At the time, Visceral Games were called EA Redwood Shores, and were most well-known for making movie tie-ins.

Though Dead Space 3 was still a horror game, it had a co-op campaign, powerful machine guns and cover shooting.Īnd as the pair explains to me, the worry that it was too scary wasn’t the only factor driving change: publisher culture, a desire to tell a more complete story, and polishing rough edges all played a part.ĭead Space came out of the blue.

What began as a lonely, tense horror series slowly became more wedded to explosive set pieces. It was a dilemma that, according to Milham and Dead Space 3 creative director Ben Wanat, would help shape the transformation of the trilogy. “And the number one reason people didn’t buy Dead Space was that it was scary.” “All our data showed the number one reason people bought Dead Space was that it was scary,” says Ian Milham, who was developer Visceral Games’ art director at the time. Many fans loved that sense of dread, but for some players it was simply too stressful. Every time I jumped back in and clumped down one of the USG Ishimura’s dark corridors, a monster would pop out of the vents and I’d jump up, smash the pause button and find an excuse to do anything else but play it. It took me a month to get through the first two hours when I first played it. The first Dead Space turned 10 years old last month.

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