Dead Space 3 - What we want from Visceral's Dead Space sequel

Rumblings are about that we may only be a few weeks away from the announcement of a new Dead Space, and that the game's release might be less than a year away. This is fantastic news - its been too long since we've blown the arms off a flailing, screaming monster.

As usual, these rumors got us thinking about all of the things we want from the next game in one of this generation's best franchises...

The last two Dead Space games focused mostly on incredibly creepy interiors. The first game had us fighting back an alien swarm on the USG Ishimura, and the sequel brought things to a much larger location in The Sprawl space colony. While we agree that there should be a fair amount of skulking around dark interiors, we believe it’s time we explored the outside a bit more.

Rumors have Dead Space sporting a snowy, icy location, and we sincerely hope that’s true. Guiding Clarke as he explores a colony located on a frozen planet would be wonderful, and it gives Visceral Games even more excuses to throw The Thing references into its survival horror game. As if they needed more.

Poor Isaac. The engineer took to the Ishimura to save his girlfriend, and... yeah. It didn't go well. Since the events of the first game, Clarke's sanity has been slipping further and further away, and that slip should continue.

Clark is one of gaming's best unreliable narrators. His loose sanity makes the already frightening moments of Dead Space all the more scary. While we feel bad to see the guy lose all sense of reality, it's something different, and we hope it only gets worse for the poor sap.

Dead Space is all about strategic dismemberment, and what is a destructible environment if not strategic dismemberment of… the environment? Taking down necromorphs by collapsing rooms on them would totally make sense (as long as, y'know, the game didn’t take place in a space station), and be a nice workaround to needing to shoot everything’s legs off. It would even mesh well with the series' mechanics - holding an enemy in place with a Stasis, only to shoot a chunk of wall into them, would be awesome.

Not to mention how scary it would be to have enemies take advantage of the destructible objects, too. Hiding behind a doorway only to have a necromorph rip through it would be horrifying, and knowing that literally no hiding spot is safe would make the already tense situations all the more disturbing.

Both Dead Space games had tense, frightening sections, and we’d love to see this taken even further in the sequel. Go ahead, Visceral – we can take it. Have more things bursting out of walls, and give us more disgusting monsters.

It’s also time to start using what we know about the Dead Space universe against us. This is the third entry in the horror series, and it’s time for it to get a little big meta. Start having creatures that blatantly disobey the rules of the franchise, and monsters that make us doubt everything we know about Dead Space.

Generally, game characters remain in their standard costumes from the beginning until the end of the game. There might be one or two wardrobe changes, but oftentimes they're strictly cosmetic. In the Dead Space series, different armors actually make a difference, and that's something that should be expanded in the sequel.

Maybe it's time we get to upgrade specific parts of the armor? Maybe we want to get a new, more powerful chest piece, but we want to keep our old helmet? Being able to swap out parts of our armor might make us look like a mishmash of styles, but it would definitely be cool, and help us customize Clarke as we see fit.

The original Dead Space had interesting, albeit one-note zero-g sequences. With the sequel, Visceral Games took the zero-gravity segments to another level, letting Isaac float around at his leisure, which made for awesome puzzle solving and even cooler combat.

With Dead Space 3, we want to see this expanded even further. Let's have some neat no-gravity boss battles. Let's have even more low-grav puzzles. Let's play an entire level based around - not inside - a space station. Very, very few games have ever managed to pull off zero-g successfully, so run with it.

Fighting in human versus necromorph battles in Dead Space 2’s multiplayer was a nice novelty, but it was never going to take off – it couldn’t have. That said, we don’t think Dead Space 3 should abandon multiplayer altogether. Instead, it should give players a co-op side campaign with a few repeatable missions that take place before the game starts. Drop us in the suits of nameless, faceless soldiers experiencing the disturbing aliens for the first time – and let us blow them away.

We’re thinking it could essentially be like the co-op in Uncharted, except, obviously, with more horrible aliens. Competitive multiplayer in the Dead Space formula technically works, but it feels more forced than a 2-3 hour prequel campaign would.

There's a good chance that Dead Space 3 will be coming out after Nintendo's next console, and if that's the case, we think EA should make sure the game releases on the tablet/console hybrid.

The game's streamlined, in-game UI would look great on the Wii U tablet's screen, and being able to swipe through weapons and items on a touchscreen would give us an even more visceral connection to the game world. Plus, they could totally do some cool stuff with it, like having the occasional necromorph pop up on the screen in the middle of doing something. Cheap scare? Yeah, but it would be awesome.

Zero gravity fighting, psychopathy, insanity... we have a long list of wants from Dead Space 3. What about you? Are there any things you want to see from the next Dead Space that we didn't list? If so, toss them in the comments below - we'd love to hear your opinion.

And if you want to see more futuristic wish lists, check out what we want from The Elder Scrolls: Online and what we want from Resident Evil 6 .