This winter will see Glen Schofield's Dead Space - and the former's new "gore engine" is helping it establish a more separate identity. As the game's director is marketing The Callisto Protocol as a spiritual successor to Dead Space, the two space survival/horror/action games will share many things in common. Still, one area the two will diverge is the level of detail in the game's gore and dismemberment. With EA Motive helming the remake of the original, the challenges the studio will have to navigate to capture the original's fear and tension (along with the bloody details that come with them) are numerous - especially when there's only a month between the two games.
The original Dead Space took parts of Resident Evil and films like Alien and married them to create a new horror franchise in the late 2000s. Dead Space's central gameplay mechanic focused on the dismemberment of the alien race known as "Necromorphs." Following the game's tag line "Cut off their limbs," players would utilize the game's physics to break off parts of the Necromorphs to defeat them thoroughly. Players even use their blade-like appendages to attack them via kinesis abilities attained by the game's protagonist, Isaac Clarke. The game didn't utilize traditional guns - instead, it focused on using engineering tools repurposed to dismember Necromorphs and infected humans. For the time, the gore was detailed and certainly practical - even the deaths of Isaac were undoubtedly explicit.
Players who witnessed Isaac Clarke having his head torn from his body in the late 2000s were undoubtedly left more than a little disturbed - but from interviews and the original red band trailer for The Callisto Protocol, Striking Distance is increasing the violence further. In a couple of recent interviews via Eurogamer and Game Informer, Glen Schofield discussed the new "gore engine" utilized for the new game. The team at Striking Distance has expanded on their rendering technology and has emphasized greater detail with bones emerging from the flesh and individual chunks of gore separating from areas of impact - and The Callisto Protocol did this for every unique body part that was possible. For example, protagonist Jacob's deaths are excruciatingly detailed, as the new engine can show several realistic and horrible ends that Schofield hopes fans will feel an urgency to avoid seeing. Additionally, the deadly details are more prominent on the humans on the Callisto station, something the original Dead Space lacked.
Dead Space Remake Claims Gory Details, Callisto Protocol Shows Them
The team at trailers for The Callisto Protocol and its gameplay that show terrifying details of the physical horrors that await players.
It will be interesting to see how the two compare - and comparisons will be drawn quickly, considering the two games come out a month apart. Controversy still surrounds Striking Distance and their choice to subject their developers to graphic imagery in the pursuit of improving the gore engine, but the project is still progressing well. Glen Schofield has given his blessing to the team at EA Motive and wishes them the best of luck on the project, but time will tell which game holds the greater appeal when it's all said and done. For now, The Callisto Protocol seems to be inching ahead of the Dead Space remake in the gore factor - later this year, players will see if Striking Distance can deliver a satisfying horror experience again.
Source: Eurogamer, Game Informer, Gamespot