#with half of them being on the crew of the Ishimura and the others being part of the crew that responds to the distress call

[pomellon]

Yeah Dead Space hyper fixation is really going brrr and I be think of aus 

[justaddgame]

GOTY 2021: #9 - Dead Space

Dead Space frequently made me feel uncomfortable throughout the length of its campaign. Being aboard the USG Ishimura—where protagonist Issac Clarke and fellow survivors find themselves adrift in space while attempting to uncover the cause of the disaster that descended on its crew—will evoke images of creeping through the Spencer mansion to any diehard Resident Evil fan. Visceral Games—today, sadly shutdown—successfully sprang a survival-horror game on an unsuspecting audience in 2008 after the genre had shown signs of gradually slipping away.

For years, Dead Space existed on my Steam account, and yet it took a long time to get around to. Back then, at the time of its release, I didn’t have access to a console capable of running it. A generous friend gifted an extra copy to me, but sadly, the PC I downloaded it on—bless its heart—couldn’t run it comfortably at the best of times. It would take a hardware refresh, but that refresh wouldn’t come for some time.

That day finally arrived this year, however, when I was lucky enough to finish building a new PC just before it became nearly impossible to find the parts. When the calendar flipped over to October, there was no question: what better time than now?

Dead Space, like other games on my 2021 list, shows its age in some ways. Graphically, it shines in places even now—several sequences stood out thanks to Dead Space hiding its HUD and instead displaying all necessary information elsewhere, such as Issac’s health meter functioning as a visual part of his armor, and a weapon’s ammo count being integrated into its iron sights.

Other elements will remind you it’s a game from 2008—the ragdoll physics, for example, are often more comical today than I’m sure they were intended at the time. One sticking point in particular was the lack of a quick turn. Resident Evil had implemented this into their core games by then, so it came as a surprise when I finally realized its omission. I will admit most of my frustrations early on were from the increased difficulty of escaping death because of Dead Space’s rigid movement. It became a thorn in my side for at least half of the game and was more than once an excuse that tempted me to move on to something else.

But the formula remains solid, and it was too late to turn my back on it now as there was so much to like. I felt it every time I jumped back in, loaded my save, and seeped back into a world I had grown to like—other than it being a nightmare-scenario, of course. Sometimes a game manages to get under your skin, and you adapt to its rules, even if it bruises the ego a bit. Truthfully, it was frustrating enough to mention it here, but for the sake of the narrative, it successfully heightened my fight or flight senses—the need to survive. Those limitations in movement are not unlike the infamous tank controls of Resident Evil’s early days.

Love them or hate them, there’s no easier way to create a sense of dread in survival-horror than holding a player back, and I think Dead Space gets that.

[therealvagabird]

Dead Space as a Master-Class: Sci-Fi Horror and Cosmic Horror

An essay I wrote for some reason, after having had a sudden burst of recollection earlier this year that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

Read below or HERE on my blog.

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From 2008 to 2013, the Dead Space game (and multimedia) sci-fi horror series was one of the leading titles in the next-gen era. Competing with more veteran IPs such as Resident Evil at its peak, the imagery of Dead Space became synonymous with gaming and horror pop-culture of the time. Though not free from criticism, especially towards the end of its run when radical shifts in the industry economy spoiled the reception of its third game, Dead Space was a major phenomenon in its time and retains a strong nostalgic following.

Dead Space followed the personal hell of one Isaac Clarke, a spaceship engineer in the distant future. In a far-flung time when massive resource scarcity has devolved humanity into a society of corporate-fascistic planet-looters, Clarke and a team of peers are called to the mining ship USG Ishimura to investigate a distress signal activated while the “planet cracker” vessel was stripping an innocuous planet. What follows is the start of the original Dead Space title, a massive bloodbath. Discovery of a strange alien monolith known as “The Marker” (later the “Red Marker”) has unleashed some manner of alien parasitic infection known as “Necromorphs” on the ship, having been lying dormant since it devoured the original colonists of the world centuries ago. The parasite operates by killing and then reanimating human corpses, and is able to enhance its deadliness through recombinant properties, making monsters out of multiple bodies, as well as spreading a fleshy moss known as “the Corruption” around its environment as a form of hostile terraforming. As if these obstacles were not enough for Isaac Clarke, the Marker also appears to induce vivid hallucinations and violent insanity, having driven most of the Ishimura’s crew to suicide or homicide even before the parasitic outbreak, and continuing to wreak havoc on any human minds.

