

This is a particularly tough balance to hit with horror: If the protagonist talks too much, it breaks the tension. A common complaint about God of War Ragnarök is that Atreus is a little too helpful, chiming in with hints and suggestions during puzzles before frustration even has the time to set in. Jonathan Reid wouldn’t stop talking about every last thing he saw, instead of just letting me take it in with my own two eyes.


I had to stop playing the 2018 game Vampyr because Dr. This could have been executed poorly sometimes, a speaking protagonist threatens to crush a game with the weight of their narrative. A simple, voiced line of sympathy shared with Hammond, and things going wrong afterward, makes Isaac feel like part of the story instead of just an avatar. In the intro of the remake, however, he makes a suggestion that saves the crew’s life. You are free to project whatever characteristics you’d like onto him as his crewmates Kendra Daniels and Zach Hammond explain the plot and give him orders. In the original Dead Space, Isaac is a cypher. Now, Isaac feels more like a character - and he feels more in line with the fully voiced Isaacs of Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3. In the Dead Space remake, Isaac’s arc hews closely to the original template, but he’s no longer a silent protagonist - he not only vocally reacts to the events on the USG Ishimura, but offers more context for each of the game’s tense chapters. We see the back of his head, hear the raspy breathing in his helmet, and control him as he cuts, stomps, and slices his way through hordes of Necromorphs. In the original Dead Space, engineer Isaac Clarke is silent.
