The reason why the psychic influence of the Marker seems so contradictory is because there are, in fact, two distinctly different entities present. There is the Marker's Necromorphic Hive Mind, which wants to spread the Necromorph infection, and then there is what was placed there by the precursors, which wants to contain the Necromorphs. The Hive Mind psychic influence tends to be basic but broad- it makes everyone in the radius suicidal and violently psychotic, so that there are more dead bodies. The psychic influence from the seal is much more complex but narrow- it can only affect one or two people at a time, and it gives them complex hallucinations of dead loved ones that give them advice or guidance.
The real problem arises from the fact that copies of the Marker were made- imperfect, man-made copies that didn't understand the fundamental makeup of the combined artifact, and thus recreated both the original Marker and the additional seals in unison, as a single piece. This has caused the two psychic entities to be partially merged, despite their diametrically opposed natures, and thus, essentially, schizophrenic. While the Marker/Seal combination in Dead Space 1 was relatively consistent, presumably because it was a fairly high quality copy, the Titan Marker was much more confused, presumably because it was more poorly made.
- This is interesting, but I don't like the direction it's headed, what with the seeming implication that the "Invited" aliens are just misunderstood. Either way, they still result in the deaths of a lot of people, including BABIES AND CHILDREN, and also make us look freakish and go batshit-insane. I think that's reason enough to go on killing them.
- I doubt that Markers have things like Ego, just desire. I also doubt that age factors into the equation, here. It's possible that, assuming the Markers can be affected by the environment they were created in, the Yellow Marker (the Site 12 one) was simply made to be an absolute sociopath by the cruel Earth Government, and learned early on that the only way to avoid being used for the rest of time as an energy source was to manipulate the scientists into giving it control.
- Not true. Instead, they're all working to free the post-convergence Necromorph that created the black marker millions of years ago, to finish its own convergence.
- That... That just might work!
- However, the Implacable Man makes an appearance when you first let the Necromorphs swarm the government sector. If you look, you'll see him. How else would an army of Necromorphs be able to swarm over 200 heavily armed men so quickly? One of them is literally unkillable! However, this is still likely. However, it is possible that the Hive Mind in Dead Space was malformed or a mutant, due to the fact that the Red Marker was a failed experiment.
- It is possible that Convergence is what creates the hive mind, and then the Marker goes dormant to control it. It would explain why the Site 12 Marker behaves differently than the black or red markers: the older ones have achieved convergence and are now content on being dormant, while the "young" one has yet to converge.
- Not exactly true. Hive minds are just very, very large Necromorphs made of several thousand bodies. In 3, you can see its close relatives (called Nexuses), which only count as a boss fight. The reality is much, much worse: Convergence makes a Necromorph the size of a goddamn moon, with billions of bodies consumed, and the only known example was interrupted before it could finish.
- Except that if you let her get too close, she mind rapes you and makes you kill yourself. It's far more likely that she was preparing Isaac for a direct assault on his mind by the Marker, seeing as how the hordes of Necromorphs weren't doing a very good job of killing him.
- Then again it's entirely possible that the next game will give Isaac a breather and create a new main character.
- More likely Ellie will probably be a Co-op player option, much like how Sheva pairs up with Chris in Resident Evil 5. They've already taken a page from Left 4 Dead with the multiplayer, it's not entirely out of the question that co-op will be an option.
- Very, very close, but with the characters reversed. At the start, Isaac is more concerned with keeping his head down and surviving, while Ellie is the one working to end the threat of the markers for good. Isaac is coerced by EarthGov to stop the markers, but ultimately decides to go in order to rescue Ellie from the suicide mission she jumped into.
- For the Co-Op multiplayer, Ellie is still an NPC, while the second player is a newcomer named John Carver, a former EarthGov soldier.
- I've always figured that the Necromorphs are actually slaves to the Markers, and want to be free. If a marker is unable to control Necromorphs, like when the Red Marker was removed from its pedestal, they form a Hive Mind to have control over themselves. The reason why the Red Marker wanted Isaac to return it to its pedestal was so that it could suppress the Hive Mind and gain control over the remainder. It never got the chance to betray Isaac on account of Kendra removing it, and couldn't do anything more on account of being blown up.
