Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Other than paranoia and fear, there are a few moments where tissues are a good idea to have in the inventory.
- In the remake, Isaac is no longer a Heroic Mime, but an honest engineer way in over his head with this job. Now you get to see him go from being pleasant to those aboard the Kellion, to gradually descending into panic, terror, rage, and an utterly excessive hatred for the Necromorph outbreak and Unitology as he slowly breaks down into the Knight in Sour Armor with fits of Marker-induced insanity that he'd become in the sequel. Knowing that even his managing to survive the Ishimura will only lead him down an even more hellish road in the future doesn't help.
- Chen's death and subsequent transformation into a Slasher is a constant source of turmoil throughout the story, as he repeatedly comes back to haunt the remaining Kellion crew. Hammond, in particular, has a hard time grasping it.
- Later on in the game, Hammond has trapped the Slasher that was Chen in an escape pod, but is having difficulties releasing it. Even when he does go to do the deed, he very noticeably hesitates. He mentions that he knew Chen and Johnston for a long time before this so their deaths hits him particularly hard.
- Johnston's death. In the original game, Johnston died unceremoniously at the start alongside Chen. Here, she's wounded from the start and is never given a proper chance to survive, being blown apart by the Kellion's malfunctioning systems. Isaac's screams are gut-wrenching. Kendra and Hammond were clearly upset too when they hear of her death.Isaac: Hailey! HAILEY!!!
- Jacob Temple's death is both this and Nightmare Fuel. In the remake you get to know him more and he actively tries to help you and stop Mercer. Mercer stasis's him long enough for him to give a Motive Rant to Isaac and shoot Jacob in the head. Mercer calmly mentions that dying while you are under stasis is slow and a horrible way to go. Jacob deserved so much better.
- Hammond's death is far, far more gutwrenching this time. He has almost completely succumbed to Marker-induced insanity, babbling incoherently and barely registering the threat that the Slasher that was Chen poses to him until it has its blades through his chest. The one saving grace is Hammond coming to his senses for long enough to hurl himself and the Slasher into the singularity core, killing them both.
- Chapter 10. The entirety of chapter 10 is where a lot of big reveals regarding Isaac and Nicole's pasts come to light, and they are not pretty. Isaac's mother was lured in by the church of Unitology, but was helped by Nicole to get away from it. Unfortunately, after Nicole left for the Ishimura, Isaac's mother committed a murder-suicide in the name of the church, sending Isaac into a grief-induced rage against Nicole, blaming her for failing to save his mother. Nicole, fuming, can only tell him to go to hell in a clearly very hurt tone. This was the last time the two properly spoke.
- Octavia didn't just commit a murder-suicide on a nobody. She killed Isaac's father before she killed herself. Isaac lost both of his parents within a span of a day due to Unitology and he accidentally pushes away Nicole too because he can't process the grief of that at that very moment. It's a horrifying tragedy that didn't need to happen.
- An small extra detail that is mentioned by Hammond looking into Isaac's background. After the murder-suicide that Octavia committed the Church claimed both her and Poul Clarke's bodies. Despite Isaac petitioning them so he could bury his parents bodies himself the Church ignored him, citing that it was Octavia's wishes. Isaac didn't even get the proper time to bury them before the Church of Unitology fucked him over again. Is it any wonder why he comes to absolutely despise Unitology?
- In one of Nicole’s log recordings, she voices her frustrations over Mercer’s attempts to stop her efforts to treat Brant Harris and the other Aegis VII colonists. It’s clear that she still feels guilty over what happened to Octavia as well as Isaac’s father and refuses to let Unitology’s warped religious beliefs claim another innocent life.
Nicole: If I have to file a complaint, I will. I’m not losing my patient over Unitology bullshit...Not again. - The Reveal of Nicole being Dead All Along hits even harder this time around. Isaac, in disbelief, is unable to say much beyond only minor acknowledgement that he knew something was wrong.
- It's worse than that if you did her sidequest retracing her steps through the Ishimura, in that all the signs point out to him that the woman he loved was long dead before he even stepped foot on the Ishimura, but his Marker Madness actively prevents him connect the dots, hence Isaac's relative calmness upon the reveal and doesn't dispute it beyond that minor acknowledgment that he knew something was wrong about Nicole because he already knew she was dead and he just couldn't actively see it thanks to the Marker's manipulation.
