 One of the earliest things I did on YouTube was a video I made for the 10th anniversary of Dead Space. In that video, I talked about how Dead Space was not only one of the best games ever made, but that it was basically timeless because its visual presentation and art design held up so well. Still, I did say that it annoyed me that EA wouldn't just do a cash-grab remaster with modern lighting and improved textures. There's no reason it was like leaving money on the table. Something you came to the Master Chief Collection where you had the old textures alongside the new ones. It's dangerous to mess with a beloved game. Could all the criticism to change enemy designs in the Demon's Souls remake got? I mean, that was great. I figured EA would want to keep this as simple and inexpensive as possible. Instead, Motive has delivered a fascinating remake full of ambition. The remake of Dead Space is now, in my opinion, the definitive version of the game. And while there are a few complaints I have, they are easily outweighed by just how much the remake does right. Let's take a look at one of the best remakes video games has to offer. And I'll do this. I never do this. Smash the like button and the subscribe button. Dead Space, after the logo. Ambition vs. Risk Doing a remake or remaster of a game is tricky business. I bought the last of us remake this year and while it's now certainly the better version of the game, I ended up finding it pretty underwhelming because of its extreme lack of ambition. The last of us two is a superior game mechanically. And it was tantalizing to imagine a remake that brought the first game up to mechanical parity with the sequel. Because the first game was still fairly modern, even small changes to level and combat design would have gone a long way towards improving the game. Instead, it ended up being a full price game based only on improved textures and facial animations. And while yeah, that's a nice improvement that makes it the better version of the game, it left an awful lot of things on the table. Naughty Dog's stated reason for not improving the gameplay was that they wanted to stay true to the original design. But I pretty much reject that. The only thing they needed to stay true to was the narrative. The last of us gameplay was never very good and could have benefited tremendously even from small changes. When all was said and done, it's hard to argue that the last of us remake was anything more than a business decision. And to be perfectly honest, this is pretty much what I expected from the Dead Space remake, especially early on when much of the marketing seemed to focus on making sure they were true to the original design of the game. And I'd have been very happy with Motive and EA taking that route. Unlike the last of us, the original Dead Space, while still a beautiful game that kind of holds up today, is, you know, like 15 years old and it's starting to look that age. And perhaps even more importantly, unlike the last of us, Dead Space isn't a great game only because of its story. The game feel, combat, anime and level design of the original game are what make it a classic. It's easier to screw those things up than it is to screw up a story. But as the game's release got closer, there started to be much more talk about ways that Motive was trying to improve on the original game mechanically. The fact that they were given the freedom to do this probably says a lot about the changes at the top of EA's corporate hierarchy. I don't think anyone would have complained about their remake being a direct, exact remake of the original with modern graphics and lighting. And I'm positive that everybody would have complained with a bunch of changes to the game if those changes were bad. The safe move was just to remake the game and frostbite as faithfully as possible, but that is not what they did. The things that make Dead Space the game it is are its combat, its progression, its level design, its narrative and its sound design. And there were significant changes to every one of those things in the remake. Let's start with the stuff that changed the least. Combat and progression. This was the one place the Dead Space remake could have utterly failed. The original game was developed on Visceral's then EA Redman's in-house engine that had been created for their previous title, a licensed godfather game that I have never heard anything about. And one could be forgiven for being slightly nervous about any non-battlefront game that ends up using the frostbite engine at this point. But me personally, I actually was not all that nervous about the engine. Both Anthem and Andromeda had a mountain of problems, but combat and game feel were the two things that those games both did pretty well. Even Anthem's bad combat never felt like an engine thing. It felt like we wasted three years and didn't have time to actually design enemies that are fun to fight thing. Still, I am pretty amazed at just how similar the remake feels and plays to the original. I think it says something about just how well designed the combat was in that original game. The limb severing thing is not just a gimmick. It combines with the enemy design to create something completely original that really keeps you tense all the time. Almost everything in the remake feels exactly as it does in the original. Isaac's movement feels exactly the same. Many of the animations have been slightly improved, but in a way that still calls back to the original game. That first game had a very