It looks like we won’t get a remake of Dead Space 2 in the style of last year’s excellent do-over of the original limb-shooting horror game, but it turns out that Dead Space isn’t completely, uh, dead just yet. Though to what degree you could consider it alive and well – reanimated in a twisted form of its previous glory, perhaps – is another question entirely.
EA’s space-horror series is finding its way into the next season of Battlefield 2042, inspiring a new horde-extraction mode called Outbreak that will run from July 9th to 16th as part of the shooter’s seventh – and final – season Turning Point. (The game is also 90% off over on Steam at the moment ahead of its swan song season.)
The time-limited event doesn’t quite star the The Thing-like necromorphs found aboard Dead Space’s Ishimura space station, opting instead for decidedly more human-like zombies-slash-infected-slash-whatever (presumably to make it easier to shoot them in the head, instead of wondering where their head even is) that will try and overwhelm the players’ squad as they attempt to defeat waves of enemies, buy new gear as they advance and extract from each level without losing their single life.
Don’t expect to find the limb-slicing plasma cutter in your armoury, either, although the teaser trailer for the crossover does show a character decked out in Isaac’s glowing engineer suit and helmet. That’ll join the usual selection of weapon skins, charms, player cards and other cosmetics able to be unlocked through the event itself and bought from the in-game store.
With Dead Space remake developers Motive now split between working on Battlefield and developing their Iron Man game, it seems like – for whatever reason – we won’t be getting a remake of Dead Space 2 anytime soon. Whether a one-week crossover event with Battlefield is really the brightest sign for the series’ future, I’m not convinced – but I suppose it’s at least acknowledgement that someone, somewhere in EA is thinking about Dead Space, if nothing else.