Visceral on the believability of Dead Space's Isaac Clarke

[jkipp82]

In its continuing series on profiling character design in games, IndustryGamers has posted a chat with Visceral creative director Wright Bagwell on Dead Space 2 protagonist, Isaac Clarke. According to Bagwell, it was very important from the beginning that Dead Space's main character was a "normal everyday kind of guy" and that he made logical sense in the game's universe.

"We didn't want you to play a superhero, and we didn't want your character to be a space marine as well," said Bagwell, which led to the idea of an engineer sent to help an abandoned space ship. Not only did this help players identify with Isaac, but it also gave him "a lot of interesting things to do in this world as well."

Dead Space 2 presented new challenges, thanks to Isaac's newfound ability to speak. According to Bagwell, the team at Visceral tried to prevent Isaac's dialogue from pulling players out of the game. Thus the team "focused a lot on having him say things that [the team] thought were situationally appropriate." Speaking from personal experience, we can certainly identify with Isaac hurling expletives during the more shocking moments in Dead Space 2.

Head over to IndustryGamers to read the whole piece, which includes insights on the characters of Nicole and Stross, as well as Visceral's insistence on using creepy nursery rhymes.

[Emerald Lance]

I love how they're trying hard to make Isaac a normal guy.