Review by: Michael Barnes

I loved Dead Space 2 far more than I expected; I even played through it two times back-to-back, which something I haven’t done with a game in years. One of my biggest frustrations with it, however, was how so much of the story felt disjointed and incomplete due to the cross-marketing among other media and products. Sorry, I just don’t particularly care to read a Dead Space 2 fanfic-quality novel or watch a crudely animated cartoon to squeeze out more information about a video game when I could be reading Isaac Asimov or watching 2001 instead. Unfortunately, the just-released “Severed” DLC is also dependent on outside material and as such it feels incomplete while also managing to damage the cool subtexts of the main game.

Severed puts the player in the Rig of Gabe Weller as he attempts to find his pregnant wife, Lexine, just hours before the Necromorph outbreak at Titan Station. Given some of the events in Extraction, where these characters originated, it doesn’t make much sense out of the gate but maybe I’ve missed a comic book or something that would fill in the gaps. Gabe comes equipped with the flamethrower, a pulse rifle, and the seeker rifle. The upgrade and shopping mechanics are the same, but don’t expect to take them very far since the DLC is two scant chapters and there’s barely any time to make any progress on the tech trees.

There are no new areas of the Sprawl explored, which is a damn shame because if there’s any content that I would have liked to have seen it would have been more scenes like the school or the Unitologist church. Gabe’s trip takes him through boring mines, boring industrial areas, and some of the medical facilities encountered at the beginning of Isaac’s story, but you go through them backwards this time, oh my. Any opportunity to expand on what happens in the main game is squandered and if you’re expecting new insights or story material, you won’t get any. Instead, there’s alluring come-ons about mysterious “Oracles” that have no other content in the core games and it comes across almost like a marketing lead to get players interested in learning more by purchasing other Dead Space products to get the rest of the story.

As an action-focused pair of chapters with no big scares, I guess it works well enough if all you want out of it is to shoot up some more Necromorphs, but seasoned vets will likely find the repetition of areas egregious. It is also spectacularly disappointing that within its one hour playtime the DLC repeats one of the main game’s signature moments not once but twice, thus cheapening its “holy crap” impact.

The biggest and what I think is the most shameful blow to Severed is that its shift in perspective completely nullifies the fascinating possibility that Isaac might not be, shall we say, right in the head. It’s pretty clear in the DLC that everything is very literal and there is no ambiguity or psychological gray area. Further, one of DS2’s triumphs was in making Isaac a believable, fragile, and human character with great dialogue and a compelling journey. Switching over to Gabe just points out further how central Isaac is to making Dead Space work. He is greatly missed.

Severed is six bucks and if you didn’t get enough of the action out of the base campaign or the multiplayer then these two chapters might sate your bloodlust. I was able to complete both chapters in just under an hour on “Zealot” difficulty, which explains the relatively low price. If you’re following all the marketing promotions and tie-in products, you might enjoy seeing Gabe and Lexine in the game and the Oracles might mean something to you, but for all but the most diehard fans this is definitely a download to skip.