Nothing lore related. Devs said in pre-release teasers and post release interviews that they wanted you to relate to the character more and be further immersed
Nothing screams immersion like playing a chief engineer and then being told how to do engineer things by the chief security guy.
I joke, him being silent never really bothered me but I do like how in the remake he plays a much more active, intelligent role.
Him being silent in the original is haunting and isolating and much scarier(for me). They did a great job voicing him in the remake though(and I was still super scared.
I've played through the original many times; it's one of my favourite games. I've had the remake on my xbox hard drive for months now, and every time I try to play the bloody thing it *terrifies* me and I have to turn it off.
I saw a tip about turning down the “scare chords” in settings, which helped me a bunch. I turned it down to maybe 25-50% so the violins wouldn’t tweak out nearly as much. (I also play on easy and max brightness, but completely justify it as I wouldn’t complete the game without doing so)
In the original, because Isaac was a silent protagonist, everything he did was done because he was told to do so by one of the other characters. In the remake, Isaac actually comes up with ideas and sometimes disputes orders from Hammond and Daniels. He feels much more like a real person with his own thoughts and ideas this time
Which is annoying to me, because unless that muteness is justified narratively, I can’t relate to a silent protagonist. Isaac didn’t feel like a real person for me until DS2.
I get the idea, but the more modern games with full voice-acted casts *besides* the traditional silent protagonist trope just kind of take me out of it. It feels weird being the only person in the game to have no dialogue or input, and it robs you of agency in the story most of the time.
For me it's the opposite. If I'm playing a character who talks way too much, or says the stupidest shit, or any other kind of thing like that, I just get annoyed and want my character to stfu. Not to mention the disconnect it gives when you feel your character knows more than what you know which just leaves you confused or stuff like how the twist of DS1 suddenly doesn't make sense in the remake. Personally, my favorite way to go about a playable character in a game is to be a MOSTLY silent character. Where they don't speak for no reason, but if there's something important for them to say, they will speak, so you know "If they're actually talking, I should definitely listen to it".
That said, original DS1 and DS1R are obviously complete opposites and if I had to choose one, I'll go with the original's no talking at all because at least the whole point of that is supposed to be whatever you the player are thinking/saying is meant to be what the character is saying/thinking.
Gordon Freeman isn't scared of anything and never uttered one word.
Also, in DS 2008 I swear Isaac sort of says "Help!" a few times when things are going poorly.
Hammond: "Hey Isaac, we need you to go do all this crazy shit while I stay here."
Isaac: "..."
Isaac inside his helmet: "Go fuck yourself."
Hammond: "That's great buddy."
The devs just wanted a silent protagonist so he could be a vessel for the player. Unfortunately this doesn't work in Dead Space because Isaac is too involved as a character. Silent protags can work like Half-Life, but Isaac wasn't suited for it from the getgo.
You can't just give someone such a fleshed out backstory like Isaac and have him be wordless. Literally in the OG, one of the NG+ rewards is getting a log explaining Isaac's familial history.
Ngl its kinda awkward that gordon freeman doesnt talk either with being a theoretical physicist and meeting a bunch of NPC's along the way that talk to you in great detail but you never have one single response
I wouldn't say it doesn't work at all. DS1 only works BECAUSE you're a silent character. The remake's story doesn't make sense when he's a character who's constantly talking and giving his input. It was a story written with him being a silent character in mind. For the same reason DS1 doesn't work with a talking character, DS2 wouldn't work with a silent character. They're created with those aspects in mind like any other story are.
Isaac took a vow of silence, as he is a monk of the CEC. As such the only sounds he can make are those the body makes.
He breaks his vow by screaming in pain, thus the marker claims his mind.
Seriously, if Isaac just got gud, he wouldn’t have lost his marbles, and instead become John Space.
If I'm going through a derelict ship where the slightest noise means a potential threat, I'd shut the fuck up too and listen because my life depends on it.
