Friday, July 8, 2011

Dead Space makes little sense.

Hi everyone. I just wanted to post some thoughts on the video game Dead Space that occurred to me the other day.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Dead Space is a third person shooting game set in space (Hence the last half of the title), and involves the player taking on hordes of mutated space aliens and undead human beings (Hence the first half of the title). As games go, it's pretty good, it controls well enough, the graphics are good, the sound and music works quite well, and it's over all just fun to play. I did not find it very scary. At times creepy and mostly just a little gross, but not nearly as scary as many make it out to be. Anyway, I digress.

What I wanted to talk about is a matter of believability. In Dead Space, a race of evil aliens are taking over human bodies and mutating them into hideous monsters in order to... well, whatever reason an evil race of aliens need to do such thing. The only way to kill these beasts is by dismembering them thoroughly, making sure they have no limbs with which to do nasty things to you. Because they will do very nasty things to you if they get you. So nasty in fact, that I don't really believe it.See below video of Dead Space 2 for details. (Warning: If you are uncomfortable seeing violent images, you might not want to watch this video, as it contains extreme violence, blood and gore.)


Now, I don't have much of a problem with violence in video games, but in this case, a lot of the ways the player gets killed by these monsters just isn't believable in the context of the game. We know that these aliens need functional human bodies in order to make new monsters. However, in the video above the aliens have no problem tearing poor Isaac, the main character, into pieces. On the contrary, most of the monsters seem more than happy to rip his limbs off, the way a sadistic child would rip the wings off a fly.

This got me wondering: Why would they do that if they need human bodies procreate? (Provided that what they do in the game can be called procreation, that is.) I can understand accidentally slicing off an arm or two in the heat of battle, but to almost casually rip off the head of a clearly incapacitated foe? Some of those aliens have a horrible work ethic, I tell you. "It might be alright if I'm the only one doing it", eldritch (Shut up spell check, eldritch is a word.) abomination 1 might think. But what if they all thought that, eh? Eh? Not so innocent now, are we?

I might have missed something that explains this behaviour, but to me it still removes believability from the game and thus makes it (even) less scary. Extreme violence is only shocking if it's believable, after all.

Just my two cents. Until next time, have a good day!

19 comments:

  1. Since the human race is so large, surely slicing up one dude trying to kill them isn't really a problem?

    I haven't played the game though so I don't know if the rest of the humans are readily available to the aliens or not.

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  2. 1Deadspace 2 is a lreally good game, love this kinda stuff.
    thanks +1

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  3. Believable enough for me, awesome vid!

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  4. I didn't play the game, tbh. I'm thinking about picking it up. Good post though bro keep it up

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  5. Most people say its a relatively good game, might have a go at it one day...

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  6. This little sense is made by dead space :O

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  7. Yeah, it almost seems like believability wasn't their main target, the gameplay really focuses on mowing down zombies. Great reviews, i'll keep my eye out for more updates!

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  8. I assume necromorphs as a disease weaken flesh resistance and gives everyone brittle bone disease, because neither side should be able to just pull off a limb.

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  9. I believe it's explained through the story. Think of Isaac as Neo from The Matrix. He's the anomaly in the system. While everyone else is expendable, Isaac is near invincible to the infection and virus. Sort of like Frank West from Dead Rising. Others can be infected by the zombies, while Frank can get bitten all day long and be fine while someone else gets bit once and immediately turns.

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  10. There are other deaths in the game where someones body gets ripped apart. It never bothered me that much, I just took it to mean that the necromorphs wanted Issac dead no matter what. Not every body gets morphed anyways though.

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  11. Dead space is an outstanding game!

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  12. that game sounds pretty ridiculous when you put it like that!

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  13. oh look, a game where the most interesting part is how you die

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  14. I have never played this one, that was one wicked killing at the beginning of the vid.

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  15. nice post, nice blog, followed! :)

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  16. I think it's pretty believable from the standpoint that it's not really an intelligent creature doing the head-ripping.

    Oh and Dead Space 2's beginning scene is beautiful on my system too :D

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