Dead Space - Talking Bans, Warren Ellis, And A New EA?
IGN AU has an interesting interview online with Glen Schofield where he reveals some insights on the bans in Germany, Japan, and China, and answers the question everyone is asking, 'Why Not Australia?' Glen also talks about the influences of writer Warren Ellis and something about a new Electronic Arts? Check it out:
Read the whole article here.
IGN: Dead Space has been banned in a handful of nations now. Did you have any issues getting the game through the stringent Australian Classification Board?
Glen Schofield: Australia is getting the full, complete version. No cuts. We're not softening it for anybody. You know, I think a part of it was – he's not a killer. He's killing aliens and that's why we thought for a while we'd get it through in Germany. And they were like 'well, the fact that he can get dismembered pretty grotesquely is bad, so...' We thought it was cool.
IGN: And Japan banned it?
Glen Schofield: Japan too. Korea thought they would get it, but we haven't heard back yet.
IGN: And there's a new EA?
Glen Schofield: The new EA – and when I say 'new', it's only 2 or 2 and-a-half years old. You're only just starting to see the games come out now.
IGN: How much pressure did you feel from EA's uppers to get multiplayer in Dead Space, because that's a big deal; to actively reject multiplayer in a shooter like this. It's bold.
Glen Schofield: I had it in for about three months and it was taken away from the one-player game. It was co-op – we had two Isaacs running around. I was really like, I just really want to make a one-player game right now. It wasn't a matter of being pushed into it; we just wanted to make the game better.
IGN: You got a pretty interesting writing team together for this – what's the story with Warren Ellis' involvement?
Glen Schofield: So, ah, with all due respect to Warren... Warren came at the very beginning of the game; we figured we needed a writer and Warren came in and we had our direction, our ideas. We knew we wanted a religion running through it and we knew we wanted psychological terror as well as grotesque terror. Warren is more of sci-fi writer; how many of these ideas are leftovers from what he wrote, I don't know – I'd have to go back a reread all his work. But he's just a good guy... we tried a bunch of writers. The one thing he really helped us out with was, when we first started to do the comic book, we asked Warren. He hit deadlines for us, he did everything right – but he came on two and-a-half years ago and some of the ideas filter out.
I think Warren also helped out on some of the back-story of the characters, the naming of them – because he was good at that. But what he did was he also introduced us to Anthony Johnson who became our writer for the comic series. Then Anthony eventually wrote most of the dialogue for the game. As a comic book writer, he mostly wrote in short sentences, which is what we need.
Glen Schofield: Australia is getting the full, complete version. No cuts. We're not softening it for anybody. You know, I think a part of it was – he's not a killer. He's killing aliens and that's why we thought for a while we'd get it through in Germany. And they were like 'well, the fact that he can get dismembered pretty grotesquely is bad, so...' We thought it was cool.
IGN: And Japan banned it?
Glen Schofield: Japan too. Korea thought they would get it, but we haven't heard back yet.
IGN: And there's a new EA?
Glen Schofield: The new EA – and when I say 'new', it's only 2 or 2 and-a-half years old. You're only just starting to see the games come out now.
IGN: How much pressure did you feel from EA's uppers to get multiplayer in Dead Space, because that's a big deal; to actively reject multiplayer in a shooter like this. It's bold.
Glen Schofield: I had it in for about three months and it was taken away from the one-player game. It was co-op – we had two Isaacs running around. I was really like, I just really want to make a one-player game right now. It wasn't a matter of being pushed into it; we just wanted to make the game better.
IGN: You got a pretty interesting writing team together for this – what's the story with Warren Ellis' involvement?
Glen Schofield: So, ah, with all due respect to Warren... Warren came at the very beginning of the game; we figured we needed a writer and Warren came in and we had our direction, our ideas. We knew we wanted a religion running through it and we knew we wanted psychological terror as well as grotesque terror. Warren is more of sci-fi writer; how many of these ideas are leftovers from what he wrote, I don't know – I'd have to go back a reread all his work. But he's just a good guy... we tried a bunch of writers. The one thing he really helped us out with was, when we first started to do the comic book, we asked Warren. He hit deadlines for us, he did everything right – but he came on two and-a-half years ago and some of the ideas filter out.
I think Warren also helped out on some of the back-story of the characters, the naming of them – because he was good at that. But what he did was he also introduced us to Anthony Johnson who became our writer for the comic series. Then Anthony eventually wrote most of the dialogue for the game. As a comic book writer, he mostly wrote in short sentences, which is what we need.
Read the whole article here.