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A few weeks ago, Electronic Arts invited us out to get a look at some of their upcoming titles for their 2009 lineup. While Dead Space Extraction was behind closed doors, it was only so that we'd get a chance to experience the game as it was meant to be played: in the dark, with no distractions, so that the Necromorphs jumping out of the ceilings and walls would scare the begeezus out of us.
We have to admit, Extraction surprised us. The game not only looks impressive for a Wii title, it plays well. Fans of the original may already balk at the on-rails nature of its gameplay, but Dead Space Extraction is looking like a worthy entry in the series, and anyone that loved the original game would be wise to keep their eyes on this.
The game includes a co-op mode as well as some multiplayer content, but EA is keeping the details on those two modes under wraps until E3. For now, hit the jump and check out our interview with newly renamed Visceral Games, as we ask them about what to expect from Dead Space Extraction.
TAG: Now how close is this to the final version of the product? What percent of the game is complete at this point?
VG: I would say we're about 75% complete right now. We're really, really making a lot of headway every day now. We've got all the levels in production, they're all getting to a point where they're pretty fun. Right now, it's all about polish. It's all about tuning the weapons, it's all about getting the enemy AI to work just right, get the camera just right, and all that kind of stuff.
TAG: How many weapons do we have in Dead Space Extraction?
VG: There are 10 weapons. We've got all of the weapons from Dead Space 1, plus three new weapons. I can talk about two of the new weapons; one is the Rivet Gun, and one is the Arc Welder. The Rivet Gun is a weapon that you're going to have with you at all times, it's an unlimited ammo gun. The Arc Welder is a new weapon that we're going to see a little bit later in this level. It does a couple of interesting things... when you shoot it at enemies, it will sort of electrocute them, but what happens is, if an another enemy gets really close to them, it will arc to that enemy and do damage to that enemy as well. So it encourages the player to try to shoot enemies when they're clustered together, and of course that usually means it's when enemies are really close to you. So there's a lot of risk to using the weapon most effectively. The alt-fire for it fires an electrified charge through the air that can also arc and hit multiple enemies. So the strategy you want to use with it is to wait for a bunch of enemies to sort of cluster up and get in a line, and then fire it down along them so that it arcs and hits all of them on its path.
TAG: Explain the "Glow Stick" mechanic. That's something new for Dead Space Extraction.
VG: The Glow Worm is a device that you carry with you at all times. When you find yourself in the dark, it illuminates a small area around you so that you can see. But it will only show you the area that's right around you. It makes it so that combat's a lot more difficult in the dark. You're not going to be able to effectively shoot enemies that are out in the darkness, but obviously, you can see enemies that are up close. When you recharge it shaking your Wii remote, it'll stay charged for a little bit, it'll discharge, and then you've got to shake the Wii remote again to charge it back up. And of course, while you're doing that, you can't shoot, so there's a big risk involved with recharging the glow worm.
TAG: I'm actually impressed. I think the visuals... I think only the real graphics snobs are going to have a problem with the Wii visuals. They're remarkably similar to the 360 and PS3, although obviously they're missing some of the nicer effects. Were the visuals something that you strived for initially, in that you wanted to make them as close as you could to the 360 at the onset for the sake of connecting with the past game, or were they a secondary concern that you worried about after your focused on the game concepts?
VG: From the start, we wanted the game to look really good. Of course, not at the expense of any of the gameplay. Dead Space is all about being very immersed in a very believable world. To achieve that, we had to have characters that looked and behaved realistically, we had to have worlds that really looked like they were rich and detailed. We started out with a lot of the assets from Dead Space 1. A lot of the environments that you go to in Extraction are environments that you saw in Dead Space 1. We took a lot of the same art and we just modified it very slightly and got it working on the Wii, and I think the game looks pretty spectacular.
TAG: Are we going to get any surprise blowouts with multiplayer, like a hidden competitive multiplayer mode?
