I don't "get" Dead Space - help! Also, SPOILER ALERT!

[Epic Fail 1977]

I've just finished Dead Space (I managed to get the hang of the mouse control, though I still don't like it) and I'm confused by the story. Very confused. It didn't help that I couldn't make out some of the dialogue due to static interference with the video feeds, various glass windows muffling the sound of the person on the other side, and the occasional necromorph attack right when someone is speaking, but I think I caught most of it and it doesn't add up.

So. People discovered the marker on earth and the government reverse engineered it to make another marker (why?) which they took to the planet to study or test or whatever, and this resulted in necromorphs. So they sealed the marker on or inside the planet and declared the whole place a no-go zone. The Church wants the marker so they fake an illegal mining operation in order to get it and achieve transcendence. Fine. So here are my questions...

1) The marker creates things from dead flesh, right? The necromorphs, the Leviathan, the final boss, and all that stuff "growing" on the ishimura is dead flesh infected and mutated by some sort of alien life form... or whatever... that comes from the marker, right? And it has some sort of hive mind, right? Correct me if I'm wrong in any of this! And presumably this hive mind really likes being close to the marker because after the marker is taken it telepathically tells everyone that they should "make it whole again" using hallucinations of dead wives, dead girlfriends, dead brothers, etc. In which case, why do the necromorphs attack the people who are trying to help it? Isaac and that English chap you run into are both trying to do what the hive mind wants, yet Isaac is attacked by the necromorphs at every turn, and the English bloke presumably would be attacked as well (or else why would he need to lock himself away from the necromorphs).

2) Why do the necromorphs attack Nicole? She's a hallucination! One possible explanation is that the hive mind is intelligent and wants Isaac to believe that Nicole is real and on his side, so it tells the necromorphs to attack the hallucination in order to fool Isaac, but this explanation seems a bit far fetched to me and if the hive mind is intelligent then that only makes 1) above even more confusing.

3) Why are some people half-dead and insane? You meet various "survivors" on the Ishimura who are a mess physically (skinned and mutilated, but not mutated) who bang their heads on walls until their skull cracks open, or slit their own throats while laughing, or just stand staring into space laughing at nothing. What makes them do that while leaving other survivors relatively sane (or at least functional)?

4) What was up with that crazy doctor? The one who made the regenerating necromorph? I thought he was going to have some sort of relevance to the story but as far as I can tell he was nothing to do with the main plot. Was he just a nutcase sideshow or did he play some larger role that I missed? And what exactly was his crazy plan anyway? Why did he want to make an "improved" necromorph before giving himself up to the hive mind? He didn't consider the existing necromorphs to be a good enough transcendence? I know he was mad, but even mad people have some sort of rationale.

5) What was Kendra's plan exactly? She works for the government and was sent in to retrieve the marker? The government, knowing full well what the marker can do, sent ONE PERSON to find it and take it somewhere else? Oh wait, no they didn't, they also sent a warship to blow up the Ishimura while Kendra is on board. Way to go, government. What exactly is this government trying to achieve here? Destroy the marker? Move it away from the Church? Move it to the Church maybe?

There are a hundred other minor plot holes and inconsistencies but they don't bother me. The five things above bother me. Any help here?

 

[Brandon Strange]

1. The Marker was made to keep the Hive Mind in check. It is apparently sapient to some degree, being able to think and whatnot. Nicole was the visual representation of the Marker made to look like Isaac's girlfriend so that he would help get the marker back to the planet. The Hive Mind (which controls the Necromorphs) attacks Isaac because it doesn't want to be trapped again. I'm not sure if you caught it or not but everything went to shit when the miners removed the Marker on the planet.
2.Since Nicole is being created by the Marker, then she is a threat to the Hive Mind, which is why she is attacked by the necromorphs, now as to whether she is or is not corporeal to some degree isn't exactly explained, but it can possibly be inferred through the necromorphs attacking her.
3.What the Hive Mind does in its quest for more power is to get people to kill themselves by making them go insane using its strong telepathic capabilities. It tortures people to the point where the people commit suicide, where it can then send in the infector forms (bat things)to turn the corpses into Necromorphs.
4.Crazy Doctor guy is a Unitologist who believes the Necromorphs to be their next step to transcendence. His plan was to take away the one weakness of the Necromorphs (their weakness of having their limbs cut off) by making one that could regenerate. He then would send the necromorphs (all the ones in the frozen stasis tubes) to Earth so that the rest of mankind could achieve transcendence.
5. As far as I can tell, the government found out that the miners (and possibly the Church) found out about the Marker (which they reverse-engineered from one found on Earth), and they sent Kendra and later the USM Valor to destroy the Ishimura and any trace of the mining facility, and take the marker back to Earth.

