On June 5th, 2465, 440 years from now, in Earth’s American Republic Sector, an engineer a part of the Concordance Extraction Corporation would be born, but for mostDead Spacefans, this man was simply known as Isaac Clarke. Since his silent debut in 2008’sDead Space, developed by EA and EA Redwood Shores, later known as Visceral Games, Isaac Clarke has become one of the most beloved horror protagonists in not just the gaming world but across all media. While his ultimate fate remains unknown, players become attached to Clarke as they experienced his traumatic psychological journey through the originalDead Spacetrilogy. With Clarke turning -440 years old this year, here’s an in-depth look at Clarke’s tumultuous life in theDead Spaceuniverse.
Isaac Clarke’s Fractured Family and Childhood Explained
By the late 23rd century in theDead Spaceuniverse, humanity had begun to colonize numerous worlds and moons beyond the Sol system. However, as human populations continued to increase, the Earth Government Colonial Alliance quickly began struggling to acquire enough resources to power humanity’s needs and desires. This ultimately resulted in companies such as the Concordance Extraction Corporation conducting intricate mining expeditions on planets via a method known asplanet crackingwhich saw massive chunks of planets ripped apart to acquire their resources. While this helped most of Earth’s colonies, a rising portion of humanity began seeking out another source of energy, not just for monetary reward but for supposed religious reconciliation. This organization was known as Unitology, and they sought out supposed holy artifacts known as Markers.
It was in this galactic circumstance that Isaac Clarke was born into the universe to his parents, Octavia and Poul Clarke. While Octavia and Poul initially had a stable loving relationship by the time Isaac was born, their family dynamic began fracturing when Poul was forced to abandon his family for extended periods of time due to being a celebrated ship builder. Poul’s absence eventually led Octavia to fall into a deep depression, often resulting in self-harm and psychotic breaks. Octavia’s poor mental state eventually caught the eye of cultist-like Unitologists, who convinced her to devote her life tothe Church of Unitology. While Octavia’s health seemingly recovered after being indoctrinated into the Church, Isaac still sought help from certified medical professionals for his mother, such as the neuropsychiatrist Nicole Brennan.
Isaac Clarke’s Engineering and Military Careers
From a young age, Isaac had always looked up to his father and strived to be like him. By the time Isaac was a young adult, he had excelled at his education and was poised to attend an exceptional engineering school, but Octavia donated most of their family’s estate and Isaac’s trust fund to the Church. This resulted in Isaac having disdain for the Church and him enrolling in a cheaper engineering university. Despite these events, however, Isaac still managed to graduate with high honors and went on to enlist inthe Galactic Union Merchant Marine Corp, gaining a reputation for resourcefulness and ingenuity.
Dead Space’s Isaac Clarke is named after celebrated science fiction authors Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
The Fall of the Clarke Family
While the cost of Octavia’s medical treatment continued to strain the Clarke family’s financial stability, Brennan’s support appeared to help Octavia’s mental state and, overtime,Nicole and Isaac began a romantic relationshipwith each other. Brennan urged Octavia to abandon the Church due to its corruptive nature as full membership in the Church required significant funding, often forcing people into debt. It was around this time that Poul returned to Octavia and Isaac, seemingly to stay. For a brief moment in Clarke’s life, everything appeared to be in an upward spiral with his family reunited and finding love with Brennan.
This all changed when Brennan received a promotion to Senior Medical Officer aboard theUSGIshimura, the first Planet Cracker-class shipever built. While Isaac was happy and supportive of Brennan’s promotion, it forced Nicole to leave the Clarke family for an extended period. As soon as Brennan left aboard theIshimura, Poul was requested to leave again for work, but this caused Octavia to go mad and commit a murder-suicide of her husband and herself. The Church, meanwhile, used this opportunity to steal and freeze Octavia and Poul’s bodies for their supposed Convergence, robbing Isaac of being able to peacefully bury his parents. Wrought with anger and grief, Isaac blamed his parents’ deaths on Brennan, causing a fracture in their relationship that would never be healed.
Isaac Clarke’s Torment on the Ishimura
A few days after Clarke’s blaming his parents' deaths on Brennan, Isaac received a soul-crushing video message of Brennan apologizing to him, hinting at the chaos aboard theIshimura, and ultimately killing herself. This broke Isaac to his core to the point where he made himself forget the message’s ending to cling to a small hope that Nicole may be alive on theIshimura. In an attempt to right his wrongs, Isaac joined a smallrepair crew aboard the USGKellionto repair a communications blackout and help those aboard. However, what Isaac would find in the Ishimura would be something no one could have possibly imagined: a psychotic, body-morphing outbreak of creatures known as Necromorphs.
One by one, each of the Kellion’s crew would be killed by Necromorphs, malformed monsters of theIshimura’s crew, with Isaac struggling to repair the ships’ systems in an attempt to escape and find Nicole. Along the way, Isaac would learn how this whole nightmare originated fromIshimuraUnitologists recovering a Red Marker from Aegis VII, which subsequently drove most of theIshimura’s crew mad, causing widespread insomnia, murders, psychotic breaks, and ultimately the transformation of corpses into Necromorphs. Isaac additionally began to see visions of Nicole helping him thwart the Necromorphs andreturn the Red Marker to Aegis VII, but this was a hallucination by the Marker with Kendra Daniels revealing that Nicole had been dead the entire time.
