Hmm, that headline was kind of misleading, wasn't it? Let's try again. Godfather II has no RTS elements and an Academy Award-winning performance from Robert DeNiro. Godfather II: The Game will possess at least some RTS elements, in addition to the Grand Theft Vito gameplay you remember from the first game.

The tidbit came from EA CEO John Riccitiello who said "it's almost like you're in an RTS, controlling the strategy of the boroughs so you can see what's going on." EA Redwood Shores is apparently working on the game, presumably on their breaks from finishing up Dead Space. Riccitiello says that G II: TG is a title we'll be talking a lot about in the fall, let's hope we don't have to wait until then to hear more.

Toasterhead and his pals on the Ishimura deathtrap took time out from their busy schedules to pose for a roll of fresh Dead Space screens (trust us, Isaac's smiling underneath all that glowing light). The gang did a fine job keeping the action looking candid. And by golly, all that blood sure looks real! How they do it ... we may never know.

After the break, you'll find the second of six animated "issues" of the Dead Space comic. The hefty backstory to EA's survival horror continues, with the mysterious "marker" potentially causing a colony of miners to all catch a bad case of the crazies. At the rate we're going, it looks like EA will drop one of these a month all the way through September, at which point we'll be treated to the one-two punch of the animated prequel and the game's release this Haloween.

In case you're behind, here are the previous issues:
Dead Space Animated Comic: Issue 1

EA is changing. I want to believe that. First, selling off lucrative but terribly stale license to the competition. Then, a new president who's chanting the mantra of innovation. And then, acquiring renowned developers who (get this!) willingly and enthusiastically partner with the corporate monolith that used to be EA.

Bioware president Ray Muzyka thinks EA's changed (he talked his new employer up in his presentation at the EA Spring Break event last Monday); EA's own (formerly unhappy) employees think it's changed. With a lineup of new properties ranging from innovative and well received (like Skate) to ambitious but less successful (think Army of Two) – as well as the extraordinarily successful EA Partners program that sees the publisher's name on everything from Valve's Orange Box to MTV Games' Rock Band – most signs point to change. But EA has yet to match the critical success of rivals like Take-Two, whose BioShock and Grand Theft Auto games have reached a level of praise practically unknown to EA.

So when a new survival horror property was announced on the cover of October's Game Informer – proudly proclaiming its development by "a renegade team at Electronic Arts" – our curiosity was piqued. A new IP, a new genre, an impressive (and external) graphics engine? A series of developer diaries, comic books, interviews, and press materials continued to stoke the fires of innovation, encouraging everyone to think of the game as something new for EA: a game where story and atmosphere aren't trimmings wrapped around a stale license but fundamental components of the experience. EA was essentially building a "Shock" game (System Shock, BioShock), only they named it Dead Space and I finally got a chance to play it last week.

In case you didn't get a chance to pick up the first issue of the Dead Space comic (or maybe you can't read ... in which case, what are you doing here?), they've just released an animated version and, we've got to say, it's got our attention. While it's a known fact that the entire staff of Joystiq suffers from a rare disease whose only symptom is intense concentration when presented with a combination of foul language and severed torsos – both present in the first installment tucked away safely after the break – we think we'd be interested regardless, disease be damned.

It's got that creepy space horror aesthetic they've been promising, along with a healthy dose of creepy space zealots and creepy space obelisks. We're sure the next five issues will add appropriate amounts of creepy space paranoia and, of course, creepy space monsters. After all that, we'll get the feature-length fully animated Dead Space prequel which picks up right where the comic lets off. After that? We presume the actual video game. EA better hope there's enough meat on these bones.

To hear the devs of EA's upcoming Dead Space tell it, the pause option is the wimp's way out, just a way for you to grab a vine and pull yourself, breathless, out of the lightning sands of terror which they have crafted. In fact, they're so down on it, they're considering leaving the tride-and-true pause feature on the cutting room floor (or, perhaps, recycling it into uncomfortable silences or theatrical intermissions).

But are we the only ones who don't normally use the pause button to catch our breath but rather when life gets in the way of gaming? Is EA telling us we shouldn't interrupt our play to enjoy a refreshing soda or answer a creditor's phone call? Either way, the decision to remove pause is theirs, but if their pauseless game scares the crap out of us, we're sending them the cleaning bill.