9 Promising Video Games That Were Totally Ruined By Publisher Meddling

2. Dead Space 3

Dead Space
EA

Ever since the release of the second game, it was evident that the Dead Space series was moving away from its survival horror roots. However, while this change in direction didn't impact the first sequel, the third game suffered hugely from EA's insistence on making the franchise more 'marketable'.

Sadly, this new desire for sales meant ditching the original idea for the sequel, which was initially all about lead character Isaac's delusions and psychosis. After two games of having his psyche hammered by supernatural influences, the third game was going to go all in on making the engineer a truly unreliable protagonist.

Feeding into this idea, the game's co-op partner was going to be an unreal shadow version of Isaac, a fact that would be reserved for a late-game twist.

More interestingly though, the co-op experience was going to be different depending on who you were playing as. In order to ramp up the tension and create an uneasy atmosphere, the two characters would see completely different things during key moments, attempting to stir up paranoia between players.

This was all cut from the game though, and according to this video, was replaced with a focus on microstransactions, a more straight-forward story, and the psychosis features toned all the way down.

Contributor

Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.