Dead Space fans will remember several moments throughout the trilogy that frightened them most. The USG Ishimura from the original Dead Space is home to many grotesque and psychological horrors that Isaac Clarke must face, whether players experience their dread from a necromorph lunging at them in a corridor or from Dead Space’s devastating asteroid mini-game. These moments are incredible in the original, and therefore EA Motive’s remake has big shoes to fill. Thankfully, it seems like Motive is delivering a faithful experience from what has been shared thus far.
As with any remake, there will be sequences players are familiar with that will inevitably be changed. Changes made in Dead Space’s remake will hopefully be for the better, especially as comparisons between the original and the remake continue. EA Motive has shared these comparisons, which are staggering when looked at side-by-side. Recently, the Dead Space remake’s extended gameplay walkthrough shared a look at its new-and-improved decontamination room, and the improvements make it far scarier than fans may remember.
Dead Space’s Decontamination Room Gets an Upgrade in the Remake
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The decontamination room is memorable in Dead Space for being an ambush where players are locked in a single room with an island structure in the middle. This is an encounter where players cannot do anything but wait out the decontamination sequence and defend themselves from necromorphs that make their way into the room. The remake’s upscaling makes it even more claustrophobic, such as having a sprinkler system that showers the room while a detoxifying gas pours in from the ceiling.
This is much more chaotic than in the original game, where the lights are dimmed, and a light mist fills the room. The window shutters around the room close much slower, and the entire room is redesigned to have different window and shutter fixtures. The remake’s absence of light, as well as its use of sprinklers and smoke, almost completely shrouds the room. As Senior Producer Philippe Ducharme notes, this makes lurker necromorphs almost impossible to see until they are already next to the player.
Then, once attacked, blood spatters fill the screen and obscure even more of the player’s view for a moment. Players could put their backs to a corner and strafe their plasma cutter left and right, but a necromorph may appear from any direction and be virtually invisible in the Dead Space remake’s new horror-inducing technology.
The Dead Space Remake Shows Attention to Detail with New Technology
This attention to detail is seen not only in the decontamination room, but everywhere on Dead Space’s USG Ishimura. Lighting, special effects, camera work, and other features are all drastically improved to make it more modern and amplify its horror.
There are superficial improvements that may only affect how the lighting looks in an area, but there are also substantial improvements that took a ton of work in development. The ALIVE system for Isaac in the remake is a wonderful example of how significant some of these improvements are, where the protagonist will now have behavioral responses to different levels of stress or fatigue.
Other new features include the Intensity Director, which claims to give players new experiences as they explore and backtrack to areas they have been to already. If the rest of the Dead Space remake maintains the same level of enhanced detail and technology as the decontamination room has, it will surely be an immersive experience that floods fans with nostalgia, but also introduces them to a new, modern horror they are not prepared for. EA Motive is clearly passionate about Dead Space, and all its hard work will be seen in full early next year.
The Dead Space remake will release on January 27, 2023, on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.