One of my favorite games ever is being rebooted, according to Gematsu, Eurogamer, and Venture Beat, who all say they've heard that a Dead Space revival is in development.
Specifically, Venture Beat's Jeff Grubb says that EA is "rebooting the franchise with a full-fledged remake."
The original Dead Space (which is on Steam) was made by Visceral, which EA closed in 2017 while it was working on the never-released Star Wars Ragtag project. This reboot is said to come from Motive, the EA studio that made Star Wars Squadrons and co-developed Star Wars Battlefront 2.
The original Dead Space helped make 2008 one of EA's best years ever. Even back then, there was a growing sense that mega-publishers didn't care about releasing exciting singleplayer games anymore, and Dead Space was seen as EA's counterpoint: a surprising, delightfully gross horror game in which you sliced up alien monstrosities with a plasma cutter. The zero gravity bits felt particularly wild at the time, and the in-world UI, which delivered information to the player through holographic displays and lights on the protagonist's suit, remains an example of the technique worthy of study.
Later in 2008, EA dropped Mirror's Edge, and for a moment it was the champion of excellence in singleplayer game design. (And then everyone I know went back to being mad at it for their various reasons.)
There are no specifics about this rumored Dead Space reboot right now, just sources who say it's happening. It'd be surprising if three publications were all misled here, but we haven't heard anything ourselves.
We've contacted EA for comment, but if Dead Space is really coming back, it seems likely we won't hear anything official about it until EA Play Live on July 22.
