One of the most iconic parts of Dead Space was, undoubtedly, its suit. It stood out from other sci-fi or horror games due to its unique organic design. And while the upcoming Dead Space remake features a more detailed version of the suit, it still retains elements from the classic 2008 game.

An IGN First reveals the story behind the original suit as well as the suit we see Isaac don in the remake. The suit’s designer, Chi-Wai Lao, was a concept artist during Dead Space’s development and used a popular Japanese mecha anime as inspiration.

One unusual candidate that was the most influential to me at the very beginning stage of designing the suit was the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, particularly the spine and the Entry Plug design of the Eva. It was a prominent functional and visible element of the Eva design, and got me to implement a similar emphasis of a very prominent spine and a life support system of sorts on the back of the suit at its early stage.

The Evangelion anime featured a more organic-looking mecha that heavily contrasted the bulky robots we saw in other shows such as the Gundam franchise. This direct inspiration is what led to the suit’s iconic glowing spine.

In the Dead Space remake, EA Motive was given the opportunity to redesign the suit from the ground up. Art Director Mike Yazijian explained that they wanted to consider the functional aspects of the suit as they designed it.

So we just started from the ground up. We said, ‘Okay, well the helmet looks cool, it’s very iconic, but let’s model the whole thing. Let’s see what it looks like on the inside. Let’s add the padding to make it more comfortable for Isaac.’ So that’s how we would think of it, is that in a very credible way, if you had to wear that suit, what would you do to it?

To ensure that the remake would keep up with today’s standards, EA Motive needed to add more detail to the suit, but they also wanted to ensure the essence of the original was kept intact. Yazijian elaborates on this point in the interview.

It looks so unique and iconic, and we wanted to retain that. We don’t want to mess with it. But when you look at it, it does look kind of flat and simple. And what we did is we actually modeled all the individual pieces. You can actually zoom into each one of those sections and you see the mechanism that’s inside. […] And we also added on the back, you can see the Stasis meter and the Kinesis as well. So there’s a lot of detail there.

Here are some in-game comparisons between the new suit and the original one:

The Dead Space remake has already gone gold, so fans will only have to wait a little longer before they get to relive the game’s survival horror experience. It’s set to release on January 27 next year on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Source: IGN