Dead Space - On this day

After 2005, the publishing house Electronic Arts began to actively encourage the development of new franchises, resulting in Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Mirror's Edge, Skate, and with the Dead Space - a horror survival game that came out on this day 13 years ago.

Dead Space followed in the footsteps of the hugely successful Resident Evil 4 but was thematically different from that game so it wasn’t considered a cheap attempt to earn Electronic Arts in the action-horror genre. The game was originally conceived as the third part of the cult System Shock, but it was the success of Resident Evil 4 that took the development of this game in a completely different direction.

The result surprised many with a few fresh ideas. Dead Space put the players in the role of engineer Isaac Clark who, due to the force of circumstances on the spaceship, had to fight against resuscitated corpses called Necromorphs. The specificity of the fight was that the Necromorphe had to be disabled by dismembering their limbs, and this was a new approach in addition to the previous tactics of aiming at the head (because it always worked except when the enemy did not have ahead).

Dead Space also had a very interesting user interface solution. We monitored the health of the main character in the form of indicators on his back, and the amount of ammunition was shown when aiming with the weapon itself. An important component in the design was that there was no stopping the action in the game. That is, you could pause the game, but if you wanted to see a map or use an object then there was no pause, which added a new kind of tension to one horror title.

The game came out on PC, PS3, and X360 platforms and was very well received by audiences and critics, resulting in more than two million copies sold. For a new title, as well as a horror theme, it was a great success, after which the directors of Electronic Arts turned a blind eye. The later two sequels, therefore, turned to action and many will say that after that everything went the wrong way. In addition to the second and third parts, there was also a version of Dead Space Extraction for the Wii console, but it was a rail shooter format.

The studio that created Dead Space closed in 2017. However, Electronic Arts are still counting on this series and are preparing a remake of the original game for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles.