Summary
Debuting back in 2008, theDead Spaceseries hasn’t had the best luck. Drawing heavy inspiration fromResident Evil 4, the very firstDead Spacegame earned critical acclaim across the board, managing to push the survival horror genre in bold new directions, for a brand new era of gaming. Just a few years later,Dead Space 2would receive another incredibly warm reception from both fans and critics alike, but that’s when the series took a turn for the worse.
In 2013,Dead Space 3hit store shelves, disappointing just about everyone who laid hands on it. A co-op action-horror game,Dead Space 3placed its ambitions in all the wrong places, and the franchise suffered for it. After a decade-long hibernation,theDead Spacefranchisereturned stronger than ever with last year’sDead Space Remake, and naturally, many fans expected this to just be the start of an EA Motive-ledDead Spaceresurgence. But according to recent reports,Dead Spacemight be doomed once more, though a different franchise could end up benefiting from its misfortune.
Currently sitting at an impressive 89 on Metacritic for its PS5 and Xbox Series X versions,theDead Space Remakewas widely considered to be a critical success upon its launch at the start of last year. With innovative new systems that really ramped up the game’s intense horror atmosphere, some reworked story elements, modernized gameplay features, and no shortage of quality-of-life improvements, theDead Space Remakeoffered everything that fans could want and more, but according to some recent reports, it didn’t quite give everything that EA wanted from it.
About a week ago, renowned industry insider Jeff Grubb took to his podcast Game Mess Mornings to briefly discuss aDead Space 2remakethat was apparently canceled during its concept phase due to the lower sales of the firstDead Spaceremake. This report started circulating around the usual outlets, so much so that EA eventually released a statement simply saying that Grubb’s report had “no validity.”
Grubb then shot back at this, and several other well-known industry voices came out of the woodwork to comment on the exchange, such as Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. Schreier stated that his own sources mentioned thata newDead Spaceentrywas in the concept phase at EA Motive after the first remake’s release, but these concepts apparently never made it too far. Regardless of the true specifics of the event, it seems as though theDead Spacefranchise is on ice once again, and though this is upsetting for many fans, the news might have a silver lining.
EA Motive Can Now Focus Its Efforts on Iron Man
With anotherDead Spaceapparently no longer on the cards, EA Motive can now shift all of its focus over to the upcoming Iron Man game. Announced back in September 2022,EA Motive’s Iron Man gamehas a lot of pressure on its shoulders, especially coming after the release of the acclaimedMarvel’s Spider-Man 2. Motive is going to need all hands on deck to really knock Iron Man out of the park, and withDead Spacegone, that opportunity is now there.
But there’s one thing that’s still stopping EA Motive from focusing solely on Iron Man. It’s recently been announced thatEA Motive is working on the nextBattlefieldgame, alongside the other slew of EA studios working on the juggernaut project. Thankfully, Motive’s general manager, Patrick Klaus, has been very upfront about the team’s goals, publicly stating that “The team made excellent progress this year, hitting a major internal milestone and laying a robust foundation for the journey ahead. Iron Man is an important priority for Motive, and I’m very proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far.” So while Iron Man might not be Motive’s only focus, it sounds like it’s still the studio’s main priority.
Dead Space (2023)
WHERE TO PLAY
The sci-fi survival-horror classic Dead Space™ returns, completely rebuilt from the ground up to offer a deeper, more immersive experience. This remake brings jaw-dropping visual fidelity, suspenseful atmospheric audio, and improvements to gameplay while staying faithful to the original game’s thrilling vision.Isaac Clarke is an everyman engineer on a mission to repair a vast mining ship, the USG Ishimura, only to discover something has gone horribly wrong. The ship’s crew has been slaughtered and Isaac’s beloved partner, Nicole, is lost somewhere on board.Now alone and armed with only his engineering tools and skills, Isaac races to find Nicole as the nightmarish mystery of what happened aboard the Ishimura unravels around him. Trapped with hostile creatures called Necromorphs, Isaac faces a battle for survival, not only against the escalating terrors of the ship but against his own crumbling sanity.
