The COMPLETE Dead Space Story Retrospective

before we begin Dead Space has a lot of flashing lights or strobe effects that may be uncomfortable for some people so figure discretion is advised Dead Space is one of the most well-known survival horror games of all time it's not the most populars that would probably go to the game that actually popularized the genre but Dead Space scratches an itch that no other survival horror game has ever been able to do for me it's a beautifully woven strand of sci-fi and horror that ends up creating an unforgettable experience the core idea of its gameplay is unique and its story is equal parts captivating and horrifying today I want to spend some time talking about this series and not only explain to you what Dead space's story is about but also how its external systems create a feeling of dread in the player how its progression and the story feels natural and fluid how the gameplay complements the story and how our man Isaac is about to go on the Journey of a lifetime let's get started Dead Space 1 starts with a video a video of a woman talking it's a message addressed to her boyfriend and our protagonist Isaac Clark we've learned from the conversation that follows that Isaac's girlfriend Nicole works on the ship they're visiting called the USG ishimura Isaac is on a maintenance ship called the USG kelian apparently ishimura's Communications blacked out so This five-man Crew is sent here to determine the cause onboard the ship is Kendra and Hammond don't worry about the pilots they'll be Irrelevant in just a few minutes due to some malfunctions the ship crashed into the ishimura but the crew managed to survive the team makes it to the front door but they're stuck so they have Isaac fix the door and it's here where we get our first encounter the ishimura seems to be inhabited by these alien life forms another crew is going to need to escape if they want to survive as fast as the game wants the player to get into combat is as fast as this video is going to need to go into a long ramble about the world of Dead Space because without it nothing going forward will make much sense much of this information is either in the current games database or in future games but Humanity within Dead Space has managed to achieve space travel and inhabit other planets like Mars and Saturn while this may sound good most of humanity is struggling the world of Earth seems to be overpopulated and under resourced as non-renewable resources have all been spent so Humanity took to the stars in order to find more planets to live on not only to make earth less cramped but also to mine those planets so it can give Earth its extra resources however after some time even those new colonies ran out lots of Hope in the species survival was lost until the creation of Planet cracking using some advanced technology it's possible to dig deep into the planet's inner layers and harvest the minerals Inside Planet cracking sounds like a cool term for advanced mining Until you realize that it's literal The Rock underneath the ushumura is part of the planet the ishimura is a flagship Planet cracker designed to specifically take massive chunks out of a planet then melt down any materials from that chunk due to how expensive and time-consuming the process is the planet is first mapped up by experts to determine if cracking it open is worth the hassle once that's complete the next step is to set up a base on the planets that the planet cracker can use its tethers to pull it apart this process however is very delicate and needs to be watched over at all times the point of Planet cracking is do not just take a hole out and leave but to dismantle the game entire planet one piece at a time according to various reports in game this method of resource Gathering is very efficient it's impossible though to fit the entire piece on the ship at one time so they break it up into larger balls one report stated that their first haul was a 10-ton ball that had 6.5 tons of minerals inside this means that this planet is Rich with resources and the ishimura is going to come back with a good haul but as I said the whole process is very delicate as it can cause some serious issues for anyone on or near the planet as it has the potential to disrupt the gravitational pull that holds the planets in place that's why many of these planets are carefully selected and are likely far away from the solar system that Humanity inhabits the ishimura is here to do another routine Planet cracking but is not the only reason it's here but we'll have to get to that later as stated Isaac and Company are here to investigate the ship since its Communications went dark but I think we can already tell how that happened these alien creatures are called Necromorphs not much is known about them now and won't be for some time but to give you a brief idea what they are Necromorphs are repurposed humans these spikes with their hands would be seem to be the person's bones and one of the creatures uses their 10 hendrils to keep itself attached to the wall which looks like its intestines then Necromorphs are also related to an object called the marker but once again more on that later I've played a lot of sci-fi games where Humanity runs into the same issues like a lack of resources but cracking open whole planets to mine for these resources is definitely a new one and I gotta say I'm pretty fond of the idea it's Unique and very much in the realm of Science Fiction the early chapters of Dead Space don't explain too much of this mostly because there are more important things at stake like trying to survive but this also ends up halting a lot of the game's pacing Dead Space follows the same style other trilogies have like a mass effect but the first game is made to set the tone of the world and introduce all its Rich lore before giving the player the real story closer to the end as such Dead Space 1 only really starts getting good with its main story around chapter 10 and this is a 12 chapter game everything before that is just about escaping the ship well actually the whole plot is trying to escape the ship but many of the details that would be expanded upon in further entries are shown towards the end personally this has never bothered me mostly because Dead Space has multiple entries so if one title especially the first game doesn't expand on some broader scope of the game world I won't complain plus gameplay is just as important as if that's not interesting enough no one's going to make it to the end anyway and speaking of that gameplay we can see that it follows the standard mechanics of survival horror limited ammo scary monsters Inventory management and all those other important parts that create the genre if you played Resident Evil then this style will be incredibly familiar in fact even the presentation and systems are the same in the sense that each game is made to be enjoyed multiple times as inventory carries over to the next playthrough and combat starts almost immediately as to not slow down the pace of repeat playthroughs and it also has backtracking involved not just in level but across chapters as you'll be constantly moving through each part of the level quite a few times and then possibly revisit that same exact area later in the game when you're stronger the only difference is are that Isaac can actually walk and shoot at the same time and combat is more about placement rather than accuracy the head is the go-to spot to shoot when it comes to shooter games but Dead Space forces the player to forget those habits shooting specific limbs is critical to surviving the ishimura the first enemy you face is a standard Necromorph with a wide enough distance between each limb to make aiming a bit easier shooting the leg will cause them to fall over and shooting the arm right after more often than not deliver the killing blow its unique style of combat and one that ends up making the Gunplay a lot harder as you can't just simply default to the head when faced with a group the only issue though is how to balance all this a week or two ago depending on when this video goes live I covered a game called soma both of these games are horror games but Soma has no defensive option so it's all about hiding and Running Dead Space gives the player Power by allowing them to upgrade Isaac's health and armor and also allow them to buy new weapons becoming stronger is antithetical to the horror genre but Dead Space doesn't follow the standard Trope it's all about having a delicate balance of power and horror so that neither side goes too far as this could end up damaging the experience of the game too much power in the game feels scary as a result it also makes combat easier because you have extra ammunition to spare part of the balance of gameplay and horror is knowing that you're one step away from burning a large hole in your inventory that used to house dozens of rounds of ammo and a handful of health kits on the opposite end though too little power in the game becomes difficult this every now and then is not a problem but constantly restarting will cause the player to view the arena less like a room and more like a puzzle and once the player is analyzing the spawn rates and knows what enemies are aware you've lost them for the remainder of the time in that room this however is more player dependent but the devs behind the levels do actually place the enemies in those rooms so it is on them as well something less player dependent though is the horror horror is not hard to create it's hard to maintain though add a few jump scares and loud sound effects and call it a day but can you keep that up for the remainder of the game of course not if so anyone could do it it requires not only precise timing between scares but also originality among those scares I never felt like I had the upper hand at any point but conversely none of the enemies did either sometimes I had more ammo that I could shoot other times I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for the last round but this never caused an imbalance once this is due to how diverse the encounters are throughout the game their various forms of Necromorphs in Dead Space all of which have specific weak spots you can Target like the legs or tendrils if it has any even all the way up to chapter 9 the game was still throwing in new enemies as it introduced this incredibly fast type of Necromorph sometimes you'll even run into the same type of enemy but a different color which in this case means it has more Health this change in enemy design is also complemented by the levels and environment that these fights take place in it wasn't hard to pinpoint when combat was going to start it was hard though to correctly guess what I was going to be facing like in the first lockdown event the player has it's simple you can't leave until all the enemies are defeated but then the game keeps the lockdown idea and puts it in a similar room and adds different enemies then widens the space and adds even more types of enemies or just locks the player in one room this change also transfers over to the encounters that don't force the player to stay in one place some encounters are in a large room or in a hallway you'll never know when combat could start Dead Space also wants the player to really be present in the world as much as possible and not be clogged down by various gameplay systems which is why the HUD is practically non-existent all that's included is the health bar on the spine the stasis bar on the right and the current magazine on the gun and that's it going this route removes all those flashy icons in claustrophobic UI that some games have allowing you to be enveloped in the world and its horror and it's this HUD couple with the seamless blend of power and horror that makes Dead Space a perfect survival horror game but just as the game goes from Silent to scary very quickly so too has this video gone from informational to ironic as I've just spent the past few minutes talking about Resident people and dead space's gameplay in a video that claims to be about the story of dead space and there are two reasons for that firstly it's because without Resident Evil this game wouldn't exist and not just in the sense that Resident Evil was what popularized survival Horror in the first place but because the devs literally pivoted their entire production when Resident Evil 4 was released Dead Space was originally going to be something more into System Shock and in a way some of its influence is still present but when Resident Evil 4 was released with its new camera perspective and plot the team knew that they wanted to make something like that instead it's not often a studio already missed a copying another game usually game journalists handle that job yet the horror genre doesn't really seem to carry the same negative effects that other genres might suffer because of this a few months from now a game I plan to talk about at some point called Callisto protocol is releasing which looks exactly like dead space now it is made by the same director but still had you shown this to me without the title I would have thought this was dead space 4. it's even got the same minimalist HUD that shows the health on the back and ammo on the gun and yet despite some minor backlash for the influence most of what I've seen is positive many people including myself are very excited for this game though whether or not Calista protocol ends up actually being good as a conversation will have at a later date regardless despite it being similar to dead space in more ways than one The Gaming Community doesn't really seem to care and if anything is happy with the comparison because it's more dead space the second reason is that sometimes the gameplay can match the tone of the story it's hard to pull this off sometimes since gameplay can be very divorced from the story but in dead space's case this works deadspace's story is all about exploring an unknown location filled with terrifying and creepy enemies the tone of the game is fear and this fear is shown in the gameplay running out of ammo causes fear and just walking around the level can create fear in the player you feel like you yourself are on the ishimura not just controlling someone who is and this further heightens the gameplay experience most of this is down to the sound design and temperament on the devs did not throw out as much horror as possible but most of this is also on the visual Fidelity of its environment Dead Space is a 14 year old game and yet it still looks great some of the faces could use a bit of a touch-up but other than that the game is Stellar both inside and outside the ship their Israeli a time you'll be disappointed with its visuals and hearing that there's not going to be a dead space remake coming it's only going to make the game better even if it is ironic that EA is creating the their own Necromorph by Reviving a game series they killed made by a studio they shut down returning back to the story Isaac now has to figure out what to do next thankfully his