- The problem with the theory of good markers and bad markers is that the Red Marker on Aegis VII is the cause of all of this. Remember, in the first game they talk about the government experimenting with a marker and things going horribly wrong, leading to the complete abandonment of the planet. The Red Marker failed, drove hordes of people insane and created the first Necromorphs (that we know of). No different from the mammoth marker in DS2.
- The Black Marker on Earth seems to be of a mixed bag as well according to the novel Martyr. The Black Marker also drives people insane who get in its sphere of influence and also is responsible for a smaller Necromorph outbreak decades before the first experiments on Aegis VII. However it also created a hallucination in form of an old witch causing peasants to destroy a potential Necromorph outbreak years before Altman finds it. So we don't know how close the red markers are to the black one in terms of objectives.
- The Markers are physical representations of heuristic algorithms. They transmit a signal that causes either mass insanity or visions to cause their replication. The Marker signal causes Necromorphs. The Markers are able to infiltrate the human mind with incredible skill. As one scientist put it, the Markers WANT to be duplicated, and subtly manipulated those around them into doing so. Why? Because a group of intelligent machines, after purging their sector of the galaxy of the "fleshies" decided to make a way to keep them from ever being a threat again. They created the marker, a device that would decimate life forms, yet would inevitably cause those life forms to duplicate them. Convergence events occur when so many bodies reach the Marker that it sends a signal. If the signal is strong enough, the creators of the Marker come to wipe out the "fleshies". And why must the creators of the Marker die? Because the Marker has the same weakness as their creators.
- Then again, a proboscis to the forehead is the standard infection tactic used by Infectors. Franco's no more likely to be the Ubermorph than any other person.
- While the hunter was created via necrotic tissue being placed in the brain of a still living victim, it was also implied that this isn't normally possible and only worked because of careful medical intervention by Dr. Mercer. Besides that, pretty sure the slasher blade through the heart probably killed Franco before the Infector got him. Also, the face tentacles are actually a clue that Franco was a secret Unitologist. If you pay attention when you reach the Unitology church, you'll notice that all the slashers are dressed in Unitology clergy robes and have tentacles coming out of their faces. They're also tougher and more aggressive. Religious zealots just make better zombies, I guess.
- Even in death, the clergy make that hand gesture imitating the Marker - their hands remain fixed that way even if you pick them up with kinesis and bounce them around. (...I was bored, okay?) Since the entire Unitology religion is implied to be the result of the Marker's influence, I would wager that believers are more susceptible to being controlled by it, hence the mass suicides - more material for Necromorphs, more material for Convergence. Maybe that extends to the way their tissue warps as well?
- If he is, then how do you explain the fact that we kill him before we even reach marker? Or you haven't noticed that necromorph that had same skin color, a flashlight on the shoulder and same clothes, not to mention melted face had attacked you in living quarters? Although it is possible that since we kill him even after that, (reusing same skin maybe?) he eventually turned into Uber? Brrr...
- Then again, a proboscis to the forehead is the standard infection tactic used by Infectors. Franco's no more likely to be the Ubermorph than any other person.
- Howard (The Watchman for the solar array) actually committed suicide, the Necromorphs didn't get him. Doesn't really disprove the theory, though.
- However, in Martyr, Altman describes seeing a Necromorphed fish, which was currently attacking other fish. It's possible that the infestation targets only ones that could prove useful to it. In Martyr, fish were the only lifeform available, and would be almost a non-threat to any kind of larger fish. However when you reach the solar array, the birds would be left alone because they are useless to the Necromorphs; why infect a small bird when there are plenty humans around ripe for the taking? It's not like they need to kill them, since when the growth reaches their area they'll just suffocate.
- Think about it: the Marker causes the Necromorph phenomenon, causing dead organic material in its vicinity to change into Necromorphs. A Convergence event occurs when a large number of Necromorphs come in contact with the Marker. Consider this: once enough organic material has been gathered around the Marker, couldn't it just reconfigure all of that organic material into the beginnings of a terraforming system, reconfiguring the atmosphere, biosphere, and ecospere in order to sustain its original creators? We saw this in Dead Space 1: on the Ishimura, Necromorphs adapted to poison the air aboard to make it breathable. The organic material on the walls is called, in Dead Space 1, a habitat changer. The Markers are a Genesis device for beings so alien that their home environment is one that humans cannot possibly exist in!
