‘Dead Space 3’ will recognize your profanity-filled screams

The Dead Space series is fundamentally about jump scares: the monster that bursts out of the wall or impales your favorite character, the hallucination that disappears when you turn your head. So it’s supremely fitting that Dead Space 3’s Kinect controls will respond to your reflexive swearing. In an interview with CVG, executive producer Steve Papoutsis says that certain voice commands will take advantage of the common reactions to horror games. “There are commands where you might be in a certain situation,” he says, “and you might yell a specific expletive and it might behave in a way that you want it to.” People will “need to figure out” those commands, but given the typical speed with which “secrets” travel these days, they’ll probably be public knowledge before long.

Besides discussing controls and mechanics, Papoutsis also dissects the anatomy of a (partially) cooperative horror game like Dead Space 3, including the difficulties of adding new characters and drawing in players who aren’t used to the genre. “I’ve seen people pause the game and walk away and that’s a sad one,” he says, “because it’s too much for them and they don’t want to play anymore.”