The problem with Dead Space

[The Robotman]

The main problem with the entire series is the lack of human contact. Sure, it's supposed to cast an air of dread, as if there is no escape off the completely alien filled catacombs of the Ishimura (And the Sprawl in DS 2). Alright, cool..

But if hundreds of people cannot defeat necromorphs in the beginning stages of the mass infection, suicides, and all out hell breaking loose, how can ONE MAN, let alone a man who has never been trained in any form of true marksmanship or weapons combat, defeat a legion of the re-animated undead by himself, even AFTER the fact that everyone is infected? People couldn't even survive when there wasn't even that many Necromorphs, and Isaac can single handedly take on the entire ship worth of the bastards? You'd think someone trained would've survived, at least a tight knit group..
But no, only Isaac, engineer with no background in monster killing, can waltz through the hordes without much fear of death. (It's not a hard game, either of the two in actuality.)

I call bullshit on the developers. It's just too unrealistic to have one man be able to handle something that HUNDREDS, (Supposedly thousands on the Sprawl) couldn't handle AT ALL, with trained personnel or not. The only true people we even see at the end of DS 2 are the soldiers aiming at Isaac, and even then they're easily wiped up by the necromorphs minutes later, that Isaac waltzes on through like buttering toast instead of fending for his life against otherworldly forces.

Stupid.

Dead Space is suffering from a severe case of after thought stupidity, and the developers should of thought a little bit harder on that fact, or at least made the game harder in EVERY way.

Spill your thoughts.

 

[Talal Provides]

The problem with Dead Space is it's pretty much Doom 3.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

It's a game, who cares? Go shoot a variety of zombie-alien-monsters with cool weapons and be happy.

 

[BlueberryMUNCH]

It's a game, who cares? Go shoot a variety of zombie-alien-monsters with cool weapons and be happy.

Pretty much this.

Games are exactly that- tools for pure entertainment, to let imaginations flourish and to waste hours away.
At the end of the day, you can de construct any game, right?

At the end of the day, that's like saying Game Freak are bullshit developers because Pokemon aren't real.

Or heck, even with the Call Of Dutys...how can one man [okay, sometimes more than just one] kill literally HUNDREDS of people, and save the world.

Just a thought.

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

I'm sure there are a lot of problems that a lot of different people will claim is THE problem with Dead Space.

Honestly... it's not that big a deal, you're not meant to have human contact, you're meant to feel completely alone and without any kind of back up.

Isaac has just the right combination of luck, skill and weaponry to survive the necromoprh horde.

Yeah sure we can say he probably doesn't stand any more chance than any other person on that ship... but how boring would the game be if the realistic thing happened and Isaac got skewered by the first necromoprh in sight while he was frozen in terror and confusion?

Just roll with it, it's a damn good horror/action game (depending on which you play).

 

[sheic99]

My main problem with the first one, was the amount of fetch quests I was supposed to do. It really started to irk me that I had to fix everything by my god damned self.

Edit: Also, the necromorphs stop being scary after the 10th time I shot it's limbs off.

 

[Bobic]

But you know how he killed all those creatures, you were controlling him when he did it.

 

[NeuroShock]

While it doesn't really prove that Isaac can plow through baddies more effectively than anyone else, he WAS trained in how to use a weapon. You wouldn't know this though unless you read one of the backstory logs you get for beating the first game, but Isaac was apparently in the Merchant Marines at one point.

My theory is that Isaac gets by on the fact that he's using tools designed for cutting (rather than actual weapons like the Pulse Rifle, which is actually quite a bit more difficult to sever limbs with in my experience with the game) and that the audio logs he picks up at the beginning of the game basically tell him not to approach killing Necromorphs with body shots, but dismemberment. He knows it from the beginning. That, combined with the stasis module he finds, the kinesis module he's given and a whole lot of luck (well, I was pretty lucky sometimes playing through the game the first time) gives him the ability to make it.

 

[Corven]

So the fact that one man is able to survive a spaceship (then space station) filled with mutated reanimated corpses is the unrealistic part of the game?

Also during the beginning chapters of dead space 2 you see several evacuation ships flying off into space (some crash but not all) frankly we don't really know how many people survived.

And another thing he doesn't need a background in killing things, because in both games (to my annoyance) he is reminded several times on the best way to dispatch the necromorphs.

 

[Wicky_42]

I thought the game covered that quite well - everyone finds out that Necromorphs only die from amputation AFTER the com system gets shot which, at a practical level, renders the military's heavy use of pulse rifles counter-productive.

