Robert Norton

Robert H. Norton was the captain of the USM Eudora and an officer in the Earth Defense Force Special Ops branch. He aided Ellie Langford during her mission on Uxor and joined Isaac Clarke in the campaign to destroy the Markers on Tau Volantis in 2514, before his jealousy and a secret deal with Jacob Danik brought him to a violent end.

Soldier of the last battalion#

Little was recorded of Robert Norton's military career or personal life before the events on Uxor, Keyhole Station and Tau Volantis. At some point he served alongside Special Ops Sergeant John Carver on Haven Prime, and a brief conversation with Isaac suggested that Norton and Carver stood among the last battalion of EarthGov's Defense Force in the face of the relentless attacks waged by Jacob Danik and the Circle.

Working with Ellie Langford#

Ellie Langford and Norton met while he and Carver were stationed on Haven Prime, and after her break with Isaac the two became romantically involved. When the archaeologist Damara Carver uncovered Sovereign Colonies research on the Markers, Ellie and Norton chose to help her dig deeper, but they arrived on Uxor too late to save Damara or her son Dylan from Danik's attack, and instead persuaded Carver to get the doctor's data to safety. Norton brought the USM Eudora down from orbit to extract Ellie and Carver before Danik could seize him, and once Carver agreed to help, the Eudora made for Ptolemy Station, where its triangulation system was used to locate the master signal of the Markers. Realizing they needed a shock beacon and a station to reach it, they set course for Keyhole Station.

In transit Ellie tried and failed to decode the Marker language in Damara's research and suggested they bring in Isaac, the only person she knew who could read it. Norton objected, fearing that Isaac's ties to the Unitologists and his fragile sanity would only complicate the mission, and Ellie, taking his resistance for jealousy, went to speak with Carver instead. At Keyhole Station, Norton insisted on taking the lead despite his unfamiliarity with the place, and the crew was soon ambushed and scattered by the combined forces of Unitologists and Necromorphs already aboard, leaving only Norton, Carver and Ellie alive. His refusal to defer to Carver's firsthand knowledge led them both into danger until Carver saved him. Unable to reach Ellie, Norton grudgingly agreed to her plan to go ahead to Tau Volantis alone, and the two apologized to each other over their quarrel about Isaac before she passed through the ShockRing. Norton then used the Eudora's weapons to destroy the station and the ShockRing, preventing Danik from following her, and told Carver that their next move was to find Isaac Clarke.

Working with Isaac Clarke#

Norton and Carver located Isaac at his apartment on the New Horizons Lunar Colony, subdued him at gunpoint, and demanded his expertise in the mission against the Markers. When Isaac refused, Norton won him over by telling him Ellie had asked them to find him and was now missing, and the three set out through the colony's streets. As Unitologists swarmed them in an attempt to murder Isaac, a suicide bomber destroyed their car and separated the engineer, who fell into the sewers below. After another outbreak was triggered by the Moon's Marker, Norton brought the Eudora to extract Isaac from the top of a train, and the three set course for Tau Volantis.

Arriving in the planet's system, the crew found the remains of Sovereign Colonies warships and an SOS from the CMS Roanoke. Drifting into a minefield, the Eudora was crippled and then destroyed, hurling the group into space, and Norton and Carver guided a container holding the survivors Rosen and Locke toward the distress signal and into the Roanoke. There an ancient swarm of Necromorphs, sealed aboard for two centuries, ambushed them, and they barely held the creatures off until Isaac restored power and reunited them with Ellie, Jennifer Santos and Austin Buckell. Norton, overjoyed, embraced and kissed Ellie and declared the mission over, but she insisted there was more to find in the admiral's quarters. The crew repaired a decommissioned shuttle, the CMS Crozier, and made for the surface, only for the debris field to shatter and ignite the craft and tear it apart, separating Isaac from the others.

On the frozen surface, the survivors found snow suits enough only for Norton, Ellie and Santos, and were forced to leave the injured Buckell behind. Frustrated by Ellie's determination to see the mission through, Norton privately implored Isaac to make her see reason and admitted his jealousy, insisting that Isaac and Ellie's relationship was over and that she loved him. He grew steadily more dubious of the team's pursuit of the Codex and the Alien Machine, and during the examination of the Nexus corpse Isaac caught him secretly contacting someone, which Norton brushed off as nothing important. After helping Santos locate a thousand signals beneath the planet's surface, Norton left Isaac trapped in an elevator and set out to take control of the mission and "save" Ellie himself.

Death#

Norton and Carver were ambushed outside the complex by Danik and his followers moments before Isaac, having escaped the trap, rejoined them. Danik revealed that Norton had let the Circle track the team to the planet through ShockSpace, the fruit of a secret bargain in which Norton handed over Isaac in exchange for the crew's safe passage off Tau Volantis. When Danik decided to kill them anyway, Norton protested that the Unitologist was breaking his promise, and Isaac intervened to keep Danik from executing him. The three fought through Danik's soldiers until the Nexus appeared and Isaac killed it from within. Afterward Norton turned on Isaac in a fit of rage, blaming him for dragging them to the planet, telling him that Ellie did not love him, and trying to kill him; Isaac shot Norton in the head in self-defense.