Dead Space Deserved More Than a Single Remake

Dead Space is one of my favorite franchises in gaming. It’s a series packed full of ideas that push the boundaries of the survival horror genre, and I’ll even defend the often-maligned Dead Space 3 to a certain extent.

When EA announced back in 2021 that it was going to be reviving the franchise with a remake of the first game, I couldn’t have been more excited. Now that the excellent Dead Space remake has been out for a few years and EA hasn’t said anything about what comes next for the series, I can’t help but feel like I’ve been served a tasty appetizer while waiting on a meal that’s never coming.

Death After Reanimation

The Dead Space remake was well-received by critics and sold more than two million copies, helping to ignite a new sense of passion within the fandom. There were newcomers joining our ranks by the thousands when the game launched in 2023, but regardless of how long you’d been a fan, it felt like one exciting question was on the top of everyone’s minds: What comes next for Dead Space?

With how successful the remake seemed to be, many fans waited expectantly for EA to announce something, but it never did. Quickly after the release of the remake, EA polled fans to see if there was interest in more Dead Space, but after that, everything went quiet. There wasn’t any news until early 2024, when Jeff Grubb claimed that EA Motive had been working on something Dead Space-related but that the game was shelved due to poor sales of the first remake.

Apparently, nothing is next for Dead Space as EA Motive splits its time working on Battlefield and an untitled Iron Man game, but that feels so anticlimactic. The Dead Space remake did a lot to prove that the series’ format and central gameplay mechanics still have legs and go toe-to-toe with the best games in the genre more than 15 years after the original game’s release.

Fans loved it, critics loved it, and it sold two million copies, but apparently, that wasn’t enough for EA to consider it a success. Based on what we’re hearing, it sounds like the publisher has completely abandoned the IP.

Why Have You Done This To Me, EA?

As a long-time fan of Dead Space, the remake has a certain air of cruelty surrounding it. Not because of the in-game dismemberments and violence, but because it gave hope to fans and then stomped on that hope with a heavy boot.

Obviously, a lot goes into game development that informs what games get made, but if 2 million copies sold doesn’t equal a financially successful survival-horror game, then perhaps EA needs to reassess its game budgets. Dead Space feels like a lesson in futility about how a company can be interested in your interest in a series but not ultimately care unless your fandom is able to provide infinite money to them.

The ultimate irony for Dead Space fans is that this is a lesson we’ve already learned once before when Dead Space 3 came out. The game dropped a lot of the survival horror elements in favor of being a bland co-op action-shooter on account of EA’s mandates to hit the market to appeal to wider audiences than are typically interested in survival horror games. Dead Space 3 came out, underperformed critically and commercially, and EA shelved the series. It’s a frustrating cycle to be a part of, especially when there’s so much good in the series.

While many fans were hoping for a remake of Dead Space 2 to come next, others seemed optimistic that EA Motive wouldn’t opt for a simple remake of the second game and use the newly revived IP to take the series in a brand new direction. I was hoping for the latter, but would have taken either option if it meant that Dead Space got to continue existing. It didn’t, however, so there’s no point in giving it more thought than that.

It feels like EA teased Dead Space fans with the remake by allowing us to get excited that the publisher had an interest in trying to make the series work, for real this time, but that just wasn’t the case. The remake was good, the original games were good (with some exceptions), and I hoped EA thought so too. Instead, I just feel dumb for even getting excited in the first place.