Dead Space: Extraction is a 2009 rail shooter co-developed by Visceral Games and Eurocom and published by Electronic Arts for the Wii. A port for PlayStation 3 was released in 2011 alongside Dead Space 2. A spin-off within the Dead Space series and a prequel to the original game, the story follows survivors from the Aegis VII mining colony as the planet and newly-arrived ship USG Ishimura is overrun by deadly monsters called Necromorphs. Gameplay involves going through scripted sequences with different characters, using assigned weapons to kill Necromorphs by severing their limbs. Each version respectively supported the Wii Zapper and PlayStation Move peripherals.
Conceived during the development of Dead Space, production began in 2008 using Eurocom's EngineX game engine. Electronic Arts treated it as a test for mature games in the Wii gaming market. The aim was to create a survival horror experience within the genre and hardware limitations. The script was written by Antony Johnston, who worked on the original game and its expanded media. Jason Graves and Don Veca respectively returned as composer and audio director. The original release met with poor sales but good reviews, with critics praising its gameplay and use of the Dead Space setting while faulting pacing issues and a lack of content. Reviewers of the PS3 port praised its Move usage, but faulted the low graphical quality.
Gameplay
Dead Space: Extraction is a science fiction rail shooter and is viewed from a first-person perspective. Taking the role of multiple characters across the campaign, the player navigates through the Aegis VII colony and the mining ship Ishimura from a first-person cinematic perspective. The original Wii version controls using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, incorporating both motion controls and an option to use the Wii Zapper. In the PlayStation 3 (PS3) port, the controls are altered to support both the DualShock controller and PlayStation Move. In contrast to the diegetic UI design of the original game, players can press a controller button to display weapon slots, current ammunition and health in the screen corners.
The campaign is split into ten chapters, with progress dictated by the narrative, though in some sections the player is allowed to freely direct the camera or choose routes through environments. The narrative is told in real-time, using a combination of in-engine cutscenes, and video and audio logs picked up within the environment. Gameplay is similar to a light gun shooter; enemies approach the player and are shot using the equipped weapon. The main enemies of the game, Necromorphs, can only be killed by severing their limbs. Up to ten weapons can be found, with two different firing modes per gun. The default Rivet Gun, which has unlimited ammunition, is always set to one of the weapon slots. The others are filled with weapons picked up during progress through a level. Two abilities used by the player are Stasis, which slows object motion for a short time, and Kinesis, which allows the player character to pick up and throw or move objects.
Each chapter gives players a rating based on their performance, awarding stars used to upgrade the player's abilities and weapons. Upgrades and ammunition can also be found within the environment. There are four difficulty modes, with the lowest being "Normal" and the highest being "Impossible". The two highest difficulties are unlocked upon completing the campaign. Both versions of Extraction feature local cooperative multiplayer. Players can drop in at any point during both the campaign and the challenge missions. Both players can take down Necromorphs, take turns on puzzles, and divide between different tasks during certain set pieces.
Synopsis Setting and characters Dead Space: Extraction takes place in the year 2508, centuries after humanity narrowly escaped extinction due to resource depletion by "cracking" planets to extract their resources in a three-year process. The events of Extraction play out prior to the events of Dead Space, and in parallel to the prequel comic and the tie-in movie Dead Space: Downfall. During the second year of an illegal mining operation on the planet Aegis VII funded by the Church of Unitology, the colonists discover a monolith-like artifact they identify as a Marker, an object sacred to the Unitologists' beliefs. In reality, the Marker is a copy of an alien object that triggers the destruction of both the colony and the associated mining ship USG Ishimura using reanimated mutated corpses referred to as "Necromorphs".
The game follows several characters as they escape the Aegis VII colony onto the Ishimura. They are colony detective Nathan McNeill; Ishimura soldier Gabe Weller, who is less affected by the Marker; Lexine Murdoch, a colony resident who can likewise resist the Marker's influence and softens its impact on those close to her; Warren Eckhardt, an executive from the Ishimura; and Ishimura doctor Karen Hollwell. The opening section follows Sam Caldwell, an Aegis VII miner. Nicole Brennan, a central character from Dead Space, appears as a supporting character.
Plot A team from the Aegis VII colony including Sam Caldwell transport the Marker into the colony. During the transport, the crew suffer hallucinations, and Caldwell kills his teammates when they seemingly go mad and attack him. After receiving a call from his fiancée Lexine about a mass suicide of Unitologists, Caldwell is shot dead by a security squad led by McNeill, who perceived his behaviour as an insane rampage.
A week later, as McNeill is investigating recent similar incidents, Weller arrives and asks for his help securing the bodies of the suicides. After reaching the morgue to find it empty, they find the colony's residents going insane, forcing them to repel the colonists and growing numbers of Necromorphs. The pair find Lexine and later Eckhardt, witnessing a shuttle crash destroying all the colony shuttles and trapping the colonists on the planet.
