BeefJack | Visceral: Dead Space 2 is intentionally less scary

Visceral: Dead Space 2 is intentionally less scary

Lewis Denby January 26, 2011 - 10:27 am

Dead Space 2′s creative director Wright Bagwell (who has an amazing name) has revealed that the developers chose to turn down the scare-o-meter for sections of Dead Space 2, after players of the first game found it to be too constantly intense.

“In Dead Space 1, it’s tense throughout the game. It never really lets up,” he said. “And what we found is that there were a lot of people who told us first-hand – I can tell you that I probably have at least five friends who played the game and came back to me and said – ‘Aw, man, Dead Space 1 was really good. I loved it. I was playing it last night. It’s totally cool, but I can’t play anymore because it felt like I was going to have a heart attack’.”

The developers didn’t want to lose what made Dead Space great, however, so they worked on a compromise: intersperse the scares with slower, less intense passages of play.

“On Dead Space 2,” Bagwell continued, “what we said was that there are moments where we’ll kind of change things up a little bit. There are moments that you feel like you have a little bit of empowerment, or there are times when you feel like the action in the game sort of takes a turn from being slower, more strategic, more sort of action-horror-style to a little bit faster paced. It’ll show you something a little crazy for a little bit so that it feels like a little bit of break from the claustrophobia and darkness and tension. And after we put you in those moments, it kind of rams you back into the Dead Space 1-style gameplay.”

The comments come in an interview with Gamasutra, where Bagwell details some of the team’s design decisions during the creation of Dead Space 2 – which is out now in the USA, and on Friday here in the UK. Emily is currently beavering away at her review, which will be with you as soon as possible. In the meantime, here’s her telling you why she’s so excited.