As unfortunate as it is, Dead Space 4 is seemingly never happening. Following poor sales of the series’ remake, the series is back on hiatus, and it seems like nothing will ever follow up on the cataclysmic ending of Dead Space 3, the ending many fans likely never played.
While not the first game in the series to have story DLC, the third game in the series actually ends within a paid expansion. Called Awakened, the expansion finishes off the third game’s story and seemingly concludes the franchise. However, we have focus groups to thank for the DLCs existence in the first place.
Speaking on the next episode of the FRVR Podcast, producer and writer Chuck Beaver explained that focus groups were upset at the lack of horror in Dead Space 3, a criticism shared by the devs. While it made sense to make an action game to hit the publisher’s sales milestones, something was lost on the way.
“We had gotten all the way through Dead Space 3 and ship and, of course, towards the end of it we were doing focus tests,” Beaver told us. “And the focus tests were like, ‘This is a fine interesting action game, but where’s your Dead Space in your Dead Space?”
Dead Space 3 at this point was even more action-focused than its release version with devs rushing to make a “horror pass” on the game. This saw more scares added throughout the experience, pushing the mind-altering horror back into the game alongside the action that couldn’t be ripped out.
“We had calibrated far too far towards action,” he continued. “and we had to put the horror back in. Which led to our producers going through and having to do a horror pass from the beginning. But, you know, the levels were baked, everything’s based, mocap was shot. That’s why you see Carver with the doll,” he continued. “The little Nutcracker thing. That level was still live so Ben was able to go in and put the horror in.”
Nevertheless, most of Dead Space 3 was done and dusted, and there was no time to go in and change anything substantial. However, Visceral had agreed to do a DLC expansion, and “EA was much less concerned about a DLC’s ROI [Return on Investment] than it was the whole game”.
This led creative director Ben Wanat to go hard on the horror for the game’s DLC, Awakened. While the devs had to work alongside the constraint of the main game’s co-op gameplay, Awakened was a much more horror-focused release, even if it was only a brisk hour-and-a-half adventure. As EA cared little about the expansion’s sales, the team was allowed to just make Dead Space, and it was pretty damn good.
“The story that we wanted to tell was Isaac is losing his mind and the Brethren Moon awakening and coming back to Earth. That was potentially what we were lining up for Dead Space 4,” he continued. “And so we got to tell the story we wanted in Awakened, which is kind of the story we would’ve told in Dead Space 3 is we had known we could’ve told a horror thing.”
Beaver describes working on Awakened after the action-mandated third game as “cathartic” as the devs got to work on what they really wanted to do. “We were like, ‘hoo, we’re free!’. The shackles came off and we can run around and write what we want for Awakened.”
Unfortunately, Visceral’s Dead Space 4 never happened, and seemingly never will. While fans still clamour for new games in the series, poor sales figures may have ruined the franchise’s future. Nevertheless, there’s always hope that the series will return at some point in the future.