crewmates will task him with doing things like repairing parts of the ship or turning on specific Power Systems and the best part is Isaac can't argue with them because he can't talk even though this would change in later titles Isaac for now is a silent protagonist a Felix Island protagonists are more suited towards RPGs with a character is a blank slate but this works tremendously well in this entry as the silence adds to the atmosphere you'll never hear Isaac's thoughts on anything which means the player can be swayed by what Isaac is thinking which will be relevant later and just walk into the ishimura in complete silence is terrifying if Isaac were to speak at all during this it would remove some of the tension this silence makes every other noise have meaning even if it's just something as small as a floor creaking as it could mean a Necromorph is nearby it also makes the few times you can hear Isaac also have more meaning Isaac's only voice lines are Grunts and screams which pairs well with the gore of this game it's quite obvious from the footage that this game can be quite gross at times enemies and people can be dismembered and disemboweled at any point so should particular enemy bother you enough you can take out your anger by slamming your foot into its chest cavity but this score wasn't just created for the Player's enjoyment if anything its inclusion could provoke the opposite effect Isaac isn't safe from a gruesome fate either in fact I would argue it's more of an oddity if Isaac doesn't lose a limb at some point during his death animation Dead Space is one of a handful of games where getting the character killed actually makes you more upset than angry most games dying just means you have to reset to your last save or checkpoint and go again their deaths may be quite tame as well like fainting or falling over Dead Space keeps the score consistent by allowing Isaac to be dismembered right in front of your eyes this emotion of sadness is also heightened due to Isaac's silence as his deaths are the only time you can actually hear some form of expression he will scream constantly while dying and similar to how the noises aboard the ship stand out so too does this [Music] foreign it makes you feel terrible even though Isaac is just a character in a game because the player feels responsible for condemning him to such a fate it ends up becoming a wake-up call because now it's not just about leaving the ishimura because you want Isaac to survive but because you don't want Isaac to die once Isaac escapes the initial attack he comes across the plasma cutter an iconic weapon in the series due to its unique firing mode and wonderful sound design the plasma cutter plays into the game's style of combat by allowing you to switch between a horizontal and vertical angle so you can always hit a limb no matter the creature other weapons focus on other forms of damage like the assault rifle which is about his bog standards you can get or the line gun which is only horizontal but as a wider spread but the plasma cutter is the Old Reliable you can never go wrong with it the greatest part about the weapon is that despite its design it's not actually a gun it's a tool used in mining operations for cutting soft material and Flash is about as soft as you can get quite a few of the weapons were designed like this as well the line gun contact beam and disc gripper looked like they were designed for mining operations the only actual gun in this game seems to be the pulse rifle it's a nice change from a genre that focuses on various types of standard Weaponry but it also fits into the lore in two distinct ways the ishimura is a planet cracker so mining equipment and its relative ammo should be quite plentiful and Isaac is also an engineer who has likely used these items before so while he may not have actual combat experience he is very handy with the tools he uses inside combat it's the unique details like these that made Dead Space Stand Out amongst not just horror games but games in general as there really is nothing like it Isaac's first objective is to now fix the tram station this will allow him and the others to get around the ishimura without getting attacked but once that's fixed things start to become a bit tedious Dead Space is split into 12 chapters and it isn't until the last third of the game that the story actually starts in a way though this does fit with the current predicament as the story is partially about escaping the ship but what's more important in regards to the story is the source of these hallucinations over the course of the game Kendra will bring up how her brother keeps showing up next to her and Isaac will also get constant messages from Nicole these hallucinations are tied to the real reason behind the ship's infestation in the world of Dead Space exists a church called The Church of unitology it's a more perverted version of Scientology even if that is a pretty Twisted group already but just like Scientology unitology believes that humans are more than just flesh claiming that life does not end here on Earth but continues for Untold eons and spirit form the two also have the same pyramid scheme structure where members pay their way to higher positions than the church in fact this is why Isaac distrusts them so much because his own mother used his college tuition to pay for a higher position in the church which meant that Isaac had to go to a less prestigious school for his engineering degree where the two differ though is in their believability Scientology to just about everyone is a cult and unitology is the same but the current world circumstances make their ideas more compelling the average person in Dead Space isn't worth their weight in gold everyone is Expendable because if they die that means it's your mouths to feed Planet cracking is likely extremely dangerous but people do it anyway because they need a paycheck and once again if someone dies oh well it's less money out of the CEO's pocket unitologists believe that after death they'll be reunited with Humanity's Divine creators in a world where no one is Happy believing in a better life after their death is more palatable than believing that their only life will ever be one of and uncertainty the church also uses various forms of teaching like indoctrination to convince some of its members to join and they often perform mass suicide since the whole point is to be reunited after death unitology started though because of an object called the marker this current marker which from this point forward will be called the red marker was found on the planet ages 7 the one that ishimura was cracking open before the events of the game a group of researchers found what they called the black marker on Earth the person who found it was a man named Michael Altman he became a martyr for the Church of unitology as Altman believed this was the first sign of alien life but he was assassinated for this discovery so many humanitologists believe it was the government trying to cover up something a lot of this story is twisted and confusing because what actually happened versus what unitology believes what happened are different but I'll talk about more of this in Dead Space 2 where it's elaborated on when the government found the black marker though they tried to replicate the codes inscribed on it and after some time they succeeded in doing so this allowed them to create the red marker the black marker is the real marker the red marker is just a replica with a different color using the red marker they were able to study lots of its effects but the team behind and the research was instructed to keep it away from Human colonies likely so people couldn't figure out what they were doing the creation of the red marker also created a small microbial life form and when one of the scientists forgot to decontaminate they watched it latch onto their dead skin cells and began to self-replicate now this was likely happening on the cellular level only visible through a microscope but after enough replication the life forms started growing in size and in number and this would eventually lead to a Necromorph outbreak despite that though the ishimura was still instructed to crack open the planet and that's because no one but the government knew this experiment happened the planet of Ages 7 was restricted by Earth's current government called earthka because of its experiments that we just talked about the CEC however who was the largest Mining Company in the Galaxy went to Asia 7 anyway because they discovered it was rich with resources the Church of unitology discovered that this planet also had a red marker on it so they had some other members Infiltrate The ishimura as part of the crew Dr Mercer Dr kein and Captain Matthias are members of unitology they aren't the only unitologist on the ship but just the only ones of note once the outbreak was discovered Captain Matthias decided to shut down communication with the planet and leave them to their fate as the marker was the only goal Dr kind realizing the true face of his religion went against the captain and killed him he'll also end up helping Isaac later in chapter 11 as he believes that if they return the marker back to the planet then the infection will stop but what Dr kind's beliefs had been broken due to the infection Dr Mercer's was only growing stronger he's quite fanatical even by unitologist standards as he's seen multiple times trapping Isaac in rooms with this Necromorph that he created and even stabbing other crew members who likely didn't agree with the teachings of unitology in a final act of worship he let one of the Necromorphs kill him said he could be reunited with the marker's Creator as for a quick summarization why these markers create life forms how they were created and pretty much anything surrounding the marker is not expanded upon until further titles but all you need to know is that the red marker is the source of these hallucinations the source of the Necromorphs on the ishimura a religious object for the Church of unitology and that the red marker is specifically a replica this plot about the marker also inadvertently adds more depth to the Dead Space 1 story as well as just saying that it's about Isaac escaping the ishimura isn't wrong but it's an unfair generalization about the events of the game as it's really about eyes Isaac finding out what happened to Nicole and also finding out the reason behind the outbreak is a game of multiple stories that all come together under the same umbrella the story ends up taking quite a sharp turn after this as well trying to help Dr kind get the marker back to the planet he's killed by Kendra who takes the marker for herself Kendra works for earthgupp and was sent here to recover the marker and bring him back to the government she clearly ends up succeeding before Nicole of all people comes by and attempts to thwart her plans she's appeared in a few hallucinations and even in person at one point so her presence here isn't as jarring as it seems but it is still quite the shock regardless Nicole and Isaac are able to call the ship back which houses the marker foiling Kendra's plans before they recalled the ship though Kendra managed to use an escape pod to land on the planet's surface and Isaac and Nicole have to do the same if they want to return the marker back to the planet Nicole manages to guide Isaac to where he needs to go before getting betrayed again this Nicole was just a hallucination made by the markers that it could get Isaac to bring it back to the hive mind the final boss of the game before that happens though Kendra arrives and tells Isaac to re-watch the same video from the intro we see the final few seconds which shows Nicole killing herself she was dead the whole time the reveal that she was dead is really well done especially when you consider that she was seen in person twice so the idea that she was dead may not have crossed her mind this game however attempted to give you hints about her true fate because in chapter 7 where you first meet her she just appears out of nowhere and shows no signs of fear towards the Necromorphs that she's being attacked by and in chapter 11 when recalling the shuttle she says she's worried about the marker because Kendra took it this is tied to the reveal right after this the hive mind seems to be behind the hallucinations and is the one using Isaac the hive mind is still using the power of the marker but it wasn't the marker doing it on its own as we thought it's sort of a chain of command the hive mind uses the marker to relay orders to the other Necromorphs we can also assume that it wanted the marker to return to the surface because this whole plan was Dr kind's idea but just like Isaac he was seeing hallucinations of his wife Emilia so the hive mind was controlling him too the only question that remains though is how is this stuff with Nicole possible but I do believe there's an answer for this since she's a hallucination she can't open doors or recall the shuttle like the game implies she did so my theory is that the door was already open but Isaac didn't notice and that he was the one who recalled the shuttle back at the end of chapter 11 but because the hallucination his mind believed Nicole did it when it was really him it's a stretch but it's the only information we can really go off of here according to Kendra's dialogue she seems to imply that Isaac never finished the video likely because he didn't want to accept that she was dead so he never watched it all the way through that's why Isaac was convinced that Nicole was real and ended up being tricked by her the game was also trying to tell us from the start that she was dead because the first letter of each level spell out Nicole is dead now you obviously wouldn't have figured this out until after the game but it was a nice Easter egg regardless keeping in line with the letters in the levels the last four spelled dead and are also the only levels with major character deaths Hammond dies in chapter 9 Dr Mercer in 10 kind and 11 and now Kendra and 12. as right when Isaac heads back to the shuttle he meets with Kendra who is then thrown into the wall and killed by the hive mind this is the final boss of the game and from a pure spectacle standpoint it's a great looking fight mechanically it's not too difficult the glowing yellow weak spots are pretty much a dead giveaway and as long as you move side to side you pretty much won't get hit my only issue though is when you're picked up by the hive mind and have to shoot its weak spot before Isaac gets eaten the game doesn't let you zoom in and aiming is only done by the thumbstick and I don't know if it's just me but these have always been such a pain in the ass the same thing happens in the two turret sections and the few times you're being dragged across the room and I hate doing these every time I play the game it's hard enough as is to keep the reticle steady but because the camera isn't behind Isaac's back it makes it even harder to aim in total though they