Dead Space can be looked at in two ways: on the one hand, we have a competent shooter that played around with some interesting concepts, like zero gravity, upgradeable weapons and scary elements (scarier than F.E.A.R. 2); on the other hand, Electronic Arts was disappointed with the sales of the title and few players actually praised the game.

But the publisher is not ready to give up on Dead Space and has announced that it plans to launch a Nintendo Wii game, called Extraction, which is set to be a prequel to last year's release.

Glen Schofield, the leader of the Electronic Arts Redwood studio that is working on the game, has offered a few more details regarding it. The big reveal is that we now have a time frame for the action, which begins no earlier than three weeks prior to the events of the original game and the fact that there is more than one character that the gamer can play as.

Schofield has told Gametrailers TV that “Isaac's not even in the game at all,” and that he is not yet ready to talk about the “couple of people you'll be playing in the game.” Initially, as the action takes place on the surface of the planet that you can see in Dead Space as mined by the Ishimura, you will play as a female (maybe the police officer seen in the official comic) and then you can take on other roles as you get to the spaceship.

Regarding the weapons, Schofield has stated that “The flamethrower's back, we've got a couple of different pistols you'll be using... There's one or two I really don't want to get into right now.” We're hoping that the node-based upgrade system from the original game will also return, along with the concept of shooting limbs off enemies in order to take them down.