There is no way EA would let a licensed game near the chopping block — not if a little-known new IP like Dead Space could be canceled first to free up resources.

"Dead Space doesn't have much stuff in it compared to what we thought we were going to make," Art Director Ian Milham explained. "We thought, let's not get fancy with the art direction. Our risk tolerance was pretty maxed out from the start."

For his panel on "Creating Horror and Immersion with the Art of Dead Space (which could be canceled any minute)," Milham discussed the myriad things stolen inspirations that led to EA's only horror title ever created (at least until Dead Space 2 comes out).

A big one was David Fincher films. Milham explained that the colors in movies like Se7en and Fight Club "feel hopeless and decayed – while still varying up the color so you don't have the next-gen brown that everybody gets raked over the coals for."

Colors like Fincher's are consistent within one frame — but varied throughout the whole project, which is definitely what happens in Dead Space. Go back and play the Leviathan boss fight again and you'll see what Milham was talking about: it starts out blue and warms to red as the boss comes closer and closer toward Isaac.

Next up was Gothic architecture for the actual innards of the Planet Cracker ship, Ishimura. I won't bore you with specifics, but if you think to yourself "Gee, the inside of this place looks like a rib cage," there's a reason for that. Bonus if you can find circles with ribbing on them — Milham is fond of those.

Lastly, Dead Space drew from dentists offices to create the lighting concept for the game. The point of that, said Milham, was both to cut down on the troubles of deferred lighting and to make the player feel constantly uncomfortable. "You sort of feel interrogated," he said, showing a slide of a room dotted with dentist lights. "A lot of our lighting is on arms like that. We wanted no indirect light."

The result, along with a lot more borrowing from Sci-Fi Horror classics like Alien, was this:

Not everything in the game was cribbed, to be fair — sometimes the things that we saw are the direct result of the dev team applying some of Kojima's problem-solving skills. For example, the game was never meant to include heads-up displays, maps, or helpful terminals that tell you where to go. Everything has to be communicated visually — from Isaac's health bar to whether or not a door is open.

The art team rose to the challenge, coming up with the Japanese subway-style signs above doors and a landmark system using the lurid advertisement posters throughout the ship. The result is something that looks a like like other stuff, but still scares you just the same. Even anachronistic things like fire extinguishers (which you'd think would have evolved a little in a hundred years) were choices made by the art team that drew you into the world and made it truly scary when you finally saw an alien.

But you wanna know what's really scary? The they might have canceled Dead Space to make this.

The estate of Puzo, who died in 1999, sued Paramount Pictures Corp., which licensed the game to Electronic Arts. The two sides appeared headed for trial until the agreement late Friday. Its terms were not disclosed.

"We think it's a terrific settlement," said Bert Fields, the lawyer for the Puzo estate, Bert Fields. "This involved one of the most admired films of all time."

EA was not involved in the lawsuit. The litigation has nothing to do with the game's delayed release into April. EA moved it out to make sure its release wasn't going up against the likes of Killzone 2, Halo Wars and Street Fighter IV.

Godfather Estate Settles Video Game Lawsuit [Agence France-Presse at Yahoo! via VE3D]

In this video, Duvall gives a little insight on how he understood Tom Hagen, the iconic consigliere of the Corleone family. He's the only character voiced by his original actor in this game. But frankly, the Hagen impersonator in the first Godfather video game Duvall sounded like he had a little more heft as Hagen in the first game. Here, I'm not hearing Hagen's icy pragmatism as the family's fixer and advocate. Even when the character issued direct orders, they sounded more like advice. Extremely threatening advice, but you could still take it or leave it. His dialogue with Sen. Geary has none of the menace of the original encounter.

(Edit: Terrible mistake. Duvall did in fact voice Hagen in the original. I still stand by my observation that he's not putting much oomph into it this time, though.)

EA, masters of the sequelized IP, know that there are guys like me who'll buy or play anything in a certain franchise regardless of how warmed-over it may look. I still have high hopes for the Godfather; I'll still play it; I may even beat it. But I'm not exactly fired up.

Developer Diary: Robert Duvall [Gametrailers]

We'll be checking out the game first-hand next week, so stay tuned for our impressions.

Godfather II: First details [CVG]

Son of "Godfather" sues Paramount over video game [Reuters]

Major Nelson updated his blog with a list of all the Godfather microcontent coming to Marketplace. Most disturbing?

Name: In-Game Money - $100K Available in: All regions Price: 75 Points Dash Details: Fatten your wallet with $100K. Maybe that'll help you on your way to buying that new Tommy gun you've had your eye on. The money will be added directly to your in-game bankroll once you return to gameplay. This is a one-time offer; it cannot be purchased multiple times.

Name: In-Game Money - $250K
Available in: All regions
Price: 150 Points
Dash Details: Add $250,000 to your game portfolio. Now we're talking some serious cash. The money will be added directly to your in-game bankroll once you return to gameplay. This is a one-time offer; it cannot be purchased multiple times

So first EA starts selling cheats; now, developers are acting as goldfarmers. Although we suppose there's no difference between buying virtual cash and a new virtual horse, somehow, the parallel between exchanging real currency for a couple bits of data seems very disturbing now. Florian Eckhardt

The Godfather content [Major Nelson]

There is a rumor floating around, supposedly to be found in Game Informer magazine's latest 'Loose Talk' column, that System Shock 3 is in the works by EA.

But Irrational isn't the company working on it. Instead, the team that put together the execrable Godfather game has been put in charge of the project.

Wasn't that rapid succession of exquisite joy followed by unbearable torment fun? It's like having a nail gun shot into your spine at the moment of orgasm. Florian Eckhardt

So on the heels of the Godfather's success comes the cast list for the upcoming Scarface game. Reprising their roles from the film are Robert Loggia as Frank Lopez, Steven Bauer as Manny Ribera, and Al Israel as Hector the Toad. Pacino's not joining in, which is depressing — who else could possibly pull of what we pray will be your Scarface avatar's crie de couer when he's down to a sliver of health: "I'm still standing! I'm still standing!"

Other talents who are lending their voice to the game are James Woods, Michael Rapaport, Ice T, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Cheech Marin, Ricky Gervais, Michael York, Michael Rooker, Tommy Lee, and Elliott Gold, amongst others. That's a hell of a V.O. cast.

Scarface Vocal Cast Announced [1UP]