Now that is as much as I can figure out, but part of what makes Dead Space so great is the mystery, so I know I don't have all the answers, and perhaps even some of what I said is wrong, but I hope that my explanation filled in a few holes and helps you to understand what happened.

 

[Tr3mbl3Tr3mbl3]

Horror as a genre generally has so many holes in it you could grate cheese. For example, why does Jason Vorhees decide to kill teenagers at the camp he drowned at? Some stupid reason. Why does Silent Hill have an evil side and an even eviler rusty gross side? Some stupid reason. Why does everyone who survives Jigsaw's traps team up with him to kill more people? Some stupid reason.

It's better to just enjoy the scares and forget the bad story-telling. That's why we have RPGs and James Cameron.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

I've just finished Dead Space (I managed to get the hang of the mouse control, though I still don't like it) and I'm confused by the story. Very confused. It didn't help that I couldn't make out some of the dialogue due to static interference with the video feeds, various glass windows muffling the sound of the person on the other side, and the occasional necromorph attack right when someone is speaking, but I think I caught most of it and it doesn't add up.

So. People discovered the marker on earth and the government reverse engineered it to make another marker (why?) which they took to the planet to study or test or whatever, and this resulted in necromorphs. So they sealed the marker on or inside the planet and declared the whole place a no-go zone. The Church wants the marker so they fake an illegal mining operation in order to get it and achieve transcendence. Fine. So here are my questions...

Well, they made a second marker to study it. The original is considered to be a religious artifact by the Unitoligist church so they wouldn't let it out of their sight.

1) The marker creates things from dead flesh, right? The necromorphs, the Leviathan, the final boss, and all that stuff "growing" on the ishimura is dead flesh infected and mutated by some sort of alien life form... or whatever... that comes from the marker, right? And it has some sort of hive mind, right? Correct me if I'm wrong in any of this! And presumably this hive mind really likes being close to the marker because after the marker is taken it telepathically tells everyone that they should "make it whole again" using hallucinations of dead wives, dead girlfriends, dead brothers, etc. In which case, why do the necromorphs attack the people who are trying to help it? Isaac and that English chap you run into are both trying to do what the hive mind wants, yet Isaac is attacked by the necromorphs at every turn, and the English bloke presumably would be attacked as well (or else why would he need to lock himself away from the necromorphs).

According to Dead Space: Downfall the Necromorphs actually are repulsed by the Marker. They can't touch the thing. The influence that the Marker exerts and the Necromorph infestation seem to be mutually exclusive. If anything, its implied that the Necromorphs were being kept in check inside of Aegis by the Marker's presence. The Necromorphs don't seem to have any sort of intelligence beyond "kill everything, make more Necromorphs", so its hard to say if they are furthering the will of The Marker or not. Its not especially clear, and something I hope Dead Space 2 will clear up.

2) Why do the necromorphs attack Nicole? She's a hallucination! One possible explanation is that the hive mind is intelligent and wants Isaac to believe that Nicole is real and on his side, so it tells the necromorphs to attack the hallucination in order to fool Isaac, but this explanation seems a bit far fetched to me and if the hive mind is intelligent then that only makes 1) above even more confusing.

They don't. There isn't any real explanation for Nicole's presence in that scene, but since she needs to be escorted we can either assume that its another shipmate who is still alive (and Isaac is simply seeing as Nicole), or just some automated process and Isaac is hallucinating. Remember, every time we see Nicole (with the possible exception of the ending) she isn't real. You have to take that with a grain of salt.

Also, if the Necromorphs deliberately ignored Nicole, when they previously have attacked anything that moves, it might seem fishy. Plus, it keeps Isaac on his toes, keeps him stressed and agitated so he'll be more willing to listen to the Marker's suggestion. He NEEDS a friend, and the Marker is happy to provide him with one. He just can't be allowed to think about it too much.

3) Why are some people half-dead and insane? You meet various "survivors" on the Ishimura who are a mess physically (skinned and mutilated, but not mutated) who bang their heads on walls until their skull cracks open, or slit their own throats while laughing, or just stand staring into space laughing at nothing. What makes them do that while leaving other survivors relatively sane (or at least functional)?