Dead Space 2 and 3 continue the plotline after Isaac Clarke is left as the sole survivor of the initial plot. It is elaborated on that the Earth Government wants the alien Marker despite the great danger it poses due to the artifact providing a source of limitless energy. However, despite its promise, the construction of a second Marker using memories burned into Clarke’s brain results in another, even more vicious Necromorph outbreak on a residential space-station in the Solar System. Attempts to stop the pandemic are exacerbated by both the greedy Earth Gov and the “Unitologists” – a massive sect of religious extremists who view the Markers as divine and, likewise, tend to aid in the undue spread of Necromorph infections. By the time of Dead Space 3, the conflict between Earth Gov and the Unitologists has exploded into all-out war, with Markers exerting their influence over most of earth. Isaac, with company, travels to the world of Tau Volantis following the promise of a way to stop the alien menace. It is revealed by the end of the final chapter that the history of the Markers is far deeper and darker than previously guessed, with the influence of the monoliths having led to both the rise and fall of numerous civilizations throughout galactic history as a way of both creating and feeding the Necromorphs’ final stage – the “Brethren Moons”. Though Isaac succeeds in destroying a half-formed Brethren Moon as the penultimate boss of the third game, the rest of the dormant Moons are awakened by the start of the final DLC expansion, with the implied ending of the series being the Moons consumption of all life on Earth and within human-controlled space, leaving the galaxy to once again be “Dead Space”.

With the outline of the Dead Space trilogy established, I will look at the ways in which – despite its reputation as being a semi-popular cultural phenomenon in its heyday – the Dead Space series is actually one of the best demonstrations of Cosmic Horror in gaming, and even in modern applications of the genre. Dead Space also displays a keen knowledge of its predecessors and draws on them for inspiration without undue copycat symptoms. Cosmic Horror has long been an elusive concept for modern artists, as the memory of H.P. Lovecraft and bastardizations through the action-RPG genre have rendered most executions of the genre as little more than “alien monsters induce insanity through their mere presence”. Though at a surface level Dead Space may seem to fall prey to these tropes, the overall result of the games’ lore and plot shows a much deeper and more genuine application of Cosmic Horror concepts than most.

The Two Enemies

Dead Space’s storyline revolves around two core enemies or obstacles, with the both of them being intertwined. Though government and Unitologists forces certainly have their spotlights over the course of the game’s storyline, the true flesh and blood of Dead Space’s appeal are the Necromorphs. Wherever the Necromorphs are, there is also the second enemy – insanity. Both of these are the result of the alien Markers, and they form a symbiotic relationship meant to make quick work of their human foodstuffs.

In the games’ lore, the Marker monoliths do more than just lure civilizations in with their abundant energy output. At a certain point, these artifacts will begin putting out an enigmatic signal which induces madness and violent outbursts. The concept is that this will provide a nice working base of corpses and disorganized resistance for the Marker to then began causing the creation of the Necromorph monsters. As the parasitic beasts further cause carnage, the Marker’s job of inducing insanity is made all the easier by the rampant PTSD most human survivors will be struggling with. From a practical standpoint, these two villains embody the two aspects of the series’ actual gameplay. The Necromorphs are the physical obstacles – the monsters and baddies to be dismembered, fled from, and the like. The insanity is the atmosphere – the illusory shadows moving at the ends of hallways, the hallucinations which drive Isaac Clarke and the overall plot along, and the displays of inhumane gore as survivors turn on you, themselves, and each other. Both of these enemies also show Dead Space’s understanding of its roots, and what drives audiences’ interest in the sci-fi horror genre over the decades.

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The Necromorphs take cues from many other examples of the “murderous alien parasite” throughout genre history. As recently as 2001, gaming audiences had been exposed to the infectious and disgusting Flood in the Halo series – the original trilogy of which concluded one year before Dead Space debuted. Resident Evil had expanded on the zombie archetype with mutant abominations going back to 1996. Of course, the most prominent influences on Dead Space’s design predate the video game boom. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and the Alien franchise (1979-1986 primarily) are perhaps the most noticeable contributors.

