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The original Dead Space introduced us to Isaac Clarke: a masked, silent engineer doing his best to survive an extremely lonely and hostile environment. His weapons were that of an engineer, though they served Isaac well enough in strategically dismembering the ghouls that came creeping at him. The events of Dead Space 2 took Isaac on a similar mission, albeit through an enormous space colony known as "The Sprawl." Isaac once again battled creepy necromorphs, all in the name of survival.
Despite what you've seen of Dead Space 3 thus far – the action-heavy, co-op sequences from E3, for example – Isaac is as much "the reluctant participant" as ever. Visceral Games executive producer Steve Papoutsis explained as much to us in a recent interview. "He by no means is a vigilante for hire or any nonsense like that," Papoutsis said. "That's not what's going on with Isaac. And I don't want to get into the details too much 'cause that would kinda spoil the fun for folks, but let's just say after the events of The Sprawl – which was, as you may or may know if you played it, a massive disaster – he's kind of laying low. And he kind of wants to be left alone."
Papoutsis didn't speak to specifics of the game's intro – which, according to previous precedent, should be insane – but he was quick to stifle any idea that Isaac is on the offensive in Dead Space 3. "The events that kind of thrust him into action in Dead Space 3 will reveal themselves when people play the game, but by no means is he a willing participant in the story that's gonna unfold." It's unclear if Clarke's co-op buddy, Carver, plays into that "thrust," but the fact that he's a gun-toting government official can't hurt.
As for whether this is Isaac's last spin as a starring character in a Dead Space game, Papoutsis was less specific. "We didn't set out to make a trilogy," he said. "We would love to create many more Dead Space games, there's a lot of stories to tell of the Dead Space universe." He allowed one teensy nugget to slip through. "With Dead Space 3, it's definitely Isaac's story and we're trying to bring answers to this story. There's a lot of questions that have come in Dead Space 1 and 2, and with Dead Space 3 we really wanna answer a lot of questions."