odd walking animation for Isaac. In fact, it was recorded by the animation director walking around with bungee cords strapped to his legs, and in the remake, this has not been changed, just cleaned up a little. It is still recognizably Isaac's walk. The sprint feels exactly the same. The stomp and melee attack feels exactly the same. The necromorphs are the core of the original game. If you're going to change them, you better be damn careful. And yet, they are changed here, sometimes pretty substantially, and the game is better for it. First off, the technology allows for limbs to actually disintegrate and break away, which is perfect for the game. It allows the player to actually know how much damage they're doing and fits right into the Dead Space ethos of giving the player all the information they need with a limited UI. In fact, most games can probably stand to move away from health bars and just implement this in the Doom Eternal system. Anyway, most of the enemies are pretty similar to the original with some extra gore and significantly more detail. Animations have been improved. Some enemies, like the super fast guys from the Valor, have been tweaked, but for the most part, there have been visual improvements to almost every enemy while remaining extremely faithful to the original design of those enemies. There's nothing here as transformative as what Blue Point did in Demon's Souls, but simply higher resolution, more gruesome versions of the same designs. It's pretty much perfect. Most are slightly harder to deal with here, like the Wall of Flesh requires a bit more ammo to kill, but others, like the babies, are actually a little bit squishier. Also, it's important to know just how improved enemy animations are while still being recognizably similar to the original design and how they move. And while those animations have been improved and changed, the stagger animations that are absolutely crucial to how the combat plays remains amazingly similar. Just a great accomplishment. Gun balance feels about the same, even as the alt fires have been changed to be closer to their Dead Space 2 versions. Like the hilariously garbage pulse rifle alt fire from Dead Space 1 has been replaced with the second game's grenades, and it looks amazing. All of the changes to enemies and combat have been very careful. Very subtle changes were made to make things look better without changing how the game feels or plays. There is one change that I find kind of interesting. I started the game off on regular for some reason, even though I generally play Dead Space on hard now. And early in the first chapter, I started thinking that they had accidentally made the game too easy. By an hour and a half in, I had like a massive pile of plasma cutter ammo, like 60 shots. But in fact, I think normal in the remake is closer to hard in the original. Because even on normal and hitting almost all of my shots, I found myself needing to cycle through all of the weapons because I was running low on ammo all the time. I wonder if this was done on purpose, or if it's just a weird little quirk. It's quite noticeable how much more difficult the game becomes when the harder variants of the Necromorph starts showing up. But the difficulty curve is probably steeper than the original. Which is awesome, for people who've played the original so much that we know which weapons to use and which enemies. Another place where subtle but significant changes were made is to the game's progression. The basic Dead Space progression of using power nodes to upgrade the suit and guns is still here, but some important changes for the better have been made. First off, each weapon's special ability is now unlocked not just by getting to the end of the tree. In fact, each gun now has multiple upgrades that had to be found on the map or bought from the store before other parts of the upgrade trees are even unlocked. This, combined with the removal of doors that are only opened using the upgrade nodes, makes exploration a much bigger part of the game's progression. At this point in the original game, I'm basically able to never spend money on anything other than power nodes, even on hard. I mean, I just don't ever have to buy ammo anymore. The remake's slight difficulty increase really works well because it meant I ended up having to buy ammo pretty regularly in the late game, so progression feels smoother and more impactful as a result. The remake adds a couple of new special upgrades as well. In the original game, you had the fire shot on the plasma cutter as a special upgrade for getting to the end of the tree, and I am convinced that it actually did nothing. In fact, it was hard to even see that anything was happening. You got like a two second flame sprite on a limb after unlocking it. It was like deeply disappointing the first time I went all the way to the end of the tree and was like, oh shit, that's it, huh? In the remake, the fire upgrade is noticeable and amazing. It literally lights enemies completely on fire and does real damage over time. And every other weapon now has multiple special upgrades that range from, nice, that range from useful but mundane, like greatly expanded ammo, to things like making the shotgun shoot a huge black hole that electrocutes enemies. Weapon upgrades have been improved across the board, taking a fun little extra from the original and making it into a powerful incentive to explore and fully use the progression system in the remake. Finally, perhaps the other biggest change