From Carpenter’s adaptation of The Thing we are given the visuals of gory, mutagenic, violent, and infectious alien monstrosities who live only to consume and convert all other lifeforms to their cause. Forgoing the Thing’s major aspect of being a shape-shifter, the Necromorphs instead favor a wide variety of monstrous forms which each function as a unique enemy type, while their “infectivity” is limited to the slow spread of their alien hive as they kill and convert human corpses into food. It is the Thing’s imagery (and sound design) which is its biggest contribution, with the blood-and-guts aesthetic providing the visceral backbone to Dead Space’s immediate horror.

From Alien is derived the setting, with the environment of a futuristic and brutalist human environment offering little comfort to the player when not being faced with mutant monsters. In the original Dead Space, cramped corridors, dim industrial lighting, hostile machinery, and vents which allow the Necromophs to stalk and flank the player all call back to the settings of the Nostromo and LV-426’s mining colony in Alien and Aliens. The Necromorphs also, despite their more zombie-esque and gory visuals, function on a closer level to the Xenomorphs’ “hive building” behavior, at least until they reach their later stages. Of course, the name “Necromorph” is itself a play on the blending of the “Xenomorph” aliens with human-derived zombies.

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As stated, the second “enemy” of the Dead Space series, and the biggest contributor to its horror atmosphere, is the insanity induced both by the Marker and by the trauma of being exposed to the violent Necromorphs. The insanity which Isaac Clarke is afflicted by its one of the main drivers for the trilogy’s plot, and the source of the first game’s (rather uninspired) twist. It also functions in the game’s backstory, as a precursor to Necromorph outbreaks meant to supply corpses. From an artistic standpoint, the insanity is itself a reference to the common tropes of Cosmic Horror dating back to H.P. Lovecraft – its most renowned contributor. It also provides a more human level to the horror that permeates each of the games. While it’s one thing to see alien monsters mutilating people, it’s another dimension to see humans doing equally terrible things to themselves or each other. It shows the emotional destruction of the Marker’s victims alongside their eventual physical destruction. It also – as pointed out previously – provides another layer to the games’ atmospheric design, with the largest effect on new players. The visual and auditory hallucinations Isaac experiences keep players on their toes, as they can never be sure they aren’t about to face off against another monster, or are simply jumping at shadows.

Yet there is a final dimension to the insanity of the Markers which culminates in the revelations of the third installment. It is hinted at by the Markers’ nature as alien artifacts, and the appearance of strange occult symbols, religious terminology, and repeated phrases going back to the first game. The Markers, and their entire purpose, are shown to be the products of massive, ravenous, and highly intelligent alien beings known as Brethren Moons – the end stage of Necromorph evolution and something of “gods” to the entire galaxy. Is both shown and implied, in different measure, that every aspect of the Markers are simply emanations of these Moons. The energy they release which can uplift the minds of various species to sapience, and in turn provide them with power to support their resource-strapped civilizations, are just brainwave signals broadcast from the minds of the monstrous Moons. The violence and insanity inspired in humanity is the simple result of human brains being subject to the thoughts of incomprehensibly vast and hungry alien beings. And moreover, while much of this madness could be viewed as human brains being overwhelmed by excessive traumatic input, there is also the revelation – very in-line with the most fundamental ideas of Cosmic Horror – that these Brethren Moons are unstoppable, inescapable, and responsible for the premeditated creation and destruction of all human civilization. To have a mental breakdown in the face of such a nihilistic state of galactic affairs is quite rational, and the precept upon which Lovecraft built the basis of his Cosmic Horror writings.

The Settings

Dead Space – Vents and Hallways

As with all good horror, and sci-fi horror as a rule, the setting of the Dead Space games is as important as any of the actual events which happen therein. While the basic gameplay remained the same throughout all three titles, with minor deviations in overall tone and combat approach, the settings differed drastically. Yet these changes did not compromise the core concepts of the series. Claustrophobia, hostile scenery, minimal visibility due to frequent obstacles, and other staples were retained. Yet over the trilogy, each new setting could actually be interpreted as an homage to one of Dead Space’s predecessors. Though the writing and delivery of the games was not the most refined of all examples in the genre, the creators had a clear concept and appreciation for what traditions they were building off of, and this is reflected in the physical space.

