Isaac Clarke

Isaac Clarke is the main protagonist of the Dead Space franchise.

Isaac was a ship systems engineer working for the Concordance Extraction Corporation and the protagonist of the Dead Space franchise. Prior to the Second Aegis VII incident, he was part of an emergency response unit of the USG Kellion, sent to the USG Ishimura to investigate and handle the ship’s mysterious communications failure. Apparently the sole survivor of the incident, Isaac became stranded in space for a long period of time before he was rescued by an Earth Government ship. For the next three years, Isaac was held in an asylum on Titan Station and was diagnosed with dementia, resulting in haunting illusions that taunted him throughout the game. In Dead Space 3, he still had the blueprint to destroy and create the Markers. However, in the Awakening DLC, he experienced the effects of dementia once again when he was exposed to one of the Brethren Moons.

In the Heroes Coalition fics, Isaac is a member of the Heroes Coalitions and is part of Of Guns and Magic as it's second-in-command.

Appearance
Isaac is a middle-aged man with dark-brown hair and has blue eyes. He wears a dark-brown Advanced Suit alongside a helmet with a blue visor.

Personality
Even before the events of Dead Space, Isaac Clarke had strong resentment for Unitologists, an emotion that originated from the actions of his mother, who had spent all the family funds on the religion. Following the events of Dead Space, this feeling would grow from distrust into hatred. Isaac enrolled in the electrical and mechanical engineering course, joined the Merchant Marines and focused on major shipping lines. Isaac then tried to find out where his father was, but he had been missing for quite some time and his personal files were kept classified by EarthGov. Isaac loved Nicole deeply, as shown by his determination to find her among the infested USG Ishimura. Isaac was also heavily distraught after finding out that Nicole had committed suicide during the initial Necromorph infestation and that his visions up to that point were merely hallucinations caused by the Markers.

Even three years later, during the events on the Sprawl, Isaac found himself unable to let go of Nicole, and was saddened and weakened by her continuous psychological presence. Fortunately, as Isaac traveled deeper into the Sprawl, he displayed strength against Nicole and was increasingly more willing to let go of her. Even so, Isaac was consumed with guilt over the death of Nicole, as he had encouraged her to take up a post on the USG Ishimura.

He is a selfless and determined individual as shown throughout the series. Some examples are him activating a gunship so Ellie can be rescued despite her protests (not wanting her to end up like Nicole), and trying to save a fellow engineer (Santos) from a cable car under attack by a large Necromorph when doing so was dangerous to his own life -- when Carver cut the cable from the car and sent the engineer to her death, Isaac was angry and distraught. He even protected Carver from Necromorphs during Carver's hallucination confrontations in the Marker Containment site.

As a CEC Engineer, Isaac is extremely resourceful. He displays his best abilities in hacking, repairing and dismantling electronic devices, and has extensive knowledge of high-tech mining tools and other weapons, which he uses to his advantage when in dangerous situations. An example of this came about during the Sprawl outbreak, where he dismantled a Kinesis Therapy machine box in the hospital and removed its Kinesis Module for his own uses, along with a Stasis Module some time later. He was also able to improvise a makeshift Plasma Cutter using a flashlight and a surgical module when he tried to help a survivor. Due to his experiences on the USG Ishimura and the betrayal of Kendra, Isaac was understandably reluctant to trust fellow survivors. However, he would still go out of his way to help others if the situation allowed for it.

Isaac's occupation and duty of being an engineer for nearly 20 years has also taken a toll on his posture; Throughout the series, he walks and stands with a very noticeable hunch.

Abilities
An ordinary engineer pulled into extraordinary circumstances, Isaac is the sole survivor of the USG Ishimura incident: a mining ship disaster in the far reaches of space that revealed the existence of a monstrous life-after-death infection known as Necromorphs. Isaac's ingenuity and cunning allow him to create improvised tools and weapons from the materials he finds, which may give him the edge he needs to survive in his quest to destroy the Necromorph scourge once and for all.

