To make it even more terrifying, the teams decided to redesign the ship from scratch. “Not only did we have to add or remove live content, while progressing or revisiting other sections of the ship, but we also had to make sure that this content matched the progress of the person playing.highlighted David Robillard, technical leader of the project. Fortunately, in recent years, Frostbite has made several improvements to its streaming solution and we have been able to take advantage of them.“Even though their quality was not optimal, Motive Studios was able to rely on the original files as a guide.
“We had to take the play spaces, put them together, then fit it all into a 3D shipsays Roy Tuazon. Then, we had to move certain areas to make everything coherent. We also had to change the size of certain areas, add connecting corridors, that sort of thing. But we didn’t just do that to add things. Everything we did, we did because it made sense and it made sense.” Catherine Stewart, lead level designer, adds that some areas have been enlarged to fit new gameplay mechanics, making particular reference to the zero-gravity system.
“For example, in the original game, we take a gondola from one end of the ship to the other, and we can see this beautiful environment around usexplains Roy Tuazon. But in our version, you can take the gondola from one end to the other, activate zero-gravity, and then come back without the gondola. We can now explore this new area which, before, was only a dark and scary space, when looking down.“
Motive Studios has also endeavored to expand the areas already present, like the empty room in which one enters just to open a door. In Dead Space Remake, the developers made it a customs area, which involves adding security warnings, customs declarations, scan stations and more. “We were able to take places or marks from the extended universe of Dead Space to implant them in the Ishimura in the form of advertisements, posters, stuff like thatunderlines the man. Now, when you play the game, you see places mentioned in dead space 2, for example. These small details help to unify the game world even more. And all these small narrative elements make the ship feel like a living world.“
Finally, the teams – and they will certainly not say the opposite – assure anxiety when they explore the new USG Ishimura. “JI think the worst thing is to go to the belly of the beast, to the engine room or the drilling deckswears the associate artistic director. There is this industrial vibe, everything is so cramped. It’s dark, cluttered, you see shapes everywhere. We think he’s a necromorph, but he’s just a machine. And every time I think I know what’s going on, I know what’s going on, and boom! I just gained another gray hair.“
We hope that all these beautiful promises will be kept in the final version of the game which, we remind you, will arrive on January 27, 2023 on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PS5 and PC.