Isaac Clarke may want to hold onto that trusty Plasma Cutter, as it seems Visceral Games is open to developing a new entry in the Dead Space franchise despite its most recent release, Dead Space 3, failing to meet sales expectations.
Speaking to GamesTM, the studio’s General Manager Steve Papoutsis revealed that although resources are tied up with the soon-to-be-released Battlefield: Hardline, the creative team is still passionate about the cult horror IP.
“Many, many people here at Visceral have a warm spot in their heart for Dead Space, and right now we’re busy with Hardline and…other things… but it’s definitely something we’d love to look at again. There’s definitely a lot of interest internally for us to pick that up again at a future date.”
While it’s refreshing to hear that Dead Space is still considered to be one of the studio’s crown jewels, it’s hard to imagine that a new installment would see the light of day anytime soon. Following her abrupt departure from Naughty Dog last year, Uncharted director Amy Hening joined Visceral to work on an as-yet-untitled Star Wars game. Couple this with the ongoing online support for Hardline and you have a development team with little-to-no time to spare.
Still, that won’t prevent us from gazing hopefully into the crystal ball. If Visceral were to kick start work on a new Dead Space, all signs point to the studio opting for a full reboot to the story, perhaps one that would feature a new protagonist and/or timeline. After all, there’s no doubting that the company has crafted an intricate, Event Horizon-like universe replete with nasty necromorphs and deluded Unitologists, given how the story has proliferated across platforms and into books.
We’ll just have to wait patiently to find out whether Visceral will give the sci-fi horror franchise another whirl.