Trivia

 * Isaac Clarke was voiced and modeled after Gunner Wright in Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3. Prior to this in Dead Space, Isaac’s face appeared somewhat more rounded, along with a wider jawline and his hairline seemed to be receding. Although the player could clearly see Isaac’s slightly battered face at the end of Dead Space, Isaac’s visage could be glimpsed during the game’s intro sequence. After the Kellion crash landed inside the Ishimura, the player could rotate the camera view around as Kendra and Hammond argued. His face could be briefly seen if Isaac was killed by an Infector.
 * The name "Isaac Clarke" paid homage to the world renowned science fiction authors, Isaac Asimovand Arthur C. Clarke.
 * Likewise, the names of his parents "Octavia Clarke" and "Poul Clarke" are likely tributes to the esteemed sci-fi writers, Octavia Butler and Poul Anderson.
 * Even though Isaac was actually 49 years old, he was biologically 47 or 48 due to the effects of Stasis containment during his three years on the Sprawl.
 * Isaac seemed to be very mentally resilient. He suffered from 3 betrayals, the deaths of several allies, 3 years of mental torture on the Sprawl, constant peril in each installment and he was still capable of communicating socially with ease. Except in Dead Space 3: Awakened where he lost his sanity and went against Carver (Who was also suffering from hallucinations) to try to slow him down because of the heavy dementia from the Brethren Moons.
 * In Dead Space, Isaac’s face appeared to have close-cropped hair and a small amount of facial stubble. In Dead Space 2, he appeared to have slightly longer hair and thicker stubble along with pronounced dark circles under his eyes. In Dead Space 3, his appearance seemed to be grown further unkempt, sporting shaggy hair and more pronounced stubble as well as appearing more weary and haggard than before.
 * According to the scales in the first Store that you came across in Dead Space 2, Isaac weighed 195lbs with his Patient Suit on. His weight rose from 195 to 255 pounds after wearing the CEC Engineering Suit.
 * Isaac’s cameo in Dead Space 2: Severed was a wanted poster marking him as extremely dangerous.
 * In Dead Space, Isaac held his Plasma Cutter with one hand standing still while aiming. However, in Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3, he used a two-handed grip. This could be due to the fact that Isaac would have become more used to combat and used a two-handed grip to reduce recoil.
 * In Dead Space 3, Isaac wore a flight jacket with a RIG attached, brown gloves and a shirt with an unknown logo with the words "New Horizon" and "Hope". This was actually a stripped-down version of the Hacker Suit from Dead Space 2.
 * Nicole was not the only person that Isaac knew serving aboard the USG Ishimura. A comment in Isaac’s "diary" (Accessed via the Objectives tab in the menu) that appeared while he was on the Mining Deck implied familiarity with some of the mining crew or even implied that he was a crew member on the Ishimura at one time.
 * It was revealed in the Extraction Comic that Isaac strongly disliked the Unitologists.
 * In the PS3 version of Dead Space: Extraction, the trophy for completing the game on the Impossible difficulty was called "Isaac 2.0".
 * In Dead Space 2, Isaac canonically took damage in only seven cases (The Slasher that pinned him down in Chapter 1, being tossed out of the train car in Chapter 2, being slammed multiple times by the Tormenter in Chapter 5, being assaulted by a Drag Tentacle in Chapter 11, being thrown off the drill at the beginning of Chapter 13, being stabbed in the eye with the needle from the NoonTech Diagnostic Machine in Chapter 13 and being impaled twice from a Javelin Gun by Tiedemann in Chapter 15).
 * Interestingly, all above cases except for the first one and the last one did not actually cause real (Gameplay) damage to Isaac. Only when he was stabbed by the Slasher in Chapter 1 and shot by Tiedemann that he sustained actual game injuries.
 * Isaac was one of the only eight known survivors of a Necromorph outbreak. The others are Lexine Weller, Ellie Langford, Tyler Radikov, Alejandro Borges, John Carver, Robert Norton, Isabel Cho, Nicolas Kutner and Nolan Stross.
 * Isaac was also one of the two people known that survived the events on Aegis VII as well as those on Titan Station. The other person was Lexine Weller.
 * Isaac was the only character to survive the events of all three major Necromorph outbreaks and was also the character responsible for stopping all three outbreaks.
