Isaac Clarke, the sole survivor of the USG Ishimura will make a return January 27. The creative team at EA Motive have committed to an official date following a recent in-depth art developer livestream.
The folks at EA Motive have outlined the structure the remake will be built upon. These include horror storytelling, immersion, and a lived-in world. The livestream not only touched on these aspects, but also showed off the technical prowess of those behind the remake.
The developers took us through the daunting task of recreating the immersive environments the original was known for. Adding further attention to detail such as aging the Ishimura by adding dirt and grime to the ship’s bulkheads and peppering rooms with horrific scenes that build upon the idea of visual story telling.
Visual effects have been wholly amplified thanks to today’s rendering technologies. Back in 2008 the original Dead Space was visually impressive for its time.
The game used atmosphere and intelligently placed lighting to immerse players in the horror world Visceral Games created. The dark and gloomy nature was also built out of necessity, however, considering the graphical power of older consoles. It did bode well for the developers and made for arguably one of the scariest games of all time.
These key aspects have been faithfully maintained. Adding interactive volumetric fog solutions, enhanced real-time lighting systems such as global illumination, and upgraded VFX to make pyrotechnics, smoke and debris look and feel as realistic as possible.
Of course, the protagonist and his main enemy, the Necromorphs, have also gotten a drastic visual upgrade. Isaac’s iconic ribbed suit was originally inspired by gothic architecture and the human anatomy.
The visual artist followed the same rules while overhauling the suit, further emphasizing the working-class mining aesthetic. Keeping in mind, much like Gordon Freeman, Clarke is just a simple employee not a gun-toting soldier of fortune. Necromorphs are even gorier than before as a new ‘peeling’ process has been developed. The Slasher type model was used as an example to showcase the anatomy and gruesome attention to detail used when removing limbs.
A snippet of gameplay is available below showing with all these effects and artistic directions working in tandem. Suffice to say it looks to be a visual nightmare, in a good way! EA also announced that fans would get a full reveal of the game later this year to coincide with Halloween.
