Six issues we realized concerning the Useless Area remake

When EA introduced it was remaking Dead Space, it wasn’t actually clear what “remake” meant. Would the corporate be utterly rebooting the beloved area horror collection? Or wouldn’t it be extra like a remaster that upgraded the unique’s 13-year-old graphics for the Xbox Collection X, PlayStation 5, and fashionable PCs? Star Wars: Squadrons studio EA Motive provided a little bit more detail in interviews. But it surely was nonetheless exhausting to gauge what the remake was supposed to perform — since in comparison with remakes of ’90s video games like System Shock, the place designers are updating restricted graphics and unfamiliar management schemes, Useless Area nonetheless feels eminently playable right this moment.

Now, the Useless Area remake’s builders have helped fill in a number of the gaps. Motive held a livestreamed Twitch session with members of the studio’s inventive staff, exhibiting off extraordinarily early footage demonstrating how the gameplay and stage design may work. (We nonetheless don’t have a launch date.) It confirmed a couple of issues that may set the brand new sport aside — however gained’t essentially remodel it.

Isaac Clarke will discuss, and he’s getting a well-known voice actor

The unique Useless Area starred engineer Isaac Clarke as a silent protagonist, however within the video games since then, he’s been distinctively voiced by actor Gunner Wright. Right now, Wright appeared on EA’s livestream to substantiate that he’s coming again for the remake, too.

Wright’s return makes the Useless Area remake sound extra like a retroactive continuation of the unique collection, not a complete reimagining of the franchise. EA additionally clarified that apparently Isaac will comply with the identical guidelines for talking as a well mannered Victorian baby.

EA

The second rule presumably exists to let him swear whereas stomping containers.

Dismemberment goes to be extra sophisticated

As my Polygon colleague Joshua Rivera details, simulated limb severing expertise has superior considerably since 2008. The livestream featured some very early renderings of the sport’s necromorphs, they usually appear affected by weapons in additional detailed and convincing (these are nonetheless area knife zombies getting shot with plasma, so I gained’t say “sensible”) methods.

EA

The brand new system contains limbs whose flesh will get stripped off as you shoot them, serving to you gauge how a lot harm you’ve carried out. It’s received weak factors that really feel extra natural than the unique sport’s huge glowing joints. It’s received extra selection in how a given weapon impacts a given necromorph.

Useless Area’s weapons have been already extra different than they generally get credit score for. (In the event you undergo the unique sport and particularly the sequel with simply the plasma cutter, you’re legitimately lacking out.) However the remake is clearly placing effort into meaningfully rebuilding them.

Zero gravity truly enables you to float

The livestream’s usually scant in-game footage confirmed one substantial change: Useless Area’s remake will allow you to float in zero gravity (like you’ll be able to within the sport’s sequels), reasonably than having to leap between surfaces along with your boots in any other case anchored to the “floor.”

Like Useless Area’s authentic weapons, its zero-G controls arguably get an unfairly dangerous rap. The degrees are designed round leaping, and it’s weirdly satisfying to bounce from wall to wall. However including free movement is a reasonably pure tweak for the remake.

There aren’t any microtransactions

Did we already know EA isn’t bringing the broadly hated microtransactions of Useless Area 3 into the Useless Area remake? Yes. Was it good to listen to Motive’s builders emphatically repeat that promise right this moment? Clearly.

A lore infusion is coming

Motive and EA beforehand hinted that they’d construct out Useless Area’s story, and right this moment, they gave extra specifics about what which may imply. “We aren’t going to alter the inspiration of the story, as a result of that story is de facto iconic,” stated inventive director Roman Campos-Oriola. “The issues we need to enrich when it comes to story or narrative, it’s actually concerning the larger universe of Useless Area. We need to have extra ties with what got here after, whether or not it’s the books, whether or not it’s the anime, whether or not it’s Useless Area 2, we need to put the unique in a greater approach inside that broader universe.”

That may apparently be carried out subtly by the setting, however some additions is perhaps “a bit extra,” says Campos-Oriola. Useless Area grew to become a particularly lore-heavy collection throughout three important video games and a number of tie-in media, and the Useless Area remake appears like it is going to spend extra time acknowledging that lore than altering it. The staff didn’t talk about the sport’s most beloved Easter egg, however after the livestream, it feels protected to say there’s always Peng.

The sport goals to flesh out its facet characters

The Useless Area remake additionally goals to offer extra depth to the characters round Isaac, together with Nicole Brennan, the girlfriend that he spends the sport on the lookout for. As Campos-Oriola places it, “we need to provide the means to truly search for her, and greater than search for her, study what occurred to her through the outbreak.” Which may indicate that Useless Area’s remake will contain just a little extra lively participant company than the extremely linear authentic, or perhaps it’s simply acknowledging that the unique storyline does appear to periodically neglect Nicole exists.

All the small print above are nonetheless pretty imprecise. Motive confirmed off the remake in ways in which highlighted its unfinished-ness, like placing enemies on a stage of untextured blocks, and a number of the modifications have been simply mentioned theoretically. And it stays irritating to see a brand new Useless Area sport after EA unceremoniously shut down the series’ original studio Visceral Video games. However for now, at the very least it’s changing into simpler to inform what the remake’s creators are aiming at — whether or not or not they pull it off.