6 Things That Would’ve Made Dead Space Remake Surpass The Original

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Dead Space Remake is here, and it’s better than anyone could’ve expected! However, I can’t quite call it wholly better than the original. It’s a refreshing take, one that I believe only Motive could’ve produced, but that vision isn’t quite the same as Visceral’s. In some ways this is an improvement, like much better written female characters and achieving a faster tempo to combat without throwing away the challenge. All the same, I’ve got some notes, as the resident Dead Space obsessive, on how they can improve things going forward, and what would’ve truly put Remake over Dead Space (2008) for me.

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Brace yourself, reader. The nitpicks are coming.


A Weaker Pulse Rifle

It’s just too useful! Seriously, the Pulse Rifle is two guns in one now. You’ve got the mine layer from Dead Space 2 paired with that entry’s Pulse Rifle. It works for offense, defense, taking out the wall-mounted Necromorphs in a handful of blasts, taking out Brutes just as quickly within a single splash of stasis, and even on Medium there’s enough ammo dropping for it that any player would be a fool to not use it.

Sure, it’s a blast to tear apart Necromorphs with a grenade blast, but it’s also the gun with the least amount of emphasis on tactful dismemberment. Originally, the Pulse Rifle was meant for crowd control and boss fights against large targets at long-range, with its ricochet alt-fire forcing enemies back when you were crowded.

Sure, maybe I was one of the five people to like that original alt-firing mode, but it kept the weapon distinctly useful in certain situations.The Pulse Rifle doesn’t have any downsides – I’m not even sure you can take friendly fire damage from blasting an enemy with a mine at close range.

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I tried to see if it would happen, and I could never get Isaac to be demonstrably injured by it. It’s so absurdly useful that making it the second weapon players pick up is an immediate disincentive to try other guns, especially since it’s followed up by the initially underwhelming Flamethrower.

More Dangerous Lurker

I get it, it’s a baby with tentacles coming out of its back. The Lurker was never a particularly sturdy opponent, but the little guy takes exceedingly minimal effort to eliminate now. What’s worse, I could swear he’s dealing less damage than before, so he’s not even threatening when at a distance, but instead purely an irritant. Every other enemy in the game has received a wonderful tune-up, but the Lurker feels like a nerf when some new attack or skill would’ve been a welcome improvement. Instead, a Lurker is just a bump in the road on the way to victory, now.

Un-Limit The Loadout

Dead Space Remake Necromorphs-1

Speaking of unnecessary limitations, limiting the player’s loadout variety until New Game Plus just isn’t ideal. I understand that the original game also gave out weapons over time, but they were more readily given. It takes a while to get all seven weapons in Dead Space Remake, and that’s not great for ensuring players will invest in each of them. Why experiment with a new gun after eight hours when you already have a loadout you’re feeling good about?

As Visceral adjusted with Dead Space 2’s opening, the more options offered out of the gate, the better. It’s clear that where you find each weapon is meant to be a testing ground to try the newest tool out, but the Necromorph variety of Dead Space isn’t super vast in the first game. Realistically, you’ll have faced almost all the enemy types by the halfway mark. Most players are bound to have figured out how to make do with what they have. In the best case scenario, a player might try out the new equipment in New Game Plus, but that’s a big ‘if.’

Better Side-Quests

A weirder thing that I wouldn’t think I’d need to say is – sidequests should have a bit more to do than finding random cutscenes in isolated rooms. Don’t get me wrong, those cutscenes you can walk around in are typically well-written and incorporate all sorts of wonderful worldbuilding. Yet if there’s one thing Dead Space 3’s first few sidequests got right, it was making unique, standalone quests that diverged off the beaten path to offer a memorable little side story. This is not how sidequests work in Dead Space Remake.

Even the Marker Fragments quest, a collectible hunt only unlocked in New Game Plus, just sees you revisiting previous areas to find one thing changed in a handful of rooms. I’d think the sidequests were a late addition, but the sheer amount of fully mo-capped scenes says otherwise. Hopefully, if they give the same open-ish world treatment to Dead Space 2, the sidequests there have more meat to them, and less running around backtracking.

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Skip Cutscenes (At Least In NG+)Dead Space New Game Plus 3

On the subject of retreading things – if there’s going to continue to be more cutscenes, give the player the option to fast forward them on New Game Plus. I’ve been helping our resident guides hound Matthew O’Dwyer track down those Marker Fragments in New Game Plus, and I’ve got to tell you… if you are just replaying Remake for the gameplay, boy do the cutscenes run a long time.

I’m grateful I’m playing this on a laptop, because at least then I could turn on the TV for a few minutes, but it’s quite striking how much more often the Remake stops you in place when you could just keep moving in the original game. It absolutely works the first time you play the Remake, but some kind of fast-forward or skip button would do wonders. Nobody needs to hear how Hammond is torn up over Chen and Johnston dying for a second, let alone third time.

More Post-Story Content

Dead Space Remake Flamethrower

As I said in my review, post-campaign content would also be a good thing to expand upon. I absolutely endorse making the core product satisfying and conclusive, but it’s not the story that keeps me coming back to replay these games a dozen times over. There was a wide array of weapons that I had to work towards to upgrade – meanwhile I’ve already got everything but the Linegun maxed out in Remake before finishing my second run.

Above all else, the simplest option would be to just add a horde mode. I don’t get why a series inspired by Resident Evil somehow never received an equivalent to The Mercenaries mode. I could even see there being a separate progression track for the survival mode, letting you use and invest in any weapon from the start but also needing to invest time in the mode to be at full power. It’d be extremely cost-effective and a perfect solution for those who just want to blast Necromorphs without stopping for story.

So there you have it. In an ideal world, these tweaks would’ve perfected the Remake for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful game – I expect to revisit it as much as the rest of the franchise – but it’s not edged out its spiritual predecessors quite yet. I wholeheartedly hope Motive’s next step with the franchise surpasses them, because they’ve shown a lot of promise here. In the meantime, being as good as what came before is perfectly reasonable.

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