The Aftermath of the Ishimura
Isaac managed to stop Daniels from bringing the Red Marker back to populated space and destroy a Necromorph Hivemind on Aegis VII, but his mind was still tormented by violent visions of a now-dead Nicole. Eventually, Isaac was recovered and taken toEarthGov’s Titan Station on Saturn’s moon Titan, where he and a few otherIshimurasurvivors and recovery agents plagued by the Red Marker’s effects were experimented on for three years. In this drugged state, Isaac and the fellow experimentees would have mental blueprints of the Marker extracted which would eventually be used for the construction of a gigantic Marker on the station. Meanwhile, Station personnel eventually recovered and docked theIshimuraon Titan Station.
Isaac Clarke is well known for being voiced and modeled after American actor Gunner Wright for most of theDead Spacefranchise, but he was modeled after fellow American actor Max Shippee inDead Space 1.
Isaac’s Crusade Against EarthGov, Unitology, and Necromorphs
By 2511, Isaac would be freed from his drugged state amid a new Necromorph outbreak on Titan Station and be forced to fight crazed Unitologists, EarthGov military personnel attempting to cover up the outbreak, and reanimated Necromorph bodies of Station citizens. This was all while Isaac was being repeatedly taunted by the new Marker with nightmarish visions of Nicole andIshimurahorrors. Isaac wasn’t alone in this fight, however, as he was assisted byNolan Stross and Ellie Langford. While Stross eventually succumbed to the new Marker’s madness, Langford helped Clarke destroy the new Marker and end his nightmares of Nicole.
After surviving the Titan Station outbreak, Isaac and Ellie would go into hiding in the New Horizon Luna Colony on Earth’s moon, where the two eventually became romantically involved. However, while Isaac wanted to lie low and live a normal life, Ellie wanted to find a way to end the Markers’ threat once and for all, causing the two to briefly split apart. By 2515, Ellie had discovered what appeared to be the Markers’ homeworld of Tau Volantis, which seemingly held the key to stopping the Markers, but she was trapped aboard an old Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces ship. This forced Ellie’s new romantic partner Robert Norton and fellowEarthGov soldier John Carverto recover Isaac from Luna amid another Necromorph outbreak initiated by a militant Unitologist sect known as The Circle.
The Nightmare of Tau Volantis
Eventually, Clarke, Norton, and Carver managed to rescue Langford and her surviving crew and travel to Tau Volantis’ surface to find out how the SCAF managed to stop a Necromorph threat there hundreds of years ago. However, in fear for his life and upset by Clarke’s relationship with Langford, Norton leads The Circle to the planet, forcing Isaac to kill him. While this upset Langford at first, the group continued on to discover that the Markers’ goal was to initiateConvergence events to create Brethren Moons, gigantic masses of flesh bent on consuming all life in the universe. Tau Volantis ancient alien inhabitants and the SCAF group managed to stop Convergence events by freezing the planet and a nearby Brethren Moon.
The Unresolved Fate of Isaac Clarke
The Circle’s leader, Jacob Arthur Danik, managed to reawaken Volnatis’ Brethren Moon just as Langford escaped on a ship, but Clarke and Carver stayed behind to defeat the Lovecraftian monster. While Langford left the system believing Clarke to be dead, Isaac and John awoke in theDead Space 3Awakened DLCset afterDead Space 3’s base ending. Together, Clarke and Carver fought off the crazed remnants of The Circle but learned that a group of Brethren Moons had discovered Earth’s location and were on their way to consume the planet. The DLC ends with Clarke and Carver arriving in Earth’s orbit only to see the planet being ravaged by three Brethren Moons before presumably being consumed themselves. Clarke, Carver, and Langford’s ultimate fates remain unknown.
Visceral originally planned on producingDead Space 4reportedly with Ellie Langford as the protagonistinstead of Isaac Clarke, but due to underwhelming sales numbers in the eyes of EA executives,Dead Space 4was canceled, and the series was left in stasis for eight years. Sadly, in 2017, Visceral Games was shut down by EA, ending the possibility of the franchise’s original developer from working on the series ever again. In 2021, a remake ofDead Space 1developed by Motive Studio was announced and subsequently released in 2023, but despite widespread positive reviews, development has not begun on aDead Space 2remake or aDead Space 4project.
A Potential Endgame for Isaac Clarke
With survival horror games seeing a resurgence in recent releases such asAlan Wake 2, theResident Evilremakes, and the Silent Hill 2 remake, now is the best time forDead Spaceand Isaac Clarke to make a grand return. For over ten years, fans have clamored to discover Clarke’s true fate and Isaac deserves to at least have his story properly concluded beyond a simplistic cliffhanger. His fate could be resolved in two ways. For one, EA could slowly remakethe entireDead Spacetrilogyand haveDead Space 3end in a definitive way or EA could build on Visceral’s concepts forDead Space 4and make aDead Spacesequel following an entirely new protagonist who discovers Isaac’s fate along their own nightmarish journey.