The same thing happens in real life. Some people simply can't handle high amounts of stress and danger, so they crack. Some of them went kill-crazy (like the doctor), others simply lost it and hallucinated dead spouses, or just killed themselves. Remember, they've been on this ship with a horde of ravenous zombie monsters for a while now.

4) What was up with that crazy doctor? The one who made the regenerating necromorph? I thought he was going to have some sort of relevance to the story but as far as I can tell he was nothing to do with the main plot. Was he just a nutcase sideshow or did he play some larger role that I missed? And what exactly was his crazy plan anyway? Why did he want to make an "improved" necromorph before giving himself up to the hive mind? He didn't consider the existing necromorphs to be a good enough transcendence? I know he was mad, but even mad people have some sort of rationale.

He's a unitoligist, but I assume he's also a scientist. He's probably just fascinated by the Necromorph transformation and wanted to study it before finally giving in. After all, anything to help along his religion, right?

5) What was Kendra's plan exactly? She works for the government and was sent in to retrieve the marker? The government, knowing full well what the marker can do, sent ONE PERSON to find it and take it somewhere else? Oh wait, no they didn't, they also sent a warship to blow up the Ishimura while Kendra is on board. Way to go, government. What exactly is this government trying to achieve here? Destroy the marker? Move it away from the Church? Move it to the Church maybe?

It seemed to me like the government was starting to get wise to the Church's buisness, heard about the Marker, and sent in an agent to recover it to study themselves. It had to be hush-hush, because the Church has a HUGE following in the Dead Space world and messing with their religious artifacts would be a public scandal. Plus, they seem to have some idea of how dangerous the Marker and the Necromorphs are (though clearly they underestimated them), so in case the agent failed to retrieve the Marker the best course of action would be to destroy it and the ship before a Unitologist agent could recover it. Better safe than sorry.

There are a hundred other minor plot holes and inconsistencies but they don't bother me. The five things above bother me. Any help here?

Its not so much plot holes as a lack of general information about the Dead Space world. Downfall helps a little, and unfortunately I never played Extraction so I don't know what it adds. Hopefully Dead Space 2 will clear up more of it, especially concerning the relationship between the Marker and the Necromorphs.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

I'm glad someone else had as much trouble as me understanding this game... usually I'm good at following these sort of plots but Dead Space was completely lost on me. Once the marker was introduced and the idea that it was actually just a copy... I was completely lost. Thanks for clearing that up guys!

 

[Shockolate]

1. The Marker does not create the dead flesh necromorph stuff, it has the genetic code to make it inscribed on it. The marker itself is somewhat sentient and it in place to keep the necromorphs in check. When it was moved, shit got real. They weren't attacking people who were trying to help, they were trying to keep the marker away from it's pedestal thing.

2. Unknown, probably to add to the further mindfuck that she wasn't real, bringing Isaac question into sanity, just like the second game boasts about.

3. The marker affects everyone differently, depending on thir mental state. You'll see in deadspace downfall that the blond dude went crazy before anyone else, probably due to some pre-existing mental instability. even Kyne, who was for the most calm and helpful, called himself crazy.

4. He was just a nutcase unitologist trying to make people into necromorphs, like preparing them (Temple and Cross) and making them stronger (The hunter). He didn't really have a plan, he was just helping the necromorphs.

5. Probably to evaluate the situation and try to take the marker. I don't recall anywhere stating that the warship was sent to destroy the Ishimura, just that it heard a distress signal.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Thanks for the helpful replies. At least I understand now why the necromorphs didn't want the marker back!

Wikis are always helpful to me when I either have trouble understanding a game or want to learn more about details related to backstory, implied references, or symbolism I may have missed. You can get a lot of answers about many fictional worlds by searching "(title) wiki" on Google.

Dead Space Wiki here:
http://deadspace.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

If you want to learn more about Kendra's plan, for example, search for Kendra in the wiki. If the die hard fans haven't organized it into an article, then chances are that nobody knows.

Thanks for the link. I've read a few pages and it seems even the die hard fans can't figure it out, as there are plenty of things in the wiki that directly contradict things in the game (and other pages in the wiki). For example, one page says that the mining operation was a ruse and that the Ishimura's real objective was to find the marker, which makes sense because one of the text logs in the game says that the captain and most of the senior crew are all "fucking unitologists". But another page on the wiki states that the illegal mining operation discovered the marker by accident! I feel a bit less stupid now.

I hope DS2 tells its story better than DS1 did.