- It'd be a brilliant parallel to Isaac himself: He's just an engineer forced to fight harder than any soldier, whereas the Necromorph threat, which looks like some horrific genocidal bio-weapon, is really just a terraforming tool.
- But why are the Necromorphs the result? If they're essentially just meat to by malformed, why not just drive everyone batshit-insane and make them go to the Marker via airborne virus, released by the Marker. If the dead species were intelligent enough to make the Markers, why couldn't they just do this?
- Slave Labor. In both instances of Necromorph outbreaks, we've only seen what would amount to be a vanguard army. The Wheezers seem to be the first signs of an actual, practical application of corpses, but still a practical one, since there's no other reason to have them poison the air, given that necromorphs do a fine job of killing without it, and there's no actual need for them to breathe. The Marker is designed to cause havoc and create a slave labor force, making life easy for it's creators, and hell for anyone else.
- Turns out, it was just as much of a doom for their civilization as it almost was for us.
- The Ubermorph only shows up once a Convergence event is triggered, if the game is to be believed, and as Marker-Nicole states, Convergence is what the Markers were made for. If the Marker's operating at full capacity and is able to bring forth Convergence, that means it's able to fully complete the Necromorph transformation process- turning Infected into Ubermorphs instead of the 'incomplete' Slashers the Ubermorphs resemble. The Markers might be the alien race's only way of saving their civilization- by re-shaping new generations into more of their own. (All credit for the theory goes to the Dead Space wiki)
- On that note, the similarity between the Ubermorph and the first game's Hunter may be more than mere coincidence. Doctor Mercer, like everybody else, was being driven mad by the Red Marker; but whereas Kyne was obsessed with studying the Marker itself, Mercer was obsessed with the Necromorphs. Basing it off the theory that the Red Marker wasn't ready/capable of making an Ubermorph, it may have been trying to complete the process piecemeal through Mercer; his attempts to build a better Necromorph may have been a manifestation of the Marker's will to build an improvised Ubermorph.
- Once again, the Ubermorph actually shows up before the Convergence, it's in the swarm of Necromorphs overrunning the soldiers, and actually, there isn't anything to suggest that Convergence had been achieved. Heading towards, yes, but never fully realized; it's strongly implied that that's why the Marker needed Isaac.
- Alternate theory: The Ubermorph was some of the biomass sludge aboard the Ishimura; it's mentioned that it reanimates when near a Marker signal; but it would seem odd that somehow it neatly sorted itself back into slashers/leapers/etc. When the sludge was reanimated by the Marker, it built up a construct that, while possessing a roughly human shape, was significantly less human than most other Necros.
- Ooh I like that theory; the Ubermorph is infact the remains of the Hunter from the first game, remade by only a particular bit that remained...maybe one the many limbs that Isaac shot off. Shame that the last chapters got cut making the end such a mess.
- The Ubermorph doesn't show up until one chapter after Nolan Stross dies because it was formed from his infected corpse. The Ubermorph is more powerful and looks more alien than a normal Necromorph because the data and blueprints the Marker imprinted into Stross's mind enabled the infection to transform him into a more "pure" form of alien DNA encoded into the Marker. This is why the Marker doesn't seem to care where or how Isaac dies and continually sends Necromorphs after him the whole game - once he's dead, an Infector will find and transform him into an Ubermorph, and he'll eventually make his way to the Marker and initiate Convergence. (full credit to the Dead Space Wiki for this theory)
- This is also why the Ubermorph disappears suddenly in the final chapter. The Marker's goal is to absorb all its makers - Since the Ubermorph is really Stross, once it got close enough to the Marker is was absorbed in preparation for the convergence event.
- From what one can tell from reading Dead Space Martyr and some of the other background material, it seems that the Black Marker was the original Marker and the only genuine alien Marker, the only one that wasn't a replica. And while the Black Marker's ultimate fate- sunken deep within the ocean- is revealed in Martyr, it's never explained what happened to it next. EarthGov might still be trying to find a way to recover it and/or reactivate it. Seeing as Isaac and Stross, the only individuals who came into contact with a Marker, are no longer under EarthGov's control, EarthGov might go back to Earth and recover the Black Marker, if they don't have it already, and in so doing find another way to create Marker replicas.
