Horror into Action: A Dead Space 3 Commentary

[RJ 17]

Let's just start things off with a disclaimer: I played DS1 and enjoyed it, played DS2 and enjoyed it even more. Never played DS3, though, as I was indeed one of the people that got completely turned off due to EA's infamous "We want to change the format so that it appeals to a broader audience" comment.

To me that felt like a betrayal. Indeed, back then I agree with Yahtzee in that it's really hard to be scared of anything when you've got a co-op partner at your side making goofy jokes while you're trying to listen to audio logs about how horrifically fucked everything is. I say "back then" because I think I may have changed my mind on the matter now. I still have no intention of going back and picking up DS3 because I've moved on from the 360 and now play my PS4 pretty much exclusively, however over the past couple weeks I've watched Markiplier play through all three DS games and that has given me a chance to reflect upon them, and during his final thoughts on the game as the credits roll he makes a point that I think is pretty fair:

The natural progression of Horror franchises leads more into the realm of Action.

The reason this is true (at least in my opinion) is due to the fact that if you're going to tell a Horror story, you can only tell it once...at least you can only effectively tell it once. And why is this? Because after the first time the story has been told, the mystery is stripped out of it. I'm pretty sure we would all agree that the best type of horror story is one that lets your imagination do most of the work...one in which the monster isn't actually revealed until close to the end. Now it's certainly a very valid criticism that the monsters in the DS games love showing themselves off at every opportunity and because of this it can easily be argued that as it is: it's a weak horror story from the very start. But this isn't a commentary about whether or not DS is good at doing horror - or even scary - stories, but rather if DS3 deserves the crap it gets for shifting into a more action-focused game/story.

And that's the point that I'm not quite certain about. Look at the Alien movie franchise. The first one is a horror movie and it does it very well. However as Jim Sterling points out in his Movie Defense Force for Alien 3: after the first movie there's really nowhere to go with the horror aspect. We already know what a Xenomorph is and what it's capable of. As such, with the sequel they tossed all sense of horror out the window and went straight action...and it worked. Many consider Aliens to be the best movie in the franchise. Granted it's all about the execution, because the sister-series for the Alien franchise tried the same thing and yet didn't do so well. Of course I'm talking about Predator. The first Predator movie was great because you don't even get to catch a glimpse of the damn thing until half way through the movie, and even then it's cloaked so all you see is a distortion in the air and a flash of glowing eyes. You still have no idea what this thing that's hunting the squad is until towards the end of the movie. Predator 2 tried to go with a more action-oriented style and while I certainly enjoyed it (I shamelessly admit to being a fanboy of all things Predator related ) many people didn't because there wasn't nearly as much suspense as there was in the first movie. Well how could there be? We already know what a Predator is now, so there's no mystery to build that suspense upon.

The same is true with the DS franchise. The first game gives us Zombies (basically) in Space. Add in a few trippy moments of Isaac going insane and you have a decent little horror game. But where could they go from there? The cat's out of the bag in terms of Necromorphs at that point, so you might as well go with a more action-oriented story. It still tries to get the creepy factor in due to the setting...you're in an actual city where people lived and worked until all hell broke loose. With all things considered, the continuing story of the series almost dictates that it move in a more action-oriented direction. Thus, we get DS3. By this point the Unitoligists are in open revolt and it's time to bring an end to the chaos once and for all. There's still plenty of creepy, dark, and claustrophobic hallways to walk down, but by this point we all know what we're up against which makes it particularly difficult for a story to build up the suspense needed to create functional horror in a story. Look at Alien 3 as an example. They tried to go back to a more suspenseful horror story in that movie and - from what I've gathered - many people find it to be the 2nd weakest of the Alien movies (with Resurrection holding the top spot).

In conclusion, you can say what you want about the crappy microtransactions they added in or the co-op functionality that was implemented, but one thing I don't think you can blame DS3 for is the shift to a more action-oriented story/gameplay. As Markiplier says in his closing comments: that's where the series needed to go if it was going to grow. It's a matter of scaling, and if you're looking for a grand, epic ending to your story about alien zombies, you almost have to go with a more actiony mindset since it is more conducive in leading towards said epic ending.

 

[Kopikatsu]

That's just the natural progression of any non-supernatural based horror. To quote a certain narrator, "These nightmarish creatures can be felled! They can be beaten!".

I'll use Resident Evil as an example.

Resident Evil 0/1/2/3: Umbrella is developing bio-weapons to sell on the black market. An outbreak occurs and the neighboring city is wiped out as a result.

Resident Evil 4/5/6/Rev1/Rev2: Following the events of Raccoon City, use of biological weapons are becoming incredibly popular among terrorist organizations. Numerous organizations are created or converted to fight the bio-terrorist threat.

It's a logical progression of the story. As the 'horror' becomes known, countermeasures are put into place.