from the original is how you acquire weapons. In the original game, almost all weapons were bought from the store. They unlocked over the course of the first half of the game. In the remake, you find weapons by exploring the ship. This is probably why enemies were made slightly tankier, as not having to spend money on weapons means the economy has changed significantly. In my opinion, this is a positive change, as it's simply more interesting to find weapons in the levels than it is to buy them. It also works way better because it ends up making you use every weapon in the game for at least a little bit. I don't buy the Ripper and Dead Space one anymore. I mean, it's alright, I just don't really like it. I end up using it quite a bit in my first playthrough because you find it in the game with ammo and immediately use it. Every change to progression that mode of made is stuff like this. Smart additions that improve balance, push the player to explore the levels, and feed into the other big changes the game made, like significant changes made to exploration and level design. The level design and art direction in the original Dead Space went a long way in making the game immersive. Love that word, immersive. While Dead Space 2 was a massive step up in level and direction, the first game already did an excellent job of making every area feel distinct. And that was with a lot of reuse of assets in the first game because it was clearly made on a budget. But going back to play the game today, it's clearly a product of its time. While each area feels like it serves a real purpose to the point that the Ishimura becomes a character in the game, motives redesigns make all of the details our imagination filled in extant in the levels themselves. The two core improvements are in scale and detail. The very first moment you take control of Isaac in the remake shows off what motive has done across the whole game. In 2008, the hangar feels big enough to sell the idea that you were in a large ship. But motive has made it a point to dramatically increase the scale in almost all of the 0G sections and everywhere else that it feels appropriate. The moment I stepped into the hangar, I thought, oh wow, this is awesome. One of these ended up being interesting skyboxes, either. All, I mean all, of these expanded areas become playable spaces. Let's put a few examples of these side by side on screen. There's that initial hangar area. There's the 0G gravity therapy room. There's the gravity tether area and the mining area. And of course, the centrifuge. All of these areas have been expanded in a way that makes the ship look and feel appropriately huge. It also makes many of these places feel more chaotic in combat. You'll constantly be frantically searching for enemies in the 0G sections, which for me was an excellent way to keep the tension consistently high. Then there's just the insane level of detail and all of the textures and all of the levels. This stuff is on display everywhere. The very first section of walking through security after the crash. The room where you're getting the tram car unstuck. The imaging lab. Every level is full of extreme detail in the environments. That makes me desperate to see what a remake of the second game would look like. If mode have got to remake the unitology church or the kindergarten section of Dead Space 2, holy crap man that would be so great. This level of detail matters so much here because again, the ship is such an important part of the game. Only in the last 5 years or so, that level and environmental detail has gotten so good across games. And that industry-wide improvement has finally made the original game age pretty significantly in comparison. So 5 years ago when I made my video and said that the game held up perfectly, well, in those 5 years things have changed. Mode's attention to making the Ishimura a believable place that people lived and worked is as good as anyone has done. I have to compare it to the Callisto protocol. Which again, was a perfectly decent game I guess. The Callisto protocol also has extreme environmental detail in its textures and much more impressive visuals than Dead Space. But Mode's environmental detail isn't just graphics, it's a form of storytelling that the Callisto protocol simply failed at. Much of that is the result of how much the original game got right, but Mode has taken the original game and perfected its environmental storytelling in a way that was simply impossible in 2008. I'll give you one small example that I think perfectly demonstrates this. In the Callisto protocol, there are spike walls everywhere. This is fun because impaling monsters is fun. But it makes zero sense in the world. No place actually has spike walls of death. Like what prison would have guards walking around trying to control dangerous criminals with spike walls everywhere. I have to say that that's a massive failure by their union man. Surely you would trade a couple of sick days or like maybe higher insurance premiums in exchange for having a 75% reduction in deadly spike walls and open spinning meat grinders. Definitely need to call the shop Union rep on that. In the original Dead Space, you will find long spikes to shoot at enemies. Even though it's strange that there are impaling spikes laying on the floor, you can kind of let it go because you figure oh that's just debris I guess. But that was not good enough for Mode of apparently. The first time you find one of those spikes, you will see that they are actually the