Electronic Arts has offered the first details about a new IP called Dead Space, currently in development at Redwood Shores studios and slated for a fall 2008 debut.

The idea behind the plot has been exploited by other survival-horror games, like the highly-praised Cold Fear: you basically end up alone in a place crawling with alien creatures and you desperately fight for your survival (not the human kind’s, no, not that…).

The game puts you in the shoes of Isaac Clark, an innocent engineer sent to operate some minor repairs at a mining ship lost in the depths of space. From here on, you know how the plot unfolds: Isaac finds out that the ship’s crew has been completely wiped out after a mysterious alien infestation, and…surprise, surprise, you have to smash heads, rip limbs off, chainsaw bodies and generally busy yourself with that sort of innocent activities in order to stay alive.

"In the brilliant, bold and often-bloody Dead Space, gamers will step into a third-person sci-fi survival horror experience that promises to deliver the ultimate in psychological thrills and gruesome action" says EA. “He [Isaac] must fight through the dead silence and darkness of deep space to stay alive." Now where did I hear that before? Hm…

Executive Producer Glen Schofield said: "We are all such huge fans of the horror and sci-fi genres; we wanted to create the most terrifying game we could, and keep the player on the edge of his seat the entire time."

Let’s see now: gory gameplay, dark corners, nightmarish creatures? DOOM 3, FEAR, STALKER, The Suffering, so checked. Alien invasion, alien infestation, kill to survive? Crysis, Cold Fear, Quake… so checked again. Let’s hope EA comes up with a really good gameplay or some jaw-dropping graphics because the idea behind their new IP is close to the World War II-inspired games…

Dead Space is slated for a fall 2008 debut, on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.