Dead Space has proven that in horror games, bigger is not always better

The most strained moments of the Dead Space trilogy generally articulate around a very simple image: Isaac Clarke, clad in his bulky engineer costume, stands in the dark and narrow hallway of 39, an abandoned spaceship. His spine indicator indicates your health, which is often a lamp as comforting as you can get it, and you can hear his breathing raucing inside his helmet. A light flashes, you pause and when you finally feel safe, you hear a sound: the clatter of a vent, the sound of bone and flesh rubbing against the floor, and you remember that you are do not safe, and you never were.

Even if you move to more lethal weapons and larger, more horrible enemies, the best settings of Dead space are intimate, quiet and carefully balanced to provide the appropriate amount of detail while allowing the player to project into this heavy and slow combination.

While Dead Space 3 collapsed, the problems of the franchise began with Dead Space 2… or maybe in the hope that there is a franchise. It is neither the necromorphs nor the unitologists who have condemned the world of Dead space; it was the inexorable shift of reach that advanced. The horror of the decor worked better on the USG Ishimura, with a silent protagonist and a small cast.

A surprise from Dead Space

Dead space came out of Electronic Arts at an unexpected time, alongside titles like Mirror edge and Mass Effect. These were new titles and games that took interesting balls and accompanied them in wonderful directions. A RPG of the massive space opera with romance and danger as Mass Effect or a music party game for the gang like Rock band was easy to summarize and easier to market. Dead space EA Redwood Studios, a studio that had not yet created its original IP address. It was a horror game of survival at a time when the genre was not fashionable.

Dead space was more than happy to borrow a page of previous titles of the same kind. Messages stained by blood by survivors or breathless journal entries recorded at the last moment, warning unlucky protagonists against critical elements of scenario or play? Dead space to these in profusion. A Resident Evil 4camera style over the shoulder that gives the player agency enough agent to aim, maneuver and run away? This too, with the new "strategic dismemberment" mechanism and some science fiction gadgets. A small group of support characters trying to guide you through this nightmare by giving you a series of missions on voice communications? Dead space had that.

When it comes to the critical points of the story, the characters, the basic mechanisms and the environment, Dead space has not done anything new and wild. It just needed a kind of game that had not received a lot of love and that's how each item was eliminated. The initial race of Isaac, panicked as the team docked in Ishimura, shows that a problem has badly started the game. The combination of the engineer, with his iconic HUD, and the way his mundane and contrasting utility shell contrasted with the visceral inconvenience of hearing Isaac gasp and his panties seemed astonishing. The terror of having a group of slashers rushes on you, screams and agitations can be mastered, and Isaac has gradually become more powerful (and you've become more able to determine which necromorphs to remove, how to rotate Stasis and your plasma cutter, and how to cut the limbs quickly).

It's not like the game is free of surprises. The sections of Zero Gravity, where you face the same threats in a silent void, are always memorable and deeply disturbing. The sci-fi engineering element was a very funny hook, allowing you to take powers to make Isaac's day easier and use them to kick crates and desperately try to save ammunition. To this day, I still remember the terror that I felt throughout the match. Even when I turned on, I stopped at every corpse that appeared dead and empty a clip in it.

The game was so confident with the environment and the tools that it provided you with. There are long periods of quiet tension, where only you and USG Ishimura, who is a full-fledged character. The developers were good to leave you alone with the ship, when you expect the fear of the jump to end, and that your imagination does the work before coming back for another blow. Dead space is discreetly competent and offers a surprisingly refined interpretation of a familiar scenario.

But that's not all

The problem is that Dead space does not just refer to the title of the initial version of 2008, but to the entire franchise. Dead Space has not only won three main titles, with 2 and 3 to be released in 2011 and 2013, but there are derivative securities Extraction and Ignition, a mobile title, animations, comics and novels. Redwood Shores, now known as Visceral Games, is pursuing its new intellectual property.

