Visceral - motivators in Dead Space 3 promote exploration or tailored experiences

Dead Space 3 executive producer Steve Papoutsis has elaborated on the various routes available to players in the game, which he says will provide alternative experiences for various play styles.

The various paths in the game will provide players with a more tailored experience, like with previous Dead Space games, or if they are the adventurous type and prefer to go off the grid, they can do that as well; however, Visceral can't guarantee what may happen should the player decide to act haphazardly.

“Think of the game having a variety of hubs, and then there are spokes that come off those hubs," Papoutsis explained to OPM. "Some are required for your alpha path or your A to Z progression through the game. You might find an audio, video or text log that motivates you to go find this place; you might be just exploring because you want to see what’s over in that corner of the world and find an interesting-looking door that could lead to a dungeon, so to speak, of stuff to do.

"There will be other paths available through the game just for you to go out there and find, and figure out what’s going on.”

The inspiration for a more open environment to the series, was inspired by the cooperative option the development team added with Dead Space 3. It became "really important" for the team to add more to the game for players to do and see, allowing them to experience more of it.

"There’s a lot of motivation that we hope drives the players to go explore the world and see what’s around," said Papoutsis. "There are a lot of motivators in Dead Space 3 that are really going to promote a sense of exploration and getting off the beaten path - and scares aplenty.

"When you choose to go off the rails and explore stuff off the A to Z path, now you’re into an area that’s not that tailored, scripted, authored experience because we don’t know you’re going to be walking through this door at this exact moment, like in Dead Space 2. So it is a little bit different, but the trade-off is we’re allowing players to experience more game, and experience it with friends. And hopefully that trade-off is a good one for players.

“If somebody chooses to just jump into single-player and play it A to Z and not do any of the beta content, they still have that very tailored experience that they have come to expect.

“That feeling of dread and claustrophobia? That can be derived from the elements out in the cold. When you have a white-out condition, you can’t see what’s in front of you, now you can have enemies coming out of the mist at you, or popping out of the snow at you. So you can create that, even in an open area. That’s one way we’re gonna do it."

Dead Space 3 is out in February 2013 on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

If you would like to have a better look at the game's Feeders, a new Necromorph variant created when a human eats the corrupted flesh of a dead Necromorph, head on over to Game Informer.