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Aegis VII
Sam Caldwell
An engineer stationed on Aegis VII and Lexine Murdoch's boyfriend. What was supposed to be a routine planet crack changed due to the discovery of a mysterious red artifact. He and his team are sent to extract what everyone is now calling "The Marker"...
- Decoy Protagonist: He winds up being gunned down at the end of his chapter of the game.
- Player Character: He's your player character in the first chapter of Extraction, but as the above states. For that chapter only
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Kills his entire crew, believing them to be monsters. Or, at least, that's what Nathan MacNeil claims; we don't know if he really did just hallucinate them all, if he was Mistaken for Murderer as a result of legitimately defending himself against other colonists, or if it's something in between.
Nathan McNeill
Played by: Joseph May
A detective stationed on Aegis VII and the player character whose point of view is shown through most of the game. He was investigating the bizarre rash of murders and insanity since the extraction of the Marker, until he meets up with his old friend Gabe Weller from the USG Ishimura. He soon finds himself trapped on a madness-ravaged Aegis VII, along with an alien threat known as the Necromorphs.
- An Arm and a Leg: Is forced to amputate his arm to escape after The Spider pins him to a wall after their fight. Interestingly, after he succumbed to his injuries and turns he’s seen to have two arms again, possibly due to the infection process giving him a new one.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: The Spider impales his arm with a spike before leaving, ultimately causing his infection and death.
- Handicapped Badass: After the Spider forced him to amputate his arm, he manages to fight his way to the escape shuttle with a Contact Beam one-handedly.
- Heroic Willpower: Endures a full-blown assault from the Marker’s influence by the end of his journey, fighting through necromorph hordes and making it onto an escape shuttle just in time to succumb.
- The Hero Dies: Sadly turned out to be the one that became a necromorph at the end of Extraction, forcing Lexine to kill him.
- Private Detective: His original job was as a privately employed detective, examining crime amongst the colonists of Aegis VII.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Gabe Weller; the two snark and bicker constantly, but they have each others' back.
Lexine Murdoch
Played by: Laura Pyper
A surveyor of Aegis VII and girlfriend of Sam Caldwell. As the Aegis VII colonists go mad, she tries to find sanctuary in the security office, but joins Nathan and Gabe as they all try to escape from the Necromorph attack.
Lexine reappears in Dead Space 2: Severed, once again trying to escape from Necromorphs.
- Action Girl: She protected Gabe and found painkillers, off-screen.
- Damsel in Distress: She's stuck in the hospital during the second Necromorph attack. She's also one of the Key Subjects Tiedemann marked for Termination alongside Isaac, and the Church of Unitology wants her as well. Most of the time, she has to be protected by Nathan and Weller, but you do see her use a gun and defend herself later on.
- Doom Magnet: Everyone close to her winds up dead.
- The Immune: She is immune to Red Marker influence like Michael Altman, and imparts resistance to it to those who remain in close proximity.
- MacGuffin Super-Person: In Extraction, she somehow has the ability to nullify the Marker hallucinations which is why the Church of Unitology is after her. In Severed She was one of the subjects in Tiedemann's project, likely because of her ability to cancel out Marker-induced hallucinations. It's revealed that she's pregnant, and her and Gabe's child was also of interest to the government.
- Sole Survivor: By the events of Severed, she was the last known surviving colonist of Aegis-VII.
- Stripperiffic: Played with in Extraction as her outer garments (including stockings with garter and a short skirt) are very fanservicey but she is wearing them over a skin-tight bodysuit that makes her fully-clothed at the same time.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite having an entire DLC centered around how important she was to EarthGov and the Unitologists, she disappeared from the series after 2. May also be a case of her being Put on a Bus because of her pregnancy.
Warren Eckhardt
Played by: Jon Cartwright
Executive Director of Colonial Mining Affairs for the Concordance Extraction Corporation. He survives the crash that wipes out the shuttles, and relies on Nathan, Gabe, and Lexine for protection, as he possesses the keycodes needed to operate the last working shuttle off the planet.
- In the Back: After shooting Weller, he's fatally impaled through the back by a Leaper.
- Karmic Death: After figuratively stabbing Weller in the back, he's literally stabbed in the back by a Slasher. For added irony, the necromorphs are essentially the angels of his religion, even if his religion initially denies it.
- Obviously Evil: Warren is clearly up to no good and constantly butts into conversations pushing his own interests and safety above everyone else, so it's more of an inevitability that he's gonna mess things up - just not when or how. In fact, the first letter of each chapter spells out "Warren lies".
- The Load: He doesn't really do anything for the party after giving them the shuttle, mostly whining and complaining.
- The Mole: He's secretly working for the Church of Unitology all along, first to help them secure the Marker, then to secure Lexine. His traitorous nature is revealed when he gets Karen Howell killed by a Drag Tentacle, then cemented when he turns on Well at the game's ending.
- Ungrateful Bastard: He's kept alive directly by McNeill and Weller, and he repays them by manipulating the group with intent on killing everyone but Lexine.
USG Ishimura
Gabe Weller
"Isaac isn't the only one fighting through the Sprawl."
Played by: Ramon Tikaram
A security officer on the Ishimura and the second player character in Extraction. He is sent down to Aegis VII to retrieve the bodies of the mass suicide and happens to meet up with his old friend, Nathan McNeill. The bodies are found to be gone, and he and Nathan have to escape Aegis VII as they soon discover what the bodies have transformed into.