However, I will say that I think Dead Space 2 was handled poorly. An alternate version of the intro sequence that I pitched in an earlier thread was basically; every few seconds the bloodied necromorph-filled room flashes into a pure white room with doctors and nurses standing in place of the necromorphs, with a background audio of people saying things like "He's breaking free!" "Restrain him!" "Isaac, we only want to help!", but deliberately off-sync with the visuals. Then halfway through he gets grabbed by a Necromorph that raises a claw, only for it to change back to the white room with a doctor holding a syringe up, "It'll all be over in a second. You'll see-" and then Isaac breaks free and kicks the claw so that it is forced through the necromorph's head instead. The last vision being just before the door slams shut on one of the necromorphs to cut it in half.

I mention that version because they could have integrated Isaac's hallucinations into the gameplay to get the player to question what is real and what isn't to keep the horror elements going. But instead they went with the dumb orange overlay that always gave the hallucinations away. (Nicole's headlight eyes didn't help either). Which is why I excluded supernatural horror from the natural progression towards action. Because with supernatural (or mental), they can do whatever they want. They could introduce invincible eldritch horrors into the story, adding forces to which you are helpless against. But for something like the Necromorphs, or the BOWs... if you can kill it, then at some point there will be people who become proficient at hunting them.

 

[LaoJim]

First of all, Dead Space 3 was fairly terrible but not for the reasons you think. (I played through about half the game before giving up) The action wasn't really that in your face apart from in the brief prologue part - after that it reverted to the original style of gameplay but with occasional (well more than occasional) soldier as your enemy. The first few sections of the game, where you were exploring wrecks in space, was fine if a little uninspired. What killed the game for me was when you got to the ice planet and you were just going endlessly from identical building to identical building with no real feeling for where you were or what you were supposed to be doing. There was no real sense that this could be a real place where real people lived and with no interesting story or enemies, it felt like an enormous trudge.

Funnily enough before it came out, I was thinking about it in this way - everyone was down on it apparently becoming a Gears of War clone (which again its not), with Isaac joining up with space marines to fight the necros. Now, Dead Space has always taken a lot of influences from Alien and of course this set up sounds a lot like Aliens. After having one guy fight off necro's as a horror game doing a first-third person shooter with heavily armed marines and a lot more necros could have made for an interesting tonal shift in the series, and given us something slightly different.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Hey if you like it as an action thingy then enjoy.

But Dead Space is an obvious Matrix trilogy fumble all over again. They had one great idea, made one great package with it and after the first success publishers wanted more. Sadly the ideas weren't there, so they went "Fuck it! Do some action shit instead!"
Surely is progression, but not one in quality.

 

[Mike Fang]

Overall I'd say this makes a lot of sense. It's true the greatest fear is that of the unknown; the fact you don't understand the why's and the how's behind horrific events going on around you is what makes them resonate all the more with an emotional level of fear rather than just a momentary, reactionary bit of shock that you'd get with a just a jump scare alone. So yes, I'd say that if a company wants to take a horror game idea and turn it into a franchise, it has to go one of two routes: either make it more action-oriented as the series progresses and the protagonists become better equipped to deal with the threats, or cause the threats they face to change in some way in each installment to keep the protagonists feeling like they're one step behind and fighting a precarious (or losing) battle against a threat that they can never be sure how it will come at them next.

As to the whole co-op thing defeating the purpose of a "horror" setting, that is, unfortunately, true, for the already covered reasons. I have a friend I game with online and while he and I definitely enjoyed playing DS3 together, I think it's fair to say neither of us were truly horrified by anything we saw. We had the occasional "oh shit" moments, but it wasn't in a heart-grabbing moment of terror kind of way; more like a "crap, lock and load, we've got company!" sort of way. The headspace-y moments when one of you starts to halucinate or get sucked into your own inner nightmare gave us each the occasional moment of pause, when we'd ask one another "Did you just see that?" But I feel like the game could have done more with that. If it had gone more like, say, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and had weird stuff happen within the game's mechanics, like suddenly audio cut out for one player but not the other, or have one of us see enemies that weren't really there, causing one player to start shooting at halucinations while the other player was wondering why his/her partner was suddenly blasting at nothing, that could have been an interesting effect.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I maintain that Dead Space 3 is a good game, but not a good Dead Space game.
That said, I have to agree with the "this is the direction it had to take" point, I never thought of it that way.
And then every asks "have you played the DLC?"
I don't really want to play the DLC, I hear it's good though, makes it scary again, don't know how but that's what I hear.

 

[stroopwafel]

The first 2 games were really good. DS1 as a sort of traditional survival horror game(in space no less) and DS2 as a suspenseful shooter in the vein of Resident Evil 4. Actually DS2 plays much like a RE4 in space. It is by far my favorite in the series. It maintains the DS atmosphere while making subtle changes to the gameplay which made encounters with the necromorphs more satisfying.

DS3 seemed to have been made with a checklist in hand. Co-op that effectively eliminated any horror/tension the series had, a dime a dozen setpiece spectacles, predictable plot points; no creative muscles were strained here.

What made it even worse is that EA terminated the series and apparently disbanded Visceral(atleast in its previous form) b/c EA execs well expected for DS3 to sell over 5(!) million copies, b/c CoD influenced co-op shooters is what gamers want right? *sigh* I guess this is what you get with gaming/entertainment corporations whose sole drive is ridiculous CoD level(atleast back then) sales projections at the cost of everything else. Dead Space was the one cool IP they had but leave it to EA to destroy it.