10 Times Publishers Screwed Over A Video Game

Purists will argue that even by Dead Space 2, the game had moved away from its roots. However, both games focus on survival horror and a creeping sense of dread. Originally, this was going to continue into the third instalment, but publishers EA put paid to that idea.

Knowing survival horror was a niche market which likely wouldn’t bring in massive numbers, Dead Space 3 was contorted into an action shooter. Unsurprisingly, microtransactions were shoved in any which way they could too.

The conclusion of the trilogy was going to have protagonist Isaac suffer a full of psychological breakdown, with a co-op version of the game featuring Isaac and a hallucinated version of himself fighting alongside each other. This dramatic twist was to be saved for the climax, and each player would have seen different things across their playthrough, heightening the sense of paranoia and psychosis.

All of these features were shorn away in the end, with EA pushing for a shooter as generic and by the numbers as they could get. The problem was it wasn’t a game ever built for this, and those who might have enjoyed it avoided it, while those invested in Dead Space hated the new direction.