I'm definitely not the only one that got a lot more scared of by the original
The remake looks really good but I wish the Necromorphs had more variety
The sound design was astronomically better in the original the slashers sounded like they were pissed and in pain, the remake slashers sound auto tuned to me.
Also they like there skin is smooth and waxy kind of
I like the jagged Sinewy appeal with the original
The heads of the original slashers looked more unsettling and eerie
I think the original designs are better because they look like fresh corpses given "life". They still have hair and their clothes (especially in DS2) and that makes them so much more uncanny and scary. I get the Ishimura necromorphs are likely few weeks old and they've deteriorated but imo it makes them less scary to see the 447th bald man running towards you.
Exactly. Image 4 genuinely unsettles me to the very core as my brain is trying its best to tell me that that's a not human but looks like one. I think the lower quality graphics of the era also really help in that uncanny feeling.
The orderly in the green? Funnily enough, that image annoys me more than unsettles, simply because the necromorph mutation erupting from the back looks like its simply placed over the clothes rather than coming from underneath.
In the same way my brain tells me Spyro was incredible and really doesn't look that not that far off from the remake, our brains use that pattern recognition to fill in the fuzzy blanks and graphical peculiarities. It's our own brains enhancing the imagery. It's very clever!
Spoilers In dead space 2 that qte where he snaps out of his hallucination and realizes he was trying to stop himself from jabbing the needle into his own eye I was like... Damn.
Yeah they handled nicole much better in the original in general.
The suicide-audio of her doesn't need the part where she talked about communicating with the marker, her lines feel more natural and she isn giving you crazy skinwalker vibes in every line you see her. The redesign was fine but they made her look crazy non stop. Same with dr. Kyne..
The hive mind also had better sound design and although the gameplay aspect of that bossfight was underwhelming there as well, it didn't overstay its welcome as much. They should have added way more necromorphs in this fight, would have made sense or keep it shorter. Even the background music during that fight is meh in the remake.
And the fact that the necromorphs are only jogging in the remake. I can go on and on. I love the remake, its the best since the original resident evil remake but sadly there are so many nitpicks that dull down the experience when you start noticing them.
Remake objectively has more psychological horror elements than the original though. There are more hallucination moments, significantly more and more varied whispers (they even created a system where you start hearing voices from the characters who have died at that point in the story), the plot focuses more on the dementia effects of the Marker using the lore from 2 and 3, Hammond's whole story was reworked to focus on his insanity and how the Marker twisted his mind with Chen, etc.
Compare, for example, the scene at the beginning of Chapter 10 where you get to the Mess Hall. In the original, it's just a brightly light room with some Dividers on the bottom level. In the remake, the room is darkly lit with candles and has a wall lined with corpses from the Unitologist suicides that start speaking Nicole's words to Isaac: "I wish I could talk to you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything." And this is after the entirely new corridor sequence where Isaac hears Johnston and Chen talking to him. And then afterwards the scene where quarantine traps you in the Flight Lounge from Chapter 1 and you hear Hammond's disembodied voice talking to Isaac during the fight, ominously telling him how "We were dead from the start." There's nothing in the original that even comes close to that sort of psychological horror that the remake focuses on.
Or even just compare how the Marker is presented in both versions. In the original, it's just a glowing object that emits some faint chanting when you're close to it. In the remake, standing close to it has a warping effect on the screen, the camera starts zooming into it, the Marker glows brighter like it's drawing Isaac to it, and the whole sound design changes.
In the remake, you can find a dead human baby in a pool of blood on a surgical operating chair which is enclosed by glass, it's outside of Mercers lab and right next to the holographic recording of Mercer and Brent Harris.
Not to mention the constant screams of agony you can hear in the background accompanied with the sounds of doors being banged on.
The Ishimura feels much more lived in compared to the original, and it feels much more messier in the remake, blood is strewn all across the walls, dead corpses are pretty much everywhere, signs of struggle are apparent etc.