Weller is the main character in Severed, re-appearing alongside Lexine as the two try to get off the Sprawl.
- An Arm and a Leg: Loses a leg from a grenade in Severed.
- Badass Bookworm: Although he's a security guard, rather than an engineer, he's just as capable of rewiring panels as Isaac.
- Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of Severed, he is badly injured and has to sacrifice himself to save Lexine.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As abrasive as he can act, it's made clear that he's a good guy deep down who really wishes he could save people from what's going on, but fate just keeps conspiring against him. By Severed he has completely lost the jerk part.
- Nice Guy: By Severed.
- Late to the Tragedy: His chapter one in Severed starts off just as the Necromorphs are attacking the hospital, but by the time he gets there, Isaac is long gone and the place is in even worse condition.
- One-Man Army: Like Isaac, he had to kill his way through an army of undead monsters to escape both the Colony and the Ishimura alive. When the Sprawl falls to the infection, he once again has to cut a path through the reanimated former residents to get to his pregnant wife.
- Papa Wolf: The whole plot of Severed revolves around Gabe getting his wife and unborn child out of The Sprawl alive after he finds out that the Necromorph infection has returned.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: In Severed, his entire goal is to get Lexine and their unborn child off the Sprawl by any means necessary, even if it kills him.
- Red Herring: One is naturally inclined to assume he's the one who becomes the necromorph at the end of Extraction, since the shadow of the slasher depicts it with two human arms and, well, McNeil only has the one.
- Sole Survivor: By the time of his death in Severed, Gabe was the last known surviving crewmember of the Ishimura.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Is a completely different man by Severed.
- With This Herring: Averted, unlike Isaac, he's pretty heavily armed from the get-go.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Nathan McNeil.
Karen Howell
Played by: Archie Panjabi
Catherine Howell, also known as Karen Howell, was a doctor and botanist of the Hydroponics section of the USG Ishimura who managed to survive on the Ishimura by herself for a while before the rest of the Dead Space Extraction group meets up with her.
- Action Girl: She fought off hordes of Necromorphs and even killed a Brute.
- Ankle Drag: Karen Howell is dragged away by a tentacle, she doesn't make it because Warren Eckhardt abandoned her when she called him out for seeding Unitologists in the Ishimura's ranks.
- Deadly Doctor: She starts out with a Ripper. One can only wonder why she was carrying it.
- India: Where she probably comes from.
- Lower-Deck Episode: She has one level starring her. She kills a brute protecting Lexine, but she dies when she calls Warren out for seeding Unitologists into every corner of the ship. Immediately afterwards she is attacked by a tentacle and left to die by Warren while he yells about his "god" having different plans. This leaves the player in serious doubt of his character.
- She Knows Too Much: Warren leaves her to die after she confronts him with her knowledge of his involvement in engineering the whole necromorph outbreak.
Necromorphs
Flyer
A small weak necromorph that, like its name implies, flies around and tries to attack with its tail. Only appears in Dead Space: Extraction.
- Airborne Mook: And unlike the Infector, whose capability for true flight is questionable, these creatures can easily remain airborne for long periods of time.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Like Lurkers, they mainly attack by slashing with a tail consisting of a bone barb on the end of whip-like sinews.
- Flight: The only known Necromorph capable of taking to the air.
- Living Gasbag: The have a pair of mutant lungs growing out of them that act like balloons.
- Sinister Stingrays: Have a body shape resembling that of a Stingray, complete with a long tail tipped with a stinger that’s used to lash at targets.
Grabber
A necromorph that can extend its neck to attack from a distance. Encountered only in Dead Space: Extraction, though it appears in Dead Space: Aftermath.
- Long Neck: Although hidden when Playing Possum, the neck of the Grabber has been mutated into a flexible tentacle which gives it an impressive reach, topped by a head with a tripartite maw filled with needle-like teeth.
- Playing Possum: The only Necromorph who are capable of doing this besides Slashers, their entire attack strategy is to pretend that they’re dead (quite convincingly considering that most of their body is largely unchanged) then lash out at anyone who gets too close. Considering that they’re immobile Necromorphs, it’s also the only way they can attack.
- Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Since the only part of the creature that’s mobile is the head and neck, destroying or severing the head will kill it.
Boss Necromorphs
The Urchin
A large Necromorph of unknown origin that appears in chapter 6.
- Attack Its Weak Point: After it’s tentacles have been dealt with, the creature will reveal a large, waving appendage tipped with a yellow weak spot. Destroying this will result in the creature’s death.
- Combat Tentacles: It mostly attacks with enormous tentacles, which ironically also double as weak-points.
- Deadly Rotary Fan: The team manage to get rid of some of its tentacles by tricking it into grasping at the nearby megavents, then letting the rotary fans within shred them off.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: Excluding the Deadly Rotary Fan trope, it also happens to be nestled in an area full of exploding barrels which are used to blow away its second set of tentacles, and in its final phase will spit organic bombs at you, which can be caught and tossed back at the exposed core of the beast with kinesis.
The Spider
A massive Necromorph that that is found crawling on the exterior of the USG Ishimura. Serves as the boss of chapter 9.
- Non-Indicative Name: It actually looks more like a centipede than a spider.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: McNeill manages to make it retreat after an arduous battle, but not before it takes a parting shot at him that costs McNeill his arm.
