Dead Space 3 - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] fire up your planet crackers and load up your lying cutters because it's time for another cataclysmic limb shredding Mercure filled episode of what happened the show if you take a panicked sweaty glance over at your calendar you might notice it's still October so that's phase ah the kickoff to the men everyone hates us let's actually develop some cool games initiative that EA implemented in the mid to late 2000s one of the key studios who was at the center of this movement was Redwood Shores responsible for a number of well-loved double-oh-seven and Lord of the Rings titles like those that you see here eventually the team wanted to tackle something a bit darker that was out of their wheelhouse which at the time was the aforementioned movie licenses so they got to work on System Shock 3 now I didn't stutter dead space's initial pitch was simply horror in space and early talks were being had to make it a new entry into the light-hearted series about a mischievious AI who causes trouble hacker system shock was developed by Looking Glass and distributed by Origen a publisher whose parent company just happened to be Electronic Arts now while some may snidely chuckle the very idea of this when you break it down both franchises share some DNA a silent protagonist stranded in an isolated space-based location that's gone to hell a hideous menagerie of mutated Horrors to contend with and flipping a lot of switches Redwood Shores were prototyping a slow paced descent into madness methodical but with some spurts of action and really felt that they could do system shock justice this happened thus the team cleared their drawing board and started over again been wonít event production designer and deadspace recalled it was like everybody get out system shock to play it from start to finish and let's figure out what we're going to do then Resident Evil 4 came out and we were like oh oh no this is the [ __ ] knowing however that this new action focus would rub fans of system shock the wrong way as well as the complicated ownership of the franchise itself something that was an illegal limbo for years the team decided it was best to turn it into a brand new IP which as you can imagine is a hard sell at Electronic Arts it was at a time at EA when there was no appetite for original IP it seemed like everybody was making a sequel except for us once people saw that it was a real thing we understood it much easier than if you were to go oh I want to make this totally scary ass thing to which they'd look at their portfolio and say nope scary ass thing is not in our language with the smash obsessive resin Evil 4 coupled with the building hype for re 5 Electronic Arts decided to throw their marking muscle at dead space and upon its positive critical reception rebranded Redwood Shores as visceral games giving them a bit more autonomy in creating riskier projects however there was one aspect of dead space that was left on the cutting room floor a back of the box feature that would go on to be an a sticking point between developer and publisher from then on out this feature was full two-player co-op and was something visceral experimented with and even got a work in pretty well in later builds of the original dead space unfortunately this technical breakthrough came far too late into the project as most of mechanics and level design had already been finalized which of course didn't mesh very well with two players most areas were too cramped for two thick-ass Isaacs to even move around in as everything had been designed with single-player in mind ammo drops weapons enemy HP there was just too much that would need to be rejiggered for co-op to even work so while they learned a great deal from the tests the idea was promptly scrapped dead space went on to sell roughly two million copies in its lifetime a good start to any franchise but far behind what ei deemed to be a rollicking success therefore for 2011 sequel Dead Space 2 a total shift occurred to appeal to the fans of the blockbuster action of the current Resident Evil games Isaac who kept his mouth firmly shut in the first game was now like an actual man guy Jesus draws you okay there are huge bombastic set pieces that would make even Michael Bay blush and overall the game had a slightly faster tighter pace while still retaining lots of creepy moments and a sense of impending dread along with this though there was pressure from marketing to implement some type of online functionality because in 2011 if your game didn't I don't know I guess EA would just shut you down making the best of an unidentified 'uncle and thus so I'm working on a separate multiplayer deathmatch mode that I I forgot even existed until this very sentence as expected to the majority of critics and fans Dead Space 2 multiplayer was just simply ignored many citing that the mode just wasn't suited for the franchise Ben wanted agreed I personally don't believe it added a lot of value to the product even though it was fun to play as a diversion I don't think it's why people even bought it fortunately people did buy Dead Space 2 two times more than the first game all told four million copies were shifted but with the game's increased developmental budget plus marketing still wasn't good enough for EA then president of EA labels Frank Gibeau now CEO Zynga if you remember them cut a shitty promo on dead space too shortly after it launched in general we're thinking about how we make this a more broadly appealing franchise because ultimately you need to get to audience sizes of around five million to really continue to invest in an IP like dead space anything less than that and it becomes quite difficult financially given how expensive it is to make games and market them so despite selling more increase in its overall reviews being embraced by fans and critics will resulted from all this well that would be dead space 3 the final space nail in the space coffin of dead space I don't think that's a good idea now most of us know about the mistake I mean the changes no I mean the mistakes that ds3 made and I'm not skipping those don't worry we'll get there what I want to start with however is the more fascinating part of the story what Dead Space 3 was going to be Ben wanna in an interview with Eurogamer opened up about what the original vision was for Isaac's winter getaway while some of those aspects would be retained for the final game a whole host of others went through what some would call EAF ocation firstly it would have been a harrowing tale of survival and desperation and like the retail game would have primarily taken place on the planet of tau volantis with Isaac and a group of characters exploring the frozen landscape eventually each one would get picked off either by the encroaching Necromorph accord or more intriguingly and unseen assailant which of course increased the tension and paranoia within the group sound familiar now co-op wasn't even a consideration in this early concept in phase but that would soon change Ben wonít who had been promoted to creative director on dead space 3 stated that this original direction was going to be deeper darker and deadlier which was marketing speak for the more personal smaller and slower paced foundation had been laid down by the first game this pivot and direction was due to two main reasons after the faster pace and bigger scope of ds2 slowing it down and narrowing the focus would be the smarter route than trying to top what they had already done the other reason was linked to the first reason because Electronic Arts slashed their budget like considerably so yeah they didn't really even have a choice the idea of that unseen assailant was also taking shape with an entity known internally as shadow Isaac being the culprit this is basically going to be a tormentor who would be rate and belittled vanilla Isaac during the game similar to Nichole Indies shado Isaac was being reported on by several news outlets at the time was never officially confirmed which in the end was for the best because the whole thing was cut of course but by who while visceral were sussing out all these details the same thing that happened with the first two dead space's occurred once again another box need to be ticked to add value to the product after the let's be polite here tepid reaction to the dishwater death match of the last game Cobb was once again brought up as the big new feature now since visceral had