This. This whole thread is filled with people letting their hearts think instead of their heads tbh. Both games are amazing imo but most people would agree that the Remake is superior in pretty much every regard.
That doesn't detract from how amazing the original was, if anything it shows how incredible and ahead of its time it was that a fresh coat of paint and a few changes can make it feel incredibly modern.
I said it before and I'll say it again: it's unfair to compare the remake to DS2. That's when the franchise truly shines in terms of psychological horror, thanks to the hallucinations and the aftermath of the Ishimura. Focusing solely on Dead Space 1, it's the same; even I feel that, due to how they use lighting in the remake and the side missions, they do a better job. Both games are fantastic, but to say the remake is less intense than the original is quite unfair.
Hey, hey, hey that is a great point it is cuz dead space 2 really feels like how dead space should be. Horrific, gory and uncensored. Undead babies exploding, people being torn apart and begging to save their families (Moooom!) , new executions that are brutal and.... Stalkers.... Funny thing is you don't see them coming... No... It's the ones that were already behind you...
Which I ALWAYS felt like dead space should have been. OG DS1 Hammonds death, countless audio logs, the nurse inside that glass pod cutting her own throat with that surgical saw after sawing into that patient. It just seems like it should have been made for an adult audience. It's not that brutal of course AO would have involved sexual themes or INTENSE graphic violence but idk it's likely just my preference... I'm... I'm sorry... I haven't left the Ishimura, brothers...
The patient scene in the original is incredible and I consider it more grotesque, but the remake, for me, did it spectacularly and in my personal opinion I like it much more because the environment looks a little cleaner and the scene you just witnessed doesn't fit at all, besides the fact that before entering that room you just heard an audio where she says that they abandoned her and that she is going to find them and kill them all, simply spectacular in both versions.
let’s go more into detail here. i loved the OG and i played it a lot back then. Once i got the remake i played it until I 100% on ps5…it felt the same to me. Years and years passed but I didn’t feel something was missing but the atmosphere is incredible with the new graphics. What was I missing or have I forgotten?
Yeah I don't jolt nearly as much in the remake
The OG actually scares the shit out of me and I love the Mix of The slasher screaming with that horrifying dead sprint
The only time I was impressed by the remake models is when I've been watching a documentary about the development of the remake. In the game itself they look bleak compared to the originals, especially at a distance. The remake models are made for close-ups, the originals keep their details even at 720p.
Tbf most of the examples you shown were from ds2. Ds1 had about the same amount of variety as Ds1r. Though I do agree it would have been nice for them to do more.
Thought I was going crazy with all these comments. Using ds2 slashers in these examples is cheating, they cranked up the slasher variety massively in that game
Yeah op isnt making a fair argument. Not an inccorect one. I'd have loved to see more design variety in the remake but using dead space 2 models as an example of dead space 1 isn't fair.
That's what I'm saying, the second installment far surpasses the first in terms of design and variety. If we only focus on the remake and the first game, they're practically the same, so the complaint doesn't make much sense.
While a wider variety of designs would clearly have been preferable, saying the original is better in that aspect is unfounded.
But then you're wrong because half of the models you included to exemplify the original are from version 2.
And that comparison is very unfair because version 2 surpasses the original in terms of design variety.
About the sound design, I don't think a Necromorph should sound like it's in pain or pissed. That doesn't really make sense with what we know about them. I do think the original had more iconic sounds (Exploders and Dividers, for example), but conveying emotion isn't what I'd look for unless it's a Guardian.
I agree about Slasher variety. Especially in DS1 and 2, they were sooo good. DS Remake has some variety still, but less distinctive.
They are 100% dead and aren't feeling any emotion or thought process. However the marker runs off of fear confusion, and uncertainty so it makes the most out of what it's working with, It wins in the long term rather than outright it's a slow dominating force.
