If not for the fact that I recognized the actor’s voice (it’s Carlos from Desperate Housewives!), it probably would have led to a lot of confusion as the film went on.Īlso, the flashback animations all looked really good, but the “wraparound” stuff (3D CGI) seemed looked a bit too simplistic, like they were barely past the animatic stage – no detail on the faces, bland backgrounds, etc. However, it’s still disorienting, and often difficult to tell which character is which at first, especially in the case of the Borges character, who becomes black in one team’s version. So one team handles all of the present day stuff, and then each time someone tells their part of the tale, we get a new team. Aftermath’s narrative employs flashbacks, as the four survivors of a space disaster recount their tale one by one. Luckily, it’s not AS jarring as Inferno, because there’s at least some sort of rhyme and reason behind the animation shifts, whereas in Inferno it just happened every now and then without fanfare (sometimes even mid-scene). And it’s a shame, because it’s otherwise a pretty good movie, and got me even more pumped to play the game (which is the only reason it exists, I’m sure). OK, I don’t keep up with anime – is this “let’s have 5-6 different animation teams do a single narrative” approach the common thing now? The first Dead Space animated movie, Downfall, had just the one team (at least for the characters), but now the 2nd, Dead Space: Aftermath follows the Dante’s Inferno-style method of knocking you right out of the narrative every 15 minutes or so by changing animation styles.

Dead space animated movie