When we first started working on Dead Space, uh, there was actually, uh, a belief from a lot of people on the team, who were big fans of Resident Evil -- and Dead Space really began as -- you know, it was really inspired by Resident Evil. And so there were a lot of people who said - uh, you know, the guys who were shooter fans on the team -- who said, "Well, you know, but the Resident Evil controls, they're so clunky. I mean it's just so hard to go from playing a first person shooter or most third person shooters to that control scheme." And a lot of people said, "Well, can't we just go with the standard shooter control scheme?" And then there was another camp that said, "Well, you have to have that. That feeling of awkwardness, that you are -- uh, you are not a -- you know, you're not a space marine. You're not this hyper-trained, uh, super tough guy, you know, practicing, um, self-defense in your spare time. You're just some guy." That, that having that awkward, kind of deliberately-clunky control scheme was necessary to create fear. And I think we all erred on the side of Resident Evil for a little while until one day one of our engineers just got really fed up. And he said, "You know what? I'm just going to -- I can't take this anymore. I don't believe that we need that." And so we, we changed our controls to what you know in Dead Space now. And we put it in front of players. And we found that players were no less terrified at all. And what's interesting is that there's another effect that I think happened that's, uh -- that -- that's maybe not obvious, which is, if you want to terrify somebody, if you want to get somebody into your game and instantly have them feel immersed and feel like they care about the story and the setting, um, and they're -- and they're focused on what's going on in the world, the first thing you need to do is get them to stop thinking about, wait, which button should I be pressing? And, wait, how does this game work again? And, you know, I'm spinning in circles and shooting at the ceiling. The faster you get players in and immersed into your game, the more likely they're going to find that emotional hook. And so what we found was, going with the standard control scheme removed the, the -- that phase of learning. It removed that, um, uh, that phase where people were just not paying attention to what, uh, the characters were saying and all those kinds of things. They could just get immersed and go right in. So, while maybe it was slightly less scary because you had more control, it was far more immersive and that that brought us something different, which was that they were more bought-in to what we were trying -- the scenario and the experience we were trying to sell. So, in the end, what we found was that the controls weren't necessary for that. What we really needed was the visual tension, the pacing, the audio. Uh, and all those things, those were the things that actually made the game atmospheric and compelling and terrifying.