There is more Dead space that you can shake a stick, and some of that has come from the rise of the main titles. Dead Space 2 was a big budget sequel to a modest success, with a marketing budget to match. While Dead space was calm, confident and centered around a simple concept of survival horror to the old, Dead Space 2 entered the room with trumpets. Did you know that your mother would hate Dead Space 2? If you wanted to buy a new game in 2011 and you do not have know that someone from the EA marketing department has not done their homework.

Dead Space 2 is bigger and stronger, with a protagonist expressed and a bigger cast. The world explodes and Ishimura shows himself; an environment in a larger world with a systemic conflict. There was even a new asymmetrical multiplayer mode, giving the game depth beyond the campaign. All this is not intrinsically wrong; in some ways Dead Space 2 feels like a successful victory round. Some environments are terrifyingly appropriate, the fight is fun while still disturbing, and the story bursts beyond the pack of nude shots that worked so well in the first game … but everything is unclear.

The sequel does not have the same images as the first title. The stakes are higher, but do we care so much? Isaac can talk and it's great for his character, but that means you're constantly reminded that he guys in this suit – and he's a kind of dick! There is a little in Dead Space 2 where you are about to send you on another quest, a tribute to the structure of the first game, then Isaac returns to his radio and closes it. It's cute, but every moment Dead Space 2 insists that the world and the characters can fend for themselves, the less we are interested in imagining what we would do in this essentially terrifying situation. Brush strokes become less wide; It's more difficult to get involved in the action, even if you really enjoy cutting rows of necromorphs.

This is a gamble on the scope; and this is where the economic part of the conversation inevitably comes from the head. Dead Space 2 certainly managed to make a fun and challenging game Dead space from a punctual franchise to a potential franchise, but it's not a success. While most of the discussions on the evolution of the Dead space returns to sales, which was certainly in EA's mind. The goal was for Dead Space 3 sell five million copies, which would allow the creation of more games in the Dead space universe.

There was no way to balance this larger scale with a scary Thu. Dead Space 3 was happy to be able to exchange gore and jumping fears, but the range is out of control. You went from a ship to a space station on whole planets and moons that must be destroyed. The author of the original Dead spaceAntony Johnson, commented on 3 – a title on which he did not work: "I know that the developers have always wanted to go further, in terms of scope. And I already mentioned that the universe we had created was huge, with a lot of elements, that just were not within reach of the first part. It was inevitable that settings and environments open up a bit and become a little more epic. "

Otherwise, Johnston remarks, "you would just have the same game on a different ship each time, and that's pretty boring."

But that's not necessarily true. the perimeter did not have to continue to expand and it is a mistake that the horror franchises continue to commit. It's hard to press the reset button, but it may have been a much better direction for Dead space than the third match. Just look Resident Evil 6, who launched a global bioterrorist attack, a wide range of protagonists, an infected US president and imposters disguising themselves as Ada Wong and and…

Then, Resident Evil 7 eliminate all that. The game takes place in a house and you deal with a family. It's certainly not a perfect game, but he manages to bring the Resident Evil franchise back onto the highway after escaping into the wild. There is always Umbrella society and a plot, of course, but the smaller premises and the tiny actors make even the most stupid plot turn. Now, one of the most anticipated titles of 2019 is Resident Evil 2, which goes back to Raccoon City. Even in 2017 Prey returned to the basic concept of survivor, ship and extraterrestrial danger and makes it sing. Clichés are clichés for a reason; a simple story is not a bad story if each of its aspects interests us.

Bigger always seems to be better – he seems more impressive in marketing copy and hype, and he swears to leave behind him the old Game. You do not want to play an old game, following a horror title usually promises you. You want bigger environments, more deadly enemies, more powerful weapons, more intrigues. It's not always a losing proposition, but it's a dangerous proposition to keep a horror game, well, a horror Game. The horror works best when it comes to small intimate things, when one can project oneself into the boots of the protagonists. We may be impressed by the spectacle of the magnitude of a sequel, but it is harder to care. There are so many lessons to be learned from the dead space franchise, but the most important is that bigger is not always better.