Summary

• Team behind Dead Space 2 remake moves to new project, casting doubt on potential sequel remakes.
• EA survey hinted at interest in further Dead Space remakes, but focus shifts to Battlefield for now.
• Commercial value likely drives EA's decision to prioritize Battlefield over Dead Space sequels as the remake reportedly under-performed despite critical acclaim.

The fate of a potential Dead Space 2 remake may be in doubt as its team has moved on to a new project. 2023's Dead Space remake was well-received upon its release for being extremely faithful to the original and served as a great new starting point for newcomers while offering some new surprises for fans of the 2008 original.

Therefore, it wasn't long before players began wondering if Motive Studio would give the same treatment to the other games in the series, Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3. An interview with exploring the series further. A survey from EA also asked its participants how interested they would be in a remake of the other titles in the same vein as the 2023 Dead Space.

Motive Is Set To The Next Battlefield

Leaving The Dead Space Series' Future In Doubt

In a new post on the update on the studio's Iron Man game since its announcement in 2022, stating that the team led by executive producer Olivier Proulx and creative director Ian Frazier has made "excellent progress this year", the main reason for the post was to announce Motive's role in the Battlefield game.

Motive's update came following news that EA would be moving away from delivering official seasons for Battlefield 2042 after its current season, Turning Point, instead focusing on a new title.

The aforementioned Dead Space remake project leads, Ducharme and Campos-Oriola, are building a team at Motive to work alongside the Battlefield teams at Criterion, DICE, and Ripple Effect to "help advance the vision" for the game. According to EA's previous Battlefield post, Motive will be bringing its expertise with the Frostbite engine and compelling storytelling to the fold, suggesting the team's focus will largely be on the game's campaign.

While the team's experience undoubtedly bodes well for the future of Battlefield, it does likely mean that a Dead Space 2 remake is being shelved for now, which is a shame considering how interested Ducharme and Campos-Oriola seemed to be in continuing to work on the franchise. EA has stated that there is "No validity" to the story that a Dead Space 2 rumor was in development and was canceled, but Jeff Grubb, who has been accurate with several scoops in the past, has called this out, saying that it was "definitely being planned" and even had a codename. Jason Schreier of Bloomberg also took to X to address these rumors, saying that people familiar with the project told Bloomberg that EA's statement is incorrect.

Unfortunately, while the Dead Space remake was well received and did top the sales chart toward the end of January 2023 going into February, its sales were lower than expected, selling less than half of the copies as its main horror rival at the time The Callisto Protocol, despite the latter receiving lackluster reviews and currently sitting at a 69 review score on Metacritic compared to Dead Space's 89.

Therefore, it's possible that EA couldn't see enough commercial value in remakes of the Dead Space sequels regardless of the response to the survey. While Battlefield 2042 didn't initially sell as well as expected, launching to poor reviews and a plethora of refunds, the Battlefield series has consistently proven to make money for the company in the past, so this was likely a driving force in moving Motive's developers onto the franchise as EA aims for a more successful launch for its next game.

Source: GQ, EA (1, 2), Metacritic (1, 2), Jeff Grubb/X, Jason Schreier/X