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Ex-Visceral Creative Director Laments ‘Dead Space 4’
To say that it still stings that Dead Space developer Visceral Games is gone (and along with them for the time being, the Dead Space franchise) is an understatement. It’s a sad reality of the industry when your game underperforms and your owner decides to cut its losses. There’s still that lingering question of “what if?”. Well, in an interview with Eurogamer, former creative director at Visceral Ben Wanat discussed just what the team would do had Dead Space 4 been given the green light.
For starters, Wanat talks about how after Dead Space 3, humanity would be on the verge of extinction thanks to the Necromorphs. As a result, the gameplay in Dead Space 4 would be more focused on the non-linear aspect of exploration that was touched on in DS3. “The notion was you were trying to survive day to day against infested ships, searching for a glimmer of life, scavenging supplies to keep your own little ship going, trying to find survivors,” explains Wanat. “The flotilla section in Dead Space 3 hinted at what non-linear gameplay could be, and I would have loved to go a lot deeper into that. I figured you’d start in a section of space, maybe following a trail of ship carcasses to an orbital station you think might have the parts and fuel needed to get your ship Shock-capable.” (In the Dead Space universe, the ShockPoint Drive was a means of interstellar travel invented by an astrophysicist named Hideki Ishimura.)
Speaking of those abandoned ships, Wanat says that the opportunity to go from ship to ship scraping up supplies would’ve opened the creative doors for the team to go crazy in terms of creating some interesting environments. “The ships you would visit are where the game would get really diverse. The Ishimura had some inkling of that diversity with the variously themed decks. But imagine an entire roster of ship types, each with unique purposes, floor plans, and gameplay. Our original prototypes for the Dead Space 3 flotilla had some pretty wild setups that I wish we had been able to use.”
As for the weapons system, Dead Space 4 would’ve revisited the crafting system introduced in DS3, which in his opinion, took away from the synergy that made the weapons special. “I think in our exuberance to really lean into Isaac’s mechanic background, we managed to diminish that synergy with the Dead Space 3 crafting system. I love that it gave players creativity in putting together their weapons, but it became very difficult to tune when you allowed players to break the primary and alt-fire pairings. There would have needed to be a focus on re-perfecting the weapon balance while still giving players plenty to tinker with.”
And then there’s the topic of series protagonist, Isaac Clarke. The ending of Dead Space 3 left the door open for Isaac, Carver or Ellie to take on the Necromorphs, or even have an entirely new character at the helm. “With the apocalypse, there was the opportunity for a clean break,” Wanat said. “It wouldn’t be necessary for the story going forward to include any of them.” In his view, however, Wanat said he’d have loved to do a game with Ellie at the helm and had always “imagined her as the protagonist of Dead Space 4“.
To read the rest of the interview, including Wanat’s opinion on the future of (if any) Dead Space instalments, you can check out the link above.
Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor best known for his role in 1993’s Jurassic Park, has passed away this week at 78 years old. In a statement shared on Neill’s Instagram page this morning, the actor’s family said that his passing was “sudden and unexpected.”
Neill had been diagnosed with a rare blood cancer in 2022, but stated the following year that he was in remission. The family notes that he “remained cancer free” at the time of his passing.
The family statement reads, “It is with immense sadness that the whānau of Sam Neill share the news of his passing on Monday 13th July, in Sydney Australia. Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life. The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free.
“They would like to express their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their incredible care. More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.”
In addition to his iconic role as Dr. Alan Grant in the original Jurassic Park and the sequels Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World: Dominion, Sam Neill left an indelible mark on the horror genre with memorable roles in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, The Omen: The Final Conflict, John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, and sci-fi horror favorite Event Horizon.
Sam Neill’s vast resume in film and television began in the early 1970s and also includes the films Sleeping Dogs, Enigma, The Good Wife, A Cry in the Dark, Dead Calm, The Hunt for Red October, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Hostage, The Jungle Book, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, The Horse Whisperer, Bicentennial Man, Daybreakers, Escape Plan, and Thor: Ragnarok.
Sam Neill is survived by his four children and eight grandchildren.
Steven Spielberg said in a statement to Variety, “I owe a debt of gratitude to Roger Donaldson, Gilliam Armstrong, Graham Baker and Phillip Noyce for casting Sam Neill in the roles in which he was so brilliant that brought him to my attention and led to his playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. Sam was exceptionally collaborative. It was a stretch for him to play a character who acted as though children were messy and smelly because this was the opposite of the loving father he was to his children. I adored making all the Jurassic movies with him.”
Spielberg adds, “Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world.”
Sam Neill in ‘Event Horizon’
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