Dead Space 3: sticky cover, Marker mysteries and why co-op won't ruin it

"Dead on the launch pad", "a waste of space", "deadly dull" - the headline writers are already queuing up to lay the smackdown on Dead Space 3, a seemingly troubled addition to Visceral's action-horror series which dares to accommodate cover-shooting and campaign co-op.

We'll admit to being among the nay-sayers, but we also think there's room for hope. Here's senior producer David Woldman with more.

How does Dead Space 3 build on the style and mechanics of the first two games?

We're pushing the envelope on everything you love from Dead Space 1 and 2, so we're going bigger, badder, better, all the way round. Isaac Clarke, our main character has been on quite a journey in the first two games so that's continuing on in this one and he's really on a mission to finally figure out what is going on with the Markers and how to stop them once and for all.

In Dead Space 3 we're going to have a lot of new locations than we've ever had previously before. We'll be in space, we'll be in ships, we'll have the corridor gameplay that you've known and come to love from Dead Space 1 and 2, but we'll also be landing on the ice planet Tau Volantis and have wide open environments in this kind of icy uncomfortable and hostile environment.

We're going to be starting off in space, and there'll be a lot of different stuff that's going on in orbit, but eventually he'll be crash landing on the planet in a pretty epic fashion. Once there, again, this is not a kind of friendly winter wonderland, this is a pretty hostile place. It's full of it's own terrors and traps and enemies and necromorphs - you'll actually have humans which we're getting to later - but this is not a really good place to be, but it's where Isaac finds himself.

Do you intend to resolve all the franchise's mysteries with Dead Space 3, or will you leave a few things hanging?

The backstory has been really important to us in telling a narrative that fans have really gravitated towards, some of them really care quite a bit, so in Dead Space 3 you're going to get a lot more backstory on the whole origin of the Markers, the unitologists - how does this all tie in to this planet? What's the mystery behind this ice planet? How does this tie in to the larger lore mystery? We're just going to really answer a lot of questions that have been asked for a long time.

Have the enemies changed much?

So of course in Dead Space 3 we'll be bringing back all sorts of necromorphs - a lot of our old favourites will be coming and a lot of new enemies will be introduced s well. There's a guy called the Feeder and he's one of my favourite new enemies, because his AI is a little bit different to things that we've done in the past.

He's very sensitive to light and sound, so if you come into a room you'll see them kind of idling doing their own thing, and unlike most enemies in Dead Space they won't immediately rush you, they're going to be hanging out and kind of not paying much attention to you. But shine a flash light on them or step a little to close to them, and all hell breaks loose. So it's kind of a 'pick your poison' on how you want to deal with these guys.