only take up like five minutes Across The Seven Hour game so obviously it's not enough to drag down the experience but that doesn't mean they aren't annoying after Isaac defeats the hive mind he rushes to the shuttle before that piece of Ages 7 we saw in the intro crashes into the planet Isaac newly Escapes in the chunk of rock collides with the planet destroying the marker and probably part of the planet as well Isaac for the first time since setting foot on the ishimura can now finally relax now that the threat has been dealt with he also removes his helmet allowing us to see his face I like this reveal because it feels natural the man just went through hell trying to escape so it's only fair he lays down the guns and takes off his helmet but he's not done yet as a hallucination of Nicole scares him before cuts to credits even without that reveal though I think we all knew Isaac's story wasn't over yet if anything was on only just beginning other than Necromorphs have made themselves known Dead Space 1 like all first games have the tough job of making sure that not only is the game itself good but it's also good enough to spawn a sequel this means the game's characters plots and world all need to be addressed and worth the player's time and the gameplay needs to be top-notch as well despite how difficult of a task this ends up becoming virtual games managed to overachieve when it came to Dead Space 1. it's easily my favorite in the trilogy for its Incredible use of enemy variety sound design level layout and horror the real threat of the world was just teased allowing those who played the game for the story to get excited about what's next and the gameplay systems are well structured enough that another game with the same combat is more than enough reason to buy the sequel that's the beauty of making a stellar first impression if you manage to nail all the aspects of your game you can essentially copy and paste it into the next one now doing that literally would be met with negative reviews but because Dead Space 1's gameplay was so well put together the team only needs to refine the intricacies of its design rather than revamp the whole production and the story left off on such good note that the sequel can go pretty much anywhere the team wants all that's left is to put it together Dead Space 2 is just as good if not better than its predecessor the problem that Dead Space 2 would inevitably have to tackle is its horror the beauty of the original came from the unknown horror that was the Necromorphs but now that the player has been more accustomed to them a lot of that horror is gone the gameplay can still be scary but the novelty of the Necromorphs has already faded the best way to circumvent this issue is to create more unique monsters or create new environments and encounters Dead Space 2 doubles down on both him manages to succeed the Horus though is present is the day I stepped onto the ishimuro which is quite hard to pull off in a sequel with these same horrific looking creatures Dead Space 2 succeeds though by increasing the difficulty of the Necromorphs both in number and in variety the tougher enemies of Dead Space 1 are now more common than in the previous title you can think of Dead Space 1 and 2 as one cohesive line of progression where the difficulty slowly gets higher and higher crossbow games Dead Space 2 still lets the player get familiar with the weaponry and mechanics early on since some of the controls changed a bit but the jump from weak to strong enemy seems a lot faster in this entry as we discussed at the end of the Dead Space 1 Section the gameplay was already incredible so although his needed was a level of refinement not replacement visceral had a head start so slowly increasing the difficulty was all that was needed Dead Space 2 also continues to be quite conservative with its horror as the team knew that there was a time and place for scares each room has more routes for Necromorphs to come through making it harder for the player to guess where the creatures will spawn which is coupled together with these specific types of Necromorphs the new Necromorphs this time around felt intentional in regards to their design like for instance these exploding babies and Necromorph children the exploding babies either funnel in one at a time or all at once but they act like a slower smaller version of the other exploding type enemies this makes them harder to see making it quite easy for you to be caught off guard the Necromorph children on the other hand only come as a group they swarm the player and can jump over obstacles so funneling them down a hallway might not be possible the caveat to both of them though is that they are killed in one shot by far the most annoying types of enemies in this game are the hunters these guys hide behind cover and stalk you until they're ready to charge I never been more scared while playing this game than in these sections minus one time towards the end though they're usually alone so another anime these will be spawning giving you an opportunity to only focus on the hunters they also let out this absolutely blood curdling scream when they charge so you know where they are and when they're attacking these new additions give us the chance to Circle back to our earlier discussion about the balance of power and horror Dead Space 2 just by ramping up the difficulty and increasing Enemy Number and variety still manages to keep that balance and I am genuinely impressed Dead Space 1 is an excellent example of what a survival horror game should be but Dead Space 2 is a case study on how to keep that Horror in future titles the only changes Dead Space 2 makes are with Isaac and the game's more cinematic moments firstly is that Isaac is now entirely voiced none of Dead Space 2's plot has to deal with secrecy and mystery like Nicole's true fate so having a voice protagonist was the right call especially in this entry as Isaac will still continue to have hallucinations about Nicole so being able to hear his thoughts after knowing the truth gives us an idea of where he's at as a person despite what you may think though his dialogue does not dilute the overall experience Isaac mostly speaks when spoken to in the presence of another character but even when he's alone it's only small quips here and there it's a exactly what I would have wanted Isaac to be like in Dead Space 1 if they plan to give him a voice majority of the game though he is silent so when Necromorphs jumped from a balcony or come from the walls he's not gonna shout something like oh no here they come again or time to make some Dead Space within this room he's just quiet it's not enough to make him feel like he's completely silent but it's not too much to where Isaac starts to become irritable this restraint on making sure Isaac doesn't monologue for three whole minutes every minute is seen in the action as well in order to broaden the game's appeal the combat became more refined and fluid and the game had more action scenes to it such as Isaac running away from an exploding train or the few times you need to Jetpack past obstacles without being hit but these action scenes are too common though most of the game is still running through broken down rooms and buildings while checking every corner in case a Necromorph is hiding somewhere and the devs willingness to hold back on a lot of these new additions is commendable and overall makes the game better but with a new game comes a new story and Isaac is in for quite the story the game starts with another video of Nicole but this time she's talking with Isaac it's a conversation that was briefly mentioned in the first game which shows us that Isaac was the one one who convinced her to join the ishimura Nicole was originally not going to take the job but Isaac pushed her to pursue it anyway this is a big reason why he feels so depressed over Nicole's death not just because she died but because he feels he's responsible for it the camera pans out like in Dead Space 1 but does stay closer to Isaac this time conveying to the player that things are going to get more personal this scene also shows that not only did the game have more time and money put into it as seen in its graphical upgrade but also that the devs still care about presentation the images that show up during this interview are not just great to look at but is also showing us a visual representation of Isaac's mind and how this interview is bringing back all his memories but right on time to drag Isaac back to the depths of his mind Nicole appears and starts taunting him afterward we see Isaac in a room being looked at by some person remember when I talked about presentation well there isn't a better example to show than this Franco here is killed and immediately transforms allowing us to see the Necromorph transformation in real time which is a first for the series this intro also calls back to Dead Space 1 where Isaac is running for his life while trying to escape the Necromorph threat so the after is where a few questions may arise as Isaac is being shot at before early escaping death again thanks to the Necromorphs this information is tied to a few audio logs and recordings we find shortly after Isaac as well as a few other people were taken to a research facility on Titan one of Saturn's moons Titan was actually the first rock to be Planet craft in its Planet cracking resulted in a large amount of the Moon being taken its remains though were pieced together and it's now a livable city called Titan station or the sprawl to many of its residents Isaac has apparently been in this facility for three years and was found floating in space before being dragged here this might be related to the hallucination he had at the end of the first game which possibly knocked him out but that's unclear and a bit of stretch on my part he was taken here initially so they could treat his dementia as a result of the marker's influence on him this facility has more Sinister motivations to it though multiple tax logs point to this facility being secretive and off limits it's built deep into one of the hospitals here on Titan station so deep that none of the staff that actually work in the hospital can get inside half of them probably don't even know of its existence that's because this was a secret facility made by earthgov in order to find out more about the markers some of the notes Here say that when affected by the marker most people experience noise but some people can see codes and blueprints Isaac and our new friend Nolan Strauss are two of these people both came in contact with a marker and were partially driven mad by its effects but not enough for them to be completely insane these codes and blueprints aren't just words you can speak and it's not something you can explain you just know it to extract this knowledge the people at the station created a machine that pokes the eyes of the participant providing those controlling the machine with the codes and blueprints this will allow someone with the information to create their own marker and as we'll soon discover Isaac's info was already extracted and the team was able to make their own marker using Isaac's codes the reason Isaac doesn't remember all of this is because he was given memory suppressants so he wasn't able to catch on to what was happening to him at the facility to make matters worse both Isaac and Strauss are currently being hunted right now as their key subjects the leader behind this research Hans teedman wanted to make sure the outbreak was contained and that all the evidence was wiped so killing Isaac and Strauss was one of the steps in their plan this marker is also how the outbreak started in the first place we learned a bit later that when the marker was destroyed back on ages 7 the remaining Necromorphs turned into this soupy sludge-like consistency so it means it's the mar marker that was keeping them alive as you would expect the marker here on Titan station is what reignited the infection as various people in the facility started feeling nauseous while also experiencing dementia and homicidal Tendencies just like those on the ishimura Isaac will eventually meet with the interviewer Edgars who cuts him out of a straitjacket and then kills himself as it will also come across a laser cutter which he Fashions into a plasma cutter but he took a bit too long as the person next to him was ripped to shreds as we can see the gore has been upgraded this time around and once again not just for the enemies but for Isaac as well he can still die in some pretty gruesome ways while trying to escape the facility Isaac receives a call from Dana who was Allied with Franco the one who got killed earlier she wants Isaac to meet with her because she needs his help and she also has a cure for his hallucinations as a reward Isaac will need to battle his way through countless waves of Necromorphs and this level also showcases the change in Pace in regards to the outbreak with the ishimura Isaac and the crew got there a week after so the infection had time to develop in Fester but on Titan station it's happening right now Isaac is in the middle of the outbreak in the environment in combat reflect this Necromorphs are showing up in all-time types of places like on the balconies in people's rooms and the people in these rooms are either dead going to die or not trying to die there's a couple that is running away from what I assume is one of their parents judging from the dialogue and quite a few people can be heard screaming and crying inside the rooms either because they think someone's trying to get in or it's already in my father all right let's see oh my God it's horrifying and really matches the tone of what's going on people are scared and worried that they or their loved ones will be dead so they're all trying to escape and this causes mass panic entrances are blocked off or sealed trains are being bordered by not just people but also Necromorphs as well and there's a high chance that 99 of the population on the station is going to die after getting through the chaos the tone settles down a bit and goes back to the 10th Slow Burn atmosphere that we're familiar with as Isaac is now alone and has to take quite a long detour through an unexpected building Isaac has to cut through a unitology building to get to Dana and I cannot express you how excited I was to hear that I can only imagine how much Allure I was going to find here and I was not disappointed to get through here Isaac has to go through one of the introduction hauls before making it to the core of the facility where people can take tours and see what unitology is about there are dozens of text logs voice recordings speeches and promotional footage that we can find throughout this building so instead of just going through it chronologically let me just summarize it on a more digestible fashion apparently unitology at least the facility here on Titan station is struggling with recruiting new members their Arch Enemy earthgov made a smear campaign recently against