The work of designer Ben Wanat, these slobbering monsters were influenced by John Carpenter’s The Thing and the films of David Cronenberg – pieces of their former selves jut out at unnatural angles, reminding the player of their origin. It turns out these horrible enemies are not random aliens but the former crew of the massive mining ship, turned into phantasmagoric Necromorphs. ‘Most of the team were big horror fans’ … Dead Space producer Chuck Beaver. This is a working ship full of mechanical items that all have practical uses in its mining activities like the Nostromo from 1979’s Alien, everything is hard-edged and robust, built for the rigours of deep-space quarrying. “We were looking at architectural styles that the player would accept – our thinking was that you have to believe in something to be properly scared,” says Milham. Says Milham: “Our artistic pillars, our colour palette, our designs – everything was looking towards the idea that when you looked at any screenshot, you’d know it’s a horror game.” Another design decision was making sure that the USG Ishimura was no sleek, gleaming spaceship. By May 2007, Electronic Arts finally green-lit the project. “Resi 4 in space: that’s a very quick and powerful Hollywood-style pitch,” laughs Milham.īeginning in January 2006, Redwood Shores concentrated on setting its game apart from other contemporary sci-fi shooters such as Halo and Gears. As with Epic’s Gears of War series (and many others), the Dead Space team adopted Resident Evil 4’s over-the-shoulder camera angle and focused, story-driven action. Capcom’s fourth entry in its phenomenally successful survival horror franchise redefined third-person video games. A pure horror game set in space became the concept, including a brief plan to set the game inside a prison world (a plot that would resurface in last year’s The Callisto Protocol).īut then came Resident Evil 4. “Most of the team were big horror fans,” remembers senior producer, Chuck Beaver key influences were Alien and Event Horizon. Photograph: Greg Grusby/EAĪ huge horror fan, Schofield wanted a visceral, terror-stricken game that tested the resolve of players. ‘The idea was that when you looked at any screenshot, you’d know it’s a horror game’ … Dead Space Dead art director Ian Milham. It’s an experience that few players forget, and is being discovered by new fans this year thanks to Motive’s remake – but it almost didn’t get made. Its enemies, the zombie-like Necromorphs, are hideously metamorphosed humans, perverted by the machinations of the Marker, a strange alien artefact that has engendered a worryingly familiar religion known as Unitology. Suddenly, the lights go out, and shadowy monstrosities appear from the walls, spearing two of the team as Clarke watches helplessly before they turn on him, chasing him unarmed into the bowels of the Ishimura, where even more horrors await.įifteen years, two sequels and countless books, comics and spin-offs later, and Dead Space has become synonymous with video game sci-fi horror. It’s one of the more memorable intros in video game history: as part of a five-person team sent to investigate a communications blackout aboard the mining ship USG Ishimura, engineer Isaac Clarke boots up the vessel’s computer while his colleagues pace around nervously.
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