legs for metal shelving racks. Like the ones you might have in your garage. They didn't need to do that. Nobody except picky assholes like me would have wondered where they came from. But they really did commit to making the Ishimura a real place and that kind of attention to detail filters all the way down the game. Everything about the ship feels real. Using the power nodes for doors always felt kind of odd to me and I thought it made progression a little more annoying because in the original you always had to make sure you carried one extra node at all times. Which wasn't really a problem it was just kind of like a chore. Making these doors locked behind security clearance upgrades works again to make the ship feel more like a real place. In the original there are lockers and containers that have a red light. You can't open them until you end up backtracking through the ship in later levels. But it's very clearly just a game balancing in the original. When you come back through here you will need to have ammo again. It's never explained like in the lore who came back and unlocked all these lockers for you. In the remake, Mode of gives an in game reason that you can now open this box or that locker. And to further incentivize exploration it gives you a side quest to create a master override clearance by finding the bodies of several crew members. Beyond even all of these improvements, Mode of has actually expanded the map in ways that I was initially kind of nervous about but now clearly makes this the superior version of the game. One of the big marketing points for the remake was that the ship could now be traversed entirely without loading screens and on foot. This didn't seem like a particularly important point to me. While the original game is broken up into levels, it still felt pretty seamless but I have to say that the expanded levels and interconnecting world is a massive improvement on the overall design. It actually surprises me that that's the case what it is. You can still take the trams between levels but the Ishimura is now laid out in such a way that the player can walk across the whole thing. This meant creating new connecting levels and these levels combined with the more random nature of enemy attacks really does improve the game quite a bit. It wouldn't matter if there was no actual reason to go back and forth across the ship but Mode of's creation of several side quests means that they had a reason to create several new areas all of which are excellent and fit so well it's often kind of hard to know what is new and what is old. We'll talk about those quests in a second when we go over narrative changes in the game but purely from a level design standpoint the updated maps look great and make the Ishimura feel even more authentic. One of the greatest triumphs of the new level design and environment of detail is how it makes it feel like a whole new game even when you're in areas from the old game. I was constantly stopping and thinking like is this a new place? Oh no this was in the original. It's totally transformative. Even old areas have been expanded with a few extra rooms and hallways. The updated art direction makes old things feel new and the new things feel eerily familiar to the old. It's pretty much amazing that Mode of was able to thread the needle of simultaneously being both extremely true to the original and everything that matters while significantly changing and improving the game in the places it needed it. Story and sound. Here's the one place where I will have at least a tiny bit of criticism. Not much but some. Let's start with the sound design. The sound design in the original game is one of the best examples of sound design in any game ever made. Very little needed to be done in this regard. I mean just listen. And yet a ridiculous amount was actually done. The sound design in this game is so ridiculously good. It's the kind of thing that makes a weirdo spend a bunch of time watching videos about sound design. Sounds realistically bounce around in the game. Enemies can be located almost entirely by sound in several sections of the game and more than that everything echoes in a realistic way. This is another example where you could legitimately ask whether it's overkill. Does a bunch of time need to be spent making sure sound properly bounces around corners or is properly occluded through glass? And you know I mean probably not. But that quite ridiculous attention to detail starts to really pile up over time and the final product shows it. Now I wasn't always so sure I liked the changes that mode have made. For instance in the early going I found myself a bit disappointed that some extra music seemed to have been added. And music that didn't really need to exist. It took me out of the game as I tended to overwhelm the quiet creepy menace that the minimalist moments in the original give you. I didn't really understand why at the time. It wasn't until later that I think I figured out what happened. In the original you will hear whispering sounds pretty much right from the start of the game. It eventually ramps up but it is always present. The remake tried to make this a much more obvious ramping up of Isaac's descent into madness and I have to say it works pretty damn well. Early on the sound design uses regular music, ambient sounds, and much more monster sounds to produce the tension. It only starts using the whispers in Isaac's head later on in the second half and instead of being a constant it increases in