“Horror protagonist” is usually a life sentence. If you don’t get shuffled off in the last few minutes of your debut feature or job for the villain in the first few of the sequel, you’ll probably get dragged back, again and again, to deal with the latest threat du jour.
Having narrowly escaped both the first and second possibilities, Isaac Clarke is forced into the third in Dead Space 3, and the game’s tone and focus naturally reflect his growth. The man has been killing space zombies so long he’s now handing out the tutorial. An eerie tone is natural – but Isaac is almost unhealthily familiar with the situation by now, so it makes sense that he’s gotten the cowering, hallucinations, and terror out of his system and replaced it with violent rage.
Like Resident Evil 6 before it (and Aliens before that), DS3 combines the genre trappings of horror with a violent action tone. Comparisons to The Thing have been noted, but the strongest atmospheric influence seems to have been the Lovecraft classic At The Mountains of Madness, another largely secondhand tale of an isolated band of humans delving into the ruins of another civilization – and another story that uses elements of unease and suspense without necessarily being viscerally “horrifying”.
Review Score: 8.3
Dead Space 3 is well on the way to making the term literal. Fanatical members of Unitology – everyone’s favorite death-cult absolutely not referencing another faith that ends in -ology – have toppled the government and are leading massacres and outbreaks of undead in human communities. After two prior outbreaks’ worth of scars and mental trauma, Isaac wants no part in any of this. But he’s soon dragged at gunpoint by former soldiers on a rescue mission for his old flame Ellie Langford, who went missing on an expedition aimed at finding a counter to the dire Markers, mysterious alien idols central to the Unitologist screed that twist and reanimate the dead.
After the first of many incidents of bad luck and awe-inspiring displays of sheer balls on Mr. Clarke’s part, the merry band end up stranded and ship-less, scrounging parts from a long-dead fleet floating in orbit around a mysterious uninhabited planet while following the trail of a long-dead military expedition.
Dead Space 3 is a very solid action title with horror elements. Like its predecessors, it’s a third-person over-the-shoulder shooter whose lead totes repurposed power tools (because no sane army would regularly issue its soldiers spike launchers and rotary saws) against an endless host of nightmarishly mutated undead. At least there’s a sensible explanation as to why everything Isaac Clarke relies upon breaks down or falls apart just when dramatically appropriate, since most of it is 200-years-untended wreckage.
Small, atypical additions like a cover roll and the occasional human enemies toting firearms don’t fundamentally change Dead Space’s traditional combat mechanics. The bigger departure is the new crafting system. Designing and testing out your own weapons is tremendously entertaining, but not always entirely balanced on the lower or normal difficulties – few foes, singly or in groups, could defy my mighty auto-spike-stasis-gun with underslung rocket launcher.
Production values are quite good, barring the occasional blemish in a few characters’ faces during certain scenes. Voice acting is typically superb, particularly Gunner Wright’s Isaac, and most characters’ dialogue feels naturalistic and believable. (A love-triangle subplot between Isaac and Ellie’s current beau, Robert Norton, is rather obnoxious, but only Norton really seems to take it seriously, so it’s probably deliberate.) Both the drifting hulks of the abandoned fleet and the frigid surface of Tau Volantis are evocative settings that could probably have carried a game on their own. And, of course, the long-dead necromorphs of this title are especially disgusting.
The elephant in the room, however, is not so easily slain. Dead Space 3 is a good game. But it is also undeniably a much more “action”-oriented title than its predecessors. Is this a betrayal of the franchise?
The answer is slightly ambiguous.
Horror franchises have a habit of evolving – or degenerating – into action franchises over time. The basis of horror is insecurity, and the central conflict isn’t merely the protagonist’s survival but their confronting and overcoming their fear. The climax is often the moment when the protagonist (metaphorically or literally) seizes back control of their life from their horrific tormentor. This is character growth, the “payoff” for the prior scenes of tension and terror.
This gradual buildup towards the cathartic payoff is what separates horror from slasher stories. In a horror story, death and mutilation are elements of the conflict to build up tension. Slasher stories, however, focus entirely on the kills themselves. In many cases, the protagonists of a slasher franchise are arguably the monsters, not their victims.
But when it comes time to make a sequel, the creators of a horror franchise are in an unenviable bind. They can remove the protagonist from the equation by killing them off or simply never having them appear, retreading the same narrative ground already trodden by the original. (After all, the horrifying has become familiar to the audience.) They can escalate, raising the stakes with ever-more frightful challenges – but there’s an upper ceiling to fear. A bigger monster is not necessarily a scarier monster.
Or, they can choose not to reverse the character growth of the previous movie, and action-ize the sequel. It’s safer, and sometimes more sensible and satisfying, to simply shift genres when your protagonist has outgrown their fear. This has the additional benefits of making the characters’ attitude closer to that of the audience, and reversing the former experiences of fear into empowerment.
Dead Space 3, obviously, considered the last option the most logical. Go into it with that understanding, and you’ll find an enjoyable conclusion to the franchise.
Review Score: 8.3
- Technical Specs (30%): 8.3
- Visuals: 9 (Barring the occasional foible, character models and environments are extremely good.)
- Audio: 8 (Decent audio quality, but aside from the voice acting nothing especially memorable.)
- Controls/Functionality: 8 (Solid, responsive controls familiar to third-person-horror-shooter players, but still slightly clunky compared to some titles)
- Presentation (30%): 8.66
- Menu/UI: 9 (As ever, Dead Space 3‘s minimalistic user interface is highly immersive and pleasingly unobtrusive.)
- Narrative: 8 (The narrative is fairly good, barring the occasional detour into Isaac’s love life.)
- Voice-Over/Sound Design/Soundtrack: 9 (The voice acting is excellent, even if the soundtrack is forgettable.)
- Value (30%): 8
- Length/Replay Value: 8 (Lengthy campaign and open-ended weapons crafting system allow for plenty of replay value..)
- Price Point & Value: 8 (At full price, you’re still getting a fairly meaty AAA game.)
- Lasting Impact: 8 (DS3 won’t be revolutionizing the genre; it represents a very good but fairly typical title.)
- Intangibles – (10%): 8 (An appealing protagonist goes a long way in earning goodwill, and the callbacks to The Thing and At The Mountains of Madness don’t hurt either.)