In what seems like a cash-in on their System Shock heritage and the success of BioShock, EA announced some time ago they'd be releasing a survival horror first-person shooter set on an abandoned space craft (see, SS) in, well, space. It's not really known why they didn't just opt to make System Shock 3 (though I dare say the fan backlash would have been at least one reason), but at any rate, while the concept sounds the same, Dead Space does look to offer a new spin on the idea and genre.

Set in the far future, Earth’s appetite for natural resources has become a major motivator for deep space exploration. Immense, privately-owned and operated mining ships called “planetcrackers” orbit planets and use sophisticated equipment to carve out entire city-sized chunks of rock, reducing them to component elements and raw ore. When communications go dead onboard the USG Ishimura, a famous planetcracker, systems engineer Isaac Clarke is sent in to fix the problem. Once onboard the vessel, Isaac discovers that the crew has unearthed an ancient and malevolent alien presence far beneath the planet’s surface and brought it onboard. Weaponless, alone and terrified, this lone engineer is burdened with much more than simple survival – he must seal the alien horror back into the dark rock.

It's easy to see where the dev team takes their sci fi queues from (Isaac Clarke? USG Ishimura?), but I guess it's also good to see EA finally branching beyond their core IPs and into [re]new[ed] territory. Today EA Aus announced we'd see this new title on Australian shores on October 30th, which is the American holiday of Halloween. Only 245 more sleeps.

A new video of the title can be viewed by clicking this link.

Oh, I'll be counting them.