Highlights

  • EA Motive impressed with Dead Space remake, as the game struck the perfect balance of innovation and tradition.
  • Motive's ALIVE system in Dead Space added realism and immersion, and it could potentially be useful for Battlefield.
  • Battlefield could benefit from borrowing the ALIVE system, offering more immersive and dynamic gameplay experiences by having its soldiers react realistically to what is happening around them.

Despite being a relatively new studio - having only been founded in 2015 - EA Motive has proven itself to be capable of delivering some first-class gaming experiences, and last year's Dead Space remake is the perfect example of that. A pretty challenging sophomore solo project, Motive's Dead Space remake had to strike a perfect balance between staying faithful to Visceral Games' original work, while also adding in its own set of new and innovative features, and by all accounts, Motive managed to strike that balance expertly.

It seems as though EA has realized just how capable Motive is, as the studio is not only working on a new AAA Iron Man game, but also on a major component of the next mainline Battlefield entry. With Battlefield being a completely different type of game from what Motive is used to, it poses another sizable challenge for the developer, but Motive already has plenty of tools it can use, and there's one groundbreaking Dead Space remake feature that should make its way to Battlefield: the ALIVE system.

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Dead Space's ALIVE System Should Make Its Way to Battlefield

Dead Space's ALIVE System Explained

All the way back in March 2022, when marketing for the Dead Space remake was starting to really ramp up, EA Motive held a set of livestreams in which it shed more light on some of the remake's innovative new features, and the ALIVE system is the one that ended up really sticking out. An acronym that stands for Adrenaline, Limbic System Response, Intelligent Dialogue, Vitals, and Exertions, Dead Space's ALIVE system was designed with the express purpose to make its central protagonist more life-like.

The ALIVE system was used throughout Dead Space remake to evoke natural reactions from its player-character, Isaac Clarke, and thus reinforce the player's connection to their avatar. For instance, when a Necromorph bursts out of a grate and jump-scares the player, Isaac Clarke experiences the same adrenaline spike, causing his breathing to grow faster, which is shown via his body movements and more exasperated tone. While games like Marvel's Spider-Man offered two separate voice tracks for relaxed and non-relaxed scenarios, Dead Space remake took that to the next level with its ALIVE system, with emergent in-game events naturally affecting Isaac Clarke's expressions, voice, movements, and body language.

How ALIVE Can Be Used in The Next Battlefield

Immersion used to be Battlefield's bread and butter. While Call of Duty was dominating the arcade-y military shooter scene, Battlefield was able to stand out by offering realistic destruction physics, immersive audio, and groundbreaking presentation. In order to reclaim its spot at the top of the FPS pyramid, Battlefield is going to need to embrace its immersive roots once more, and borrowing Dead Space remake's ALIVE system could be just the thing it needs to stand out from the crowd.

With Dead Space being a third-person game, a few changes would obviously have to be made to the ALIVE system to make it work with Battlefield's first-person gameplay, but those changes would be more than worthwhile. Though most modern shooters play audio of exasperated breaths and fade in a black-and-white screen before death, the next Battlefield game could offer more diverse and more frequent moments of immersion with the ALIVE system, such as players being able to hear different audio tracks and see different camera movements based on where their character was shot, or deliver more specialized voicelines based on the action happening around them. And those are just a few examples of how the ALIVE system could work in Battlefield.