VG: We are going to have (collaborative) co-op in the game. Beyond that, we can't really talk much about co-op or multiplayer, because that's going to be one things that we'll be showing at E3.
TAG: Let's talk about this sort of minigame being shown on the screen. It's kind of like Operation, in that you have to draw a line of energy through a conduit and avoid certain obstacles. How much of this has gone through tweaking? I can see this being a bit of a sticking point for a lot of people.
VG: First of all, what you're seeing here on the screen is placeholder art. The idea is, you're trying to repair an elevator that's broken, and to repair it, you need to trace out paths on a circuit board. One of the things in the art that you don't see is a lot more detail that makes it a lot more convincing that you're actually repairing a circuit board. That just sort of fills you in on the fiction behind the puzzles. Now, your concern about the difficulty is a totally valid concern. We're still tuning it A LOT, and we're changing the sensitivity of the Wii remote when you're in a puzzle so that it's a lot less jittery, so if you have a shaky hand, you're not going to have a lot of trouble. We're also trying to fine tune how close the obstacles are to the path that you're trying to trace, how quickly some of the objects move, and all those sorts of things. The other thing that we're experimenting with right now is that when you touch some of the obstacles, the obstacles may actually short circuit, and the electricity will stop flowing through them, so that if you touch it once, it's no longer an obstacle.
TAG: How many minigames are you looking that in the final version?
VG: We can't talk about that right now.
TAG: One of the nice things about the original Dead Space was that there were a lot of benefits to playing through it multiple times, with transferrable content and things of that nature. Are we going to see a similar philosophy in Dead Space Extraction?
VG: Yes, definitely. There are going to be plenty of reasons to play through it multiple times. I can't talk too much about what some of those things are right now, but I think you can assume that some of those things are similar to what you saw in Dead Space 1. Upgrades, cool things that you find throughout the world, and the like.
TAG: Speaking of upgrades, are we going to see suit upgrades like we had in Dead Space 1?
VG: There will be suit upgrades, yes. (wry grin)
TAG: And how many new monster types are we looking at?
VG: Not including bosses, there are three new monster types.
TAG: And I'm guessing you can't talk about bosses yet...
VG: I can't talk at all about the bosses. I can tell you a little bit about some of the new enemies. One of the new enemies that we've talked about so far is a flying Necromorph. We think that's gonna be really cool, because it's very different from what you saw in Dead Space 1. It's going to be a very fast moving, sort of panic-inducing enemy.
TAG: How do you initiate the alternate fire?
VG: You initiate alt-fire by rotating the Wiimote, sort of twisting it 90 degrees, so it doesn't require a button press. You'll know when it's activated because your cursor changes. And a note about the controls too. We tried really, really hard to make sure that the controls were as simple and intuitive as possible without giving up any of the functionality that we wanted. We were able to, with a very simple control scheme, keep Stasis, keep Telekinesis, we've got alt-fire, we've got the ability to pick up weapons and interact with things in the environment. And we have all of this stuff, on a very small number of buttons. We're really, really happy that it's so simple for people to pick up, because we think one of the great things about the game is that, especially in co-op, if you're really into the game and you want your buddy to come over and try it out, he's going to be able to pick up the controller and just hop right in with you, and have fun right from the start, and feel like he can do 90% of what he needs to do in the first thirty seconds.
TAG: As far as the connection to the original game, this is a prequel... are we going to see any kind of cameo from Isaac?
VG: I can't talk about any of the specific characters you're going to see, and I can't talk about any of the real deep plot points. What I can tell you though is that we've spent a lot of time writing the story for this game to really intertwine with all of the other Dead Space properties. So, Dead Space Downfall (the movie), the comics, Dead Space 1... people who know all those properties are going to be very rewarded playing through this game, because there are so many tie-ins with all the events and the characters.
Another important thing about the characters is that you will play different characters throughout the game. Again, I can't tell you which ones, or when and where you'll play them, but you will get to experience the story from different perspectives.
TAG: Great! Thank you very much for your time, we appreciate it.
VG: Thank you!
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