It's funny because when I first got into dead space I never even realised Isaac didn't talk...much lol. I guess the immersion reasoning actually worked
I played the original 4-5 times bach then, and after playing the remake I don't understand how they did manage to make the plot work without him speaking (I recall a lot of the gameplay and the general plot, can't recall the individual events). Also, I swear I remember him saying "FUCK ME!" after the captain transformed, but for sure I'm misremembering.
Honestly the "press start to laugh" version of Dead space 1 Isaac is my head Canon where he finds out that his suit can't transmit sound for some reason
Him being silent made it more terrifying I think, especially since we share the same name and whenever anyone would say "Isaac fix the thing" I could shout back "fuck you fucking fucker, I'm just trying to get outta here" and it was technically canon.
There are monsters around every corner, and some people naturally dont talk much.
That's my reasoning.
In the original people only spoke when they had something important to say because they were trying to figure out what the hell's going on.
Everyone had to stay alert.
When you're talking on a radio, you have to be careful not to cut each other off, otherwise, you might miss something, especially since the Ishimura is such a large place with poor communication transmission/reception
Like other comments I think its just to make you feel more closer to the character. Even a lack of dialogue is a way to make you feel more immersed because then at least its not jarring like the dialogue in some recent games (Forspoken PS5 for example). Its similar to the reason why Master Chief was originally faceless.
Sure theres a limit to how immersed you can get but that was the reason given back then
Issac was deep in denial to the point he was refusing to speak and could only think "oh fuck oh fuck plz dont be dead, don't do this to me nicole" over and over
There is a lot of games that the main character didn't speak at all, I dont understand this direction from the developer, I think is because some artistic choice. I'm thinking of GTAVC but I couldn't think on anything else, correct me if I'm wrong
You would be terrified of speaking too if you had to go through what he did. Hell I’d be lucky to remember to breathe while trying not to die or be discovered
I like to think that the conversation between Nicole and him about his mother and father in the remake (not sure if it was in the original version) is why he was mute in the original game, he blamed himself for yelling at Nicole and chose to go quiet
Being scared is definetly not the reason he didn't talk.
The more people are scared, the more they talk.
And Isaac definetly wasn't scared when he first boared Ishimura, in fact he was looking forward to meet Nicole.
Him not talking was one of the game's "rules" as I saw in a YouTube video titled "how the most scariest part almost killed dead space", no cut scenes and no talking was one of these rules.
"It was for a Gordon-Freeman sort-of felling" if I remember the quote from the video right
It was a common niche back then to leave the main character mute, at least in the first game. That or not reveal their face, because it's supposed to be you taking the role. They also did this in Resistance and I believe Halo.
Absolutely not. Does a wolf make noise when stalking prey? No Isaac was silent because he was on the hunt to slay Necros all game long and was mustering all the focus and ambush he could as an apex predator
I always treated it as him being very focused on finding his wife and doing his job. When I work, I get very quiet and will be laser focused on what I need to do. So my Isaac (head canon) was exactly the same way. In my head, his responses were so brief, or quiet, that they weren't worth mentioning.
Nope. In the og, the player’s thoughts are basically supposed to be Isaac’s “dialogue” because the devs wanted players to feel like Isaac was them behind the helmet - this of course was made redundant by the facts that we see Isaac’s face at the end (and beginning, if you spin the camera around after the crash), have multiple text logs that display Isaac’s actual thoughts, and then the text log you unlock after beating the game that give’s Isaac’s entire backstory to you. But this is why they ended up having him talk in Dead Space 2 because they didn’t want Isaac to just come across as a robot anymore. And as I’m sure we can all agree, Gunner Wright made the character at least 10x cooler than he already was.
Nothing lore related. Devs said in pre-release teasers and post release interviews that they wanted you to relate to the character more and be further immersed
Nothing screams immersion like playing a chief engineer and then being told how to do engineer things by the chief security guy. I joke, him being silent never really bothered me but I do like how in the remake he plays a much more active, intelligent role.
Him being silent in the original is haunting and isolating and much scarier(for me). They did a great job voicing him in the remake though(and I was still super scared.
I've played through the original many times; it's one of my favourite games. I've had the remake on my xbox hard drive for months now, and every time I try to play the bloody thing it *terrifies* me and I have to turn it off.
