Dead Space 3 is out in Australia this Thursday.
To tide you over, a few weeks ago, we had a chat with producer John Colhoun about a frightening action game that’s creating its own genre.
Here’s what he had to say.
MMGN: There’s been a lot of talk about Dead Space 3 as a horror game. What about as an action game? What’s been refined?
John Colhoun, Dead Space 3 Producer: Dead Space has never had a cover system before, first of all, so simply by having the ability to crouch and take cover, we’ve done a lot to improve Dead Space 3 on its predecessor. A lot of people were worried after [Dead Space] 2 that it means we’re turning combat into an action game trope, but that’s not true. Primarily because we have occasional fights against human enemies who are very tactical. They can do things like take cover and use tactics to fight Isaac.
Players kept saying the same thing: ‘I feel like I’m at a disadvantage because the guys that I’m fighting can do things that I can’t’. So we added these abilities to the game to level the playing field. Now Isaac can crouch, we have an intelligent cover system -- which in a in a perfect world nobody would be able to notice.
How would you say those elements influence the difficulty?
Quicktime events: do them right, keep them scarce and the players will absolutely love them.
They actually haven’t changed the difficulty at all. They were really designed to be used against human enemies, and the human enemy count compared to Necromorphs is about 1:10.
Really, the game is about fighting Necromorphs. Taking cover is not a tactic I would recommend against something like the slasher or the waster or the snow beast. For those kind of guys, it’s classic Dead Space: know your enemy, aim for the limbs, bring the right tool for the job.
It hasn’t really changed the difficulty of the game at all.
Can I ask what your thoughts are on quicktime events in games generally?
I think, if they’re done right they can add a pretty cinematic flair to the game. Now, doing it right is the tricky part! There’s also the question of ‘how much is too much?’ So Dead Space 3 doesn’t feature very many quicktime events. In fact, I can probably count them on one or two hands.
We do have one in our demo, so a lot of people are saying ‘oh my god, it’s going to be like so many other games coming out now with quicktime events all the time.’ That’s not true. We’ve only really put them in where we felt we wanted that moment to occur and we could develop it in a way that made sense with our controls.
Quicktime events: do them right, keep them scarce and the players will absolutely love them.
Do you think it was a mistake to have one in the demo if they’re so infrequent?
No, I don’t think it was a mistake. People play the demo and they’re only seeing a small slice of the total game. The demo was designed to basically give you a taste of everything Dead Space 3 has to offer.
But that demo actually isn’t a level from the game. It’s made up from different areas that are kind of pieced and stitched together into one short 20 minute chunk of gameplay. That includes quicktime events. It doesn’t mean the entire game is made up of that, just like it isn’t strictly made up of high intensity action moments.
We have extremely long portions of the game where the intensity really drops down, you don’t fight any enemies, but you’re hearing creepy audio. These are things you can’t really show in a demo. When people play the final product I think they’ll see that we’ve maintained the pacing and the Dead Space DNA, if you will, of the previous games.
What sort of experience are you hoping players will have with the co-op mode?
Having very few resources is a survival horror trope, but we don’t try to fit into any one genre. We just want to be the Dead Space genre.
We’re hoping that they will have a great experience!
We’re also hoping they’ll develop a little bit of psychological tension and uncertainty about what they’re doing. The reason being, Isaac and Carver will not experience reality in the same way. In fact, the closer they get to their goal, the marker, the crazier one or both of you might get. But because you’re not seeing each other’s screens, you won’t actually know if you’re seeing reality in a different way.
We’re hoping people will talk to each other and compare notes -- one might hear something when moving towards a door, while the other might not hear anything or even see a door.
Considering that and the insight into Carver, would you say co-op is targeted towards more seasoned Dead Space fans?
No, I think Dead Space fans -- our core audience -- will appreciate both modes equally. It’s hard to say what someone’s going to like. We know that if you played Dead Space 1 and 2, at the very least, you like that solitary isolated experience of Isaac Clarke against all odds.
We also know that there are a lot of co-op gamers out there, people who enjoy playing games with their friends. There is a pretty big segment of our audience that intersects that group. I can’t really predict which one will be more popular, but we did design the game to appeal to the Dead Space fans, as well as their friends who may have never played before.
Can you tell us a little bit about weapon customisation?
Weapon crafting means every weapon you create is actually built from parts and tools that you’ve deconstructed and built back up in any way, shape or form that you can imagine.
Imagine, the Plasma Cutter, Isaac’s iconic weapon. If you were to break that down you’ll have a couple of different pieces. You’ll have something that can shoot plasma, you’ll have a tip that can shoot that in three different beams, and you’ll have a device that can rotate those beams either horizontally or vertically.
Now you’ve got those three different parts. Imagine if you combine them with any other gun you’ve found!
Has it been challenging developing a horror game that incorporates health pick-ups? How do you maintain the horror aspects?
That’s a good question. You need to have the health to survive, and the horror in Dead Space 3 isn’t developed from the lack of resources as much as it is the atmosphere of the game.
Having very few resources is a survival horror trope, but we don’t try to fit into any one genre. We just want to be the Dead Space genre.
What that means for us is creating scares through audio, for example. Having really chilling, tense sound-scapes that envelop you, put you at unease and make you nervous when you hear a certain sound. That’s really the secret to Dead Space’s horror -- relying on a lot of things not just ammo or health scarcity.
However, there are some people who love that kind of style of play. When you complete Dead Space 3, you’re going to unlock a New Game Plus menu, which has a bunch of different modes. One of them is Pure Survival, which means the only thing you can pick up in the game are resources. It’s up to you whether you’re going to use those resources to craft ammo or health or upgrades or weapons. It’s a cool throwback mode that I think survival horror fans are going to dig.
Thanks for your time!
Dead Space 3 will be released in Australia on Thursday for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.