For Dead Space, the original, the USG Ishimura is the Nostromo, from 1979’s Alien. It is an industrial vessel sent to a far-flung location where its doom is sealed. Yet whereas the Nostromo was host to a small crew who were picked off by a solitary predator, the Ishimura is host to a compliment of full-time astronauts and workers, who are likewise consumed by a massive, spreading alien parasite. For major set-pieces, influences from later sci-fi properties such as Resident Evil, Halo, or System Shock can be seen. The major bosses take the form of huge conglomerations of corpses sitting at the centers of Necromorph “hives”, having terraformed whole sections of the environment. Yet for most of the game’s progression, Isaac Clarke finds himself in the bloodstained remains of human architecture. Tight corridors, vents which allow the Necromorphs to evade direct confrontation much like the Xenomorph in Alien, and hostile architecture. The latter is a major feature in the first and third games, though doesn’t fail to feature in the entire series. Visual cues ranging from outright hazardous industrial obstacles to propaganda signs and clone-vat medical bays portray a future which is not much brighter even without alien attack. It sets up a galaxy, quite like that of Alien or other dark science fiction stories, that is not at all suited to human life, both through humanity’s cruelty to each other, and the cosmos’ cruelty to humanity. The early introduction of the concept of “Dead Space” within the setting (separate from the pun of the main title) also hints at a gloomy reality: mankind has encountered no alien life before the Necromorphs. In their rapid expansion in search of resources, not once has humanity found any extraterrestrial beings in the vast, cold void of space.

Dead Space 2 – Cyberpunk Dystopia and Urban Carnage

Dead Space 2 would both intensify and relax the themes hinted at in the first game. The sequel takes place on Titan Station, or “The Sprawl” – a massive civilian space station built from the shattered remains of Saturn’s moon Titan. Set dressing in Dead Space 2 seeks to explore the actual universe built up in the first game, contrasting the life of an average person shattered by the alien attack with the existing brutality of the Sprawl. Players are greeted both with scenes of horror in the aftermath of an entire human population, families, friends, and the like all butchered in common by the Necromorphs, as well as the residual propaganda of a government who seemed to care little for its populace even during the station’s non-brutalized days. Next to the more isolated setting of Dead Space, and its own homages to properties like Alien, Dead Space 2 takes the route of previous sequels such as Aliens or Predator 2, introducing the threat to a more populous region and exchanging some of the tension and isolation-derived horror for increased action and more visceral looks at civilians being subjected to sudden traumas. The increased presence of the Unitologist cult, and their antagonism with both Isaac Clarke and the scrambling Earth Gov also brings in more elements of religious horror and human-vs-human conflict which were just a part of the backstory of the original game.

Dead Space 3 – Darkest Space-Antarctica

In Dead Space 3, the homages become much stronger, and provide both a nice divergence and yet return to the Dead Space setting format. After some introduction, the bulk of the Dead Space 3 storyline takes place on the alien planet of Tau Volantis – a frozen world of dangerous weather patterns and difficult terrain. Tau Volantis was once colonized by humanity in the days of their galactic civil war, but has been abandoned for some two centuries due to the terrible secrets they unearthed there. Isaac and company escape to this planet at the promise of finding the clue to the Markers’ origins, and a way to stop them and the Necromorphs.

The references to The Thing couldn’t be clearer in the sheer choice of setting alone. Throughout his trek on Tau Volantis, Isaac navigates the aftermath of arctic-style expeditions on this barren world which in years past succumbed to the Necromorph parasite. The first enemies faced in the game are, in fact, Necromorphs resembling snowsuit-clad humans with glowing eyes, just a few visual cues off of the theatrical poster for 1982’s The Thing. Once again the themes of isolation return, as the bitter cold of the planet is not much more welcoming than the alien-infested subterranean tunnels. Throughout the game, audio logs chronicle the fate of the previous expedition, offering something of an expanded version of the relationship between the casts of The Thing and its prequel.

