Dead Space remake devs had ideas for a brand new Dead Space game before EA shelved the series, claims report

Developers at Dead Space remake creators EA Motive were pushing to make a "new entry" in the sci-fi horror series before EA shelved it last year, according to the latest in a recent outbreak of Dead Spacey rumours and revelations that have spread through the bulkheads of the internet, coating everybody's devices with necrotic slime.

Today's injection of mutagenic insider gossip comes from Bloomberg, who claim that a small team at Motive spent a few months working on a "new entry in the series". These plans were never greenlit, however, as EA are said to have put the whole franchise on ice last spring. Since last summer, the team in question have been exploring other game concepts, while the majority of Dead Space remake developers have moved onto other projects.

As Matt reported overnight, Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb recently claimed that a Dead Space 2 remake was once in the works, only to be shelved following lower-than-hoped sales of the first remake. According to Grubb, the DS2 remake was in the "concepting phase", "definitely pre-production". EA themselves have said that "there is no validity to this story." As Nic's just pointed out to me, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has disagreed with Grubb's claim over Xitter, commenting that EA Motive used the same codename for several projects, not just Dead Space, and that the new game was "never really a Dead Space 2 remake".

So who should we believe? Was the new game a Dead Space 2 remake or an original Dead Space game? "Concepting" teams tend to chuck around a bunch of ideas, of course - it's possible there were pitches or proto-pitches internally for both a brand new game and the Dead Space 2 remake.

There's certainly plenty of room in the Dead Space universe for another sequel, or perhaps an imaginative reboot, or a cool genre spin-off of some kind. Then-Eurogamer contributor Connor Makar spoke to series creators Visceral about their plans for Dead Space 4 in 2018. Ideas included building out the flotilla section from Dead Space 3 with more zero-G combat, which I can definitely get behind. I love jet-boosting between derelicts, me. It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Dead Space has been parked in a graveyard orbit - Visceral were taken off the series and put on Battlefield development duties after Dead Space 3.

I would probably trust EA Motive with an original Dead Space game, though I disliked how the Dead Space remake recontextualised some of the original Dead Space's gamier elements (such as its silent protagonist) to fit the narrative universe it would spawn. The studio definitely has sci-fi chops to call on: their past projects include Star Wars: Squadrons, one of two VR games I unambiguously love, and support work for Amy Hennig's cancelled Star Wars game Project Ragtag. So it's a bit sad that they've been rededicated to work on *checks notes*... Battlefield again. Well, I guess Battlefield has its sci-fi elements.