Given that EA has such a massive backlog of excellent games and legions of players who fondly remember most of them, you would think the game publishing giant would be churning out remasters and remakes around the clock. Unfortunately, it seems that the opposite is actually closer to the case. Now, we do on occasion get remakes and remasters of classic games from EA and most of the time they are fine. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered turned out really well and it’s looking like the Mass Effect trilogy is getting a much-needed facelift as well. These remasters are extremely useful for everyone involved. They make a fair amount of extra money on a game that was already made, so that means there is relatively very little overhead for the folks putting it out. all of the costs of making that game have already been spent many years ago, so it really only cost them what it takes to get that game touched up and re-released, which has fractions of what it cost to actually make a game. Secondly it also helps players in that people who might not have gotten around to playing it last time around can now enjoy a version that’s closer to their expectations of what games of today look, sound, and play like.
Maybe they were young and just weren’t playing games when the original game came out or maybe they were just playing on a system that didn’t have that game for whatever reason, in either case it’s nice to give people ways to play games without necessarily having to lug out old hardware, look past dated visuals and fumble around with outdated controls. So, the case for releasing remastered and remade versions of old games pretty much makes itself. Given all of that you would think Electronic Arts would be the first ones to come up with the idea of a Dead Space remastered trilogy. But it seems like they’re going to be the last – if it ever does happen. We here at GamingBolt have no reason to believe that a Dead Space remastered collection is presently being worked on at any stage at any level and that is utterly disappointing. I think it’s high time that we really start pushing for this – politely and logically of course – given that these games have been stranded on 7th generation consoles for well over a decade now, despite being some of the best games that the publisher had put out in that entire generation.
Like I touched on before, the financial incentive of a remastered collection of all three games pretty much explains itself. The games are already done – they’ve already been made. there isn’t a whole lot of copyrighted music or characters that are owned by other companies or any other sort of bureaucratic legal gray areas that EA would really have to contend with here either. The original games were made and released by EA and are still owned by EA. Given that as far as I can tell it should be a pretty straight line from deciding to do a remastered collection of these three games and releasing them in whatever way EA decides to. whether that’s through origin or steam or going all the way with physical copies on store shelves or whatever path, it’s very doable for EA and there’s really no financial or market-based reason that I can come up with as to why they shouldn’t. In fact, I would go a step further and argue on the development side it would be a pretty straight line as well.
The games were designed by the team from the now disbanded Visceral Games and they were designed incredibly well. So much so that they still look really good. Playing the PC version of any of these three games doesn’t really feel like you were playing games from over a decade ago at least visually. Given that they hold up so well, the remastering effort could really be more-so just focus on optimization and getting these games running at 4K and perhaps 60 frames per second, rather than touching up a bunch of texture mapping and redesigning character models. They could certainly go that extra mile if they wanted to but I don’t think it would really be all that necessary, which would keep the development price tag even lower than it probably would be for other more in-depth remasters like the Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy, where they had much less to work with. With Dead Space, you could really leave the vast majority of the game alone and just focus on optimization and I think the vast majority of players would be fine with that.
Another reason why they should absolutely do this is that it would sell incredibly well. I think it’s fair to assume this but let’s go into a few reasons why; first of all, it’s one of the most commonly asked for remasters over the past several years – and not Just of EA games – I mean in general. People have been asking for a remastered collection of the Dead Space games for a very long time and to finally give that to people would absolutely generate a ton of buzz and a ton of money for EA that they could use to fund future projects and so on. It would also sell well for another reason though; Nintendo players could also have a crack at the series. Some might forget but all three of the main Dead Space games were not released on any Nintendo consoles. Now that Nintendo has caught up with the HD Revolution with the switch one could reasonably surmise that the Dead Space games would run just fine on that machine. Now granted it probably wouldn’t run as well as it would on the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox Series X, but you could definitely put slightly compromised versions of these games on the switch, and I think it would sell gangbusters. Given that Nintendo has shown more of an openness to AAA third party games in this generation than they have in the recent past with games like Wolfenstein 2 and Resident Evil 7 on the device, I think a Dead Space remastered collection on the switch along with the other consoles would make a lot of sense.
EA could absolutely go the extra mile here if they wanted to and include the multiplayer mode on Dead Space 2 as well as the co-op mode for Dead Space 3 to really make this thing feel complete and I think they should. If they’re going to remaster these games, they should definitely go all the way. Granted neither of those multiplayer modes really set the world on fire they did add a fair amount of replayability for Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3 and given that I think it would make sense to include them and support the servers on EA side for as long as they possibly can.
Whatever they decide to do with the Dead Space series they absolutely have to do something. We’re already seeing spiritual successors like The Callisto Protocol start a pop-up – which wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if EA had maintained the Dead Space series with any amount of regularity. Not only are they leaving Dead Space fans hanging by not doing so but they’re opening the door for competitors to come in and give players a similar experience that scratches basically the same itch. The bottom line is it’s just money being left on the table for EA, and if there’s any argument that a company like EA understands it’s the financial one.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.