If every medium speaks in a unique language, then every work of art in that medium speaks its own dialect. No other artistic medium speaks this language. Gameplay is the decisions you make, the actions you take, and how these things play out. What is gameplay? It’s the way in which you interact with the game space. The language of video games as a medium is gameplay. While games often use film techniques for their cutscenes, the unique strength of the medium is found in gameplay. Every medium speaks its own unique language: in games, or at least 3D games, stories are told through interaction with a virtual environment. Theatre is the live performance of a story, a sort of happening that takes place in the now. In a novel, a story is told through the placement of words on a page. In film, a story is told through a series of images and sounds edited together to create meaning. In other words, “a third person horror game with an emphasis on cutting off monster limbs” isn’t an accurate description. Dead Island‘s tropical zombie dismemberment comes to mind, but can you really imagine Isaac Clarke clomping around a South Pacific vacation resort in those big engineering boots of his? Additionally, plenty of people have made horror games where you cut off monster limbs. So, right away, we see that despite a change from third to first person perspective, Dead Space is still Dead Space. The only problem is, Dead Space Extractionis a fun first-person rail shooter. On the surface, that seems simple: third-person horror game with an emphasis on cutting off monster limbs. So, before we can talk about what Dead Space 3 isn’t, we need to identify what Dead Space, in general, is. The story’s structure and characters were more memorable. Jump scares took a backseat to lengthier moments of tension, but those few “gotcha” moments that remained were some of the best in the game. The gaps the original had in enemy diversity were filled with terrifying new enemies. Dead Space 2 tightened its predecessor’s pacing while broadening its scope. That’s a hard balance hard to pull off well, but Visceral managed it beautifully.ĭead Spacewas a tense horror game with fairly good combat and variety. We want a sequel to Blade Runner to be the same because we liked the movie, but we want it to be different enough that it feels just as fresh and new as Blade Runner did on our first viewing.Ī good sequel is the same, because it’s still attached to the identity of the series, but it’s different, because we’re discovering it for the first time. We’re not watching it for the first time again. The problem with watching Blade Runner a second time is that our experience has changed. Everything has a unique emotional identity attached to it. The entire movie is a synthesis of light and sound that affects our brains in a very particular way, and that’s true of all art we consume. That deep blue lighting means something, as does the rain, the neon, Vangelis’ music, the performances, the sound, the lenses, the atmosphere, everything. When we watch, say, Blade Runner, we start building emotional connections. The Possibility Of The Perfect SequelĪlright, what’s a perfect sequel? What determines whether or not a sequel is any good? Judging by the response most audiences have, it’s “more of the same, but different.” Development studio Visceral and EA followed with Dead Space 2, which was, in many ways, the perfect sequel. Dead Space looked great, played better, and went on to become one of the best horror games of the seventh generation of consoles. It was cut from the cloth of System Shock 2, the sci-fi horror adventure that inspired some of the industry’s greatest games, including Portal and Bioshock. When it launched in 2008 alongside Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space was part of an incredible one-two offering of original games from EA.
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