frequency. Finally I want to say that my one consistent complaint is that I think the heartbeat sounds are mixed too loudly, especially early in the game. I wish I could have lowered them with a slider. This is less noticeable like I said later in the game when the audio mix is much more textured but early on the audio was very sparse so those heartbeats end up being really front and center. Now don't get me wrong these are in the original game and I actually think they work really really well and after watching a video from the developers going over the truly ridiculous amount of effort that went into an entire system that alters Isaac's breathing heartbeat and dialogue based on how tired or hurt he is I'm even more impressed but I do think it's mixed just a bit too loud in the early game your mileage may vary on that but I mean we're nitpicking here. Overall the sound in the remake is not just as good as the original it is often much improved and that is improving on something that was already like best in video games level of great. This sound design is such a crucially important part of the game and it's something that almost every other horror game just doesn't do very well. The constant sound in Dead Space builds up and exhausts you over time. It works not only as a gameplay element but also to really get you feeling like Isaac feels. It was completely brilliant in 2008 and it is even more brilliant today. Let's wrap up by talking about the narrative changes in the remake. Dead Space has a surprisingly excellent story. It's one of the best early examples in gaming of how to have an excellent plot and story that is impressively supplemented by audio and text logs. It doesn't rely on those things it is improved by those things. Dead Space was basically going up against the Resident Evil games and the story in Dead Space is so much massively better than the old RE games it is pretty much comical. Dead Space's story has layers of excellence to it. The actual plot of Isaac's trip through the ship is excellent as a plot all on its own. The relationship between Hammond, Daniels and Isaac is great. The larger overarching story of CEC, Earthgov and the Unitologist and the Markers is also great. It manages to be a story that does a huge amount of world building and a pretty short runtime. It's so good it probably does not get enough credit for being one of gaming's best stories. Much of that greatness was tied up in how well it was paced. Dead Space kept a great deal of mystery early on. In the remake the audience already knows all of that story so the mystery is gone but the bones of the story are just as good as ever. Once again motive would have been totally justified to not risk changing even one thing but they took a big big risk by deciding to do a significant amount of changes. Obviously the one that got the most pre-release discussion is having Gunna right voice Isaac. I'm not even going to spend much time on this it's like an objectively better decision. It was always weird to go back and play the game and have Isaac just like follow instructions silently. He got Hammond telling Isaac the engineer how to fix stuff and you're basically just a mule doing whatever they say. It was always a mark against an otherwise excellent game. Especially because by Dead Space 2 Gunna right is Isaac Clark. All the parts written for Isaac are good. Right's performance is as good as ever and it's so seamless that it will be very weird to play the original now. Isaac's character is completely consistent with the later games and simply giving him a voice is a massive improvement and he's not constantly talking to himself seriously. Game developers stop to stop. I don't need Aloy talking to herself every three seconds. I promise I will not start drooling and turn off the game if there isn't someone literally telling me what they're doing at any time. Anyway, a voiced Isaac, the right decision, implemented perfectly. A bigger surprise is how many other changes there are here. One of my biggest criticisms I have always had about the original game is that Nicole was basically a McGuffin. Isaac is on a quest to save her but he's a silent protagonist and you as a player basically don't give two fucks about her so it doesn't work. Plus she comes off as like a damsel in distress and the whole thing. I mean she's not a person, she's just a pretty blonde that we need to go get. It just doesn't work. It's a sufficient jumping off point for the story but you don't create any connection to her. In fact, this serious problem even carries over to the next game where you're like, dude shut up lady, I don't even know you and you're all screaming in my face every couple of levels just go away. Then of course there's the massive plot hole of Nicole opening a door for you while you shoot Necron Morse that are attacking her. Even the first time I played the game once it was confirmed that she's dead I was like ah okay cool but like how did she open a door and why were monsters attacking her? People have always tried to hand wave this as Isaac hallucinating. Okay fine but again monsters are attacking her dude. Are the monsters hallucinating? Did the monsters open the door? It's a problem because it's dumb. The first time through the remake I was like ah ghost Nicole still opens the door for me. That's unfortunate. But a remake that spends a bunch of man hours accurately simulating Isaac's limbic response to stress will be unlikely to leave a ghost woman to open the door. I won't spoil it in case any of