— Motive (@MotiveStudio) December 15, 2022 In addition to the announcement Dead Space has gone gold, Montreal-based developed Motive Studio have further detailed the game’s new “Intensity Director” system. It sounds it will really keep players on their toes, as Dead Space senior systems designer Dan Kim promises the system can serve up over 1200 dynamic events, from simple lighting changes to surprise necromorph attacks. “[The Intensity Director] is a content organization, spawning, and pacing control system, and depending on how we count things, the system has more than 1200 unique events, with a massive variety of combinations possible. Different elements, like audio or lighting changes, fog or steam, enemy spawns—all that combined together in layers to create encounters that feel like hand-made situations.” That said, if you’re afraid things might get a little too intense, don’t worry – per senior software developer David Vincent, the Intensity Director is meant to scare you, but it will also give you a break when needed… “We monitor the amount of intensity the player is going through while going from room to room. There might be an easy room with just a few sounds here and there, but that’s it. But then you might go into another room, and suddenly, there’s a Slasher spawning from a wall vent, plus the lights turn off, plus there’s fog in the environment, and it becomes a lot more intense. But then we give the player a break. Because we do essentially track the peaks and valleys of tension, to make sure that it’s not just back-to-back-to-back high-intensity events. Because that would be emotionally exhausting; you’d be like, ‘I can’t take this anymore.’” Interestingly, the makers of the Dead Space remake note that the Intensity Director has kept the game feeling scary, even for them. That’s in direct contrast to the comments of The Callisto Protocol director (and Dead Space co-creator) Glen Schofield, who has admitted he often isn’t sure if his games are scary by the time he’s done making them. Dead Space launches on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS4 on January 27, 2023.
