A video clip shared by a Dead Space remake player shows a glitch that lends the game a camera positioning reminiscent of Resident Evil's classic's fixed angles. Fixed camera angles are a relic of a bygone era, but were once seen as a staple of 3D survival horror games. Dead Space uses a third-person camera angle that's good for intense combat and surprises around corners. Seeing Dead Space with a fixed camera does raise some interesting possibilities, though.
Fixed camera angles have a long history in the survival horror franchise, going back to the Alone in the Dark franchise's origin in 1992. Resident Evil followed in 1996, and while it wasn't the first horror game to use the style, it helped define it and has been associated with fixed camera angles ever since. Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, Onimusha, Fatal Frame, and many other non-horror games have used fixed camera angles. Horror, however, has shifted largely away, instead preferring first and third-person cameras.
Dead Space was built from the ground up as a horror game designed for third-person cameras, but it's an interesting thought experiment to consider what it might be like with fixed camera angles. Imagine if Isaac's visor was blinded and could only see through the Ishimura's cameras room to room. That's something Reddit user Decisive-Jay got to experience due to a glitch in the 2023 remake. A video shared on the Dead Space subreddit shows the camera "stuck," with Isaac having to face off against several necromorphs with independent movement and gunplay.
It's fair to say that Decisive-Jay is lucky that they aren't playing on Dead Space's higher difficulty levels. Aiming Isaac's weapons and kinesis look challenging, to say the least. Decisive Jay is lucky they had plenty of ammo and that shooting each necromorph's legs happens to be surprisingly effective. They shoot the necromorphs, do a short bit of awkward exploration, and hilariously have to run back and open a door blocking the camera to see an extra enemy that showed up late.
It's unclear how the glitch occurred in Decisive-Jay's game, and hopefully, it was addressed in a straightforward manner by entering another room or reloading a checkpoint. Regardless of how it happened, it's fun and nostalgic to see Isaac in combat from a fixed angle. It's not quite like Resident Evil. It's hard to imagine Jill Valentine surviving a similar situation with tank controls. But as far as glitches go, it could be worse.
The development team at EA Motive clearly put a lot of thought into its Dead Space remake camera angles. In a change from the original Dead Space, EA Motive increased players' field of view by moving the camera further away from Isaac's back. While this creates a less claustrophobic experience in the Ishimura, it's better for the remake's more intense combat. The third-person camera angle in the Dead Space remake is the optimal choice for the kind of game EA Motive made. Fixed camera fans will have to take what they can get.
Dead Space is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.