Profuse cursing could become a practical tool.
We’ve all been there: it’s late at night, you’re sitting in the dark playing a terrifying horror game, and suddenly something startles you. You need to act fast! It’s fight or flight! But for some reason, you’re paralyzed – except for the part of your brain that stores swear words. Instead of taking some reasonable action, you spout off a stream of obscenities in a panic.
If the game you were playing was Dead Space 3, your potty mouth may have just saved your life.
Executive producer Steve Papoutsis explains that the new Dead Space will use Kinect integration to listen for vocal reactions from players, and use that feedback to trigger some actions. “We actually have some commands that people will need to figure out,” said Papoutsis. “But there are commands where you might be in a certain situation and you might yell a specific expletive and it might behave in a way that you want it to.”
The Dead Space series has always tried to minimize intrusive menus, so Kinect integration was a logical next step. “Being able to do certain things without changing the grip on your controller is really advantageous. Add in co-op and now you can do things with simple voice commands like give your partner ammo or items – things that would normally take a couple of extra clicks on the sticks.”
It’s currently unknown whether players can combine these functions to grief their co-op buddy in-game by swearing at them in real life. Papoutsis did hint that the Kinect could be used to grief your friends, though the specific methods involved will likely be something that you’ll have to discover on your own.
The Kinect features may not be major selling points for the game, but it seems like the voice commands will provide some nice surprises for players who already own the device. Let’s just hope that this particular feature doesn’t find its way to competitive multiplayer games; Xbox Live really doesn’t need the encouragement.
Source: CVG