The group escapes the colony on Eckhardt's private shuttle, though they are forced to spacewalk when the Ishimura shoots their shuttle down. They are captured and quarantined as the Necromorph infection has spread to the Ishimura. As the Ishimura is being overrun, the group are released by Nicole Brennan, who stays in the medical center to help survivors, while the rest try to escape. In the sewage system, Lexine is attacked by a swarm of small Necromorphs and presumed dead, but she is rescued by Karen Howell. Howell, suffering from Marker-induced hallucinations, eventually confronts a solitary Eckhardt and accuses him of working for the Unitologists. When Howell is attacked by a Necromorph, Eckhardt leaves her to die, though he tells the others she sacrificed herself for their safety. The four split up in pairs to find a usable shuttle, as all escape pods have launched and trapped the surviving crew.
During their mission, McNeill and Lexine see a transmission showing Nicole committing suicide. Weller finds a shuttle, then discovers Eckhardt's duplicity through a video message. Eckhardt wounds Weller and reveals his intention to bring Lexine to the Unitologists due to her ability to resist and block the Marker's influence, but he is immediately killed by a Necromorph. McNeill, himself suffering from the Marker's effects, shuts down the ship's asteroid cannons so the shuttle can leave unharmed, but an encounter with a large Necromorph forces him to amputate his arm. McNeill, Weller and Lexine escape on the shuttle, but are unable to stop the USG Kellion responding to the Ishimura'''s distress signal. In a post-credits scene, Lexine is forced to kill McNeill who becomes a Necromorph.
DevelopmentDead Space: Extraction was co-developed by EA Redwood Shores (later Visceral Games), creators of the survival horror video game Dead Space; and Eurocom, a European development studio. Producer Steve Papoutsis created the concept for Extraction, wanting to create an original title for the Wii and give players of the original game further story content. The Wii was chosen as the platform due to its innovative features, including motion controls. Its genre was chosen based on the design and limitations of the Wii hardware. The Redwood Shores development team spent much of the production at Eurocom's studios in Derby, England. Eurocom were eager to create a high-quality title using the Dead Space licence. Production began in 2008 and took roughly fourteen months, the process being simplified by having a pre-established world design and assets.Extraction was built using EngineX, a game engine created by Eurocom for its gaming titles including Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. The main focus during production was replicating the atmosphere and design of Dead Space within Extraction despite platform limitations, with new and classic enemies being incorporated. Despite the graphical limitations of the Wii, the team incorporated the original game's enemy designs and created new enemy types. To create a cinematic experience, the team made extensive use of motion capture for its cast. This proved simple as Eurocom had access to an advanced motion capture studio close to their offices. The camera was carried around by one of the actors while the scenes were recorded.
The script was written by Antony Johnston, who had previously worked on the original game and its prequel comic. The storyline was set when Johnston was brought in, though he remained in contact with the team about changes and additions. In contrast to the isolated character views of the comic, the game used an ensemble dynamic. New character Lexine was in place from the outset, designed to be a likeable protagonist. The sequence where McNeill must cut off his own arm came from Eurocom being asked to create a scenario where players would have to make a terrible decision. The heavily-scripted style allowed for better pacing of the story and optional logs, the goal being that players would not run into a battle and be fighting over dialogue and video logs. The team chose to open with the extraction of the Marker's extraction, which acted as a point where the colony's final deterioration begins. The first-person perspective, Wii hardware and switch between different characters allowed more of the Marker's mental impacts to be displayed. The scenario team deviated as little as possible from pre-established events in the original game and expanded media, with late game dialogue tying into the next Dead Space.
While the genre and platform were different, the development team wanted to both replicate and expanded upon the original game's mechanics. Unique elements tied into the motion controls hardware were added, such as the glow worm light and adjusting the aiming reticle using the Wii Remote. So they could properly utilize the controls, team members handled the Wii Remote and Nunchuck as often as possible, and took care to make the game compatible and comfortable with the Wii Zapper. The shift in genre allowed the team to rebalance the difficulty so players would make more use of different weapons compared to Dead Space, with some being redesigned for the Wii. The new Arc Welder weapon, which featured unlimited ammunition, was designed both to as a puzzle element and to give players a fallback weapon. According to designer John Calhoun, the co-op multiplayer was chosen to shift the title into an action-based design, creating situations where one player would fight off the Necromorphs while the second completed an environmental puzzle. A major part of the co-op mode's design was allowing a second player to drop in at any time without interrupting the gameplay. Zero-G sections with dedicated controls were tested, but dropped due to slow pacing and Papoutsis finding the intended controls cumbersome. Other dropped concepts were a health-draining cloaking device, and a blind boss Necromorph.
Audio Sound and voice acting