When the first Dead Space arrived on consoles in 2008, it was greeted with great reception. Critics called it a "nail-biting experience" driven by a "film worthy" script, proving that it was far more than a Resident Evil in space.
In a recent interview with Joystiq, Visceral Games executive producer Steve Papoutsis spoke about how series protagonist Isaac Clarke has developed as a character, and his future in Dead Space 3.
"He by no means is a vigilante for hire or any nonsense like that...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."
Protagonist Isaac Clark was not a special forces trained, tough as nails alien exterminator. He was an engineer, and as both the first game's ending and second game's gameplay proved, a mentally unhinged one at that. "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 seems that, at least according to Papoutsis, future Dead Spaces are possible, with or without Clarke, though he doesn't clue us into any possible storylines. "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."
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.
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. 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.