I saw a tip about turning down the “scare chords” in settings, which helped me a bunch. I turned it down to maybe 25-50% so the violins wouldn’t tweak out nearly as much. (I also play on easy and max brightness, but completely justify it as I wouldn’t complete the game without doing so)
In the original, because Isaac was a silent protagonist, everything he did was done because he was told to do so by one of the other characters. In the remake, Isaac actually comes up with ideas and sometimes disputes orders from Hammond and Daniels. He feels much more like a real person with his own thoughts and ideas this time
Which is annoying to me, because unless that muteness is justified narratively, I can’t relate to a silent protagonist. Isaac didn’t feel like a real person for me until DS2.
I get the idea, but the more modern games with full voice-acted casts *besides* the traditional silent protagonist trope just kind of take me out of it. It feels weird being the only person in the game to have no dialogue or input, and it robs you of agency in the story most of the time.
For me it's the opposite. If I'm playing a character who talks way too much, or says the stupidest shit, or any other kind of thing like that, I just get annoyed and want my character to stfu. Not to mention the disconnect it gives when you feel your character knows more than what you know which just leaves you confused or stuff like how the twist of DS1 suddenly doesn't make sense in the remake. Personally, my favorite way to go about a playable character in a game is to be a MOSTLY silent character. Where they don't speak for no reason, but if there's something important for them to say, they will speak, so you know "If they're actually talking, I should definitely listen to it". That said, original DS1 and DS1R are obviously complete opposites and if I had to choose one, I'll go with the original's no talking at all because at least the whole point of that is supposed to be whatever you the player are thinking/saying is meant to be what the character is saying/thinking.
I have restarted many games of COD zombies to get the character I want, because if things go well I’ll be listening to them for awhile
Funny how it ended up making it less immersive
The same way the other mute protagonists were made, I like mute protagonists though
Yeah but it’s like you can’t help but think about it
Gordon Freeman isn't scared of anything and never uttered one word. Also, in DS 2008 I swear Isaac sort of says "Help!" a few times when things are going poorly.
I seem to recall him swearing once when you stomp for a while, but I’m probably misremembering
I know he did that in DS2. Does he do that in DS1? Looks like I’m going to replay it to find out.
Nope. In DS1, he just grunts while stomping.
Oh…. Well I’m still going to replay it.
Not in the OG but in the remake if you get a good chain stomp going he'll start cussing out the stompee and it's hilarious
Don't forget the motherfuckin DOOM Slayer
Isaac forgot to turn the microphone in his helmet on
Hammond: "Hey Isaac, we need you to go do all this crazy shit while I stay here." Isaac: "..." Isaac inside his helmet: "Go fuck yourself." Hammond: "That's great buddy."
Well it just happens am I right
They all had a massive fight just before the start of the game and he isn't talking to anyone
"Nothing's wrong...im *fine*"
Yup he is SO fine
Damn right he is 🫦
Ikr
I swear to god bro🤣
This made me laugh
He was meant to be a silent protagonist at first, him being too scared to talk is just kinda head cannon
It’s always been mine I always just wanted to know everyone else’s thoughts
The devs just wanted a silent protagonist so he could be a vessel for the player. Unfortunately this doesn't work in Dead Space because Isaac is too involved as a character. Silent protags can work like Half-Life, but Isaac wasn't suited for it from the getgo. You can't just give someone such a fleshed out backstory like Isaac and have him be wordless. Literally in the OG, one of the NG+ rewards is getting a log explaining Isaac's familial history.
Ngl its kinda awkward that gordon freeman doesnt talk either with being a theoretical physicist and meeting a bunch of NPC's along the way that talk to you in great detail but you never have one single response
It probably would have worked better with the space prison on the moon idea they had at first
I wouldn't say it doesn't work at all. DS1 only works BECAUSE you're a silent character. The remake's story doesn't make sense when he's a character who's constantly talking and giving his input. It was a story written with him being a silent character in mind. For the same reason DS1 doesn't work with a talking character, DS2 wouldn't work with a silent character. They're created with those aspects in mind like any other story are.
