Interview by: Brian Rowe

I highly enjoyed the original Dead Space and patiently waited for signs of the imminent sequel. Then the news came. Dead Space will be coming to the Wii, and as an exclusive sequel no less. The original and Extraction share most of the same engineering weapons/tools, settings on the Ishimura, and reanimated adversaries. They even share the same visual style, which is actually an impressive feat. As deep as the similarities are, the first-person perspective and relentless momentum of a rail-shooter make all the difference. You don’t know how frightening a Necromorph can be until it’s eye-to-pulsating-eye with you.

On board is Executive Producer, Steve Papoutsis, of Visceral Games.

Tell me a little about the story behind Extraction.

Dead Space: Extraction is a prequel to Dead Space and the game kicks off with the events around the Red Marker being extracted from the planet Aegis VII, which is a mining colony that was also seen in the original Dead Space. Essentially, what happens is the Marker is extracted, releasing a form of dementia throughout the colony and a large electromagnetic pulse that puts the colony in a state of panic. [The colonists] start seeing things and behaving strangely.

Eventually you control McNeil who is a P-SEC detective on the planet and a couple others - Gabe Weller, who is a security guard from the Ishimura, Lexine Murdoch, who is a surveyor’s assistant from a colony, and eventually, Warren Eckhart from the colony. That group of four people team up together to escape the colony because it’s overrun by Necromorphs at this point and they think they’re going to find safety on the Ishimura. They jump on the shuttle, battle their way up there because there is a no-fly order in effect, and get to [the Ishimura] and discover that things are equally bad. I don’t want to go too far into the story obviously, or I’ll give away all the good stuff.

Since we already know how the situation on the Ishimura ends, were you ever concerned that constructing a story in that environment might feel futile for the player, and how do you combat that feeling?

We weren’t really concerned about that when we started. Are you familiar with Dead Space? Have you played the original?

Yes. I really liked the game.

Cool. You might remember being back there and seeing certain things and wondering how they got that way. For instance, without giving away too much, remember that barricade on the medical deck when you’re walking through chapter two and chapter five of the original game. You’ll see how that gets constructed. So for players that played the original Dead Space, they’re going to see the before, and why things looked the way they did. I thought it would be fun for people to see and experience why that barricade got built, or why the EDF cannons got taken off-line. That was the angle we took on it.