conducted those early tests they were able to build ds3 around it especially since it was early enough in the design process wanted said creating games for EA around this time rolled around making a lot of compromises and that you can't just say no we don't want to so we're not going to put in any multiplayer co-op if you do this you risk your game getting canceled in this same spirit of compromise however official felt they could take the shadow eyes a concept and integrate it into the co-op in a novel way meanie Bo beanie Isaac would have had his face covered at all times not too difficult considering this is dead space and his identity would remain vague throughout the duration of the game this would then result in a big twist reveal showing that liquid Isaac ie the second player was a fabrication of solid Isaac's fractured psyche so Fight Club but in space this focus on degrading mental health and dementia however it was frowned upon by the marketing department of Electronic Arts as it was deemed as not very marketable so shadow Isaac was changed to the much more marketable sergeant Carver yeah Carver so the last vestige of dead space 3 doing anything interesting or risky was dashed with only one shred of their original idea remaining now due to how the story played out in many instances Carver would just disappear and reappear at random for absolutely no reason this would have been explained away much better with the imaginary nature of violent Isaac but these were the cards that visceral were dealt now that shred of their original idea well that wound up be the concept but both players seen cutscenes and other events play out in different ways having them question what was really real been wonít laments their inability to flesh this out more as they simply didn't have enough time to expand upon it one thing they were able to expand upon however Ward the environments themselves which depending on who you ask wasn't necessarily a good thing dead space 1 & 2 were lauded for having very detailed dense environments that were meticulously designed dead space 3 though environments were constructed to be bigger simpler and emptier to accommodate the space that two players would occupy with a focus on less objects and labyrinth like layouts to mitigate getting stuck now this can be seen as a step back because to create a sense of dread and tension environmental details are really important but in an action game not so much and by this point visceral were very aware that dead space was rapidly Necromorph een into an action game the human element was then introduced into the campaign a gun-wielding force that were designed to drain players of their resources as cover based shooting usually tends to do even so with two players teaming up these clashes further mixed with the swarms of necros still couldn't provide a suitable challenge then one it admits that most players needs to turn the game up to max difficulty so as not to breeze through it but they didn't have the time to properly balance the minutiae of ammo and weapons between Isaac and and what's-his-face over there worst yet was the crafting system which basically broke the game in a completely different way in the same Eurogamer interview wanted again explains the original purpose of the crafting system ie picking up bits and garbage and then bolt on to each other to fabricate some type of Borderlands monstrosity was simply meant to get across Isaac's engineering background and give fans slightly more creativity however it wound up providing maybe too much creativity giving birth to weapons with very few weaknesses like fast firing acid tipped explosive saw blades on the life this then led to an over-reliance on the same powerful weapons to get through most situations and coupled with the coop made Dead Space 3 a survival horror game contain very [ __ ] and no real threat to anyone survival so with all that good news out of the way microtransactions the idea of charging players real money to craft faster and better was an idea from EA higher-ups and while visceral were against it eventually the hammer came down and it was suddenly in the game this is one of the most common complaints fans and critics had about ds3 and all it wasn't integral to beating or enjoying the game was one of the earlier examples of the practice being introduced into a big console franchise thus plenty of vitriol was thrown its way it is what it is and what it is was not a very good idea I don't think that's a good idea now Steve Papoutsis a head guy admissible probably tried his best to mediate between EA and his dev team that obviously was losing a lot of these battles nothing however would lose more than the infamous early gameplay showcase of dead space 3 that was released by EA and the run-up to launch this thing I just okay this isn't exactly fair to the guy Steve was at the head of the company not a writer so his promo smacks of a marketing loser thinking they know what fans wanted to hear I'm not even gonna explain it more than that we roll the clip pay attention to what's going on here you're gonna get to see necros getting pulped into this giant drill which is awesome and we really spent a lot of time making sure the pulping was super awesome because I like saying the word pulping and it's super awesome to see bits and body parts go flying and it's just it's freaking cool so we did it and it's awesome this did not help thus when Dead Space 3 released with a calve acade of new but not welcomed gameplay additions the reviews were a step down from the previous entries this also doomed visceral from a variety of stand points as their output significantly dropped after ds3 before having their big Star Wars game cancelled along with their entire studios cancellation in 2017 Ben wonít has since moved on to sledgehammer games and is currently working on an unannounced project he laments visceral never got to flesh out the ideas they had for a theoretical dead space for which would have taken another direction altogether the notion was you are trying to survive day to day against infested ships searching for a glimmer of life scavenging supplies to keep your own little ship going trying to find survivors the flotilla section and dead space 3 hinted at what nonlinear gameplay could be and I would have loved to have gone a lot deeper into that imagine an entire roster of ship types each with unique purposes floor plans and gameplay our original prototypes for the Dead Space 3 flotilla had some pretty wild setups that I wish we had been able to use this could have been the shake of the franchise needed and certainly would have been a better send-off to what dead space 3 wound up being ante is credit you won't hear me say that often they tried their damnedest to make dead space a thin comic books animated movies spin-off games novels action figures even an attempt at a motion picture they put serious Bank behind this franchise but listen unless your Resident Evil the king and the survival horror hill so you're not advisable to pour so much money into your blossoming horror franchise so early in the first place as it's a risky venture as long as you have a team with a sincere passion for horror put out a game of saw mechanics and an interesting premise well sometimes that's all people really want while I love Dead Space 2 as much as the next guy it didn't mean massive battles with football-field-sized bosses it didn't need bombastic action set-pieces and tons of characters it just needed to be horror in space and needed to be budgeted appropriately it's incredibly hard to just take any game and turn it into a triple a blockbuster immediately Resident Evil looked like this when it first started and it looked like that more or less until the fourth or fifth game but EA couldn't be bothered to grow the franchise slowly over the course of like 10 years nah man so this role is dead the creative heads of the franchise have moved on to different companies and he has shown less than zero interest in reinvigorating dead space in any shape way or form so unfortunately stay where it is or Benina in the cold lonely void of space dead so if you know of any other tragically tarnished tales of Titanic trouble in the world of video games movies or a cetera to a zero-g jump over to the flophouse VIP patron to officially cast your vote on next subject see you next time fellow unit ologists and praise be to the marker [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 702,214