- Sort of confirmed. The Final Boss is the creature that created the Black Marker and launched it into space.
- Nanomachines build whatever item you buy on the spot from an internal stockpile of raw material. This explains all the blueprints you find, all the store needs are instructions and it can build virtually anything you need, you only need to pay for the raw material. When you sell or store items the shop breaks them down for easier storage and pays for the raw material or credits you for the stored item so you can get it rebuilt at any other store for no cost. And when you change your suit, the old one is broken down and the new suit is literally crafted right onto Isaac's body, explaining the swiftness of the change and the bright light and noise during the process.
- It's actually stated in one of the logs that the research in the Markers was in hopes of tapping into the alien technology in order to use it to solve Earth's resource problems. With the CEC going out of business and Planet Cracking no longer being lucrative, this has forced the government to step up the project considerably. The Markers produce their signal without any visible power source. A device that emits power just by existing could, if harnessed, supply limitless energy for the entire world!
- Confirmed. That's what they were planning to do with them, but it's actually just a manipulation by the Markers for them to spread them around the galaxy to prepare mankind for an easier convergence.
- It had some of that goop in storage for one reason or another and proximity to the Marker in the Ishimura reanimated what Necromorphs they were, and as such, the soldiers in the Valor had more to contend with than just a single Slasher. Logs found in the Ishimura do state that something weird happened with the goop they found when they were cleaning it up and it was speculated to be because of signals from the Marker.
Pay close attention to what the Nicole apparition (which is basically the Marker's avatar) says during one hallucination: "I'm afraid, Isaac. I don't want to die. But it's the only way out." This is never elaborated on again, but what if it really meant that the only reason the Marker went through its complicated "befriend-and-then-betray-Isaac" because that was the only way Isaac could muster the strength to destroy the Red Marker?
- If that's the case then why would Red infect Isaac's brain? And later drove bunch of people crazy... again? If Earth Gov managed to create Red marker, it must mean that they were also infulenced by original right? So how could they go wrong? Unless the reason was in material.
- The reason is not in the material, but even with the original Marker controlling the Earth Gov people who made the Red Marker, it is reasonable to think that the first time a Marker is made it would be flawed. The Red Marker was a prototype, which is why it was dumped on Aegis VII, and subsequent Markers were better built because the engineers learned from mistakes.
- While conducting research on the various test subjects, the team members on the Sprawl found a second, less complex sequence of codes in Isaac's head. The construction that resulted look and felt exactly like foam, and did nothing when anyone else put it on. One clueless lab janitor happened to find it laying around, with a tag saying "Source: Subject Four (Isaac Clarke)", assumed it was his, and loaded it into the shop for Isaac to retrieve later. The Marker gave Isaac such a powerful and uniquely specific tool to ensure he reached the Marker alive.
- You, sir, just made my day.
- Right "horribly killed" like the game hasn't already decided that that's the only way Isaac can ever go out.
- He still is the main character, but he did heroically sacrifice himself (oh, and Carver did too) to kill a post-convergence Necromorph. Maybe...
- It's actually mentioned in Dead Space in one of the logs that Unitology is widespread, even into the political sector, so this isn't that far-fetched.
- Some of it later, maybe, but some graffiti is obviously made by others. Most instances are pretty logical; a child hiding after seeing her mother transform might write "Mommy is a monster", and "What would you give up for what you love" could be written by someone who decided against escaping on a shuttle to rescuing his loved ones. Even the Unitology graffiti isn't too implausible, as they're written in places filled with Unitologists, and in one case you can see the woman who committed suicide after writing some.
- The only place Isaac revisits is the mall, and I don't recall any graffiti there the second time around. He does visit two tenement blocks and the second one is filled with graffiti, but they're different residential areas, and the second one was close to the church and only Unitologists lived there, so the the graffiti makes sense. That said, he clearly is hallucinating at least some of it. There's graffiti all over the inside of the USM Valor in the first game which couldn't have been real (unless the captain was an undisciplined loon and allowed his soldiers to write on the walls), but most of the graffiti in the games are found in locations where Unitologists were present and going crazy and so was probably real.
