Dead Space Remake Is Too Scary for Its Own Technical Director

Dead Space remake's technical director has admitted that he struggles to play the game outside of daylight hours because he finds it too scary.

As reported by GamesRadar, technical director David Robillard told PLAY magazine in a recent interview that when he plays Dead Space remake at night, he can't use headphones because the game is extremely immersive and becomes too terrifying of an experience.

"When I'm playing it at night, I can't play it with headphones," he confessed. "It's just too f***ing scary. Just the amount of realism and, again, atmosphere. Not just visually, right? In the way we handle sound, ambience, effects, having systems that will try to spook you."

Dead Space has been rebuilt from the ground up in EA's Frostbite engine, with Assassin's Creed Valhalla game director Eric Baptizat at the helm alongside creative director Roman Campos-Oriola, who promised to deliver "new assets, new character models, [and] new environments."

The game's developers consulted diehard fans to help keep them on track with their goal of staying faithful to the vision of the original game while also crafting new gameplay content and improvements, though Robillard admits they have elevated things to a whole new level.

"These things, you know, could have been done [on PS4], but not to the level we're doing them today," he explained in the interview. "And they really add a lot to this sort of genre and make the whole kind of experience come together even more.

"We needed to find a way to fill those gaps, so that the player doesn't feel like 'Oh, I've been here, it's fine, I'm safe'. No, you're never safe. Like, you will get jumped," Robillard added before issuing one final warning: "Somebody wants your lunch money, and they're not friendly."

Dead Space remake will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on January 27, and is available to preorder in several editions. Like its predecessor, it finds engineer Isaac Clarke among the last survivors of a deep space catastrophe on the mining ship USG Ishimura.

We recently wrapped up a month of Dead Space IGN First content including revealing the first 18 minutes of gameplay, showing off graphics comparisons with the original, and a deep dive into how the story has been rewritten and improved alongside a hands-on preview.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.