The 'Dead Space' Remake Doubles Down on the Gross-Out Horror Takeover

For a certain generation of gamers, 2008’s Dead Space was an unforgettable experience, a once-played, never-shaken onslaught of cosmic dread, aural torment, and pixelated viscera. Easily one of the most frightening video games ever made, Electronic Arts’ space-survival-horror title built upon the successes of Resident Evil and Silent Hill to deliver an ordeal that dirtied the player’s soul just as much as it rattled their nervous system. The game won over a dozen industry awards and firmly established a Pavlovian fear-response in gamers upon hearing the words “crew deck,” “lurker,” or “drag tentacle.”

Fifteen years have passed since we first accompanied the beleaguered engineer, Isaac Clarke, on his torturous journey through the mining vessel USG Ishimura. After all that time, despite a series of lesser sequels and spinoffs—not to mention the higher standards set by newer consoles—the reputation of the original Dead Space remains undiminished.

However, in an era when landmark horror titles, like Resident Evil and The Last of Us, are frequently given a next-gen polish, Dead Space always seemed especially deserving of an upgrade. In July 2021, fans were thrilled to hear that EA was planning a full remake, to be developed by Motive Studio. Initially slated for release in fall of 2022, the game has now finally arrived on PS5 and Xbox X/S. And this is no mere remaster, repackaged with a patina of improvement. As the game’s writer, Jo Berry, explained to me: “We’ve literally remade everything, all the textures, all the geometry, all the animations. Everything.”

It seems a weirdly appropriate moment to hit refresh on Dead Space. Violent horror is having a moment across a whole slew of visual media—and the audience’s appetite for blood has been freshly awoken. Horror movies are reveling in extravagant, hyperbolic carnage, with underground hits such as Terrifier 2 (2022) and Taiwanese gore-carnival The Sadness (2021) sating a bloodlust we haven’t seen since the torture-porn days of the early 2000s. Likewise, televisual horror—emboldened by the looser regulations and deep pockets of the major streaming services—is going for our collective throats. Where Game of Thrones, Hannibal and The Walking Dead led, HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us follows. The Last of Us is an especially interesting example in this context. We never thought we would get a prestige TV show out of a prestige game, but here it is. Considering the genetic link between that fungoid-zombie apocalypse and Dead Space’s interstellar grand-guignol, is it too much to anticipate that we’ll soon see Isaac Clark played by another almost-A-list actor with the right air of lovelorn worry and grunting competence?

Neither cinema, nor TV could ever match the game for scares though. There is something about controlling Isaac on his dark pilgrimage that elevates things to a higher pitch of whimpering hysteria. That’s why, even as a devotee of the original, I find the idea of a root-and-branch, current-gen remake an exciting yet unnerving prospect. Dead Space remains the only horror game I ever completed, a feat managed by insisting that my housemate sit in the same room with me when I was playing. Now, faced with the graphical capabilities of my PS5, and the fact that my wife is unlikely to offer the same moral support, the game may be too much to handle.

Few games exploit visual detail to such terrifying effect. The Ishimura’s interior is a series of harsh metallic tunnels and shadow-strewn decks. It’s a setting with clear antecedents in classic horror movies about blue-collar space-farers, most obviously Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon (1997). Joel MacMillan, Motive’s Realisation Director, enthuses about how new technology has allowed the team to elevate this most distressing of workplaces to new atmospheric heights. According to him, it's all about “really pushing each of the environments onboard the ship in terms of lighting and texture and audio.” There is also a huge difference in what Motive is calling the "Interconnected Ishimura." Wherea, fans of the original will remember the tram system that book-ended each chapter of the game (and provided a momentary respite before forging on into the next), 2023’s Ishimura is one big, seamless environment, with no load screens—and no sanctuary.

Sanctuary from what, the unwary first-timer may ask? Cue evil laugh. Just as in the movies mentioned above, Dead Space's utilitarian setting is at odds with the extravagant horrors it contains.