- Cross's death. Upon The Reveal of Nicole being dead, we're treated to another reveal: Isaac's hallucination of Nicole was Cross all along. For Cross, however, Isaac took on the visage of her partner, Jacob Temple. Upon being confronted by the reality of the situation, Cross just tells Kendra to kill her, as she has nothing left. Kendra does not hesitate.
- Temple and Cross' deaths need a bit more elaboration for how much more heartbreaking they are in the remake. In the original, they actually managed to find each other before being killed by Mercer, so there's at least some levity knowing that they're Together in Death. In the remake however, both characters die differently, and they never get any chance to see each other again. No wonder Cross, well, crossed the Despair Event Horizon as mentioned before.
- Dr. Kyne's story is this much like in the original Dead Space. Dr. Kyne is a Unitologist medical doctor and unlike the other Unitologists, sees the Marker for what is actually is and it horrifies him. He at one point in a audio log confides in Nicole that after his wife, Amelia, died that he was in a very dark place in his life and that Unitology was all that he had left to keep going, which explains why he used to believe in it staunchly until the escalating Marker induced violence and the necromorph outbreak broke that. Dr. Kyne tries to help Isaac in his journey to the best of his ability, but Kendra ends up gunning Kyne down due the fact that Marker was making him increasingly more unstable. His last words are him sadly calling for Amelia.Dr. Kyne: But... Amelia? No, Amelia, wait... we said we'd go together.
- Kendra's death. In the original game, she was a total bitch who was clearly enjoying her betrayal of Isaac, and her death was made all the sweeter for it. Here, however, she is very clearly not happy about the things she feels she has to do. She is never outright cruel to Isaac, even while revealing to him that Nicole is dead, and she clearly takes no joy in having to kill the other survivors along the way. All of this culminates in Isaac reaching for her, still trying to save her life, before the Hive Mind slams its tentacle down and reduces Kendra to a red smear.
- While undeniably badass, Isaac roaring at the Hive Mind is also quite sad. He’s been pushed far beyond his limits, lost everyone he’s tried to save, and even his own mind is turning on him. He sounds less like a man willing to go out fighting and more like a cornered animal raging at his fate.
- The secret alternate ending is this and Nightmare Fuel in its entirety. Unlike the original ending Isaac here is almost cheerful in this ending and is happily talking to a hallucination of Nicole like a seemingly normal happy boyfriend. His brief happy interaction with the hallucination Nicole and the fact that it's very obvious that his sanity is completely gone is exceedingly tragic. He fought the necromorphs, survived the Ishimura and Aegis VII, killed the Hive Mind, and yet he still lost everything. The events of the game and everyone he cared about dying clearly broke him so hard in this ending that he still earnestly believes that the Nicole he is seeing is actually Nicole and that they can be a happy couple again. In truth, the Red Marker is still using him to make more Markers through the usage of Nicole and if Isaac snaps out of it like he did in Dead Space 2, it's going to hurt him even more.
- Brant Harris' fate is nothing short of tragedy. After killing a nurse after seeing her as a Necromorph due to Marker influence, he was put upon the Ishimura and given to Nicole to help him. He starts doing better after some sessions and Zero-G therapy with Nicole, until out of the blue he's transferred to Mercer, and it's all downhill from there for poor Brant. Mercer proceeds to undo all of the progress Nicole had done on Brant by belittling him, gaslighting him and wearing him down psychologically until Brant kills one of the miners who had tormented him when he was working in the mines on Aegis VII. He's so broken down by Mercer that he allows the mad doctor to experiment on him with Necromorph flesh by surgically putting it in his brain so he can see what the Marker is telling him, just for Mercer's own ambitions. What once was a mentally broken man on the path to recovery, turned into a murderous monster just for a crazed Zealot to continue down the madness and pain the Markers would inflict on the Ishimura.Isaac: You’re done, Harris. He can't hurt you anymore.
- The original ending is this just because it highlights how much of a Pyrrhic Victory this is for Issac. He returned the Marker, stopped the Necromorph infestation ( for the time being that is) and ontop of all that managed to survive but as we see from the look on his face as he stares out into space he has virtually nothing and no one to go back to.