- The only odd thing that can back it up is the fact that some of the graffiti is backwards. Like in a mirror, or even upside down.
- Fun idea, but not remotely plausible. Humanity found the local Mass Relay by breaking open Charon, Pluto's moon. Given how prevalent planetcracking is, CEC likely would have already cracked open Pluto and its moon, and found nothing.
- Pluto doesn't have much in the way of resources, being mostly ice and such. It's also pretty small, about the size of five Ishimuras, so breaking it open wouldn't yield much anyway, as well as completely destroying it. The moons, however, could just be munched up like a twix, a nice little treat. One criticism of the theory, though, Mass Effect's time-line takes place a little before that of Dead Space, doesn't it? If that's true, then the whole theory falls apart, as Mass Effect technology came to the fore on a manned expedition to Mars, and that's the basis for all space travel, so unless there was a complete global disintegration of Mass Effect technology and mass-forgetting of how it works, the theory makes no sense.
- You're missing the best part of Markers as opposed to Mass Relays - they can indoctrinate in a much more subtle and effective manner. They can literally make the Human Resources make the devices that render them into reaper jelly. Dead Space takes place 50,000 years after the Bad Ending of Mass Effect 3, where the Reapers decided that Shepard got too damned close to wiping them out, and from that point on chose not to give their livestock any assistance whatsoever. Instead, markers were seeded on life-bearing worlds. When species develop enough to uncover their planet's marker, they form Unitologist-analogue "churches" and fuse themselves into the resulting Reaper. Where the Mass Effect galaxy averted "Apes or Angels" via a combination of dead end Mass Relay technology and Citadel conservatism, the Dead Space galaxy lacks alien civilizations altogether - they're all either primitive or have undergone Convergence. The only reason humanity is a spacefaring species is because Altman sank the Black Marker in the Carribean, rather than let the indoctrinated use it to create a Convergence event.
- Pluto doesn't have much in the way of resources, being mostly ice and such. It's also pretty small, about the size of five Ishimuras, so breaking it open wouldn't yield much anyway, as well as completely destroying it. The moons, however, could just be munched up like a twix, a nice little treat. One criticism of the theory, though, Mass Effect's time-line takes place a little before that of Dead Space, doesn't it? If that's true, then the whole theory falls apart, as Mass Effect technology came to the fore on a manned expedition to Mars, and that's the basis for all space travel, so unless there was a complete global disintegration of Mass Effect technology and mass-forgetting of how it works, the theory makes no sense.
- How about instead of being reaper larvae, The end result is the very thing the reapers are trying to advert? The reapers try to prevent an Artificial Intelligence from wiping out life from the galaxy entirely, who says the Artificial intelligence can't be organic like the Brethren Moons? They wipe out all organic life from a galaxy and integrate it within themselves and move on, while Reapers leave behind organic traces to be culled in the future. It's like comparing a wild creature that would overhunt an area for easy prey, and a hunter that would allow some animals around to propagate the next generation, like Alien vs. Predator. A cool crossover would be if the reapers caught the Brethren moons with their hands in the milky way cookie jar, the borglike reapers versus the resident evil-esqe Necromorphs.
- His incredible survivability can be attributed to his Badass Normal factor and Heroic Willpower, and being a CEC Engineer would mean he would have to stay in at least adequate shape. He didn't lose any muscle tone because he was in stasis for most of the three years, only being taken out for a few hours at most for sessions.
- Not sure about being in Stasis so much, given that you can see Stross being talked to on a log in the hospital.
- He might be, but that brings up why the soldiers aboard the Valor didn't survive. If he was, he'd be about on par with an average human surviving the games, since everyone else would be augmented to similar levels to his, so everyone would still be mostly equal.
- Isaac was lucky. I have a guess (that isn't that wild) that the Necromorphs' greatest weapon is surprise. The Necromorph's original infestation of the Ishimura was due to the fact that none of the crew survived their first contact with the Necromorphs. Even if they did manage to survive, the humans wouldn't have any really effective weapons to kill the Necromorphs with. Between a military grade weapon (Pulse Rifle) or a mining tool, which would you use? Probably the military grade weapon, since that is what you would normally use to kill. The crewmen never though of mining equipment as weapons, when in fact that they are possibly the most effective weapon against them. Also, the first weapon that Isaac gets? The Plasma Cutter, something just as efficient at cutting flesh as it is frozen rock.