them causing the group to to lose some public opinion also due to CEC layoffs they haven't been able to put unitologists in key positions like how some of the crew on the ishimura were unitologists due to the outbreak on the ishimura planet cracking activity has slowed down to a halt unemployment Rose to 9.5 percent on Titan station and any business related to Planet cracking like Dock Workers mining suppliers and Tool vendors have all suffered heavy losses financially the CEC seems to be okay but they can't earn much profit because they can't go on planet cracking operations which means that the unitologist can't be a part of the planet cracking crew like in the ishimura speaking of that and we'll discover this later but I feel like I should mention it now only Isaac knows the true fate of the ishimura as Ellie a character who we'll also meet later claims that the official news report says that terrorists killed everyone on the ishimura which we of course know is untrue Isaac ends up making it to a residential section of the facility and this whole location I found quite fascinating this seems to be inside the actual building itself and not just another residential area like we saw earlier so these people seem to be living together which doesn't really help with the whole cult Vibe unitology gives off in these areas are hundreds of writings on the wall in unitology scripture and a few statues of the marker it's kind of crazy to think about how some people might be living underneath all of this considering how tightly packed the station is in these rooms is where Isaac will get one of the first hallucinations of Nicole it seems that the marker still has an influence on him but he is still very resilient as Isaac knows that Nicole is not real after this we enter a large hallway with six presentations detailing the beginnings of unitology as we know unitology started when Michael Altman found the black marker on Earth which we now know was located near the Yucatan Peninsula according to unitology the markers spoke to Altman spoke luckily means that Altman is like Isaac and Strauss beings who have codes and blueprints in their brains thanks to the marker's influence unitology claims that the marker spoke to all men about the unity of mankind towards a bright and better future after this Michael Alden was assassinated because he spoke about the marker not because he was some religious zealot but because the government didn't want knowledge of the marker to reach the public that's why everyone in unitology sees Altman as a martyr for the church because he was killed for speaking the truth all but never wanted to be a unitologist in fact he is a member nor the creator of it he was just a researcher who found the marker first and wanted to share his Discovery with the world but the people took this in a different way that he had intended unitology believes that he is a messiah when he was really just a researcher churches then began to start up everywhere with the one here on Titan station being one of the largest in the solar system the final presentation talks about what they refer to as the convergence this is what that uniting of all mankind will lead to so for them it's the final step of unitology we have to remember though that the marker creates the Necromorph so all this information is skewed and incorrect being united in death isn't some Heavenly thing that occurs when the time comes they'll literally be United by dying and becoming Necromorphs as for what the convergence event leads to though well that's for Dead Space 3 to explain one thing I enjoy about these presentations is how they utilize the unreliable narrator Trope a lot of this information is kind of wrong as we just discussed and it makes unitology seem more pleasant than it actually is after that hallway we enter another main room in the church where the tour of unitology begins Dana also says that Isaac needs to go through here and take an elevator to the top as she's hiding in one of the safe rooms at the top of the church this whole chapter is a metaphor as Isaac is following the route the tour guides would use and he's also going into restricted areas throughout the building so he's metaphorically going through the process of being a unitologist from their initiation to their cleansing most of the tour only shows what the church wants you to see like the library and sermon rooms but I actually have to stop and laugh at one of the rooms names because it was called indoctrination and its description is about as ironic as you can get with a name like that welcome to indoctrination the church seminar is currently in progress please wait for the next available Church associate indoctrination is a pleasant joyous event where you will take the first steps into glorious Oneness that is unitology these unitologists are either so dense that this blue right past them are the most intelligent people in the world they use the word indoctrination as a sort of a playful term when they're literally indoctrinating people into believing their beliefs the hilarity of this organization continues into the next room where participants are taken to a back room so the church can assess them and at the top is a list of results regarding the person's self-confidence susceptibility to translate States and gullibility this is also a good time to talk about Isaac's hallucinations because right after Nicole appears and tries to stab him with a syringe if you succeed then it's revealed that Isaac was trying to kill himself if you fail Nicole will stab and kill Isaac with this needle but since she's not there it would look like Isaac killed himself if someone were to watch him the same thing happens later towards the end of the game where it failed Isaac will Harpoon himself with a javelin gun so it seems like the marker cannot only toy with him but also has some physical control over him to an extent Dana then hops on the comms again and tells Isaac to take the elevator up and it's very important that he goes up because if he goes down that leads to the Crypt a very important step in unitology is death because members who remain untouched and clean can join in the unification that happens after to preserve the body members are not allowed to be cremated or buried and must be kept in these ice-cold crowd chambers that the body doesn't decompose all these people will then live on after death reunification when the convergence event starts it's fascinating to see this Dynamic within the church as it's clear not everyone is on the same page there was an article in Dead Space one that talked about someone infiltrating the ranks of unitology but couldn't uncover much since a lot of their rituals and what they entail were quite low-key it's also confirmed that not everyone knows about the Necromorphs because Dr Mercer was able to create his own and willingly accepted one before he died but if this Necromorph infection was told to everyone then more people would know about the outbreak plus not once is the word Necromorph or anything like that ever mentioned during the tour from an outsider's perspective it would seem like the convergence means all humans are unified and spirit formed together when in actuality they're just used to create Necromorphs which then lead to the convergence event once enough Necromorphs are within the presence of the marker this is sadly the last piece of info we will get to learn on this wonderful tour through this decrepit Palace but the Lord that is learned here is incredible unitology was a mystery for a while and Dead Space 2 did exactly what I wanted it to do which which it was take the general idea of the previous game and expand on it and what's better than letting us walk through an entire church for two whole hours throughout this journey Isaac has had to deal with swarms of Necromorphs and this is also around the time I came to appreciate two specific things one was at the standard Necromorphs actually changed clothing depending on the location as in here any regular nekamorphs wear priest clothing where during the initial outbreak most had regular clothes on the other was the actual design of the church itself I have no idea if there's a specific name for this but the only thing I could come up with was a mix of religious brutalism it's got the stained glass style of a normal church but has a mix of gold and black colors along with the sharp Jagged designs on the floors and walls and it makes it seem even more Sinister and given what unitology is about Sinister sounds about right Isaac will then finally make it to the top of the church and if you've been confused as to how this woman made it to the top of the church considering how far deep into the church this is then you're catching on as Dana is a unitologist there was never actually a cure she was just tricking Isaac which makes her the third person to betray him right behind Kendra and fake Nicole earthgrove one of the key subjects like Isaac dead because they assume that he would destroy the marker which obviously Isaac would do but Dana however wants Isaac alive so he can do the opposite they want Isaac to build more markers for unitology allowing them to spread convergence across the Galaxy just as quickly she arrives on screen is about as quickly she disappears though as tiedeman's goons find Isaac and decimate the room this is where some of those action scenes come in that we talked about as Isaac is almost sucked out of the building while also getting shot at by some guys who have some of the worst aim I have ever seen to which Isaac escapes but not before getting involved with the Gunship again and a large Necromorph which flings him out of the building even though this scene flings the game's genre lever from horror to action immediately I did enjoy the presentation of it at least like I said these aren't as common as you would think though because you have to remember we just walked through a church for almost two hours so two minutes of action for two hours of Horrors fine by me after this is what I like to call Act 2 which is just chapters 6 through 10. it's probably the weakest act in the game story wise but the reason I say this is because a lot of this act focuses on the gameplay as the story is practically non-existent which I guess coming off a very story driven Act is a nice way to balance things out most of of the actors centered around Isaac meeting up with Strauss who ends up meeting up with Ellie so it's really just Isaac Ellie and Strauss trying to meet each other Strauss also believes that there's a way to destroy the marker and that it's located in the government sector of the station Joss claims that there are also four steps to the process but a lot of that isn't clear until much later the reason Strauss is here is tied to Dead Space aftermath an animated feature that details the events between the two games after the market was destroyed on ages 7 the USG Bannon was commissioned to go to the impact site and retrieve any fragments they could Strauss was on that ship and because he came in contact with the marker even if it was just a fragment of it he ended up seeing hallucinations like Isaac he ended up getting worse and worse until one day he snapped and killed his wife and child that's why Strauss mentions his wife and son a lot when talking to him and why he often loses his train of thought when the two talk because he's seeing a hallucination of them on the way to the government sector Isaac will meet with Ellie who nearly misses his skull basically all we learned from her is that she was the last of her Squad as they were all killed on the way to the government sector so Ellie is doing her best to keep it together despite being the only one who lived one thing that's great though is that over time the two will get more comfortable with one another and will occasionally joke around a bit to get to the government sector Isaac will need to get to the transport Hub which requires him to pass by the elementary school on its own it's quite terrifying to see mutant children walking around trying to kill you which you also have to consider that they were killed by Necromorphs and trying to imagine a swarm of them cornering a school full of children is probably something I should stop thinking about isaacanelli then meets but even cuts off the power so the two need to turn the power back on in order to get the train running so they can make it to the government sector get used to this backtracking and lack of progression as it continues for quite a bit we don't reach the government sector until chapter 12 and we're currently on chapter six so we have roughly another three hours or so before we actually make it the only thing of note that occurs in these levels is the mental downfall of Strauss as he's going more insane the longer the game goes on this reaches two specific boiling points where he stabs Ellie's eye out before getting knocked upside the head by her and then he attacks Isaac with the same weapon to which Isaac is forced to take him down Isaac has been through a lot during these two games and having to Now kill someone who I would consider to be the only person who truly understands Isaac is heartbreaking for him no one will ever understand this severity of the marker and being forced to take drugs in order to become complacent Strauss was able to share that grief with him but he wasn't able to overcome it like Isaac was to an extent Isaac hasn't really been able to overcome it either but he's in a much better headspace than Strauss was in oddly enough the main plots of this act is about Isaac overcoming his grief but his circumstances won't make it any easier as while trying to make it to the government sector he'll have to go back to his own personal hell oh my God that's the shamura the ishimura is back and with it comes all of Isaac's memories everything that happened aboard that ship is still living with him the death of Nicole the outbreak the betrayals all of it is still there and it's this acknowledgment of his past that makes this the best chapter in The Game chapter 10 starts exactly the same as dead space 1. in fact the majority of the rooms in this chapter will feel very familiar to you both Isaac and the player have history here you know what happened here and you know they could still be here this whole chapter is a slow burn kind of horror there's a slow build up that keeps going and going until it finally bursts from the entrance of the ship to the first enemy was a whole 11 minutes of walking everything is quiet and terrifying because you know that they're still here but you don't know where and the game starts the bursting of the combat with a jump scare and puts you against one of the strongest enemies in the game this quiet atmosphere also played into the Mind Games of this level you cross through so many familiar areas and yet nothing happens no jump scare by the first elevator no Ambush by the decontamination room and the one time you guessed correctly they still get you the room where Isaac strived