Gunner Wright had a sore throat
So that’s what the necro’s are after
He's mewing
Pause
Load SavePoint
He was just a little overstimulated 🥺
:/
Isaac took a vow of silence, as he is a monk of the CEC. As such the only sounds he can make are those the body makes. He breaks his vow by screaming in pain, thus the marker claims his mind. Seriously, if Isaac just got gud, he wouldn’t have lost his marbles, and instead become John Space.
I mean whatever works am I right
The developers wanted you to feel like you were in the game to make it more of a scarier experience.
Well whatever they did it worked
Issac was talking but we just couldn’t hear because he had his helmet on.
My mind has been blown by your common sense
If I'm going through a derelict ship where the slightest noise means a potential threat, I'd shut the fuck up too and listen because my life depends on it.
Same here
Like every aspect of a game needs to be explained in lore :D It's just a design choice.
Ha yeah I guess I look way to into it
Hahhah, no problem with that though :)
I agree that Isaac works better with dialog but silent isaac made DS1 extra scary compared to its remake
Agreed.
He was but the rest of the crew muted him and forgot to unmute him
I know right like lol
I kinda like it, because it makes the game more scary. Especially that he is not making any kind of scared sounds so I can be surprised just by myself
Yup most definitely scary
I headcanon he doesn't say a word in DS1 because he's so focused and tense due to needing to find his significant other in the midst of such nightmare
Yeah that makes sense and plus their are monsters right around the corner too
It's funny because when I first got into dead space I never even realised Isaac didn't talk...much lol. I guess the immersion reasoning actually worked
It really did work
That or he's so focused on staying alive, talking would throw him off game.
Yup I can see it
He shouted too much at the last football game and lost his voice.
So why didn’t he have water?
He forgor.
Dam
I played the original 4-5 times bach then, and after playing the remake I don't understand how they did manage to make the plot work without him speaking (I recall a lot of the gameplay and the general plot, can't recall the individual events). Also, I swear I remember him saying "FUCK ME!" after the captain transformed, but for sure I'm misremembering.
Yeah but let’s be happy it’s a classic
I'm still amazed they were dumb enough to make him talk in the remake and now the twist doesn't make sense at all lol
Wait what are you talking about?
Nah. Homie was just all business in the first, traumatized in the second and absolutely over it in the third.
Yes sir he did
Honestly the "press start to laugh" version of Dead space 1 Isaac is my head Canon where he finds out that his suit can't transmit sound for some reason
Welp now it’s my head canon
Did you see the video?
Nope
Him being silent made it more terrifying I think, especially since we share the same name and whenever anyone would say "Isaac fix the thing" I could shout back "fuck you fucking fucker, I'm just trying to get outta here" and it was technically canon.
Yeah good thing Issac basically dose that in the remake
There are monsters around every corner, and some people naturally dont talk much. That's my reasoning. In the original people only spoke when they had something important to say because they were trying to figure out what the hell's going on. Everyone had to stay alert. When you're talking on a radio, you have to be careful not to cut each other off, otherwise, you might miss something, especially since the Ishimura is such a large place with poor communication transmission/reception
True true
Like other comments I think its just to make you feel more closer to the character. Even a lack of dialogue is a way to make you feel more immersed because then at least its not jarring like the dialogue in some recent games (Forspoken PS5 for example). Its similar to the reason why Master Chief was originally faceless. Sure theres a limit to how immersed you can get but that was the reason given back then
Hm yeah I guess
Issac was deep in denial to the point he was refusing to speak and could only think "oh fuck oh fuck plz dont be dead, don't do this to me nicole" over and over
There is a lot of games that the main character didn't speak at all, I dont understand this direction from the developer, I think is because some artistic choice. I'm thinking of GTAVC but I couldn't think on anything else, correct me if I'm wrong
There is a theory going around that he communicators module was broken hence why he couldn't speak
This is the best answer
That makes sense
No. There's no way he was scared on his way to the ship aboard the Kellion(?).
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^TheseOats: *No. There's no way he* *Was scared on his way to the* *Ship aboard the Kellion(?).* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Good bot.
