Dead Space - First Look Preview
Gwynne Dixon
07/02/2008
Isaac Clarke is set to fill the Dead Space in sci-fi survival horror with his antics aboard the doomed Ishimura...
Sci-fi and horror is a match made in heaven. In the film world, the Alien Quadrilogy epitomises this relationship with Director, Ridley Scott, famously pitching the first film as "Jaws in Space". Strangely, there haven't been that many pure survival horror games that have donned the sci-fi guise. Sure, Halo and Half-Life had strong horror themes, but they weren't pure survival horror titles.
Dead Space, on the other hand, is. From what we were shown in our first look this week, EA Redwood Shores are packing all the traditional survival horror elements into the game. There are grotesque looking beasties, suspense by the bucket load and a well oiled third person perspective to boot. In fact, one might even call it Resident Evil in space.
Set 500 years in the future - when mining ships have been sent all over the galaxy to terraform planets - the story of Dead Space starts when one particular ship, the Ishimura, loses contact with earth. A shuttle is sent to investigate the ship and Isaac Clarke, a humble engineer, is on-board. Little does he know that far more than a communications system needs fixing...
In (Dead) Space, No-one Can Hear You Scream.
Let me give you a feel for the sort of suspense we're talking about here. During our look at the third chapter, we were shown a section which utilises the games zero-gravity feature. The protagonist, Isaac Clarke, is in the ship's centrifuge bay and, while he's magnetised to the ship's hull, he can also push off in any direction and effortlessly cut through the air before landing on the other side of the bay.At one point, Clarke decides to open the air lock, sending debris and alien parts spewing into the great void. At this point, the sound is completely cut-out because, as you'll remember from GCSE Physics, sound can't travel through a vacuum. All you can hear is Clarke breathing through his space suit, as well as the rumbles of the centrifuge as it periodically passes Clarke by. From out of nowhere, a scorpion-like alien scurries at you, whipping its spiky and blood stained tail. The ensuing combat takes place in complete silence.
In other parts of third chapter, the Ishimura (an uncommunicative mining ship that Clarke has been sent to investigate) is bathed with music and sound effects. Whether it's the discordant soundtrack of stringed instruments disagreeing with each other violently, or the goose-bump surfacing sound effects of a creature scurrying across your peripheral vision, EA Redwood Shores has gone the whole hog to make sure that in-game sounds are scarily atmospheric. But it's when the sound cuts out, in the centrifuge, that this sudden contrast heightens the suspense. We can only hope that Dead Space is directed this well throughout the whole game, as well as the snippet we saw.
What of the beasties? We saw a few and, while we're sure that there will be many more to come in the full game, the ones we saw in the third chapter were varied enough. Most went with the traditional decaying brown look, garnished with generous splats of blood. Where they did vary, however, was in their various techniques of defiling you, and the shapes and sizes they came in.
There were the scorpion-esque aliens that have already been mentioned, which seemed to be one of the bog-standard, alien foot soldiers. Accompanying them in this role were enemies that had human-like torsos with multiple spiky crab arms jutting out, which they flailed in Isaac's direction at any given opportunity. These are apparently necromorphed members of the ship's original crew. Another, more challenging abomination was a large blob that lumbered painstakingly towards you. We were shown that if you shot at its bloated stomach, tens of 'bloblings' burst out, pursuing you like blood-hungry mites.
At one point, we were treated to a gory death scene in which a huge arm grabs Clarke, pulls him through a corridor and then into a shaft were he is, no doubt, horribly mutilated by said arm. At the end of our demo, a very bizarre looking beastie reeled its ugly head (or would have done, if it had one). This repugnant creature looked a bit like a horribly contorted tree with spiky branches, while its lack of leaves and black colour suggested that, if it once was a tree, it had long since died and developed the ability to kill humble space ship engineers (in this case, Isaac Clarke).
EA Redwood Shores explained to us that all of the enemies in Dead Space could be blown apart using their Strategic Dismemberment system. This means that crab arms, scorpion tails and blob innards will gorily detach themselves/spew out from enemies depending on where you shoot them, and what you shoot them with. If you take out an alien's legs, it'll crawl after you. If you shoot off their arms, they'll run at you and try to bite you. We even saw the disembodied heart of an enemy strewn across the floor after the NPC's demise, followed by Clarke picking it up with his gravity gun (more on that later) and splatting it against the wall.
