This shouldn’t come as too absurd a notion given prior statements from EA about wanting to lead up to full retail titles with downloadable games. The intention is, I assume, to raise excitement levels, get us talking, and possibly even bring in some new players who would’ve otherwise passed on final, $60 game.
As teased yesterday, Dead Space Ignition is the official name. It’s heading to Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network this fall by way of Sumo Digital and Visceral Games, naturally. Oddly enough, it takes place only hours before Dead Space 2, and tells the story of — what else? — a Necromorph outbreak.
Visceral executive producer Steve Papoutsis says this product is “the first of many exciting game extensions,” which makes it sound like maybe they’ll give the whole comic thing another spin.
Ignition is said to combine “an interactive comic-style story with three unique hacking mini games.” Half of that sentence sounds appealing, the other, not so much — I’ll let you guess which is which.
On that note, how am I supposed to react to “‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ type narrative”? It’s got one of those, apparently. Also, Antony Johnston is handling the story. It’s at this point I realize I don’t quite have enough space here, so please, humor me with a swift journey beyond the break. It won’t hurt. Much.
The last major detail given pertains to unlocks: there are four endings in Ignition, each of which corresponds to an unlock for Dead Space 2. The example given was an exclusive in-game suit. Of course, there are no pictures of anything even remotely related to this project, so we’ll have to use our imaginations for the time being.
My main concern with these pre-release hype-getters is that they’ll be too similar to the full game they represent. It’s then and only then when I start to find those still-rather-dumb “IT’S A PAID DEMO” arguments sorta valid.
From the admittedly vague details we have to go on, Ignition sounds potentially cool. Price will be one of the main concerns, for sure — how much is too much for these sorts of things? Ten bucks? Fifteen? At any rate, I’m curious to see how this will stack up against Volition’s precursor to Red Faction: Armageddon.
