There was a name in survival horror that ran supreme among the stars for it's inception. Who's legacy was felt on the genre for console generations to come so keenly is spawned sequels, a spiritual successor and, finally, a remake. That game is also renowned within my head as one of the only survival horror games with a mildly clever title despite the fact they stuck a 'dead' in there. Dead Space. (Not as clever as 'State of Decay', but I don't think there's any real argument about which is the more influential franchise there. Maybe SOD spent all their creative budget in the marketing room.) Who else could inherit the very lofty conceptual of the alien franchise and spin them off in their own direction to create a product very clearly in reverence of, but still entirely distinct to, Ridley Scott's arthouse classic?
Dead Space would actually go on to follow something of the trajectory of the Alien franchise as well, boasting a sequel that leaned more heavily into the action elements and lost the deadly horror somewhere along the way, a threequel that totally undermined the key aspects of the original and fell apart as a result- and that was the entire franchise they never made any more, shut up. (See- perfect fits for one another!) We all kind of hoped that 'Callisto Protocol' would be Dead Space pretty much note-for-note, and the developers kind of leaned into that for their promotion, only for the gameplay to kind of veer in it's own direction that a lot of players weren't prepared for. (Melee combat above ranged combat is a big departure!) Which is probably why the Dead Space Remake was so rushed toward.
We all wanted to see more of this world and if that world just happened to be wrapped up in an excellent revival of the original- who are we to argue? I'll admit to being absolutely wrong about my gut feelings on the Remake when I first provided my impressions. Knowing the studio and sensing the corporate stink on the thing, I expected a sequel to completely lose the heart of the original in a lame attempt to shoot up the graphics and slap a weak remake for everyone to sigh and deal with. But then, I also expected Callisto to be the break-out star survival horror darling- so I guess my reads were on the moon they were so far off course! As it turned out, Dead Space Remake was an absolutely brilliant revival that took what worked in the original and reimagined it to the fullest extent of what the original would have been had it got the same care and love with 2023's resources.
And the Remake managed to win it's fight against the naysayers- wining critical aplomb, award nominations and respect... although, according to third party reports- not sales. I can't exactly claim to be a paragon of the beaten here myself, because I actually didn't buy the game either- I was gifted it by EA for a bit of QA work I did for them but... was everyone else given it too? Surely with all the positive coverage, the endless recommendations- the masses would have come piling through the doors- except they didn't. And now Dead Space has the dreaded mark of 'underperformed' under it's portfolio title- seemingly utterly inexplicably. I will confess to being something in the realm of shocked, with no real logical explanation to offer unless... I dunno, maybe people saw the name and thought they'd already played it? (I'm swinging wild here, I haven't the foggiest!)
Perhaps one of the most grim portents I've seen rise out of this anomaly is the assertion that it reinforces the apparent death of the genre appeal that is Survival Horror- and when you weight it up with the environment that might kind of check out a bit. Survival Horror games were something of a staple around the time of the original Dead Space franchise but now- they pretty much dominate the indie scene, and even then in their lowest common denominator forms. The most notable recent survival horror game was Alone in the Dark, which was an average game by all metrics but nothing to the scale of what Dead Space was going for. So perhaps they were trying to tap into a market that was already somewhat exhausted at the time of release?
Of course, the kneejerk reaction would be to slap me around the chops and remind me of the massive other Survival Horror game that released around about this time last year- Resident Evil 4. But to that I have to ask... is that game really 'Survival Horror'? Part of what made the original such a standout in it's franchise, which the Remake certainly went to ape, was the fact that Resident Evil 4 abandoned a lot of the vulnerability and drawn out tension that makes the Survival Horror genre... well... horrific. Resident Evil 4 leans into the action, with explosive set-pieces, ever changing environments, flashy takedowns and an all around bad-ass protagonist who never really feels like he's at the mercy of the elements around him- he's too cool for that. All of which invoke a different kind of game, and would attract a different kind of audience to the Dead Space crowd.
Whatever the case, this means there really is no reason to continue the Dead Space remake franchise like many expected and definitely hoped for, considering Dead Space 2 is widely considered the franchise's zenith. Reports had been made claiming that Dead Space 2 remake existed in some form of consideration before being cancelled, and others have come out to say that the game never even entered a state of serious consideration whatsoever. Either way Motive, the studio in question, seems to be moving on to their own thing whilst Dead Space has been put back up on the high shelf by the kid in the cowboy hat as he remarks how "I don't want to play with you anymore!"
It is quite in keeping with EA to make decisions that undermine the actual good thing people are praising them for. They couldn't even release two good singleplayer Star Wars games with no microtransactions without making sure the latter title would have a flaming turd of a PC port. But in this regard, I guess there really is no brainer to killing off the potential of what could have been a real bright spark in the single player space. Dead Space is an excellent Remake that proved me, and all the other doubters, horrendously wrong- and yet it wasn't rewarded for it's success like we are told will happen in a quality based industry. Maybe this is an example that Mike Ybarra was right, and we should all be tipping our Game Developers our life savings- (Nope, that's a story for another day...)
No comments:
Post a Comment