Rating: 4.9186196 out of 5

Keywords: Dead Space 3, Wha Happun, Video Game Disasters, Video Game Documentaries, Survival Horror Games, Dead Space, Electronic Arts, Matt McMuscles, Resident Evil 4

Id: XVJWYmfR8kU

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 23 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Iskral]

That bit about people using the gun crafting system to make OP weapons with no downsides that were useful for every situation reminds me of something Soren Johnson (the fellow who wrote the AI for Civilization III and IV) said that all developers should keep in mind:

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."

I also want to mention the rumor that the early in DS3's development it was intended that Ellie Langford from DS2 would be the co-op character. However, making Ellie a playable character would require more motion-capture, new animations, new costumes to be modeled, so they eventually created Sgt. Carver who could just be a copy-paste of Issac's preexisting data. As for Ellie, all she got was a dead-man-walking new boyfriend and a tighter shirt.

[u/PR0MAN1]

Man, a co-op horror where different players saw different things is such a strong idea. Why'd EA have to be ahead of the curve with microtransactions and bullshit DLC.

[u/fighunter]

EA happened.

[u/ContraryPython]

Still pissed off Visceral and DS were killed

[u/Munchylad_the_Grand]

What happened to dead space has always pissed me off. Dead space was one of those titles that I really got sucked into. I was never a big fan of similar things to dead space like Alien or Resident Evil. But Dead Space really hit me and I enjoyed every second of it.

I fell in love with the first 2 games, even found myself enjoying 3, the spin offs, and even that animated movie. So seeing that Dead Space could have been a continuous IP really excited me.

Now it's fucking gone because of EA's bullshit and I might never see Dead Space get the attention and continuation it deserves.

Fuck EA

[u/NameTakenThisOne]

Might as well mention this too the ai in 3 is horrible something about adding a second player screws with it, it's easiest to see with the raptor enemies that that go from menacing and conniving in 2 to brain dead in 3

[u/Ghost5410]

Dead Space 3 is fine but ruined by corporate interference by adding microtransactions and I’m not even going to mention the DLC because it’s so garbage, especially the ending.

Edit: Fuck it, DLC ending nullifies the entire point of DS3.

[u/The_Draigg]

What Dead Space 3? The series ended after Dead Space 2. Everyone knows this.

[u/stovetopism]

This just makes me sad