across the floor still has the same technical monster Untold surveilled that it's just a hallucination Isaac like the player remembers this encounter and knew this was coming it was only a matter of time this one scene also shows how much of Isaac and even the player's mind is still stuck here invisible knew you and Isaac would remember this so they played into those memories which is how the ishimura the second time Iran still felt as terrifying as the first it's also here where Isaac gets a lot of his hallucinations and even has to re-watch the same video of Nicole that we saw at the end of the first game Isaac is still coming to terms at Nicole's death and it's hard to blame him Isaac pushed for Nicole to do this job and that decision would eventually lead to her death obviously Isaac didn't kill her but it's clear why he would feel like he had a hand in it he also has to see her all the time in hundreds of hallucinations and was drugged for quite some time so he never had time to reflect and move on even though Isaac physically disappeared for three years in between games his mind traveled as fast as we did when we played them back to back Nicole's death still feels fresh to him which still makes it harder for him to come to terms of it and move on it's not like it was a breakup they were in love and deeply committed to one another until an outside Source ruined what they had so it's not just the fact that Nicole and him aren't in a relationship but also the fact that she is no longer here to begin with that's why the marker is trying so hard to ruin Isaac using Nicole she was the most important person in his life at the time and now she's dead and not only will he never see her again he'll have to be reminded of her death every day this culminates in the next encounter where Isaac and fake Nicole talk about Isaac and why he's still fighting this Isaac admits that he couldn't accept that she was dead because she was the only thing that mattered to him Nicole then becomes a less threatening version and says the final step to defeating the marker was acceptance these steps are tied to that device we briefly mentioned which is how the research team extracted the codes from Isaac it's not that he needs to do this in order to enter the device but it's so he can move on and focus on what's important he can't let Nicole's fate drag him down and he has to move on and destroy the marker or none of this will matter this interaction and acceptance as to why he was so broken up over Nicole's death means that Isaac now has a clear mind allowing him to focus on the main objective the next sequence of events which starts with an ambush on a moving drill is also the start of act 3 whereas act 1 was more story focused and act 2 was more combat focused act 3 is a mix of both and is a good way to end the game a lot of the bands are between these two lovebirds also comes out because you can tell they both end enjoy each other's company but they just don't want to admit it it doesn't recognize the new Junction I think I've got it from up here what I didn't hear you I did it I got it started there you know there's a lift on the other side I'll turn around you can get on CE they arrive at the government sector Isaac and Ellie find a ship and Isaac locks her in the ship and forces Ellie to escape so Isaac can finish this himself Isaac plans to die here he has no plans of coming back so he wants Ellie to get out safely this also showcases the beauty of the wriglings that have occurred throughout the series as you can see Ellie is literally talking into the camera in the background I've always liked the small detail because everything that happened in the rig link is shown in game which is a nice touch as Isaac sends Ellie on her way Isaac and Nicole get some time to talk and it's here where things start to really settle in as Nicole says the infamous line make us whole even though Nicole is nicer now it's still a creation of the marker before Isaac can get to said marker he's ambushed by some of the Teen men's guards Isaac doesn't fight them though as he instead shuts off the power which lets in all the Necromorphs plus visceral likely knew the combat against enemies with guns wouldn't be fun and definitely would not do this in the sequel inside this building is where a bit more lore is placed in regards to the marker's creation it's not much but according to some of the log it seems like the process of creating the marker was relatively easy once they understood it one researcher even claimed that it was like the marker wanted them to succeed in creating it obviously we know what the creation of the markers leads to so it would make sense that the process to create one is very easy because the more markers that exist the faster and farther the outbreak can spread as we approach the core we can see the Necromorphs in the distance walking towards our objective which we discover is the site 12 marker furthermore because Isaac shot off the power and let them inside he also unknowingly started a convergence event demon is disappointed in Isaac for ruining his plan because Steven was trying to understand the marker the markers give off Limitless amounts of energy and seeing as Humanity was in the verge of collapsing due to a lack of resources one unlimited resource would be a big help demon was likely trying to understand its effects because he and probably many others than Earth gov believe that the markers can be used to sustain humanity and prevent them from dying out but we know that the markers don't work that way now the convergence event is underway the end of the world is about to begin unless Isaac can stop it to stop it Isaac needs to step into the machine so that he can be accepted by the marker Nicole claims that this machine threatens the marker because it's afraid of Isaac and Nicole working together this is a complete lie as after skewing Demon's head Isaac is betrayed by Nicole again this machine was used by Eisen before but it seems like him accepting Nicole's death changes things as the marker was able to gain more control over his brain it wouldn't make sense otherwise because this is a necessary step to defeating the marker once inside this marker dream realm Isaac has to fight off Nicole and destroy the marker the reason Isaac is being killed is because two complete the convergence event the maker must be sacrificed and since Isaac technically made it thanks to T been using the codes in his mind he is the maker destroying the marker in the dream realm also destroys the marker in the real world most likely because Isaac is the maker of the marker so he has the power to do that in this dream realm Isaac has now finished his mission and can finally die in peace the credits even start rolling to show that this is really the end until Ellie hops on the rig Lincoln says that she's going to crash the building to get him obviously Isaac wanted it to end here but now that she's going to get him it would be quite rude if he ignored her plus she could die here as well so he enters the gunship and the two survive as a nice little treat the game recreates the final scene from the first game with Isaac looking over at the passenger seat but this time it's just Ellie and not a hallucination Dead Space 2 for all the obstacles that had to overcome managed to go right through them with ease and needed to ramp up the horror and power while also striking a balance between its action and horror on top of creating an engaging story with new lore and characters and manage to pull it all off it really is a miracle that Not much went wrong with this game as it could have gone in the complete opposite direction but the team behind the helm knew what to do and how to do it right it's a complete Dead Space experience that had everything go right well not everything despite how impressive Dead Space 2 is the same cannot be said for its DLC severed severed might be the most peculiar content I have ever played everything from the actual content to its manufacturing is just strange and I cannot for the life of me figure out why this DLC was made firstly this DLC is for PS3 and Xbox 360. despite the fact that Dead Space 2 launched on Steam day one this DLC is nowhere to be seen on the platform furthermore due to PlayStation continuing to cause me and menstruous over what games are actually backwards compatible with in their catalog this game is only available on the PS3 Dead Space 2 nor severed are on the PS4 or 5. the only console that wins is Xbox is you can play this on the 360 one or series X and S like I have on release it was already alienating part of its audience and now in the modern day barely anyone can actually play it that's not only strange on its own but when you consider that the company behind this game is EA of all people that is even stranger the next part is the story and gameplay several two main characters are gay Weller and lexine Murdoch characters you won't recognize unless you played the Wii title Dead Space extraction Gabe isama made it to Titan station and his whole journey is just trying to get lexine off the station before the outbreak kills them both dead space extraction was released on the Wii but was ported to the PS3 when Dead Space 2 released probably because they had planned on this DLC from the start now you could say extraction isn't necessary for this DLC but I would argue against that claim because extraction does more to characterize Gabe and Lexi and then severed ever does to give you a brief idea of the game extraction takes place on ages 7 during the outbreak and you go from the planet to the ishimura throughout that game this provides a lot of context regarding Gabe and lexine's journey and why at the beginning Gabe messages are saying that they're back because the two are familiar with the Necromorphs this DLC however doesn't add much because it is short like extremely short it takes about 60 to 90 minutes to complete the whole thing so where in this short time frame are you going to fit anything about these two in fact none of the events of extraction are even referenced in this game the whole plot of the DLC is that the outbreak on Titan station has started and Gabe wants Alexian to get to the shuttle they have the only problem is that lexian like Isaac is a key subject so she's going to be killed this leads into a 50-minute gameplay sequence where gay brushes through the first chapter of the main game in order to find her before his Squad made victas because he plans to follow his orders and kill her Vic actually attempts to kill Gabe earlier because they work together and thus have the same order and Vic knows Gabe wouldn't shoot his own wife to which he says Gabe I don't want this any more than you do but the difference between you and me is that when an order comes through I follow it this implies that if Vic was told to kill his own wife by someone higher in the chain of command he would do it I pray this man isn't married on top of this the gameplay Loop of using credits to buy items from the store and operating abilities with the power nodes is still the same and severed as it is in the main game but Dead Space 2 is a 7 to 8 Hour game severed is 60 minutes there's not nearly enough time to actually invest in power notes for upgrades and not even enough money to actually feel pleased with your purchase since you likely won't get that money back severt also cannot be played on New Game Plus so it's not like you can carry over the few stats you put into the game which makes me wonder why they were even added to begin with this decision inadvertently raises the difficulty by King even the gameplay this way because you're essentially fighting chapter 13 style enemies is a chapter 2 Isaac you are drastically underpowered for these encounters and it makes things feel way worse I died more times than I thought during this DLC and ran out of ammo more times than I could count because the enemy numbers never let up all of this culminates to the strangest ending in the strangest DLC I've ever played look you were both being played the whole time all they needed you for was to get her pregnant what but now you're just security risks I'm sorry Gabe what is Right Gabe because I said the same thing when I heard that as well vaccine on occasion will call Gabe and tell him that these men in white are looking for her these men in white are seen cornering Vic before killing him and then taking lexine Gabe then Sprints after her kills them because they become Necromorph shortly after gets blown up by a grenade because Vic isn't actually dead and now has to shoot the blast door so Lexing can escape while Gabe bleeds on the floor this ending did tug at the heartstrings a bit but there's so many Loose Ends Here what happened to lexine who were the men in white what's the Oracle program I know we haven't talked about Dead Space 3 but I can assure you none of this is answered the only detail that is mentioned in this is the men in White in a novel called Dead Space Salvage apparently these guys are oracles which would tie them to the aforementioned Oracle program but the oracles don't seem to be mentioned much in Salvage and seems to just be a bunch of secretive people within earthgov or possibly unitology as they carry out orders of the highest importance and the Oracle program doesn't actually get mentioned it's likely tied to the marker and its effects on childbirth which is admittedly a cool plot to go into if they had actually done something with it so to actually understand the full story of Gabe and Lexi and you'll need to play dead space extraction severed and then read Salvage for the last bit at the end and that just doesn't seem remotely satisfying to me and that's my main complaint I've thought for longer than I played this DLC on why this was made and I came to two conclusions it was either for fans of extraction or to get fans to play extraction I can't imagine it was the former though there aren't any stats nowadays but extraction arm release did not sell well at all probably because it was a non-rail shooter for the Wii that spawned from a third person horror shooter on a console and PC this isn't something like Ghost of Sparta for God of War where it was essentially the same kind of game but portable this is a complete 180 from the original design I can't imagine there was that big of a crowd of people that played and liked extraction enough back then for visceral to make a DLC that would appease them so my only consensus is that it's the latter for people who played severed first and wanted to know more about Gabe and lexine out of the two options this one sounds much better but the problem is that sever does a terrible job characterizing Gabe without the context of extraction he seems like a security guard who just tried to save his wife and died doing so and it's due to this and the lack of time with Gabe that it makes it really hard to justify buying extraction assuming you can even deduce that he was from extraction as it's never mentioned anywhere so unless you