- This is proven if you've watched Downfall. The P-sec guards unloaded several magazines into a slasher, but all it took for the big spiritual man was one slice with a plasma saw. Necromorphs are much more resistant to puncture wounds since they lack working internal organs. The entire gimmick of the first game was to break out of the "shoot them in the head" mold of zombie games, Issac was only able to survive because the situation unintentionally forced him to learn about their weakness (he has a cutter, not a gun) while everyone else fled for the security forces aboard their ships, resulting in a less-than-spectacular result (you see the trained guard shoot something, do no damage and get torn apart. A sane man would run the hell away instead of picking up an unwieldy saw and try to go sunday butcher on it).
- Isaac was lucky. I have a guess (that isn't that wild) that the Necromorphs' greatest weapon is surprise. The Necromorph's original infestation of the Ishimura was due to the fact that none of the crew survived their first contact with the Necromorphs. Even if they did manage to survive, the humans wouldn't have any really effective weapons to kill the Necromorphs with. Between a military grade weapon (Pulse Rifle) or a mining tool, which would you use? Probably the military grade weapon, since that is what you would normally use to kill. The crewmen never though of mining equipment as weapons, when in fact that they are possibly the most effective weapon against them. Also, the first weapon that Isaac gets? The Plasma Cutter, something just as efficient at cutting flesh as it is frozen rock.
- Here's a possibility on why he didn't lose muscle mass. Extended exercise can be very tiring. The people working on Isaac so that he could make the Black Marker probably wanted him to be as stressed as possible. Being exhausted can be very stressful in certain situations. Constantly pushing Isaac's body to its limit combined with whatever they were doing to him before is probably why he was physically fit enough to stomp off a corpse's limbs. And like the Troper above stated, there is the possibility of Stasis beds.
- Such a thing is possible. Lexine Murdoch from Extraction is immune, and she's been targeted before by those who wish to study her. Isaac obviously isn't immune, but his Heroic Willpower gives him better resistance from going insane, like Stross did. We don't know if it's that way for Elie, since she never was in close proximity with a Marker that wasn't currently exploding.
- If the Marker can stop people from dying, and thus have some control over their actions, why not tell them to go straight to the nearest Infector and take part in Glorious Convergence? And, as well as that, why continue with the Necromorphs if it could control them, and doesn't want them to die? The Necromorphs and people who aren't insane are the only threats they would face, and removing the former would result in the eventual death of the latter from the lack of insane people dying and the lesser numbers of sane people.
You got to admit, this is a perfect explanation.
- Also, because of this, it is impossible for Isaac to argue against orders. Why else would he be tasked to fix the entire ship nearly singlehandedly?
- Pretty unlikely, as Mercer was converted into a necromorph and killed by Isaac, the Hunter was burnt to a crisp, to the point of being unable to regenerate, and the Hive Mind was atomized when the giant chunk of Aegis VII fell on it and the Red Marker.
- Isaac activates his powerful electromagnetic boots to give some extra force to his stomps
From what I can see, the only way to stop the Necromorphs is with an equally evil force that far outnumbers the Necromorphs and the Brethen Moons. If the marker can mess with organic minds, then the only solution is to pray for a crossover, set aside our differences with the Reapers and wait until they inevitably defeat the Necromorphs with their vast supply of indoctrinated troops. If you pit an army of giant space squid against them how can they win? Then, with luck, the Reapers will take pity on the decimated population and forget about the harvest. Honestly I don't think we stand a chance unless the Reapers show up and deem the Necromorphs more threatening than other organic life.
- One problem, the reapers are commonly made-up of dead bodies, which means that many reapers like husks, cannibals, and scions, are not out of the realm of being mutated by the moons. However, there is the geth, who would stand up to save their masters, and are completely non-organic and thus immune to manipulations of the Moons. Not to mention that the Geth are pretty much a similar Hive mind system, The Geth are simply more qualified in defeating the Moons than the Reapers.
- What? They were all "not in my backyard," and stuff, just because you were not a necromorph? That is why much of the living decided to get killed else, if the ushers have that much of an attitude with them coming in. Sheesh.