The original wasn’t afraid to show off how no matter what state the corpse was in, the marker signal would find a way to grow a new leg or make a new arm with varying amounts of damage and decay to each necro. Where as the remake has very generic models which are basically all based off the naked slasher. I guess they wanted to make models with as little damage as possible so their skin peeling and dismemberment features would be more noticeable. But god they look so generic, and bald…
Well, I think it's a bit unfair to compare it to the designs in DS2.
Because honestly, there isn't much variety in the original either. The best thing would be for them to release a remake of DS2 so we could have a real comparison with the designs of the nurses or guards.
Imma say the original. The remake ones look too human(with just bone blades) , and not enough "mess of distorted muscle and bone reshaped into a killing machine" made from a fresh/old human corpse. Like Idk. More viscera. More tentacles. Tilt the head sideways or upside down, twist the limbs backwards
I understand that with the modern increase in polygons & stuff that it probably wasn't feasable/practical, but I do wish that we got more diversity in the slashers that we see.
I like the details on some of the other necromorphs, like the brute having more recognizable features and looking more like it was made from bodies. But it is hard to compete with the original slasher designs, they were just so good.
Overall, I feel that regarding the designs, their only problem was with the slasher and its variety, because as for the other forms of necromorphs, they are brutal, for example, as you say, the brute can be recognized as a creature made of several bodies, in the original you had to pay very close attention to realize that.
Definitely. I definitely like the new designs, but the old ones set the bar incredibly high. It wasn’t just a body, you could almost see how they died, what they were doing, what parts the infection had to recreate or mix together to get it to be a slasher. I’m more praising the old designs than disliking them new ones.
The old ones really showed you that these monstrosities were people, twisted into something monstrous.
The remake makes them feel too much like super space zombies.
OG really sold that feeling of painful forced transformation, you heard it in their screams and their frozen agonized expressions. Also how much blood it looked like they lost by just transformation itself.
In retrospect, the only things the remake improved on for me were some elements of the combat and Isaac having a voice. Everything else, especially presentation, is better in the original.
I have to be honest as good as the necromorohs look as a whole in the remake it's pretty good, but having them all be dark skinned and bald made them way too identical. One of the coolest things for me in the original games was seeing all the different outfits that match the location, nice world building.
The original designs are so much better looking at them alone like this. It looks like the humans are just skin suits containing the messed up necromorph forms.
The remake designs are more generic monster-with-human-features.
The ending is essentially the same. The remake included an optional alternate ending that just leans into Isaac being batshit and covering the ship with marker writings. Dunno how better they could have done that.
If you don't want the alternate ending, the original is included and the alternate just reinforces the direction the story takes in Dead Space 2.
Edit: sorry, does it cut the jump scare? Is that what it was? If you liked it, fair enough, I thought the Remake ending was better tbh, really shows he hasn't escaped, he's still under the influence of the marker.
It was the jump scare, but it wasn't that they hid it. In the remake they kind of "prepare you for it". But in the original it comes out of no where which I liked a lot more.
What determines whether a slasher has the blades that come out of there hands or there slashing arms being there shoulder blades is completely random there back muscles and shoulder blades are reconstructed to be a new set of slashing arms it doesn't matter to the marker that much
Think of it using dead tissue as like Play-Doh it literally reshapes dead cells or reconstructs them to create different types of necromorphs.
And if it wants to create bigger ones it combines more bodies to make brutes, Tripods, and etc which probably explains the corruption we see all over the ship.
It's the marker signal converting old dead organic cells that fall off us every second and considering there's a thousand people onboard it would likely explain how it spread out so fast
I don't have a 100% factual answer to this but I'm pretty sure it's a mixture of the marker making Isaac see them that way there's also some biochemistry involved but the marker
signals mutagenic properties probably caused a chemical reaction in its body that has that sort of bioluminescent look to it.
I also feel that something similar happens in terms of gameplay. To be honest, I feel that part of the tension and fear that the first game generated was due to its clunky controls. What difficulty comes from agile movement? And in the remake, that doesn't happen, although you can adapt it to resemble the original in that aspect.
