Dead Space Remake

Mostly a Model for Remakes

It’s no secret that I am not overly fond of remakes in recent years. Back in the GameCube era, we got the brilliant Resident Evil Remake, a game that kept the core of the original, but added new content that expanded the story, and updated the graphics to take full advantage of the GameCube hardware. It was absolutely flawless in execution. It showed what could really be done with remakes and opened up the market to a flood of remakes and remasters to mixed success. Some, like Resident Evil 2, were massive successes, staying mostly true to the original, but completely overhauling the graphics and gameplay to put a modern spin on it. And it worked. But then there’s Final Fantasy VII Remake, which is a grotesque mockery of the original story, and Resident Evil 3 Remake which is basically the Reader’s Digest version of the original game, itself already a little too short. So when they announced a Dead Space Remake, I was hesitant. How would this go? Would it update the original, while remaining true to the story? Or would we lose content like RE3? Or worse, would it go completely off the rails like REVII R?

   With some hesitation, I picked this one up and I have great news. For the most part, this game falls into the how to do a remake right category. The graphics are significantly enhanced over the original, though the human faces look a little PS4/XBONE, and that is a little disappointing, but the lighting in this remake… I can’t speak highly enough of the lighting in this game. They put a great deal of emphasis on creating the best possible lighting in the game and with phenomenal success. The ship is very dark, but not so dark as to have you wandering blindly, there’s still enough light to see, and there’s often a mist or a dust effect that deals with the lighting in the most realistic way I have seen in a long time. Even with Raytracing off, the lighting reflects off metal surfaces in very realistic ways. It all just comes together flawlessly in a way that the original could never have done.

   The Gameplay is very similar. It’s an over-the-shoulder third-person shooter and survival horror game with a novel hook. You can’t just kill the zombie-like Necromorphs, you must use your weapon to dismember them, or burn them to death. They also seem to randomly spawn right behind you. They seldom attack one at a time, and they usually get you exactly when you expect them to, and hilariously, they got the jump scare out of me countless times despite my knowledge of the ambiance, the increased tension in the music, etc. that something was going to happen because they always seemed to manage to appear right behind me. My wife got several laughs out of my plight.

   One enhancement to the experience is the way the levels now interconnect thanks to the improved tram system. Your lead character, Isaac Clarke, is able to fix the tram much earlier in this version opening the game up to exploration, and even a few side quests, and giving the spaceship, the Ishimura, a Metroidvania feel to it. The story also flows much better, but overall remains faithful to the original without significant deviations. You are part of a repair crew deployed to help the struggling Ishimura. Isaac is eager to reconnect with his girlfriend, Doctor Nicole Brennan. However, when you arrive, the ship is a derelict, and Isaac and his crew soon find themselves under siege by the monsters that have infested the mining ship. Their objective then becomes clear, make what repairs are necessary to locate the survivors and get the hell off the ship. The story is sort of a fusion of Aliens with Event Horizon, it involves a creepy religious cult called the Unitologists, who have found an alien relic called the marker which drives people to madness and seemingly resurrects the dead, but as the monstrous Necromorphs. Isaac then has to dig into the objectives of the cult, while trying to repair the ship, help the survivors, and keep his own sanity intact as well. It’s a bit predictable, but if you enjoyed Event Horizons (and I did) you’re going to love this remake, especially as it is mostly faithful to the original. If, however, you’re sensitive to cringe…

   Nicole’s character model has been updated, of course, she has. They all have. That’s half the fun of a remake. But there is some controversy here. In the original, Nicole appeared to be in her late twenties, when her character was in her late thirties or even early forties. Isaac is also in his forties and looked in his thirties back then. I can understand the desire to correct an error from the original game. Nicole’s model then was too young. But in the remake, while Isaac now looks like he’s the correct age, in his forties, Nicole now looks at least 65 and pushing 70. The developers say they used the voice actors as models this time around, which is awesome, but the voice actor, Tonya Clark, is nowhere near that old in real life, and the developer spent a great deal of time making Isaac super handsome while aging up Nicole well beyond what her character or voice actress is. Nicole does not look flattering at all. One has to wonder what the motive behind this decision was, especially since Tonya Clark is actually a very beautiful woman in real life. I don’t believe the decision was particularly fair to her, especially since the character Kendra Daniels looks good and does an excellent job representing voice actor and model, Bridgett Kali Canales.

