GameInsano.com

Mid-week at the Supper Club in San Francisco, Ca., Electronic Arts doesn’t seem to have realized we all just met at the Game Developers Conference and saw its games. “What?” I hear EA say. “There weren’t enough people who saw our games? Let’s show them all again. Again!”

In truth, EA’s Wednesday night event offered several new looks at a handful of games (Need for Speed, Brutal Legend, Dante’s Inferno, Battlefield Heroes), and gave us first looks at Spore Galactic Adventures, Spore Hero, and Dead Space Extraction, the Wii exclusive game.

Executive Producer Steve Papoutsis demoed a portion of chapter 4 from Dead Space Extraction, which highlighted the game’s “Glow Worm” mechanic, a healthy assortment of dismemberment, and examples of stasis and telekinesis at work. Several new Wii-specific characters were introduced, plus he showed samples of the facial and performance mo-cap (motion capture) working, and we got to hear voice over samples.

Papoutsis filled me in with some better- than-press-release details in this short interview.

Doug Perry: How far in advance is this prequel to the original game? One week, two weeks? A year?

Steve Papoutsis: Extraction is the moment that kicks everything into motion. The story kicks off from the point where the Marker is extracted. As far as the timeline goes, the opening of the game is around 10 days prior to the Kellion arriving on the Ishimura.

Doug: How will the controls be translated in a way that the gamer doesn’t lose controls, and how does the Wii controller provide additional or unique control that’s specific to the Extraction?

Steve: When we started out work on Extraction we had a goal to make sure we utilized the Wii Remote and Nunchuck in a way that felt natural and made sense with our mechanics. We are using the Wii Remote to aim at, shoot, and interact with objects and enemies on screen. The Nunchuck is used for a variety of things: at this time we use it for our melee attack, stasis, and our new quick reload mechanic. We have been doing extensive testing on the game and will continue to refine our controls all the way up until we ship. As you can imagine, nailing the controls is crucial. So we are really focusing on making them great.

Doug: Does this game require you to have played Dead Space on Xbox 360 or PS3? If so, how?

Steve: Extraction is a completely stand-alone game. If you are new to the Dead Space universe we hope it will be a great introduction. If players have played Dead Space we hope they enjoy seeing the events that lead up to Dead Space. Dead Space is a unique franchise; we not only have a video game but also have a comic series and an animated feature, so there is a lot for fans to explore. To be clear though, players will not need to have played Dead Space to enjoy and understand Extraction.

Doug: What features or aspects might attract Xbox 360 or PS3 gamers to this game?

Steve: I’m hoping that original Dead Space players are interested in finding out more about the Dead Space universe and story–specifically how the Necromorph outbreak occurred. Plus, we have all new enemies, environments, bosses, weapons, and my favorite, co-op. There are tons of new things for Dead Space veterans to enjoy.