Whilst searching the Ishimura for his missing girlfriend, Isaac encounters the Necromorphs—hideous creatures constructed from the remnants of human corpses. They possess something of the messiness of Resident Evil’s zombies, augmented with the carefully considered life cycle of Alien’s Xenomorphs and the organic excesses of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). However, when you tilt Isaac’s flashlight into the corner of a room, only to find a Lurker crawling furtively toward you along the wall, all comparisons are forgotten. Of all video game monsters, perhaps only Silent Hill’s Pyramid Head has penetrated popular culture more deeply—and his evil geometry has not influenced subsequent creature design to anywhere near the same degree. For example, I strongly doubt we would have The Last Of Us’ fungus-infested Clickers where it not for Ben Wanat’s original Necromorph design.

There are several types of Necromorph, from the hulking, unrelenting Brute, to the scorpion-like Leaper, or the aforementioned Lurker—a truly horrific assemblage of dead infants and lab-grown organs. Nasty as each monster is, they share a lingering humanity that can still be glimpsed within the folds of flesh and claw: an anguished face here, a distorted limb there. Now, through the crystal precision of the PS5, those traces become even more horrifying. Plus… and it’s a testament to the extremity of the game that I’m about to write these words… the new "dismemberment and peeling" feature ups the ante when it comes to combat. Whereas the original game allowed players to take Necromorphs apart a limb at a time, the remake pushes that envelope. As MacMillan explains, with relish, “Rather than cut off a limb with a couple of blasts, we’re now able to peel the skin and the muscle and the sinew off that limb. To see the bone and slice it.” Lovely!

Dead Space masterfully exploits the startle-reflex with a truly sadistic array of jump scares. But it also embeds these moments in a narrative laced with cosmic menace and moments of morale-sapping depravity. And I mean that in a good way. The reason I kept playing the original game—long after I exceeded my comfort levels and developed a nervousness about real-life corridors—is because of the rich narrative that supports the gore. It would be unfair to spoil the outcome of Isaac’s search for Nicole, or the layers of lore that are revealed through audio logs and scrawled graffiti, but Dead Space’s story is far more sophisticated and emotionally fraught than the genre would suggest. The panicked accounts of the Ishimura’s crew are as touchingly human as the wider lore is alien. It makes for a sci-fi horror story to rival anything that cinema or fiction has dreamed up since. The original Alien may be a major influence on the game, but Ridley Scott’s belated attempts to expand his universe, in Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), are no match for Dead Space’s search for the origins of life in a cruel universe.

A press release from EA mentions that new game features an “expanded and enriched narrative.” According to the writer, Jo Berry, this means, “looking at the story with an entire franchise’s worth of hindsight. We have so much lore available that, when we go back to look at the original game we can ask, knowing what we know now, how can we best tell this story?”

One example comes early in the game. When Isaac first arrives on the Ishimura he is accompanied by two crew members, Chen and Johnstone. In the original they die almost immediately, in the very first Necromorph encounter. With the opportunity of a do-over, Berry saw the scope to “do a little more with these characters. They are Isaacs friends, people he knew and traveled with. That has a ripple effect. It can affect Isaac and, to some small extent, everything that happens.”

This leaves only the big question. Is this version of the game scarier? Berry and MacMillan seem loath to give a definitive yes. After all, there are plenty of gamers who adore the original so much, as well as an online culture that is hostile to remakes because of a seeming unoriginality in mainstream release. Motive does, however, refer to a new feature called the Intensity Director. This is a system that tracks the player’s play-style and dynamically spawns content for that player, based on an evaluation of how they navigate the game. According to MacMillan, the feature means “you will always feel that there is a presence around you. You are never going to feel a sense of safety.”

I’m still in the earliest stages of the Dead Space 2023, so it’s hard to say whether or not the game has sprung this new trap on me yet. But I certainly don’t feel safe. Having endured the first few Necromorph encounters, in glorious, fleshy HD, I’m desperately trying to summon a fifteen-year-old memory of what’s down that next damn corridor! If the monsters start spawning in unique ways, turning this into my own bespoke exploration of hell, I may have to insist my wife stays on this couch whilst I play.