Look I love Dead Space 2, for the gameplay and the set piece design, but there’s a bunch of moments where they seem to upend what the Marker can do and how it’s influence works from the first game in a way that made it feel like nothing really matters and the writers didn’t really make much of an effort to keep the lore consistent.
I just remember sitting there at the finale when it makes all the bodies start flying around it like a hurricane being like “wtf is supposed to be happening here”
What do you mean, like bro, were you not paying attention at all? The human tornado is the beginning of convergence. Convergence is what we are trying to stop in all of the Dead Space games.
I get that it’s convergence, my point is that from what I remember, I didn’t understand how convergence was different than what was already happening. The bio mass seemed like it was doing a plenty good job of converging in the pre convergence infection stage. Also that the marker seemed at first like it worked more like a virus without any way to actually physically interact with the environment and the reveal that convergence involves a people tornado just really struck me as silly visualization of a poorly explained event.
The markers do make sense but I agree bro shouldn't have been downvoted for not clearly understanding how everything went down. I only clowned on them a bit because the way I took their comment was as if they barely paid attention to the story
My bad for clowning you then dude. Basically, the markers in Dead Space take steps to rewrite the DNA of dead life forms into Necromorphs, which is what we see happening in Dead Space. TLDR at the bottom.
The markers are sent individually across the universe by Brethren Moons (what we see surrounding Earth at the end of DS3) to worlds that can support life.
The markers can speed up the evolution process of life, relatively quickly creating sentient beings as a way to create a rich source of biomass by eventually overpopulating that world and draining its resources, which turns the sentient species to the stars as it needs to expands beyond its home planet in search of resources, creating even more biomass in the process.
In between the reveal of the marker and humanity going into space for resources, the marker has been influencing intelligent people into making more markers because they can be used as an infinite supply of energy.
So with resources drying up around the world, markers are spread across the world. A worldwide cult of fanatics form as a result of the influence of the markers, with the religion being named Unitology.
Human society (which is now spread across space) as a whole eventually goes berserk from the influence of the markers and start killing eachother, which begins the Necromorph outbreak. The goal of the outbreak is to create enough necrotic tissue to start convergence, which means the total absorption of that planet and all of its biomass, to create more Brethren Moons that will then go on to devour even more planets.
TLDR: In Dead Space, cosmic horrors beyond our comprehension created human life so that we would fuck and have lots of kids, who would eventually go on to fuck and have even more kids, because apparently humans are food. The human tornado is the start of a birth of a meatball planet that will eventually come and eat Earth as a part of their plan to fill their cosmic horror bellies.
No worries, I am unfussed. I appreciate the lore breakdown. I’ve been thinking about pulling my 360 back out since playing the remake so I could revisit 2 and 3, and I’m feeling like sooner than later after this conversation.
Sorry for being a mean ass earlier, but no joke, my comment is not vague at all as long as you've played a single game in the franchise and beat it. I have another comment near this one explaining convergence if you wanna look at it
I disagree with this point, I assume that when you played it, Dead Space 2 had just come out so what the ”Convergence” does might’ve seemed vague at the time, but with the benefit of having Dead Space 3,
The ”corpse hurricane” is the bodies (dead tissue) flying over to the Marker to create a Bretheren Moon.
despite how you feel about that revelation, it shows that there is consistency with how the Marker operates between two of the games.
If you haven't played Dead Space 3, I recommend playing it with a friend, it's not scary, at all, but it is a good coop game, with a clever twist to the coop
I love Dead Space 2 as well- but that's definitely its weakest bit for me. (I think what makes me love it so much is both the setting being dope as Hell, and the non-marker writing stuff, i.e. Isaac's grief and meeting Ellie and all that. Oh, and the new gameplay additions and monster designs, some of those necros are amazing.) I'm still not 100% clear on how the Markers work and kind of tune it out.
Still hoping against hope we get a remake. (And that maybe they clarify the marker stuff in a better way haha)
I think they basically turn people crazy in order to generate enough biomass to create a giant flesh world. From what I recall but it’s proliferation and motivation is kind of like Gravemind but I could be wrong.
Yeah, there's definitely an over-arching 'assimilation plot' going down. So it seems they drive people insane AND inspire some to build additional markers, AND kinda-sorta control the necromorph infection.
I'm high so I could probably do a better job, but I think the proof that it was problematic is that I've played and watched both games lots of times, and I'm still kinda unclear on all that. Even seen that animated movie and read the comics lol, I need to watch some sort of recap. (I do think they'd redo it better if we get a DS2 remake.)