you haven't played it yet but this is indeed fixed in the final game. The whole hallucinating Nicole thing has an entirely satisfying explanation that is only possible because motive had the ambition to add quite a lot of extra narrative to the game. I mean the poor chumps who come with you on the ship now have names but more importantly there are several extra storylines woven in through text, audio logs and actual NPCs that you will talk to over the rig. These stories are unambiguously and universally excellent. Chief Engineer Temple storyline is expanded and given more emotional impact through the logs and quests giving him a doomed yet heroic story that sets you up for the depressing turn of events with Mercer in the crew quarters. And the story of the breathers and hydroponics is expanded giving that already amazing level even more emotional oomph. I've heard people say they don't like that level. I'm just like one of the best levels in the game. Little things like this are consistently improved in ways big and small but the biggest improvement in the remake is Nicole herself. This is just a tremendous massive improvement on the original game. Nicole now has an entire side quest devoted to her as Isaac tracks her last few days aboard the ship as she tries to figure out and then stop the outbreak. She interacts with Kain, Captain Matthias and Dr. Mercer. I think games often rely on magic holograms too often but it's crucial here because seeing her actually move around humanizes her and forms a connection that's just totally lacking in the original game. Falling her across the ship solves the Nicole as personalityless MacGuffin that the original suffers from. In the remakes she has some depth. She's a real person who did real things. Even Isaac's extreme guilt is made to work because it's made clear that it was he who pushed Nicole to take the job, making his mission more powerful and his guilt at his ultimate failure more personal and relatable. This is also helped by making Nicole significantly older, less beautiful and giving her a bunch more gravitas. The original game's Nicole is a nice looking blonde gal, basically a model. The remakes Nicole was a middle aged woman. She's a capable person. And this change makes the entire Nicole's story work so much better. It takes one of the only serious problems the first game had and turns it into a massive strength which, again, will carry over if they remake the second game. The one issue with the second game I had is I felt no guilt over Nicole. I didn't even know her. I had nothing to really do with what happened to her. Now we do and it's done really well. Nicole and Gunna Wright are also the two best performances in the game. Another massive change that could easily have failed that makes the remake very clearly the superior version of the game. Now let's wrap this up with a few things that were more mixed. The rest of the cast. Hammond's character is a bit more relatable and human in the remake. And the actor does a fine job but, you know, I just simply like the original Hammond better. He does a better job of selling the whole, is he actually working against us angle. In the remake, the new Hammond very clearly seems like a likable guy and it's pretty obvious that he is telling the truth right from the start. This makes his ultimate death work better, especially that the monster in the drop pod is now this chump who Hammond feels terrible about, but it comes to the cost of a little of the ambiguity between him and Daniels. Overall it's probably a neutral change but I do wish they could have gotten the original actor back as I simply think he's a better voice for the part. Daniels I think is actually quite a bit better here. The voice acting is about the same but she comes off a bit more suspicious in the remake. Right from the start her undermining of Hammond just seems a little off. And in the remake Isaac recognizes that and pushes back against it. It actually works quite a bit better because her portrayal now feels like it actually has a reasonable foreshadowing, which it really doesn't in the original. It always felt a bit cheap to me that she screws you over in the first game. Here in the remake it's also quite clear that she feels bad about it. She even tells you, hey you've made it this far, you'll find another way off the ship. The whole character works a little better because everything feels slightly more believable. Lots of that is because the acting is excellent, but the higher resolution also lets a bunch of subtle facial expressions over the rig come through. Really well done. Finally there's two things that I think are a downgrade. With Kine and Mercer I simply don't like the acting as much. With Kine the new actor does a decent job in the role, but he's a slightly more likeable and less insane guy and my beef is mainly that I loved that original voice. The new Kine is younger and he just seems to have less weight to him. In the original game Kine is clearly a leader on the ship. Someone the captain confides in. His voice and animation model in the remake makes him sound like a less steady person. Also in the original the killing of Captain Mathias has some ambiguity to it. The video log breaks up right at the time of death and there's some question as to whether it was truly accidental or whether Kine who's starting to get dementia actually killed him. In the remake the video log is changed to a hologram and we can see very clearly that the death was accidental. A small change with no real