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Recent videos of the Dead Space remake have highlighted a particular aspect of this EA Motive project: the female characters have been redesigned, older, and less attractive in at least two main ways.
The question that arose primarily with video showing the first 18 minutes of the game, was immediately picked up by several fans and enthusiasts of the series. In particular, the change made to Nicole Brennan, the beloved of the protagonist Isaac Clarke and the one who informs us of pushing our hero to fly the USG Ishimura, is striking.
Nicole has been significantly altered in Dead Space Remake from the original version, presenting a distinctly older woman than before.
It is said that the new image no longer matches the character: Nicole’s age is not officially known, but many people think that she is about 39, given her role, past activities and the fact that Isaac is also in her 40s.
If this is the case, then a certain “aging” compared to the original’s youthful appearance may make sense, even if in fact the new Nicole looks distinctly older. In any case, this has obviously caused controversy around the rethinking of female models, which is quite often done in modern games or remakes.
Then comes the image of Kendra Daniels, the agent who accompanies Isaac at the beginning of Dead Space: in the remake she also looks very different, according to various users, much less “feminine” and “curvy” than in the original version.
Aside from aesthetic tastes and the actual annoyance that big enthusiasts might feel in the face of a certain distortion of certain traits (Nicole in particular is indeed very different from the original), there is no shortage of theories that these modifications are made to follow a feminist “agenda”. On the other hand, it has to be said that Nicole’s initial vision is also rather vague, given the clear makeover she’s already undergone from Chapter 1 to Dead Space 2.