played extraction or looked him up you wouldn't know not even the description of the Xbox Marketplace points to gay being a familiar character within the dead space cannon and not just some random character they made for the DLC like I said it is the strangest thing I have ever played because I do not know why this was made Dead Space is an incredible game severed is not but I can recognize that things could have been incredible had some certain decisions been made despite that though the main game is really what's important and Dead Space 2 is made with some impeccable quality despite reusing the same enemies in combat design the horror of Dead Space 2 is just as good as the original it even managed to throw the player back into one of the most familiar areas in the series and it was still terrifying to walk through the balance between horror and gameplay was great and never felt off in any way and the Very risky decision of letting Isaac talk and more of a focus on action more carefully crafted to make sure it was included when never overstepped its bounds the Dead Space series started off on the right foot and has continued to do so up until now so let's see if they can keep it going for one more game Dead Space 3's design is about as divergent from an original work as you can get just about everything has changed from story to length to gameplay Deadspace 3 is an evolution of the series but it's just about as interesting as unitology's idea of an evolution Dead Space 3 bothers me greatly because there's so many things I hate about this game but there's so many things I love about it Dead Space 3 starts with Isaac getting jumped in his apartment by two people Carver and Norton they need Isaac's help because Ellie's gone missing while in search for a way to stop the markers and they need Isaac to help find Ellie and destroy the markers Isaac claims that he's done with that life and wants to lay low but he doesn't have a choice he's got a gun to his head for one but also because the unitologists have made their move they're here to kill Isaac and they will blow up a city block in order to do so this action doesn't seem to let up either as our first enemy encounter in this game is a good old-fashioned shootout this makes no sense to me I can admit that it was only a matter of time before unitology launched a full-scale war and we're likely going to fight Isaac but it still doesn't make the gun play any interesting Dead Space was never designed to be an action and that's the first problem the core gameplay is still the same but the gameplay was made for a survival horror game so its attempt at keeping the horror is holding back the action but the action is holding back the horror by going way over the top with its explosions and set pieces so we have both systems at war with one another and neither of them are letting up so where does that leave Dead Space 3. honestly I don't actually know it's a horror game without the horror in an action game which is the bare amount of systems tied to it because Dead Space 3 is still a horror game so it's neither it's just a game a game with no substance and no personality shortly after the shootouts Isaac is captured by Jacob danik a leader within unitology who not only wants to kill Isaac but also keep him alive long enough to witness the marker activating I honestly thought he was full of [ __ ] and then he actually did it we're only 15 minutes into the game and a marker has been activated at least the gameplay will go back to Necromorphs though but not quite the Necromorphs are present but not really the main enemy we will be fighting is zombies they are technically Necro morphs but let's be honest they are very zombie-like I find this strange as most horror games struggle to find a unique monster to use so they default to zombies because it's familiar Dead Space has been anything but familiar yet it still goes back to the basics of horror this is the same game that has dozens of different types of disgusting creatures made from the repurposed flesh of the human it just killed and it thought zombies would be what we wanted to fight first it's strange just as strange as the pace of combat Dead Space 2 ramped up the difficulty by making the harder enemies appear earlier along with the addition of different types of enemies per encounter Dead Space 3 just decided to add more encounters that are separated by about one hallway of breathing room more enemies in those encounters and faster movement speed it's such a simple method of adding difficulty but it's not even that bad if you play it right and I couldn't this is because of Dead Space 3's biggest change co-op in Dead Space 3 you and a friend can now fight their Necromorphs together with player 2 as John Carver but don't get too familiar with him because at least for this video you won't be hearing about him much that's because Dead Space 3's Co-op is incredibly flawed despite the team admitting that they copied re4 they apparently stopped there and didn't even bother taking notes from re5 Dead Space 3 allows the player to play solo if they want to do not do this it is the single worst decision you can make in this game Dead Space 3 is not a solo game with a co-op mode it's the opposite enemies are balanced around Co-op meaning they are much faster and come in such large numbers that it would prove challenging for a team of two but this balance stays in Solo which means you're now fighting double the enemies with double the speed alone this wouldn't be half as bad if Carver existed but they opted to just take him out of the game for 95 of its run time Carver is an integral part of the game and story it's the main reason Co-op was made to begin with and yet they decided to just omit him from the game entirely if you decide to play alone Resident Evil 5 used cheva as an AI teammate yeah she wasn't great and she was much better in the hands of a player but at least she was there this is what leads me to believe that just like the horror in action the people who made the solo and Co-op parts of the game are constantly at battle with one another in Co-op Carver is present for all the cutscenes but in Solo he's only there for the important ones but instead of sticking with one plan the two sides just compromised because Carver isn't in some scenes for Solo in Co-op he doesn't speak for example in this scene Carver is present in both solo and in Co-op so he has dialogue but in this one where they're in an elevator cover doesn't appear in Solo so in Co-op he doesn't speak it's like the team wanted to reward the player for playing Co-op by giving them the ability to play as Carver but they also wanted to lessen the blow as much as possible so they opted to make Carver not have any lines that the solo players don't miss anything furthermore because Carver isn't in Solo the team has to write some reason as to why he leaves like towards the end where the two are rushing to a thing called the machine in the cutscene the two talk and decide that they're going to do what's right and do it together then literally seconds after this Carver goes up to a walkway and the floor collapses so now cover and Isaac have to split up the game does this constantly because the story is supposed to include the two of them but because solo only includes Isaac Carver only shows up momentarily then splits up right after it's even worse when it's the opposite than it goes from combat a cutscene because Carver will always just show up despite being nowhere near you the entire time this problem also extends to the story since he doesn't appear we never learn about him and his characterization is so jarring that you would think someone else was writing the story Carver doesn't care about Isaac's life his problems are really anything about him he's just here for the mission the two get into arguments quite a bit and it never seems like they'll make up until the last hour of the game where the two have a heart to heart before the final battle this is because of the four Co-op only missions that have Carver confront his past the same way Isaac did in Dead Space too allowing Carver to see the bigger picture and realize he can't do this alone not only will solo players never see this but because Dead Space 3 has asymmetrical Co-op only Carver will see it because while he's in a dream sequence fighting off his own mind Isaac is tasked with defending him in the hallway that he's standing in outside of this their Brotherhood is developing throughout the game by having Carver rely on Isaac to fight the never-ending hordes of Necromorphs the same way Isaac relies on him Co-op will likely be played with a friend so while you two are covering each other and working together so too are Isaac and Carver and those two end up becoming friends because of in Solo though he's just a guy it's a complete 180 and it also makes no sense anyway because it's supposed to be this whole conversation about Isaac and Carver doing it together and talking about how if one of them falls together we'll get the job done for them because they realize they need each other yet right after this the two split up and Isaac does everything himself because Carver can't be in the solo campaign at this point I feel like it was more work to try and walk around the issue than to just add him as an AI companion it would have at least made the game more interesting Co-op not only causes issues for the solo player by removing Carver but it also makes the gameplay more difficult because it's supposed to be played in Co-op however there is a pleasant catch to all of this even if this also comes with its own issues every Necromorph drops ammo and resources like usual but since the enemy numbers are doubled you are now given double the items I cannot remember a single time in this game I ran out of ammo or medkits I had more items that I knew what to do with and this is also because of the next change and that's ammo Dead Space 3 has a crafting bench allowing you to craft your own Weapon by making a top and bottom Barrel that's fitted with some type of device this is a supposed to be a play on Isaac's engineering expertise and I don't mind it in fact some of the tools are based on older weapons but this ends up creating a problem as the game now has to balance all ammo types leading to less ammo for all the guns you actually have to circumvent this problem they just made all weapons share the same ammo now called ammo Clips if you apply the system to what we just talked about your inventory will look something like this even though my ammo is three slots large that's actually quite a lot as each weapon uses different amounts of ammo Rockets use more ammo per shot than an assault rifle and that on screen is 500 rounds of assault rifle ammo all within three Slots of inventory these are problems on their own but when they're all combined together it makes it a mess very early on in chapter 6 I had over 1 000 rounds of ammo and I was so overpowered that I not only dismantled all the powerful parts of my gun but turned the game up to hard but this also became a problem as the enemy numbers are still doubled so now I'm being swarmed in seconds I flop back between normal and hard countless times using different kinds of guns and strategies and not a single one felt satisfying Dead Space 3 finally runs in to the problem we've discussed in this video the game has an imbalance of power and horror there is little to no actual Terror in this game so you start questioning whether or not you're playing a horror game and the gameplay either makes you overpowered or underpowered squandering any chance you could have had to create tension Dead Space 3 is trying so hard to appeal to horror and action fans while also appealing to those who play solo or Co-op and in trying to please everyone and ended up pleasing no one so the game plays a wash what about the story surprisingly not too bad Dead Space 3 has a pretty decent beginning and awful middle and a fantastic ending the story was the only reason I was able to make it through the game and I was happy that at least some of the time I spent was worth it to pick up where we left off Norton and Carver recruit Isaac for their mission to find Ellie and destroy the markers Carver and Isaac get captured by danik who then releases a Necromorph Outbreak on the moon the reason he did all this was not only to spread the outbreak and kill Isaac because he is the marker killer after all but because danik sees what Earth gov did with the markers as heresy he believes that Earth gov experimenting on them is going against their religion so he launched an attack against them and activated the marker markers activating like this isn't out of the ordinary Isaac did it on accident back on ages 7 but this instant infection is odd this has never happened before and it was never mentioned that such a thing could actually happen the markers have two methods of attack that contribute to the outbreak it first starts with dementia and hallucinations this will then progress to homicidal Tendencies which is paired with the next step and that's the dead tissue that is changed by the marker which creates the Necromorphs once the first Necromorph is made it's pretty much a done deal at this point as the infection will spread pretty rapidly this is a slow process and is intended to be but this just happens immediately it doesn't connect with any of the lore that we're familiar with secondly everyone in the game seems to forget this event ever happened danik released an outbreak on the moon the closest piece of rock to Earth and yet not only does no one mention this to anyone or even radio Earth about it Norton even talks about going back once the mission's done even worse Norton says he's the last of Earth gov meaning that Earth gov is gone and was likely killed off by danik and his army danik also says that markers like these are everywhere on all the major colonies and outposts so does Earth have some too and furthermore since earthgov is gone does that mean danik launched an outbreak on Earth it's never explained but all we do know is that danik released an outbreak on the moon so I have to ask back where Norton the Moon is gone by now we have seen twice by now that once the outbreak starts it won't stop even though Isaac defeated both markers at ages 7 in Titan stage that was also after all or almost all the population was dead that's the horror of an outbreak once it starts it won't stop so how does no one realize that danik literally just doomed the whole Moon people are shocked sure but it's more about danik just using the marker to create Necromorphs not the fact that he just triggered one on the moon next to Earth you know the home world above Humanity after this is where we get introduced to the zombie-like necro morphs and for the life of me I cannot figure out how they were created most of the Necromorphs are the same way but they at least have some differences between them believe the children are different from the regular Necromorphs one was likely a child and the