They’re a source of limitless energy (leading to, the lore implies, interstellar travel), a communication device, a necromorph-creator, and a broadcasting station sending out a variety of signals. In Dead Space lore, the Markers (like the one Isaac doesn’t quite destroy at the end of the Dead Space remake) are kind of cosmic horror-themed Swiss Army Knives. Image: Visceral Games/Electronic Arts via Polygon Think of Lovecraft’s “ The Colour Out Of Space,” where a color (from space) drives a family insane and mutates them into monstrous forms. Lovecraft, but we’ll stick with “cosmic” here.) This brand of horror involves unknowable and unknowably alien forces that affect humanity on an existential level. (We could also call it Lovecraftian horror since it’s a genre made most famous by noted bigot H.P. To be a bit too reductive about it, he’s basically just saying, “But first, we’ve gotta do the sequels.”ĭead Space (in general) and Dead Space (specifically) are cosmic horror stories. He says that he’s “gotta build a little something first” before they can go home. Isaac looks a little manic (or, at least, happier than he should considering what he’s just seen), there are scribbles in Marker font covering every surface of the shuttle’s interior, and Isaac’s having a full conversation with his dead girlfriend. In the alternate ending, there’s no pretense of hunky-dory. Until he once again hallucinates his dead girlfriend and we get a jump scare just before the credits roll. In the standard ending of the game, Isaac escapes from Aegis VII secure in the knowledge that he destroyed the necromorphs and the (Red) Marker, and now everything is hunky-dory and there is no more space engineering to be done.

(You can watch it at the end of the video above.) And he lived happily ever after. Let’s say you don’t want to play through the whole (terrifying) game again and just want to know what that whole alternate ending entails. Your job is to collect all of those Marker Fragments and arrange them on the table/altar in Captain Mathius’ room in the Executive Quarters on the Crew Deck during Chapter 11 “Alternate Solutions.”įrom there, you just have to play through to the end of the game (again).

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