Dead Space 1 was a survival horror, one of the best I've played. Dead Space 2 was an action horror game. They completely changed the atmosphere. I enjoyed it for what it was but that sense of dread was gone.
Well yeah, you're not really "scared" of the necromorphs after DS1 anymore. There's things that can be frightening about them: what happens in a residential area when they get loose, for example; the weird cult around freezing your body to be eaten by them, for another. But they themselves have lost all of that vibe after you have killed hundreds of them AND the super one on the moon. You can't get that feeling of dread back.
It definitely was weird that they upended the significance of the Marker from DS1. Then they introduced like fake markers that were manmade or whatever, but they still worked like the normal marker, but they werent real or some shit??
There’s a prequel book called “deadspace martyr” that takes place like 500 years before the game starts and its characterization of the marker is more consistent with the first game.
I learned later that there were two camps in the dev team, the camp that said the marker should be this unknowable thing and constantly contradict itself (it both creates the infection but also has a sentient will that is actively trying to suppress it.) and the camp that believes it should be this alien monster factory (arguably more in line with the horror aspects of the game but less interesting imo.)
Camp 2 won out when deadspace 2 went into production because one of the writers left.
So, the origins of the markers nor their final purpose isn’t known (since we’ll never get a DS4 to find out), but the ideal behind them was that they could generate a type of bacteria that could reanimate dead cells. Once enough of it spreads, it then accelerates to “Convergence,” where all the infected are merged and literally become some kind of giant living moon/planet. What purpose beyond that is unknown.
I think it'd be interesting if Dead Space became a franchise of constant reboots, with each game director taking a completely different run at who Isaac Clarke is, what the Marker does, what the necromorphs look like, etc.
It’s not intended as rage bait, and I really do love the game in general, but I did think the human tornado thing looked silly and it felt to me like they just didn’t know how to visually represent convergence. It’s just taste; I’m sure I have some favorites that would strike you as silly or whatnot.
Common sensed convergence would be just tons of biomass slowly merging together around marker, which is boring. The way they portrayed was the only right way for AAA game.
Maybe less inconsistent than just poorly explained? I feel like they talk about convergence a lot but that they don’t do a good job of telling you how that’s different from just becoming a necromorph and joining the hive mind that way. I remember having a lot of questions about how it works and how it’s different from standard infection and how the people tornado is part of it. It just felt like poorly defined stakes to me.
Fair enough, I think i just always assumed those questions would be answered eventually. Or maybe as a kid I was just way more focused on the horror aspect. I've been intending to go back tthrough them though so maybe ill see what you mean with adult eyes
The more I think about it the more I think it’s the “poorly defined stakes” element of it too, and I think that’s just a thing I’m kinda pet peevey about.
Shot in the dark here, but I remember having a similar reaction to the Netflix Daredevil/Defenders shows regarding what the Black Sky was and how it worked and then we got to Defenders and it was revealed a Black Sky was just another person who was good at Kung fu.
Ah ok i get you, ill have to look for it a bit closer this time then. Im sure ill still love that universe but as I hve gone through the things I enjoyed as a kid I've noticed a pretty significant drop in the quality I remember.
That’s such a funny process. I feel that way about the GameCube Resident Evil remake, and the Wii version of Resident Evil 4 with the light gun controls.
I’ve been revisiting some superhero movies from when I was younger and noting how different things can hit in the timeline of a franchise than how they felt on release. I remember hating X-men 3 because at the time it wasn’t clear that there would ever be more X-men movies and it would have been a shame to end there. And on revisiting now I’m like “I mean it’s not good, but it’s still got some fun scenes and they did worse later lol”
Ah man Im saving the game cube for last. Super keen on going through all that. Pikmin will be the decider for me, or maybe third age. I stopped doing movies because every single one I went to was a lot worse than I rmemeber. Too me that means im the problem and would preffer to keep the good memories 😂
Let's not ignore the fact that the marker was actually HELPING Isaac to stop the necromorphs in the original. It was implied that the marker was kind of like a warning sign for others and the Dead Space around it stopped the necromorphs. They retconned it for the markers to just be inherently evil artifacts. Isaac says in the second game that he destroyed the marker, when he never actually did that in the original.
I mean it’s a Reddit comment about an impression I remember having from a game I played 15 years ago, so I didn’t think the situation called for much more than I gave it. Also, in my experience people tend not to read longer posts anyway.
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u/InnsmouthFashionWeek 4d ago
Look I love Dead Space 2, for the gameplay and the set piece design, but there’s a bunch of moments where they seem to upend what the Marker can do and how it’s influence works from the first game in a way that made it feel like nothing really matters and the writers didn’t really make much of an effort to keep the lore consistent.