other an adult but the zombie-like enemies and the standard Necromorph seem to have no differences biologically so how were they created what part of their biology makes one different from the other I never ended up figuring this out and I was reminded of this the whole game because Dead Space 3 really loves to throw these enemies at you and that's another part I found rather confusing Dead Space 3 has so many Necromorphs to work with yet ninety percent of the encounters are just the same humanoid version The Tubby looking enemies only show up a handful of times the in fact factors that create more Necromorphs the brutes with the plate-like armor and the dividers which are the ones that spawn those moving skulls and the Necromorph children are completely gone one of the more unique enemies the ones that stuck to the wall were present but gutted in this release these two spit pods out that would act as another layer of complexity to the fight Dead Space 3 removed these entirely I sat here for three whole minutes and nothing happened it's not the fact that Dead Space 3 had nothing to work with it's the fact that they had the opportunity to put these in the game and purposely refused the only new creatures in this game are these immune Necromorphs which is really just a riff on the old ones from the previous games they just look a bit different the zombies the skinny looking enemies called feeders that are really just the kids from Dead Space 2 but grown up and just as weak and the moving skull enemy again but this time taking control of dead corpses with guns that shoot at you there was only one genuinely great Necromorph way later in the game that is 100 unique but we'll have to talk about them later all these editions are just so unimaginative and it's a complete regression from the level of creativity the first games had but wouldn't it make sense that now of all games would be the game to include them fighting a brute alongside other enemies would make sense for two people to do so so why not commit to it Dead Space 3 has some serious commitment issues because it doesn't know what it wants to do so it just goes halfway on everything and this must have rubbed off on the cast because Ellie also has some commitment issues that need sorting we learn in the same breath that Isaac and Ellie got together and broke up her new boyfriend is Captain Robert Norton although I'm inclined to call him Captain cuck because this man is constantly losing his girlfriend to Isaac any time he comes on screen so Ellie liked Isaac enough to date him but not enough to stay with him but she also likes Norton enough to date him but not enough to stay loyal to him wonderful if this sounds annoying don't worry we got 12 more chapters to go before this gets resolved I understand why she left Isaac and it makes sense but this character drama being at the front of the story and even taking priority during very important narrative moments really drags down the entire production Ellie left Isaac because he couldn't confront his past and talk about it he just held it in and let it sit with him Ellie was sick of having to deal with it so she left she also wanted to destroy the markers after having learned about them on Titan station but Isaac wanted nothing to do with the markers because of all he's been through the reason and even the concept itself is fine but like I said it can really drag down the story of times especially when some of the characters entire personalities are centered around this all of the characters you meet are completely one note buckle and Santos talk a couple times a chapter and spoiler alert they'll be dead soon anyway so don't get too attached to them Norton is just Isaac's competition for Ellie and Ellie is just a love interest her character has been completely shrunk to just being an object for which the two Macho Man bicker over oh and she also got her eye back she bought a fake one in between games figured I should mention that all the characters just serve whatever purpose they were meant to Ellie all the way up to the end is just the love interest every line of dialogue from Norton is either about going home or yelling and Isaac because he's Ellie's ex-boyfriend Lauren never realizes that he needs to set aside his differences and deal with it after they finish the mission because he goes out of his way to sabotage Isaac by locking him in an elevator so he can't get to Ellie tells Ellie that Isaac is dead and that she needs to move on when they crash land on tal volantis make snark comments at the two whenever Isaac and Ellie even show a speck of a friendly relationship and even betrays Isaac by working with danik also that Isaac can die and that they can go home even in his dying breath the last words this man says is she doesn't love you Isaac puts a bullet in his head for this and thank God good riddance Captain Cook may your legacy live on as the one who couldn't win over his own girlfriend what a waste of time once Isaac meets with Ellie she says that he needs to check the Admiral's quarters because she wrote marker script all over the walls and she believes that the Admiral was trying to say something on the way there we encounter more Necromorphs but they look different this time these Necromorphs are mummified this is rather interesting as it shows us another side of the Necromorph biology if we remember from Dead Space 2 when the age of 7 marker was destroyed the Necromorphs basically melted into some soupy DNA but in here they aren't so it's possible that if the Necromorphs run out of people to kill but don't have enough for a convergence event they lie in hiding until something comes by once making it inside Isaac finds the writing and it says something about turning it off in reference to some kind of machine this machine is on the planet right near the ship called Tau volantis before we actually started playing instead of the cutscene with Isaac it's actually a prologue with some unimportant Soldier he is a part of the Sovereign colonies the predecessors of earthgov they came here to investigate the marker signals because they believe the markers could be used to help them in one of their Wars however the prologue ends on an Abrupt note is both our character and major mahad die before it fades to Black Tim Kaufman the soldier we play as in the intro was tasked by a Dr Earl Serrano to get him the Codex this is the same device major bahad takes from Tim and wipes the data from Isaac and Company were run into all of this later but for now Isaac believes that turning the machine off is the key to stopping the markers the crew also believed that tau volantis is the marker Homeworld if you take into account the whole trilogy and its progression this is a turn that the story was inevitably going to take we went from the early beginnings of just discovering the Necromorph threat to learning about the markers to then go into the source it's a great transition from one game to the next and also a wonderful story beat it's what initially got me interested in the story in the first place it's just a shame that before it circles back to this we have to hear dozens of times from Norton that Ellie is his and no one else's and have to go around doing busy work just to get to the planet besides the co-op missions Dead Space 3 also has optional missions they are interesting at first but don't provide much of any information it's either vague details about future information you wouldn't be able to connect to before the reveal or just things you already know it was an interesting way to break up some of the pace but it also made the game a lot longer than it needed to after about three hours of busy work just trying to get the ship running as you can crew make The Descent down to Tau volantis but due to the speed and the debris the team ends up crash landing on the planet Instead This is where a new gameplay system gets introduced and it's centered around Isaac's body temperature tavalantis is a very cold Planet so hypothermia May settle in if the crew isn't careful so you have to move from shelter to shelter without dying while also fighting off waves of Necromorphs it doesn't stay for the remainder of the game but I did like it I think the reason why was because it replaced those spacewalks the previous games had they weren't difficult but knowing that your air could run out if you took too long was a nice touch Dead Space 3 pretty much removed that by making the air capacity way more than the player will ever need so these encounters saw to replace them it's on tavolantus where it's made clear that while some of the old game systems have been changed or lost to the wind its visuals haven't tavolantus is a gorgeous icy Vista with rundown buildings and skeletons of creatures that are incomprehensible the team's investigation leads them to the carcass of what is called the Nexus in terms of its role the Nexus pretty much functions similarly to the hive mind of Dead Space 1 a larger life form that commands these smaller foot soldiers but Communications can go both both ways so instead of following the trail from the Nexus to the Necromorphs if we instead go backwards it may be possible to find the thing giving it orders which they assume to be the machine this requires us to touch some of its nerve endings with a pro gun while inside the dead Beast Santos discovers that the signal is underground but there's an entrance further up the mountain so we'll have to climb all the way up after this danik and his Army start attacking Isaac gets captured narna gets killed in a giant Necromorph attacks this is actually another Nexus that was at another base but judging for the wreck it broke out the fight's pretty cool though and definitely delivers a high amount of intensity throughout the fight this part is a lot of what I was talking about before in regards to this game's awful middle Dead Space goes hours without anything new it's either we learn nothing or it's just one step of the plan like with the Nexus we learned what the Nexus is it's a Necromorph but we don't know where this machine is we have to go to the mountain to find it and even then we still need to figure out how to get inside the mountain the first real chunk of information is related to this being called Rosetta it's around here where we finally get to understand a bit more about what happened to talvalantis from leaving the moon to getting here it's about eight hours of content and in that time we learned that there's a machine and a large Necromorph on the planet eight hours was slightly longer than my playthrough of dead space 1. that's a whole game's worth of nothing thankfully danik is interesting enough to Warrant my attention his goals are quite simple as it follows the same unitologist's goal of starting convergence but his line delivery and voice acting is a treat to listen to mostly because he's the same voice actor behind Logan from Dragon Age a very difficult thing you know undoing the damage man has done everything we touch we contaminate we corrupt the markers had a plan for us but we took what should have been a magnificent gift and perverted it Jesus Bears the [ __ ] it's also around this time that Carver started to interest me not like I had a choice though because he was shown about a grand total of five times in the game so far but he starts to play into that [ __ ] tough guy role of his that his character is based around and it was incredible he and Isaac will eventually get into one of their main arguments over Santos's fate because Carver is more than willing to cut the elevator cable and does which Doom Santos but saves the rest of them Isaac is furious over this because he figured he could save her but Carver and likely the player knew differently this also reinforces my thoughts on the character so far as buckle dies around the time they crash land and now Norton and Santos are dead and the only one with any amount of personality is Norton but his whole character is based on being the antagonistic Force to Isaac in their love triangle taking them out changes nothing in fact you could see it as you play as each one of them becomes a distant memory as the only ones actually making any real ground in this game is Ellie and Isaac while assembling Rosetta Isaac will find some audio logs from an Earl Serrano and right after after assembling her do we finally get the full story Rosetta is not a human nor is she an ecromorph millions of years ago will hold different race of beings lived on the planet and use the markers the same way humanity is using them now and just like Humanity they too were overrun by the infection but they came up with a Fail-Safe they built a device that we've been calling the machine so far to stop the convergence because after that is the final stage of the Necromorph life cycle the brother Moon so in order of events a black marker is sent down to a habitable planet at some specific time then it lays dormant until someone discovers it once the species finds the marker they're inevitably going to use it thanks to its unlimited energy it's hypothesized that this is intentional because the marker's design and benefits compel others to make more like we saw with all the other markers thus far then the process of the outbreak begins which leads to a convergence event all the copies then activate and further spread the infection and all of its life forms into a brother Moon the assumed to be final step in the life cycle it's entirely possible that there is something even higher than this but we never see that in the series so to our knowledge the Brethren moons are the final step according to Dr Serrano the and creatures that used to live here have gills and collapsed fins which leads him to believe that's how volantis used to be a planet filled with vast oceans this ice age that occurred was because of the machine as it was able to flash freeze the entire planet stopping the brother Moon from being complete and leaving it in its unfinished State the machine was activated via the Codex which has now just been restored just in time for danik to come in and take it this is where the next Revelation is revealed and it's that Isaac and Company have actually been helping danek the whole time the message turn off the machine was not to stop the markers turning off the machine thaws the planet and resumes the convergence the Admiral was being manipulated by the moon because even in its half finished State it's still able to control the marker and was compelling people to stop the machine and let it form and thanks to Isaac danek now has the key to start the convergence if we remember from earlier the reason the Sovereign colonies were here was to investigate the marker signal and hopefully use it in a war during this time though they discovered what Isaac just discovered and realized the real truth but the Necromorph that was already upon them so they issued an order to all the staff which was to turn off all the equipment burn the date data and self-terminate anyone who didn't follow the last