Dead Space Ignition announced for XBLA and PSN

EA and Visceral Games have announced a downloadable prequel to Dead Space 2 which will be available this fall on XBLA and PSN. The game, Dead Space Ignition, was actuallyteased yesterdaywith a Dead Space 2 image which contained the subtitle in Unitology text. Of course, when we reported on that image (below), we didn't yet know what "ignition" referred to.

Ignitionwill bean "interactive comic-style game" which bothintroduces the storyline to new players and sets up the events ofDead Space 2. Thegame is described as a "unique 'Choose Your Own Adventure' type narrative" combined with three hackingmini-games: Hardware Crack, Trace Route and System Override.Why theyuse the word "unique" to describe the preexisting "Chose Your Own Adventure" genre isn't quite clear.

The game is written by Antony Johnston, the award-winning writer of comics, games, books and other such things who also wrote the Dead Space comics back in 2008.Since, aside from the mini-games, Ignition is interactive fiction, its success will probably rely almost entirely on the quality of the writing. Johnston is good, so it could work,but if it doesn't, you at least get special Dead Space 2 unlocks for beating it, like an exclusive suit for Isaac. So there's that!

Jul 8, 2010

GamesRadarTylerWilde
Associate Editor, Digital at PC Gamer