The Spot Welder.
So, we've dealt with the beasties and the suspense; what about the third person perspective? It takes on an above and behind the right shoulder view, similar to the one in Gears of War, allowing us to see our alien-killing protagonist. Isaac Clarke looks like a cross between a spot welder and the nanosuited guys from Crysis, which gives him a fitting engineer type of look while asserting that he's also not to be messed with.There's also no HUD whatsoever in the game. Instead, EA Redwood Shores has created a holographic menu that appears in front of Clarke (within the actual game world itself), topped off with a glowing turquoise colour scheme. Within the holographic menu is your inventory, as well as a library of all the video, audio and text logs that can be extracted from the ships database. These will drive the game's story forward, gradually revealing more of the Ishimura's tragic demise as you progress.
The holographic menu's inventory also provides access to weapons, which (like the enemies) take on all shapes and sizes. We did manage to get hold of some prospective names for some of the weapons in-game, such as the Plasma Cutter (similar to a pistol), Line Gun (like a shotgun), and Pulse Reticule. However, EA Redwood Shores were being type lipped over the specific names for the entire sci-fi arsenal that we saw, although we did manage to get a good look at them.
The most interesting death bringer that we saw was basically a boomeranging disc saw. The saw itself could be propelled out of the industrial looking weapon and was attached by a turquoise beam (turquoise becomes quite a familiar spectral theme, as you'll see). Gamers will be able to control the saw from quite a few metres away, slicing and dicing enemies to their heart's content before retracting the implement.
Other weapons of note included a gravity gun, which is now more common in sci-fi games than it was a few years back. From what we could see, it appeared to provide the power and abilities of a standard issue gravity gun - picking up objects and propelling them at oncoming enemies - while being useful for a few puzzles as well. Beyond this, the usual sci-fi weapons that imitate modern, conventional weapons were also on offer. As we've already mentioned, there were shotgun and pistol style sci-fi guns, as well as another that propelled turquoise looking ammo at rapid fire (presumably some sort of machine gun), and an RPG-like explosive armament.
All of these had their own laser targeting system, which projected the same homogeneous turquoise light at enemies. Another weapon that spews out turquoise light is 'stasis', which basically has the effect of slowing down time. It will be critical for some of the game's puzzles and (we suspect) can be hilariously used to blow apart aliens in super slow-mo. We saw Clarke using this 'stasis' ability to slow down time around a drive shaft (EA Redwood Shores are obviously putting his key skills to good use) so that it could be re-attached to an engine, forming one of the most extensive puzzles that we saw in the game. Again, as long as the final game has more of the same, we'll be happy bunnies.
On the back of Clarke's back is a tube called a Rig. This displays (again in turquoise) the amount of energy that Clarke has left to use this stasis ability, and it looks like such time bending tactics will have to be used sparingly. We're told that ammo will also be sparse in the traditional survival horror style, meaning that you'll have to be careful with the trigger otherwise you'll be bare-fist fighting a horde of ravenous, alien blood suckers.
Put Up Your Dukes.
Speaking of bare-fist fighting, the melee system in Dead Space looked quite extensive. When enemies get within biting range, a button tapping skirmish ensues in order to stop the alien from gnawing at your neck. While we've had no hands-on experience of the game, other punching and kicking moves looked like they were quite intuitively integrated, depending on your position relative to the alien. Weapon melee attacks are also varied, with heavier weapons simply requiring a pendulum-like swing to do severe damage and smaller side-arms needing beefier swipes to do damage.Throughout what we were shown of the third chapter, the graphics looked impressive at this early stage, with silky smooth textures and a well designed interior to the ship, which cements Dead Space's status as a thoroughbred next-gen game. Executive Producer, Glen Schofield, informed us that the whole of the third chapter could provide as much as an hour and a half of gameplay by itself, while noting that the most hardcore of gamers may be able to whizz through it in 50 minutes or so. While we're unaware of how many chapters there will be in Dead Space at this point, these sorts of playtimes for a single chapter do suggest a healthy length for the game, which is encouraging.
Also encouraging is the fact that Schofield assured us Dead Space's development cycle is ahead of schedule, and that it's fully on course to ship before the end of the year.
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