step would have had someone do it to them by force it was all in an effort to keep this hidden and prevent the convergence from happening that's why major mahad wanted the Codex destroyed but Dr Serrano had another plan he discovered that the flash freeze on tavolantus wasn't the full plan the original plan was to also crash the moon into the planet killing it in the process but for some reason it never did so the Codex can either stop the machine or fully activated depending on its configuration danik of course wants to make sure the machine stops Isaac would want the opposite for the second time now Isaac manages to escape a hostage situation but Ellie had to be left behind because the gas was funneling in too fast and Ellie was killed yet not really they couldn't kill off Isaac in Dead Space 2 so they sure as hell are not going to kill her off either to get back to the more important info though the reveal of the Brethren moons are great and it's the main reason why this game's DLC is so impressive dead space from its opening moments has been about Cosmic incomprehensible horror the Necromorphs are this creation of repurposed flesh that is so powerful that no one has been able to stop them at least without suffering some massive casualty these along the way the Brethren moons are like Eldritch Horrors from Lovecraft in fact their motivations are the same in the sense that they are completely unknown we never learn why the Brethren moons do what they do and while that was likely due to the game being canceled after this entry I'm fine with this having the Brethren moons be these all-consuming powerful beings that just eliminate things for no reason is terrifying it is exactly what dead space is all about I also like this because it inadvertently is an answer to the Fermi Paradox I talked about this same idea when discussing the Reapers in Mass Effect 1 and it's pretty much the same to give you a brief understanding of the concept many people have wondered why we haven't seen alien life yet some attribute this to a great filter that eliminates all species past a certain point in the case of Dead Space 3 the Brethren moons are that filter Humanity within Dead Space hasn't seen any alien species because the Brethren moons have literally eaten all of them on the way to Earth and just like the Reapers no one knows how long they've been alive the alien life on tauvalantis existed a couple million years ago but that doesn't mean that these aliens were the first Target it seems like each species creates one Moon and towards the end the game we'll see about seven of them so that would make Humanity the eighth but nothing says that it's just seven we can see maybe there's dozens of moons that exist we never learn anything about the moons and keeping their motivations hidden makes them appear more Sinister for the first time all game I felt genuine fear and that's why I said Dead Space 3's ending made at least some of my time worth it the Brethren moons are great aliens that escalate the game's action while also keeping its horror grounded their motivations may never be learned but for a talking sentient Moon I think that fits to get to the machine Isaac will need to climb down the inside of the mountain and while it's a long climb the game doesn't want you to feel too bored so it introduces its final Necromorph it's a Necromorph that takes the shape of the alien that we just put together a few moments ago even though it's just a standard looking alien at least to their species since they overpower humans and mass and strength they feel like slightly weaker versions of the brutes it's also a completely original design that fits well within the story Isaac and Carver then make it to the bottom and they finally get to see the machine this is also where the two have a heart to heart and that's what's so bizarre about it we have barely mentioned Carver so far in this video because we haven't learned much about him and when you play solo that's exactly how you're going to feel he talks about alienating his son and Wrecking his family like the player knows this information and he also asks Isaac if getting him this far was close for it to count and that's all because of his backstory Carver worked as a guard at a marker site and one day he got into an argument with his wife that ended with her saying that she'd be better off raising their son alone shortly after this a missile was launched and hit the building which destroyed the Dome around the marker protecting those around her from the dementia and hallucinations two of its victims were Carver's wife and son but before she died she was able to leave some info for Carver about the markers and her research so he decided to do what's right and make sure her mission is complete that's why he asks of making it this far counts because he wants to make sure he didn't let his wife down this mission of his is also how he learned about Norton and Ellie so he's already aware who these characters are before the game starts and yet none of this not his relationships nor his backstory are ever going to be revealed in Solo it sucks because I actually started to like Carver as I continued and I'm assuming I would have liked him a lot earlier had I actually got to see him more to get to the machine Isaac is going to have have to go through a lot of puzzles and combat Encounters in order to reach the top while going through the research facility you can listen to some of Dr Serrano's work which will help detail a lot of these solutions to the puzzles like how all the doors are voice activated but only in the alien language but thanks to the aliens themselves Ronald was actually able to translate some of their language he also hypothesized that the research he uncovered from the aliens was intentional and he assumes that the alien species planned on newer species coming to their Planet so they wanted to make sure they could help them Isaac then makes it to the top with danakir taking Ellie as a hostage in the most bizarre twist I have ever seen Isaac and Carver actually switched roles as Isaac is more than willing to let Ellie die if it means the Earth is saved and Carver wants to make sure Ellie is alive so he tosses the Codex to danik who deactivates the machine and Dooms the world Isaac and Carver say their goodbyes to Ellie as the two make their way to the moon's core in an attempt to stop it it's a cool set piece and a cool fight even if it is a bit cheesy that we hurl literal markers into the moon's eyes but overall not a bad fight and not a bad way to end the game either the two then make it to the Codex come to terms of what they're about to do activate said codex which completes the actual plan of the machine dragging the moon down to the planet killing it alongside with Isaac and Carver as they float down to the surface Ellie is alive though because she managed to find a shuttle out of there she said that both of them died but Earth gets to live another day and that's why Ellie was told to leave so she and the rest of the world can live on it's a beautiful ending and one that manages to wrap up just about everything but it's all ruined at the end of the credits when Isaac can be heard calling Ellie's name they just cannot kill this man off on the plus side though him not dying was actually the much better choice for only about an hour of your time in the low low price of 9.99 you can finish the story of Dead Space 3 with its DLC awakened this starts with Isaac waking up in his apartment before being yelled at by Carver the two eventually snap out of it and realize that they are indeed alive firstly if you were planning on Reviving The guy don't spoil it at the end of the credits let the DLC speak for itself secondly it's almost funny how this scene can be transferred over to the writing room imagine these two aren't Carver and Isaac but two writers on the writing team that made this game that doesn't make any sense Isaac you activated the Codex the Moon fell we fell what about the alien machine it froze the planet it pulled a moon out of the sky we don't know what that technology can do so that's it we were saved by [ __ ] aliens I quit trying to make sense of it all back on the ishimura it's just so funny to me because I can imagine the writing team trying to think about how these two survived and then after thinking about it long enough they just said [ __ ] it aliens this will never get explained or talked about again I mean Isaac does go into a small monologue about how this might be with the Necromorph C before getting slapped upside the head by Carver but the two don't question it and it's never explained so it's just better if we move past it despite the moon markers and Necromorphs being dead the two still end up receiving hallucinations this time a lot more Vivid than before similar to Nicole in Dead Space 2 Enemies are appearing and then disappearing but a few scenes will confirm that the Necromorphs are anything but dead Isaac will then get sent into a dream realm that shows the moons in the distance near Earth they also call off to Isaac telling him to take the moons to Earth and make them whole as Isaac continues he'll notice strange markings and people seeking refuge in some of the buildings Apparently one of the members from unitology here on talvalantis heard a voice that spoke to him likely referencing the moon so he believes it to be their God that they have been praying to which has led him in the group to go even more call like in their approach to appease them they literally cut off their hands and replaced them with metal claws while also putting mechanical Parts on their back so that they look like Necromorphs these guys are delusional even more delusional than unitology itself which is quite hard to do the DLC is quite short but is where a lot of Carver's personality starts to shine because he's actually present in this DLC he still doesn't show up in the two split off constantly but they at least talk with one another a lot more than in the main game when Isaac and Carver actually find a ship off tow volantis they realize it has no shock drive so they'll have to go back to the Terra Nova the ship we found Eliana originally and find a shock Drive core in order to get them back home this actually turns into an interesting dilemma Isaac says that he can't go back to Earth because the moons want to follow him there Carver disagrees and the tugany to a shootout I'm fairly certain in Co-op the two of you actually have to fight each other which if true is amazing and is exactly what I was hoping would happen the two clearly can't die or else the story wouldn't exist but the idea of Co-op players fighting each other to the death is always a great idea and is one of the reasons I'm like Splinter Cell convictions Co-op so much you spend countless hours fighting beside that person only to have to kill them by the end Dead Space never goes as far as killing someone I mean they could barely kill off their own main cast but still I enjoyed it nonetheless in Solo after this fight they realized that they've been duped the moons already knew where Earth was they were just screwing at them to buy some time the two however managed to make it out pretty quickly and head back to Earth United mining traffic flow do you copy [Music] foreign the moons have arrived the Earth is doomed and the Necromorphs have won I feel like if it was any other way I would actually be more upset at that outcome the moons are so powerful that defeating them would never be possible and having the game end as abruptly as that fits in line with the rest of the narrative Bad Endings are never fun to see it's not good to know that the three games worth of hard work that you and Isaac have done together is for nothing and that's just how the Necromorphs roll they're here to kill and will do so at the most inopportune of times regardless the DLC was fantastic in fact from the assembling of Rosetta to this cutscene the game was incredible it was just bogged down by so many poor choices and priorities that it keeps it from being amazing I managed to escalate the threat that was established all those years ago and even though mechanically it doesn't feel like it narratively the looming threat of the Necromorphs and the end of all life is still very much present but this game also makes characters that are extremely forgettable and shoehorns in a dramatic love story that goes on for about 6 hours which is 6 hours too many but no matter what you might say about Dead Space 3 you can't ignore that at the very least the story ends on a high note with all of its narrative threads that were still dangling severed by the announcement of Humanity's imminent attention Dead Space is easily one of the best probably the best survival horror game I've ever played and its story was exceptional there was a few hiccups along the way mostly because of one game but even still the progression of all three main games flowing in a way that's natural and intimidating Dead Space is a game with an extensive amount of lore that uses what makes sci-fi horror so great and runs with it but it also manages to not only tie all that into a cohesive story but also be able to take the horrors that those words they write would impose and then transfer that into the gameplay you feel scared while playing the early games like you're right there with Isaac going through all the fleshy corridors and dimly lit rooms Dead Space 1 deserved all the praise it got it's a perfect survival horror game that introduces the threat of the series in such a fascinating way Dead Space 2 further expands on this idea by making Isaac's role in the story as the marker killer a bit more important while also fleshing out a lot of the content that was barely mentioned in the first game like the markers and unitology Dead Space 3 immediately Falls flat on its face before picking itself up by its bootstraps and somehow manages to not only introduce new lore but also expand on older lore in a way that makes narrative sense all the way to the end dead space in many ways is an impressive piece of art from its actual art design to its tones and themes and it's a game I don't think I will ever forget playing thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video then leave a like I have many more long videos like this on other games you can check out if you want to but also some short length ones on single games as well if you're new here then be sure to subscribe for more content like this and as always thank you to my returning viewers for coming back to another video take care everyone goodbye

Channel: Gingy

Views: 1,289,238

Keywords: dead space 1, dead space 2, dead space 3, dead space lore, dead space, dead space remake, dead space 2 lore, dead space 3 lore, dead space markers, dead space necromorphs, dead space review, dead space retrospective, dead space video essay, gingy, dead space remake ending, dead space remake gameplay

Id: jQotdAbde7k

Length: 91min 49sec (5509 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 25 2022