Dead Space and the sequel could have been very different games if Visceral had not listened to focus groups. The team initially set out to create a survival horror game in the style of Resident Evil, as many of the team were great fans of that series. Wright Bagwell, creative director at Visceral Games and senior gameplay designer on the original title has revealed how the game design changed during development.
“There’s an interesting story from Dead Space and Dead Space 2, which is that when we started building Dead Space, we basically started with a mechanic set that was really similar to Resident Evil 4, the [people on the] team were really huge fans of that game.”
“We kind of started — we had never made a survival horror game — by saying, ‘Well, I think in order to scare the player, you really need to sort of cap how much control the player can have.’ So in RE4 and a lot of those survival horror games, they all have these pretty clunky control schemes that don’t let you do all the things that you can do in most other shooters, for example.”
However, when the prototype game was given to focus testers, they reacted badly to the limited control scheme.
“Eventually we got kind of tired of hearing people complain about it, and we said, ‘Hey, we should be trying to scare players by doing things that are actually kind of scary rather than making them just feel helpless.’
“We turned up the speed that [the character] rotates. And we turned up the speed that you could run and things like that. … What we found is that as long as we focused on making the game really atmospheric and putting you in freaky situations and getting the timing of everything right, you didn’t really have to disempower the player that much in order to scare him. … that’s the direction we went with Dead Space 2 as well.
Let’s hear three cheers for those unsung heroes, the focus groups of Dead Space. I can’t even imagine Isaac with a ‘Resi Evil’ style control system, can you?
What does TSA think of Dead Space 2? Find out tomorrow..
Source: Gamasutra
scavenga
Thank heavens they went in their own direction, the Resi controls put me off something fierce.
shields_t
Absolutely. I’m pleased they showed the initiative, it really paid off with Dead Space 1, can’t wait for the sequel to hit my mat.
I’ve never been able to get into Resi games, the control method makes it feel a little disconnect.
Dange
so glad they listened to the focus groups, currently playing through DS1, great game, an scares the s**t out of me!
quinkill
long live focus groups!
Squalje
That’s the way it should be these days, being scared because of limited controls is a little dated.
Grey_Ghost13
Fantastic news! The focus group can be proud of themselves. Dead Space would have died if it had resi controls!
4lf13
I think the Resident Evil series (not really the Wii games) has been brilliant, but I agree with the choice to take Dead Space away from that and do something else.
Harinero
Even when my personal deal-breaking beef with RE5 was the decision to turn the single player campaign into pseudo-co-op with an imbecilic AI, the most common complaint I remember reading everywhere is that “it doesn’t control like Dead Space”.
So yeah, kudos to Visceral for taking the risk of going their own way and succeeding to the point of making RE feel obsolete.
jikomanzoku
Imbecilic is a little unfair, I’ve met some imbeciles and they were way cleverer than Sheva.
shields_t
Can I just say I love the Dead Space 2 TSA theme.
RudeAwakening
Oh man thank god for those focus groups. could you imagine having to stop…then shoot…then move again! Horrible!
MadJunkBoy
No i could never imagine Isaac with resi controls…
Isaac is too smart… he can walk AND shoot at the same time=)
but i actually love resident evil 4… the best resi game=)
its only a few days waiting… then… dead space 2 FTW!!! =)
Charmed_Fanatic
thank god! sounds awful