Crazy Like You Should Be

Dead Space 2, huh?  The return of Isaac Clarke… and he seems to have fixed his speech (or lack of) problem, too!

I think one of the reasons why I enjoyed the first one so much was that it captured for me one of the aspects of what makes a good horror game. Isaac wasn’t a trained mercenary or a super soldier. He wasn’t even an ex vet, brought unwillingly back from retirement, having to rely on his army skills. He was an engineer. Give him an AK 47 and he’d have as much chance of shooting his foot off with it as you or me. He took the tools he had been working with for years and made them into weapons… much like you and I would if a zombie invasion happened, like, right now.

I didn’t think it was a good idea to bring Isaac back for the second instalment of the game. The reason for this was a good mixture of things. After the end of the first game, Isaac’s fate was unknown until the announcement of Dead Space 2. I think it would have completed the image of him as ‘just a normal guy’ if he hadn’t survived, like he had tried his best, and he got pretty far, but in the end, they got to him too. I also think he could have made a pretty cool cameo as a necromorph.

The only way I could see him coming back as a possibility was if he was somehow mentally disturbed by what had happened. Sequels to horror games don’t seem to take this into account, ever. The only horror game I can really applaud for making the events of the first have a profound effect on the protagonist is Condemned 2. You see a very dramatic change in Ethan, from a hardworking cop to a dangerous looking long haired alcoholic bum. The alcoholism even comes into the gameplay, as his abilities suffer if he doesn’t have a drink. Other games you may be lucky if the main character even grows a beard to show he’s been through a lot. The characters from Resident Evil don’t even look like they get nightmares.

My other reason for not wanting Isaac to return was that I feared he was going to do a Chris Redfield, and come back buffed up with an encyclopaedic knowledge of guns and a penchant for one liners. Luckily this does not seem to have happened. Judging by the voices in his head throughout the demo, he seems to have returned with a few screws loose, as he should. The very fact that one of this alien race’s methods of attack (other than ripping you apart from within the bodies of your crewmates) is to get into your head and mess you up mentally means that there really should be no way he would have been ok after the events of the first game.

Hopefully this all means we can expect some good psychological scares from Dead Space 2, and even the gamers who weren’t fazed by Dead Space will have to play with the lights on.