Though the references to the 1982 influence are clear, by the third act of the third game, the full elements of Cosmic Horror become fully manifest, with distinct homages to the grandfather of the genre – H.P. Lovecraft. Deep beneath the ice of Tau Volantis, it’s discovered that the old colonial expedition had unearthed not the secret of the Markers themselves, but of one of their victimized races. The Tau Volantians are a highly diverse and highly alien group of advanced yet extinct lifeforms whose own civilization progressed in a similar manner to that of humanity’s in the present day. By the end of Dead Space 3, Isaac Clarke finds himself traversing the cyclopean ruins of their subaquatic cities, searching for a supposed device that will stop the Necromorphs for good. Evidence of the aliens’ reliance on the Markers is clear, and the ultimate revelation comes at last with the reveal of Tau Volantis’ true history. At the peak of the Necromorph outbreak on the alien world, the Markers initiated a “Convergence Event” to spawn their final life-stage – a Brethren Moon. The Tau Volantians, using all the resources left to them, instead activated a terraforming device to freeze their planet, killing themselves but trapping the massive moon-creature in a form of stasis. With Unitologists threatening to unleash the Moon, Isaac must stop this final and penultimate threat, which he does in fact manage to do, at the seeming cost of his own life.

The connections to At the Mountains of Madness are striking and well-executed. Exploring the ruins of a strange yet familiar civilization of ages passed and uncovering the horrible truth of its downfall – the parallels to the fate of Lovecraft’s Elder Things are all too prominent. Just as the inspiration for John Carpenter’s The Thing – Who Goes There? (1938) by John Campbell – derived its setting from the “Darkest Antarctica” obsession in pulp horror and sci-fi, so too did At the Mountains of Madness. In turn, Dead Space 3 shows its knowledge of its roots by grabbing inspiration from all three, with a high-sci-fi take on the “frozen hell” setting and the dark secrets which might be uncovered beneath primordial ice.

The Red Moon – A Rare Case of True Cosmic Horror

But in the end, all of these themes are just set dressing. They are decent executions of common themes within the sci-fi horror-action genre and cute homages to the predecessors of Dead Space as a whole. However, a closer look at the full storyline of Dead Space once we are shown the truth of the final game creates a picture of a much better Cosmic Horror story than most acknowledge. The centermost theme of Cosmic Horror is the insignificance of humanity – the idea that the entire breadth of human existence is ultimately so fleeting and fragile in an infinite universe, that experiencing phenomena that showcase this insignificance could drive your average human insane. Over time, this idea – pioneered by Lovecraft’s works most notably – was diluted and bastardized to the point that few executions of Cosmic Horror would have any resemblance to Lovecraft’s works, as the aesthetics of Lovecraft were co-opted for simple sci-fi/fantasy horror.

But the ultimate lifecycle of the Necromorphs does in fact provide a fantastic and chilling example of this concept. The evolution of the Necromorphs is tied up in their enigmatic Markers, and their effects of other species can be seen in both humanity and the Tau Volantians. When a Marker is sent out into the cosmos by the Brethren Moons, it will (through unknown means) seek out a planet with existing life. From there, the Marker will encourage the growth of at least one species on that planet into a sapient form. Thereafter, the life cycle of this species will play out in a manner that is held to be guaranteed in the Dead Space universe – the species will seek out resources, become strapped for power and supplies as their massive civilization grows and grows, and turn to any desperate attempt to gain more sustaining power. From here, the Marker will fulfil that role, as the alien artifact that first uplifted this species will then begin to provide them with infinite amounts of electrical output. The species will be influenced by the Marker to build copies, with the end result being the ultimate Necromorph outbreak and formation of a Brethren Moon, which will proceed to consume the entire victim race along with its awakened siblings.

In this context, not only are these Brethren Moons ancient, godlike, and possessed of a perfect batting average for wiping the slate clean whenever they want to, but in fact all of human history has been nothing more than a tangential state of affairs as the Brethren Moons have been waiting for our species to grow to a suitable size for “harvest”. The entire plot of the Dead Space games was in fact premediated by these cosmic monstrosities, along with all of humanity’s development. The revelation that the Moons are not just unstoppable by sheer power, but unstoppable in terms of holding all the chips from the beginning, is suitable grounds for a character to have a mental breakdown. Likewise, the existence of multiple Moons suggests the deaths of many species going back untold millions or billions of years. Once the Moons are awakened, the doom of humanity is sealed, as illustrated in the third game’s final DLC. Not unlike how in Lovecraft’s own works, the goal of the heroes is not to defeat great monstrosities like Cthulhu or Azathoth, but delay their attentions towards Earth, so too does Isaac Clarke learn too late that the time to have stopped the Brethren Moons has come and passed.