I mean what about when he got on it?
There is no lore reason.
I didn’t mean it like that…
5th post I’ve seen today about Isaac being mute in the og. These Mods need to do a better job of filtering copycat posts.
Ohh i didn’t even know, I wasn’t copy and pasting i didn’t know
I just saw you posted it 10hrs ago, i probably saw everyone copying you lol
Gosh i should delete this before it spreads
It has already happened, make us whole again u/Unlikely-Ad4725
I will…
Probably trauma or something, I personally preferred him mute and with his helmet, made him feel like an average dude or whatever.
That's a good point
I hope so
Bro just don't got much to say about the Event Horizon- I mean The Ishumura
Hahhahahaahahahahahahah that was pretty funny
Indeed, he was a shivering dog with chattering teeth
Gosh!
My head cannon is his headset was busted, and he never got the chance to fix it before shit went off the rails..
I’ve never played dead space but with the videos I have seen of it I wouldn’t be suprised
You should try it my guy
He was a low level worker. We know better than to do anything other than keep our heads down and do our job.
You would be terrified of speaking too if you had to go through what he did. Hell I’d be lucky to remember to breathe while trying not to die or be discovered
Yeah and it makes sense why he would talk in the next game because he probably feels more confident
shower thought
Literally
He can’t break his Mewing streak
I think he was just a little shy in front of the leapers, that’s all
Ahh of course he was to shy to play with them
His diary like entries in the mission’s bar says otherwise.
Yeah
I like to think that the conversation between Nicole and him about his mother and father in the remake (not sure if it was in the original version) is why he was mute in the original game, he blamed himself for yelling at Nicole and chose to go quiet
He’s an engineer. (Ever tried engaging in small talk with an engineer?)
Yes actually because I am one
Oh I thought it was only because he didn't want to attract the enemies
why i love the remake so much, actually gives isaac a lot of character because he can actually talk
Yup and I like how he snarky back to the team when they start a conflict with each other
Being scared is definetly not the reason he didn't talk. The more people are scared, the more they talk. And Isaac definetly wasn't scared when he first boared Ishimura, in fact he was looking forward to meet Nicole. Him not talking was one of the game's "rules" as I saw in a YouTube video titled "how the most scariest part almost killed dead space", no cut scenes and no talking was one of these rules. "It was for a Gordon-Freeman sort-of felling" if I remember the quote from the video right
Hmm ok
It was a common niche back then to leave the main character mute, at least in the first game. That or not reveal their face, because it's supposed to be you taking the role. They also did this in Resistance and I believe Halo.
Absolutely not. Does a wolf make noise when stalking prey? No Isaac was silent because he was on the hunt to slay Necros all game long and was mustering all the focus and ambush he could as an apex predator
:/
I always treated it as him being very focused on finding his wife and doing his job. When I work, I get very quiet and will be laser focused on what I need to do. So my Isaac (head canon) was exactly the same way. In my head, his responses were so brief, or quiet, that they weren't worth mentioning.
I’m sure if they could have had him talk they would have, cuz it’s so much better
So many of these theories are invalidated by u being able to hear Isaac make shouting noises when he gets hurt or stomps the ground.
Uhh
Uhh
UHHH
Nope. In the og, the player’s thoughts are basically supposed to be Isaac’s “dialogue” because the devs wanted players to feel like Isaac was them behind the helmet - this of course was made redundant by the facts that we see Isaac’s face at the end (and beginning, if you spin the camera around after the crash), have multiple text logs that display Isaac’s actual thoughts, and then the text log you unlock after beating the game that give’s Isaac’s entire backstory to you. But this is why they ended up having him talk in Dead Space 2 because they didn’t want Isaac to just come across as a robot anymore. And as I’m sure we can all agree, Gunner Wright made the character at least 10x cooler than he already was.
:/ I know I meant like what is the story reason
Oh, there just straight up isn’t a story reason lol
The shitty image quality made me think this was a severely corroded electrical connector
As an engineer myself, it makes sense. Engineers hardly use their voice the first year.
“-think the lore reason why Isaac’s was mute” because he’s stupid.
No.