![]() As a result, the team is forced to look at other potential sources of horror. Those tactics still work with two players on the board, but they must be used much more sparingly. No longer can the team be content to create a spooky environment and then populate it with jump scares. In a video game, you could be turning around or looking in a corner or opening up your inventory or doing whatever, so those are things that we have to take into account.”ĭead Space 3 complicates everything with it’s co-op. In a movie, you have eight camera angles being presented to you by the director, and that is what you will watch. It’s all about pacing, it’s all about the coordination of all of those disciplines. “Ultimately it needs to be directed in a way that pays off in terms of the camera and the pacing and the timing. ![]() “When you think about some of the scenes in Dead Space 2 where Isaac is having a flashback moment,” Papoutsis said, “we’re talking about coordination between the audio group, the animation group, the visual effects team, the design team, the character art team, the environment art team in some places, all of those disciplines need to coordinate and work together. ![]() The franchise has also produced two animated films, comics, and original novels based on the material. The Dead Space franchise debuted in 2008 and has spawned two sequels and the spin-off games: Dead Space: Extraction, an on-rails shooter for the Wii, Dead Space: Ignition, a puzzle game, and a Dead Space mobile game. The next thing is, pretty much every discipline has to work on. “One, you have to have a story that really works for that. “So many different people have to work together to make that work within the game,” Papoutsis explains. “I think if you’re in a room with other people and the lights are on in a focus test, it’s probably not going to be as scary as if you’re at home with your headphones on in a dark room,” he says.Īll of which means it’s up to the development team to figure out how to leave players unsettled and on edge. Papoutsis admits that the playing environment is also a key factor in making focus tests less than helpful for working out which scare moments work and which don’t. What people write sometimes can be really different from their body language.” “Whether they lean back or lean forward, or if you see them tense up on the controller. “When you talk to them afterward they can tell you a variety of different things, but really their body language and their reactions are good of how intense a moment may be for somebody,” he says. Papoutsis typically observes players closely as they play during these sessions looking for cues. Unfortunately, this fact makes focus testing difficult when it comes to measuring that aspect of the game. I think that’s the really interesting about working on a series like Dead Space: how completely subjective horror and terror are to people.” “The focus tests that we generally do are more about usability than the specifics of if something scares you or not,” Papoutsis explains. How can you really tell if players will, by and large, find a particular moment scary? Focus testing seems like the obvious answer here, but it’s really not. Lovecraft as an essential point of reference for creative director Ben Wanat, and the links are easy enough to see for anyone familiar with the Cthulhu creator’s work.Įven still, the most difficult thing for Visceral to process prior to release is the fear factor. The latest game also adds another wrinkle in the form of Carver who, much like Isaac, is a victim of the Marker’s influence. There was a strong and present theme that is actually a big component of what the Markers are all about.”Ĭoping with dementia in a stressful situation is a theme that emerged even more in Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3. “You can see that running rampant throughout the game, whether it’s the group suicides that were present on the Ishimura to the things scrawled on the wall to, ultimately, the visions that Isaac was seeing throughout the game. “From the start with Dead Space, there were definitely strong themes around dementia and specifically the dementia induced by the Marker,” executive producer Steve Papoutsis told us. It’s an easy fit for a franchise narrative that deals heavily with insanity. Visceral knew full well that it’s tough to keep players on edge when they’re babbling back and forth in a co-op game, and so the dev team engineered moments that pit Clarke and Carver against different, mutually exclusive challenges without warning. This is the co-op portion of Dead Space 3 at its very best.
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