These games had a new-found dedication to immersion via their first-person perspectives, which dialed up the intensity of the scares. The Resident Evil formula was falling out of vogue, and creepier indie hits like Amnesia and Outlast were redefining the genre. When Dead Space 3 arrived in 2013, survival horror was mutating. Strangely, it may actually have been Dead Space’s influence that put it on ice for ten years. “Since then starting with Resident Evil 7, there's been a bigger push I think in survival horror to try to make them more immersive in order to make them more scary.” “I think one of the elements that Dead Space really pushed further, and that has been inspiring to a lot of other games, it's really that thing about immersion,” he says. Roman Campos-Oriola, creative director of the Dead Space remake, believes the original game’s dedication to cinematic-style realism had wider implications.

“And throughout the years – whether it's Silent Hill or Resident Evil, obviously Dead Space brought a lot of that feeling into it – it actually felt like it was a lot more immersive, a lot more mature in tone than your old video game-like horror game.” “I think throughout the years we've seen games being influenced by feature films and bringing a lot more of those cinematic techniques and influences into games,” says Mike Yazijian, art director on Dead Space. But while Resident Evil 4 certainly inspired Dead Space’s approach to over-the-shoulder combat and haunted house level design, much of the original game's direction was drawn from films such as Alien, The Thing, and Event Horizon.

Movie that inspired dead space