On a more involved level, the huge emphasis on a gradual descent into insanity from everyone in the area probably plays a much bigger part in getting everyone killed - mad men sabotaging the ship, going on murderous rampages and generally overwhelming the medical and security staff pave the way for an infestation with golden bricks - and leave a nice body trail for the parasites to build their army from. Add in large civilian populations being turned into ferocious, ravenous, damage-resistant beasties with a predilection for air-vents and a natural talent for ambushes, and you have one fucked conventional security presence.

Isaac survives the first game because 1) the Necromorphs aren't an army, they're more the personification of chaos, and as such there's no strength of numbers brought against him to squash him like a bug, 2) he's lucky (plot armour) and 3) he's controlled by a gamer who's not actually gradually going insane from the marker's influence.

I've only just begun 2, but it's pretty evident even from the opening sequence that his survival isn't just some cakewalk and that even with his testimony and recounted experience, the security forces on the Sprawl weren't informed of how to kill Necros, leading back to my first point.

The physchological angle isn't one you can just ignore - humans are their own worst enemies when their minds are twisted and paranoias brought out.

 

[Azure Knight-Zeo]

I don't care much about the unrealism of Dead Space so much as the fact it's a blatant rip-off of Doom 3, right down to the problem where it thinks it's scary when you're fighting slow moving enemies with a saw-blade launcher.

 

[pyrosaw]

For me, it just wasn't scary.

 

[Wicky_42]

You'd think someone trained would've survived, at least a tight knit group...

In addition to my above post, check out Deadspace Downfall - that has a tight-knit security group on the Ishimushta taking on the Necros - they get picked off one by one, though accidents, bad luck, going insane and turning on one another and through heroic sacrifices. It's pretty darn likely that, (in-canon), the Sprawl was host to many such stories, and many heroic acts were performed - and probably some other people kicked ass Isaac style. We just never meet them, they escape before Isaac wakes up, or they ended up just going demented and killing themselves and/or everyone around them...

 

[fix-the-spade]

Spill your thoughts.

Dude, DUDE!

You're over thinking this. It's a fault of any zombie based story that the zombies would get wiped out once the humans figured out what was going on and formed organised resistance.

"Alien virus discovered on Aegis VII colony, 30 commit mass suicide, re-animate, five hundred dead. Virus outbreak quelled after colony security organises fightback, dismemberment found most effective,"
That doesn't make for a very long game, although in Dead Space's case the ability of the marker to mess with people's heads provides a very credible reason for the Necromorphs proving so effective.

<spoiler=MASSIVE SPOILER HERE> in fact in DS:Exctraction this is a major plot point. Several sections take place under the influence of the Marker's hallucinogenic powers. Including the opening where you blast your way through a few dozen innocent colonists believing them to be Necromorphs.

The Aegis VII colony falls so quickly because they are thrown into complete disarray, unable to contact each other reliably and unable to even trust their own senses. Any form of organised defence rapidly falls apart and with it the outbreak spreads extremely rapidly.

The Marker's ability to cause such fatal levels of confusion and to break down effective communication and organisation hands the old space zombies a huge advantage.

Visceral have actually covered how the Necros manage to be so destructive quite effectively. Although ultimately it's just part of the suspension of disbelief. I decided to let a few plots holes slide given that I was a mute badass heavily armed marine-engineer fighting zombies in a derelict mining ship IN SPAAAACCCE!

 

[Fidelias]

What's retarded is how they're supposed to be scary, when really they'd be almost nothing to a soldier. Most of the necromorphs are close ranged combatants, so all the soldiers have to do is set up a half-decent defense and they'd be fine.

And if you start to try to convince me that the soldiers are too terrified of the necromorphs to mount a decent defense, stop. It's ridiculous that some engineer could be able to control his terror, and yet a soldier who's trained to deal with life-or-death circumstances, can't.

 

[octafish]

The problem with Dead Space is it's pretty much Doom 3.

The problem with Dead Space is it isn't System Shock 2.

 

[Talal Provides]

The problem with Dead Space is it's pretty much Doom 3.

The problem with Dead Space is it isn't System Shock 2.

The problem with all horror games is they aren't System Shock 2. No game is scary to me anymore, all because I played System Shock 2, in the dark, with headphones, when I was alone in the house. Seriously, do that if you want to feel like you're going to piss yourself. Hell, you just might.

 

[Jake0fTrades]

It's a game, games are practically unrealistic by definition, hell, you're on a space station fighting mutated zombies with plasma and javelin guns.

Of course there is no human contact, I wouldn't be scared at all if I had a squad of soldiers around every corner waiting to lend a hand. The game was meant to be played alone in the dark at night, to make you feel utterly alone and without hope.

If it's not hard enough, you can increase the difficulty.