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For those who don't know, Chuck Beaver is the closest that there was to a "lore guy" at Visceral Games. He was a producer and co-writer for all of the games as well as all of the transmedia, and he frequently worked on the lore with Ben Wanat, the "father" of the Necromorphs, who also worked on all of the games.
There was a podcast interview with a lot of details:
Dead Space 1
Dead Space 2
Dead Space 3&4
There was a podcast interview with a lot of details:
Dead Space 1
- The pre-production material for Dead Space 1 is what became the prequel comic and Downfall.
- The original pitch by Glen Schofield, likely when it was called "Rancid Moon", was that the game would take place on a prison planet.
- In the first Dead Space original setting, The "Marker" was a literal marker that was put there by aliens to tell people not to come to the planet and to hold "criminal elements" inside. It seems like they hadn't even figured out what the enemies were going to be as Beaver just refers to them as "criminal ghosts or spirits".
- As development went on, more and more twists were added to the story. Someone came up with the idea to have "Cthulhu kind of monsters" inside the planet and then someone suggested that the Marker should be man-made, among other twists.
- Beaver says that continuing the story was challenging because the lore in the first game was mostly just "kitchen-sinked" ideas and twists that didn't fully make sense.
- Even after Dead Space 1 went into full production, the lore and world-building was all over-the place. Beaver and Ben Wanat had to work to streamline it and fix some holes so they could move coherently into Dead Space 2. Unitology was an afterthought and added later in the late stage of development in DS1.
Dead Space 2
- This period after the first Dead Space 1 's release was when Beaver and Wanat officially wrote a lore bible that finalized all of the lore in stone including the Markers, the Necromorph, Church of Unitology and the Brethren Moons. This lore bible was subsequently sent to all of the writers for the transmedia around DS2 and 3 so that everything fit together. EA also have the inside documents.
- Beaver initially disagreed with the other writers on Nicole being the final boss of DS2, since it seems like she was originally going to have a bigger role in the series.
- Beaver and Wanat didn't want to go through the trouble of picking up threads and fixing holes to make sure the story continued again, so they planned the story of 3 and 4 while developing 2.
Dead Space 3&4
- DS3 was going to be a continuation of Isaac's psychological journey with an unreliable narrator and the second character being "Dark Isaac". It was eventually going to reach a point where you weren't sure if Isaac was even alive.
- Dead Space 4 would have continued that uncertainty. After being broken psychologically in 3, DS4 would've played on the fact that Isaac was a "herald of the Markers" due to having DNA that was compatible with the Marker signal. He would've eventually brought the Brethren Moons to Earth where they would have had a final confrontation, with Isaac "facing his destiny" due to being their herald.
- After the story of 3 was changed to a more action focus, Beaver and Wanat managed to put some of their original ideas into the Awakened DLC. This is why the DLC has a bigger focus on Isaac's mind being broken, him questioning if he's even alive, and ending with the Brethren Moons arriving at Earth.
- Beaver says that even though 3 isn't loved like the other games, he's still satisfied that he managed to bring the full lore of the Markers to fruition. He's also happy that he got to write the line "It's all dead space" in 3 and finally tie the franchise's title to the story.
- Beaver says he's excited for the remake since they're making a lot of the same decisions that Visceral made for DS2.