“Dead Space”

Though the title of Dead Space is itself just a basic pun, within the universe of the games it also acts a distinct label. As humanity spread throughout the galaxy in search of resources, they found that every inch of habitable space was in fact devoid of life. It was “dead space”. Though the implications existed as far back as the first game, it was not until the finale that the full reason behind this was revealed. All of space had been scoured clean of life by the predations of the Brethren Moons over million-year cycles. It provides context to the gloomy, lonesome feel that hangs over the rest of the series, and further solidifies the sense of hopelessness and insignificance that are trademarks of the Cosmic Horror genre. Humanity finds itself having been raised from the start in a galactic farm for terrifying alien beings, and it is only at the moment that they learn this that they also learn there is nothing they can do to avoid becoming a part of this cycle.

The Incomprehensible

Another aspect of Dead Space’s storyline that gains a new dimension is the consistent hallucinations and madness experienced by its various characters. At first, these breakdowns might be viewed as just being some manner of psychic attack by the alien Markers in the usual “madness ray” variety of explanation common in Cosmic Horror properties nowadays. Yet when we come to the revelation that all the functions of the Markers are just emanations of the minds of the Brethren Moons themselves, it becomes far more believable and terrifying. It’s possible that, rather than being some manner of directed and almost deliberate mode of attack, the insanity that afflicts humans is just the result of human brains being exposed to the thoughts of the Moons. Vastness of disparity is another common theme in the genre – that even if a human could comprehend the motives of an alien being (hunger, for example), they would not be able to comprehend the sheer scope of those motives. Rather like how humans can comprehend numbers, though numbers past a certain size remain inconceivable to standard thinking, so too could the violent, hungry thoughts of something as big as a Brethren Moon seem like reality-warping alien schizophrenia to an ignorant human mind. The fact that, in the games, it is stated that more “intelligent” humans are less susceptible to the Marker’s broadcasts could reinforce this. The size and depth of the thoughts of these Brethren Moons might be incomprehensible and alien to most, but perhaps to a scientist, the common threads of mathematics could bleed through in the form of the occult runes seen throughout of the games.

Dreams are also a recurring feature in Lovecraft’s stories, with the dreams of his Elder Gods and other outer cosmic entities bleeding with reality frequently. As the Brethren Moons are shown to possess some manner of psychic power, and certainly the ability to broadcast their brains’ electrical signals in a way that can manipulate reality and biology, it could be interpreted that humanity is almost living in the disturbing dreams of these malevolent gods. Though the hallucinations are just that – illusions – the fact is that the Moons have the power to raise up monsters from the bodies of the dead through their mere will. This “dreams-make-reality” in terms of a suitably powerful creature tilts the scaled even further from humanity’s favor, yet does a fantastic job of reinforcing Dead Space’s position as a true example of proper Cosmic Horror.

Conclusion

Cosmic Horror is not just about monsters out in the cold void of space. It is a very specific take on the sci-fi horror genre which seeks to evoke feelings of hopelessness and insignificance as a source of terror, rather than more basic fear. Dead Space, in the ultimate conclusion of its storyline and universe-building, nails this concept better than most pop-culture properties. Though the elements of monsters, insanity, and the like are there, the overall position of humanity in their relation to the Necromorphs is right in line with how a Cosmic Horror story should be executed. Combining this with the aesthetic influences from other sci-fi horror properties which stood out as paragons of the genre, Dead Space managed to – despite its flaws – present a very well-conceived package to popular audiences. It is strange then how fast Dead Space disappeared from the gaming scene at the conclusion of its run, whereas similar properties which were contemporary with it and similar in popularity were not so quickly forgotten. It’s likely that, due to the massive financial focus shifts in the gaming industry between 2011 and 2017, that Dead Space was doomed regardless of the actual quality of its products. Dead Space 3 was crippled by unpopular microtransaction practices which would not go away in the coming years, spelling a very ignominious end for a rather well-conceived IP. However, it could be said that, like the fate of its protagonist, the fate of Dead Space was something which was unavoidable, though for the more mundane existential horrors of capitalist practice rather than some cosmic doom.