The Dead Space trilogy is one of the most iconic in modern horror gaming, and even though the remake did incredibly well, the original game's creators were rebuffed by EA when they pitched Dead Space 4.
Speaking to Dan Allen Gaming (in a video shared on ResetEra), some of the game's original creators, Glen Schofield, Christopher Stone, and Bret Robbins, say EA wasn't interested in their ideas.
"We tried actually, the three of us," Schofield says. "We tried Dead Space 4. We're talking this year. We didn't go too deep, they just said 'we're not interested right now'. We know who to talk to, so we didn't take it any further. We respected their opinion. They know their numbers and what they have to ship."
"The industry's in a weird place right now, people are really hesitant to take chances on things," Stone explains. "Take it with a grain of salt. Maybe one day, I think we'd all love to do it."
"We've got some ideas," Schofield teases.
When Allen asks if they'd go back to make the sequel "in a heartbeat," Schofield responds, "Yes," and Stone says, "I'd make a Dead Space 4." Schofield adds that "Bret might have trouble right now, Bret's got a good gig going." Robbins is currently working with former Rockstar developer Dan Houser at Absurd Ventures, which is now working on a new game set within the universe of it's audio fiction series, A Better Paradise.
Dead Space has been the cornerstone of these developers' legacy, especially Schofield's, who made the similar but not as well-received Callisto Protocol. It was also a third-person sci-fi horror game set aboard an abandoned location in space and featured incredibly violent death scenes, but it just didn't find the same success.
Our Callisto Protocol review reads "There's an impressive game here," but "while the story's fine, and it looks incredible, The Callisto Protocol is constantly derailed by an unforgiving combat system that feels badly designed for the vast majority of the encounters you have to deal with."
I saw the original Dead Space on the shelf at Game many times over the years, but I always avoided it because, for some reason, I just didn't think the cover art of a severed arm floating in the void of space looked that interesting. Younger me was clearly an idiot, and my punishment for literally judging a game by its cover was not experiencing that wonderful, scary story until a friend of mine shook some sense into me years later and lent me his copy.
Now, I'd love to see Dead Space 4, so hopefully EA listens to the original team's pitch or makes a new one itself. We might also be getting remakes of Dead Space 2 and 3.
In the meantime, check out some of the best horror games you can play right now.
