also make their way to the rest of the Ishimura’s crew, whether they’re alive or dead. Nicole herself is an older, more experienced woman than her 2008 counterpart, and the shifts in her character alone add a level of maturity to the whole plot (as mature as you can get with undead babies and cartoonishly grisly deaths, anyway). They’ve even taken a few scenes from the animated prequel film and reintegrated them as holographic projections! Each little change adds up to a more cohesive game, one that doesn’t expect you to read the comics or watch the movie to get the complete picture.
The Necromorphs have received a grotesque makeover of their own: it takes a few extra shots to remove each of their limbs in the remake, and you might not even pick up on why until you study the model itself. Flesh and bone are both represented in an alarming amount of detail, and each has to disappear before the appendage is out of the picture. Think that’s too much? Just wait until you get access to the giant air cannon. The first time I fired it point-blank and sent the skin flying off of a monster, I nearly dropped my controller in shock. From the blood that splashes across Isaac’s armor to witnessing a corpse transform into a killer, this all-new level of fidelity is delightfully stomach-churning.
The new Dead Space shines through its laborious attention to detail – by amping up the grotesque effects and reintegrating the backstory from its tie-in media, one could almost call this the definitive take on the game. But it still doesn’t answer the lingering “why?” Why spend millions of dollars recreating a game that, to this day, is designed and played in ways that echo every other big-budget game released in the past 15 years? It’s not for a lack of availability: the Steam version plays nicely with modern computers, and you can download the original on the latest Xbox with no hassle. In fact, it’s a question that can only be answered by looking beyond Dead Space, gazing instead at an industry that is increasingly obsessed with reanimating its own undead horde.
Two weeks after Dead Space’s remake launched, Nintendo brought back Metroid Prime with a Switch remaster. We’re mere weeks away from Resident Evil 4, a top-to-bottom remake of the game that, to this day, defines how third-person shooters look and play. Last year, Sony even felt the need to remake the first Last of Us, a game so thoroughly revisited that its own remaster premiered on the previous generation of consoles!
As development time and costs soar year after year, we’re watching each publisher independently decide that their resources are better spent on remaking and remastering their old catalogs. Why bother taking a risk on something new when Silent Hill 2 can be trotted out yet again, with a brand-new coat of paint to match the $70 price tag? Rehashing history is a surefire bet, a guarantee that old fans will be onboard, while newcomers join in to see what they once missed. It’s a market that leaves little to no oxygen for new ideas to flourish.
It’s this undead environment that frightens me more than any Necromorph Dead Space could dream up. From beginning to end, I had a lovely time with this remake: the attention to detail is second to none, and each change provided by Motive Studio is a welcome adjustment without ruining a classic. But take one look at where we are in 2023, surrounded by expensive revivals of yesteryear hits, pumped out by a business that increasingly feels like it’s cannibalized its own future for short-term gains. It’s a wonderful game, but I can’t help feeling like it only exists because everything’s burning around us.
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