EA’s Scrapped Dead Space 3 Would Have Been AMAZING

Shadow Isaac Twist

The idea was to get both players on edge, questioning what was and wasn't real, and wondering why they were seeing different things. To circumvent the power that comes with having another human being by your side, these discrepancies would sow doubt and distrust in the partnership, while making for an unpredictable horror experience. Just because one player might be safe didn't mean both would be.

Even better, this would have been capped off with a payoff directly linked to the story of Isaac's psyche. A late game twist would reveal that the second player wasn't just another character joining Isaac on the mission, but rather a manifestation of his own mind, dubbed "Shadow Isaac" by Wanat in the Eurogamer interview.

This would have been a huge reveal, and while it's unclear how the game would have progressed after this - whether the cooperative relationship would be inverted or not - it would have been such a Dead Space move and proven that co-op could be done well in this sub-genre.

Of course, this was Visceral's plan, and they hadn't factored in EA. According to Wanat, the publisher got cold feet over the whole dementia idea and scrapped it. Though the devs wanted to return to the series' horror roots, EA pretty much wanted anything but that. In fact, there's an argument to be made that Dead Space as a series represented everything the publisher didn't want from its games...