So I wrote a little about my thoughts on Dead Space 3 not long after its initial E3 reveal. At the time, I'd only seen about 5 minutes or so of gameplay, and had little information to go on. Well, today EA and Visceral have released a 20 minute gameplay trailer showcases a lot of what's new, and also what's old, with Dead Space 3 and I want to talk a little about what I saw. I'm going to embed the video below as well, so you can offer your own thoughts.
As I mentioned in my previous article, Dead Space 3 has kind of left me in two minds. I'm excited, there is no doubt, and I know right now that I will definitely be purchasing this game. However, I am also cautious. Change is not always a good thing, and it still remains to be seen whether the shift in focus will be effective or not.
So let's just get this out of the way from square one, Dead Space 3 is gorgeous. Visceral's proprietary engine has never looked better. Hell, the original Dead Space still looks better than most games these days, but it really shines in 3, with some mind blowing lighting and even more grotesque and imaginative character designs. It sounds awesome, too, familiar yet with some new elements, especially in the soundtrack. Isaac's voice actor still really delivers, further proving you can take a silent protagonist and give him a voice. I'm a little cautious about Carver at the moment, he seems to come off in the stereotypical overly macho, no-bullshit, aggressive Sergeant role, but we haven't seen much of him yet, so my opinion is reserved, for now.
The demo begins with Isaac waking up in a crashed ship on a frozen planet. Steve mentions that this is the second act, so it seems not all of the game will occur on this planet. Visceral has mentioned spaceship portions, like the original, so perhaps the first act occurs on the ship, explaining its current crashed state. Isaac is looking for Ellie, his partner and rescuer from the second game. Tau Volentis makes me hopeful. There is a great atmosphere to it, the snow can come down thick and heavy at times, obscuring the view and helping create a tense atmosphere. It's full of caves and abandoned mines, keeping the dark, claustrophobic feeling from the first. The demo showcases two new enemy types. A necromorph that splits in half when attacked, sporting three sharpened tentacles from it's now torso-less legs, and also the Unitologist human enemies, armed with a lot of similar weapons as yourself. This is where my concern arises. From the little shown, the shooting looks good. The controls are tight and responsive, and there's a lot of options outside of simply shooting them. You have Kineses, which you can use to throw back grenades, or Stasis to freeze. There's a cover system, by which I mean the good old magical chest high walls and inexplicably placed debris, but outside of being kind of jarring and out of place, the lack of sticky cover works in Dead Space 3's favour. As Steve says, the last thing you want to do is be stuck in cover when some necromorph is gouging your eyes out. However, the mix of viscious melee and shooting enemies reminds me of the first Uncharted, or even Far Cry, who both tried and massively failed at getting this mix right. Also new is what appears to be a new use for Kineses, a kind of Force Push ability. There's no mention of it, and it's only used a few times in the video so it's hard to see whether it's a secondary weapon fire or not, but it looks interesting a provides a nice failsafe for holding back the horde.
The real reason behind the demo, however, was to show off the new drop-in, drop-out co-op. I was worried about co-op, until I saw the words "drop-in, drop-out". That means no shitty partner AI, no requirement to have to play it with your friends. They have preserved the single player experience entirely, simply offering another approach, probably to boost sales for EA (though Visceral claims co-op was always planned, citing the infamous System Shock 2 which apparently is their main influence and also boasted potential co-op support). If you play the game alone, Carver seems to have very little to do with the story, only popping up once, briefly, off screen. Which could be a great thing if his character is as uninteresting as he seems. However, playing with a friend not only alters the gameplay, but changes cutscenes as well to feature your partner. For the most part, co-op seems to be divergent, there hasn't been any showings of the "two people required to solve this puzzle" or "defend partner as he does something slow and laborious", but it's still early.
The demo ends with an enormous boss, reminiscent of the Hive Mind from the first game, but with a far more viscous streak and some new tricks. The encounter ends with Isaac being swallowed, shown in impressive detail, and then an image of the final weak point int he creature's stomach.
So I'm left very hopeful, but still slightly cautious. I've been hurt by EA's meddling and money-grabbing before, as I'm sure many of you also have. Their ridiculous claims of having to sell at least 5 million games is troublesome, but if you ignore the great beast behind them, Visceral is saying a lot of promising things. And a lot of the new additions can be explained logically within the confines of the universe, which is good. Seriously, Isaac is no longer unprepared for these things. Like the player, he knows what they are and he knows how to fight them. He's clearly been training and it appears he is now working with people that know how to end it once and for all, so he's driven by a need for revenge, a need for closure. He's not lumbering around slowly anymore, he's trained with weapons because he needs an arsenal to face what is about to come. He can combat roll because slowly strafing around is not going to cut it against an army. So I'm popping the video right here, let me know what you guys think.
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