 * Isaac was likened to the character, Ellen Ripley from the Alien movies due to his surviving the outbreak despite a non-military background as well as the fact that he becomes a source of information on the creatures, similar to Ripley.
 * Isaac was a playable character in the European "Death Edition" of Dante's Inferno.
 * Additionally, Isaac was a playable character in the Skate 3 Free Skate Mode, with the code "deadspacetoo".
 * As part of marketing promotion for Dead Space 2, Isaac Clarke was also available in Dragon Age II. The players could access the exclusive Ser Isaac’s armor by using a one-time activation code supplied with Dead Space 2. This ended on March 31, 2012.
 * He was also a playable character in the game, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale with his default appearance being the Arctic Survival Suit. His rival in the game was Zeus from the God of War franchise.
 * Isaac was also planned to be featured in MySims Agents, but was removed before it was published as  it was said by the MySims Agents concept artist, Genevieve Tsai. But, there was still an Isaac Clarke costume that you could dress your character in. Isaac Clarke appeared in MySims SkyHeroes, however.
 * Despite the symptoms in the other victims and hospital reports detailing Isaac’s violent dementia, Isaac kept his alleged insanity in check with proficiency over the game. Whether seeming relatively sound in the face of hallucinations or proving reliable on his own, Isaac’s only real moments where one could question his mental health were during Nicole’s several attempts to make him commit suicide. While this seemed somewhat monumental, compared to the barely coherent Nolan Stross or ironically his own hospital supervisor, Isaac came across as fairly sound minded with the possible exception being in Dead Space 3: Awakened when he stalled Carver due to the heavy dementia that he and Carver underwent from the Brethren Moons.
 * Throughout the series, Isaac showed unusual amounts of physical strength such as being able to dismember the Necromorphs with one or two swings and dismembering their bodies with a stomp as well. It was also exemplified when nigh effortlessly wielding heavier tools such as the Line Gun, weighing sixty pounds according to its bio-card. It was possible that the RIG suits also increased the user’s strength to help miners, engineers, police and military personnel with their occupation.
 * However, this theory might be false as Isaac seemed to possess the same amount of strength while wearing civilian clothing (Patient and Hacker RIG). It could be speculated that any RIG would increase its wearer's strength in varying amounts depending on their career of choice or Isaac’s super-human strength was simply the developer’s choice of giving a fighting chance to the player should he/she run out of ammo.
 * At the beginning of Awakened DLC, Isaac’s left eye was no longer swollen from the explosion that he took earlier. Also, Isaac’s suit still had its helmet intact, despite him ripping it clean off his face prior to the battle with The Moon. How his suit got suddenly repaired without using a Suit Kiosk and his wounds are treated so quickly was a mystery.
 * Isaac seemed to be resistant to many forms of damage that would normally incapacitate or kill most. He could survive falls and stabbings from the Necromorphs that would normally be fatal such as in the beginning of Dead Space 2 where he survived multiple stabs from a Slasher pinning him down. At the end of the game, he even survived taking a Javelin spear in the shoulder and another in his left hand from Hans Tiedemann before killing him. In Dead Space 3, he could survive multiple gunshots that would normally kill someone. In addition, he managed to survive being thrown off a cliff. Of course, this could all be due to his R.I.G. specifications: Since he was an engineer, it would not be surprising if any RIG Suit gave him the resistance to work in even the harshest of conditions for engineers. However, he was not wearing an Engineering Suit in the beginning of Dead Space 2, yet he managed to survive multiple Slasher stabbings.
 * Daina Le Guin, Ellie Langford and Nicole Brennan are the only 3 people that Isaac referred to by their first names.
 * During intense combat, Isaac could be heard breathing heavily as well as his heartbeat becoming faster and louder (This also applied to Carver).
 * Isaac and John Carver's masks are available in the game, Army Of Two: The Devil's Cartel as one of the choices for the players mask. Both franchises are published by Electronic Arts.