The Dead Space remake is pretty faithful to the original game, but one way that it majorly deviates is with its side quests. In the original game, the story was told in a completely linear nature, boxing the player off from revisiting different areas in the USG Ishimura, but in the remake, players are able to explore the abandoned ship a little more freely. Coming hand-in-hand with the increased ability to let the player explore comes new side quests added to the game.
Early on in Dead Space, players will find themselves in the Medical Ward of the Ishimura. When exploring the first floor of the Main Lab, a sensor displaying the message “Tissue Sample Needed” can be found. Here’s everything you need to know about the message, how to interact with it, and what will happen once you do.
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‘Tissue Sample Needed’ Explained
As mentioned above, the tissue reader is found on the first floor of the Main Lab in medical. You’ll likely encounter it for the first time when you first go to the Medical wing in Chapter 2: Course Correction and need to go into the Main Lab to reset the power. While you might think to use your RIG to grab a piece of one of the necromorphs you killed in the Main Lab and place it on the table with the message, nothing will happen.
In order to properly interact with the screen, you, unfortunately, won’t be able to do anything with it until after finishing Chapter 5: Lethal Devotion. The tissue sample that you need comes from the Hunter, a menacing type of special necromorph that regenerates its body after being torn apart. You’ll encounter the Hunter in the Medical wing after Dr. Mercer takes things over, but you won’t be able to kill it until the very end of the chapter.
After beating the Hunter boss fight, you’ll be able to pick up a piece of its tissue in the cryochamber that you used to finish the monster off. When you grab the tissue sample, Isaac will mention that he needs to find a place to analyze it quickly, but don’t worry, there’s nothing timed about it. Head back to the Main Lab with the sample and you’ll find that you can now interact with the screen.
Once you do, you’ll start the “Premeditated Malpractice” side quest that has you get to the bottom of Dr. Mercer’s grim experiments.