Image via Electronic Arts.
Dead Space 3 is perhaps most notable for sending the vaunted action-horror franchise into a decade-long dormancy. Now, a producer on the game, Chuck Beaver, has discussed his ideas to redo Dead Space 3, if he was ever given the opportunity.
Beaver recently took part in a discussion with YouTuber CaptainBribo (spotted and transcribed by PCGamesN). The interview is wide-ranging, but of particular interest are Beaver’s comments about Dead Space 3. He reiterates the idea that Visceral Games wasn’t “allowed to make a horror game from the beginning” in an attempt to create mainstream appeal and admits the attempts to expand into new gameplay genres didn’t meet the goal of expanding the game’s audience.
As a result, he would remove much of the co-op and action focus of the game, reorienting the ideas to better suit a single-player horror experience. Specifically, he talks about recycling the concept of having the co-op characters seeing different things to focus on positioning protagonist Isaac Clarke as an unreliable narrator, unable to trust what he sees.
Similarly, he would keep the lore around the Brethren Moons and the indigenous species of Tau Volantis intact but “redo the entire main story.” That would involve rejigging the roles of deuteragonist John Carver and Isaac’s love interest Ellie to center the narrative of Isaac’s internal mental struggles.
Beaver spent 11 years with original Dead Space developer Visceral Games and was the story producer of the series, creating and overseeing franchise’s lore across all six games and the various transmedia offshoots. However, he is no longer longer affiliated with Electronic Arts and had no involvement with the recent Dead Space remake. As such, his comments about a redo of Dead Space 3 is little more than a wishlist, but it is nice to imagine where a remake series could go.