   Speaking of Kendra Daniels, she has a throwaway mention that she doesn’t like listening to her girlfriend… though it’s not clear if by girlfriend she means bestie, as many women in my circle will use that term meaning best friend… or… in this context should we assume changes were made to the character to accommodate the mythical unicorn known as “modern audiences”? Hard to say. It is just a throwaway line that has absolutely no bearing on her character, so why make the change then? And if it wasn’t meant to be interpreted as a change, why include it at all?

   And speaking of changes… the bathrooms are now all unisex… again, it has no visible bearing on the narrative, they’re clearly just trying to appease a very small handful of shrill voices on the far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far left side of Twitter. An angry relentless mob of bullies who would be best ignored, not catered to.

  But the most obnoxious change is actually a piece of graffiti. In the original game, there is graffiti that reads, “f--k this ship!” Make sense, people are going nuts and killing each other, monsters are showing up, and everything is going to hell. Someone is bound to write that on the walls. But in the remake this understandable sentiment is expanded upon to read, “f--k this ship, it’s a shitty capitalist organization.” No normal person even talks like this, let alone would take the time to write it while fleeing for their lives from flesh-eating monsters. The type of hysterical Gender Studies Major that would write this wouldn’t work in an industry like the Ishimura does… because it actually takes work, something Western Radical Leftists find offensive. It’s killing the planet, don’t you know? It cuts against my suspension of disbelief to see something so radically out of place like that in a game and setting such as this. But more obnoxious is the point that, once again, here is a multi-billion dollar corporation, Electronic Arts, trying to use the Free Market to sell us communism. Normally I refuse to pay for Commie propaganda. Capitalists who sell communism are hypocrites who should be forced to live by their own standards. Give it away for free or shut the f--k up, EA. (Double goes for you, Disney.) If you’re selling a product, at all, you lose the privilege of being taken seriously if you advocate against Free Markets, Capitalism, or even America or the West in general. Stop pretending that Twitter has any resemblance to reality and start paying attention to your actual customers or watch your sales suffer.

   And speaking of sales, they haven’t been great for this remake. Official figures have been hard to come by, but the rumor is that it sold around 2 million copies, when they were expecting six million in sales. Moreover, while it debuted at the # 2 spot of the NPD charts in January, newer sales charts show the game was unable to maintain that position, and in some regards, that’s sad, because for the most part, this is exactly what a remake should be. It is largely faithful to the original, and where deviations do occur, it’s usually to expand on or clarify the story. However, the developer’s desperate desire to connect with a “modern audience” that DOES NOT EXIST caused them to include just enough cringe to be off-putting for the true mainstream, and it isn’t blinking-and-you’ll-miss-it: developers really need to knock this crap off, because go Woke go Broke isn’t so much a slogan as it is a general statement of reality.

   That said, while these aren’t exactly blink-and-you-’ll-miss-it changes, the overall production is excellent, though if you feel as strongly as I do about not paying for commie propaganda, maybe get this one out of a bargain bin to hammer home the point… we’re the actual audience, not Twitter, and we will not pay for communist propaganda. At least not full price. You can give it away for free… or shut up and entertain us. I suspect that had this cringe not come to the attention of the gaming community, they very likely would have easily hit that 6 million units sold and that they did as well as they did because they kept it under wraps until the game launched. Should they remake part 2, they would be well advised not to continue to try to pander to the fringe on Twitter, because that pandering is overshadowing what is otherwise a shining example of how to do a remake right.

4/5