plot ramifications, but I prefer the original's direction and ambiguity. With Mercer however in my opinion we have something that is clearly inferior in the remake. First off again the original voice actor simply does a better job in my opinion, but that's not the core of my issue. The core of my issue is that Mercer's personality is fundamentally changed here. In the remake he's kind of like a mustache twirling villain. Now don't get me wrong he is an evil murderer too in the original game, but his total fanaticism comes across better. The killing of Temple in the original and in the remake is probably the best example of this, so let's have a quick look at both. There in the original Mercer is reveling in religious ecstasy. He's not enjoying the murder because he's taking masochistic pleasure in it, he is overwhelmed with the power of his faith. Now let's take a look at that same scene in the new game. Here Mercer's murder seems to be far less about religion and far more about being angry at Temple. The ending end of the line about how awful a death it is under Stasis is gratuitous. It changes the character in a small but significant way. In 2008 there was more ambiguity to Mercer's actions. He's less a psychopath and more a demonstration of ultra-orthodoxy gone wrong. When Mercer releases the hunter in the cryolabs against you in the original game, the emotion you get from him is frustration. He's almost sad that you're being so obtuse. He repeatedly asks you just to give in. He does not understand why you cannot see the obvious, that unitology has now clearly been proven right and your lack of belief is depressing to him. In this remake, Mercer seems more like an actual lunatic. He's trying to kill you just like the original but his motivations have changed slightly. The monologing in the original game makes more sense because Mercer is actually trying to convince you. He wants you to understand that what's happening is truly miraculous. He's a man whose faith has just been completely proven true. There's no more doubt and the killing is just a means to an end. Every death brings God's plan closer to fruition. That to me is both more interesting and more terrifying. Now there's still some of this in the remake but it's like buried and muddled. The plot points are the same but the acting and especially directing as well as some changes in how he's actually written makes things feel different. Plunging a knife into temple as he glories in his faith is different than putting him under stasis so that he suffers as he dies. I only harp in this because the rest of the game is basically perfect so this one thing sticks in my craw a little bit. Now not every change in the Mercer story fare is badly however. The story of how he is the one who kick starts the infection on board by doing experiments is good. It's in the original game but it's made far more explicit in the remake. And I love that you actually get a lot of backstory on who the Hunter is and how it ties into the original game's logs about the first person brought up from ages 7. This is again something that's implied in the original game but it's made clearer here. We actually hear and see Harris several times now. And these bits of story really do flesh out the characters. Temple and Cross's story in the first game is basically the same but by tying it all together more adding more audio logs and wrapping these characters together in a more cohesive way. The actual plot of the game is improved quite a lot. I would have preferred to have the original kind and Mercer back as voices. And while I love the extra story you get about Mercer and the Hunter I don't like Mercer being a much more outwardly evil person. But either way everything else about the narrative has been vastly improved of what was already an insanely good game. Wrapping up. This game is a masterpiece. The original was too. Me not liking one voice actor and thinking the heartbeats are mixed too loud is about as petty a couple of complaints as I've ever had about a game. It takes the original and just improves it in pretty much every way. There is almost no reason to ever play the original again which is not something that always happens with remakes. Like there is still a reason to play the original Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy 7. Those are different fundamentally different games. But there's not much reason to play the original Dead Space anymore because it's the same game just not as good. The bigger ship expanded narrative and improved levels means that Motive should get to first remake Dead Space 2 and then take the series over as if Dead Space 3 did not happen. And I actually like the third game more than most people do. Dead Space 3 is not nearly as terrible as most people say in my opinion. I'm sad to see that I guess they're working on an Iron Man game now because I just don't care about superheroes like at all. I actually like anti-care about superheroes. But using the Frostbite engine after Anthem basically designed an Iron Man simulator will probably produce at least a good action game. But after that, I deeply hope that Motive now becomes the Dead Space Studio. The series deserves to live again and Motive just proved that they are the ones to do it. Alright, Forespoken will be up next because oh boy, oh man. Ugh, I gotta talk about it. Even if it gets 110 views, I must talk about Forespoken. And not because it's woke. I don't care about that because it's shit. Thanks for coming. See you next time. Bye.