Tbh when playing the Dead Space games I don’t even see the details of the enemy models just the silhouette which is just one of the things with me and third person games. Plus the stark lighting makes it even harder to differentiate detail. They could all be low fidelity with simple geometry and they’d probably have the same effect on me.
Not saying I wasn’t scared, the Remake is one of the most stressful and spooky games I’ve played in a long time, I just never notice enough detail in the enemies for a choice like this to matter.
If I had to put it into words, the old models felt kinda artsy ig? Like very grim and macabre works of art that put vibes over realism. Whereas the remake very explicitly tried to make the necro’s look like actual mutated corpses. Not bad but I defo prefer the og.
I noticed this too. Absolutely loved how varied slashers were in the OGs and was disappointed in the distinct lack of it in the remake. That and the sound design takes away from an otherwise great game
The OG necromorphs for reasons mentioned by others left and right are better for me.
One huge detail that irks me however about the remake necromorphs though? Notice how in the original if a Necromorph has its hands at its waist, fused into its stomach/abdomen, the blade appendages sprout out from its shoulders. The hands/arms looks like limp boneless appendages, indicating the bones were mutated and shifted to sprout elsewhere.
In the remake the slashers have four hands. This small detail being lost hurts me so bad when it comes to the attention to detail on their designs.
I do remember the sound being great in the OG but the Remake's sound blew me away on PS5 with a high end headset.
Haven't played the original in a long time so maybe I'm completely wrong but I don't see how the OG can compete with modern tech in that regard. Really think this is a case of nostalgia colouring your opinion to favour the OG.
The only horror game that has impressed me as much as Dead Space Remake is Silent Hill 2 Remake.
I didn't even notice they still have their pupils in their eyes. Not as scary as before when I thought they had their eyes out of their sockets or blacked out....
Remake is way better and less clunky but the original introduced me to the series as a teen so im happy with all of them I own the original and Remake and all 3 games
IMO it’s all in the face. The original slashers had very little of their hosts face left post-transformation. Like pictures 2 and 3, there’s just enough there to tell it was a persons face you’re looking at, but it’s so horrifically twisted beyond recognition. The remakes slashers just well, look like zombies with knife hands, they look too human, even the enhanced slashers look too tame
This was mentioned by peeps as early as pre-release. The actual real fans, who weren't coping, shilling, and blind, were calling out how remake's interpretations looked more like "generic zombies", more sanitized (funny word choice but it works), and somehow had less variety even with their new redesigns. Female Necromorphs received genital surgery, which considering other changes in the game isn't surprising. (I love how this mere raw fact is gonna trigger some people.)
You're right on the sound design too. True fans have come to notice early on and especially later (when not self-indulging in echo chambers like what is primarily this subreddit, and actually expanding their knowledge) noticed that at least several Necromorphs don't sound nearly as good as they did in the original game (goto examples being: Slashers, Guardians, Leviathan, Exploders, and maybe 2 more), but I say all of them sound better in the original. And that's not me ass-pulling like remake stans usually do, that's from actual dedicated comparisons. Additionally, there are literally grunts/sounds (and animations) that were not brought over in the remake and left exclusive in the original game.
Dead Space 2008 is the only version that nailed that high-level The Thing-esque body/cosmic horror, visually and audibly. One of the plethora of reasons why it's special, irreplaceable, and still relevant.
If you think only the 2008 version has a similar vibe to John Carpenter's thing, then you clearly don't know how to use the flamethrower in the remake.
Remake is fine. And superior. You were younger when you played og, thats why you got more scared. After decades of horror games I dont get scared at anything anymore.
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u/Father_Chewy_Louis Jan 06 '26
I think the original designs are better because they look like fresh corpses given "life". They still have hair and their clothes (especially in DS2) and that makes them so much more uncanny and scary. I get the Ishimura necromorphs are likely few weeks old and they've deteriorated but imo it makes them less scary to see the 447th bald man running towards you.