Dead Space: Isaac's suit

We're hard for Dead Space. Everything about the EA horror tells us it's one to watch. Good news this evening, then, that Xbox360Fanboy's posted a dev diary from art director Ian Milham detailing the origin of protagonist Isaac Clarke's instantly iconic suit.

Isaac's look came about through a lot of thinking and designs. The key idea is that Isaac is an Engineer, not a Space Marine. His outfit had to look functional and utilitarian, basically like a space welder. He is very specifically not designed to be shot at, and he doesn't have macho armor plates all over him.

Isaac's suit and RIG are functional mining equipment designed to help him survive and augment his strength for lifting and cutting, not fight aliens. The idea is kind of like taking the loader from the end of Aliens and evolving it 400 years or so.

Head over for the full thing, and definitely take a look at the first episode of Starz Media's prequel cartoon series, which popped up this morning. From the off, the back story to EA's new IP is off-kilter and beguiling, and certainly not run-of-the-mill.

Dead Space ships for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on October 31.