WARNING: Spoilers Off applies to Nightmare Fuel pages. You Have Been Warned!
"That's No Moon" indeed...
Taking place on a frozen planet, it's not that hard for The Thing (1982) to come to mind as well, what with all the paranoia...- Isaac and John Carver investigating an abandoned ship, filled to the brim with coffins. Isaac mentions earlier how it looks like a funeral and Carver points out that the deaths were executions based on where the blood splattered. And then, as if on cue, dozens of Necromorphs attack.
- The Necromorphs of the abandoned flotilla all by themselves. 200 years of waiting around doing nothing does interesting things to a Necromorph's biology and appearance, as they're more mummies than zombies by this point. Their dried-up and often-missing flesh somehow makes them even more revolting than the fresh-meat Necromorphs you deal with in the previous games.
- This gives the entire game a more unnerving aspect than in previous games. In the first game, you were arriving at the tail end of a Necromorph outbreak, which was 90-95% done. In the second, you were there near the very beginning and saw the full horror of it. This time, however, you're entering places long dead with the Necromorphs waking up. Not to claim the crew of a ship or a space station, but solely for you. No distractions, no secondary objectives, the Necromorphs are awake and aware solely to kill and assimilate you, and because they all share a hive mind, the moment that they became aware of you on one ship in the flotilla, every Necromorph in the flotilla and on the planet below started waking up.
- "Turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it off...."
- The characters think that this was the Admiral leaving a clue to stop the Markers. It's actually a command/plea from a Necromorph the size of a moon, speaking through the Markers right into the Admiral's head.
- The Snow Beast death scene for Isaac/Carver. To elaborate - the Snow Beast launches a tentacle towards you while you're low on health, and it gruesomely spears you as it pulls you towards its mouth. Your character tries desperately to keep from being dragged in, but it doesn't last long, as their spine is destroyed as they're folded in half, backwards, as they're devoured. Truly a horrific way to go.
- Some Fridge Horror makes it worse - it's not clear if the Snow Beast is made out of multiple human corpses, or if it's a Necromorph-ized life form indigenous to Tau Volantis. If it's the latter, then not only does Isaac/Carver have to suffer the pain of a shattered spine and being crushed into something's gullet, there's also the possibility of him getting digested in the thing's stomach. It makes you hope that they swiftly expire after being swallowed up before that.
- The Infected death scene.
Nothing like Issac having a good Necromorph dinner to ruin a player's appetite. - The new Feeder enemy subtype is chock full of terror. These are Necromorphs that are formed when a person eats Necromorph flesh. Whether out of desperation or Unitologist fanaticism, it doesn't matter- it's still terrifying. And disgusting.
- Here's the most terrifying thing about the Feeders: THEY AREN'T DEAD! Recordings indicate that the Feeder transformation is much more a mental one than a physical one. Eating Necromorph flesh makes your mind into that of a cannibal, and turns the person into a creature that can starve and starve, but never die of hunger. They are constantly hungry, but never die. We hear recordings made by those who succumbed to the transformation, and they were, 200 years ago, still capable of speech. But after 200 years with no food save humans and dead Necromorphs, they are completely mad with hunger beyond all possible reason. This is why they are now a Fragile Speedster enemy: their bodies are still living, but just barely on the verge of life and death.
Infected Soldier: Ackerman! Is that you?Ackerman: Oh, God...Infected Soldier: I smell you! I smell... FRESH MEAT! - One text log from a soldier mentions how not only did he know some of the Necromorphs attacking his base, but when he looked into their eyes they seemed, for a moment, to recognize him as well.Private R. Blatty: NIGHT AND DAY, IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME. THEY COME SHAMBLING OUT OF THE STORMS, TRYING TO GET IN. IT'S NOT EASY FOLLOWING ORDERS. YOU SEE FAMILIAR FACES ALL THE TIME. SOMETIMES THEY SEE YOU AND THEY LOCK EYES AND THERE'S A GLIMMER OF RECOGNITION. LIKE THEY REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL, SAFE AND WARM... AND ALIVE.
- In one of the optional missions, you end up in a room with about 5 Regenerators... Thank God none of them broke out. Until three of them appeared to ambush you as you walk Isaac out of that mission.
- The last boss. That's No Moon indeed.
- Rosetta isn't a document or key. It's an alien who was dismembered and placed in slabs. You have to find all her body parts and put them together again.
- Brute type alien Necromorphs.
- Those very same Necromorphs occasionally will start birthing baby alien Necromorphs.
- At the start of the game, a Unitologist tries to kill you by blowing himself up while screeching loudly. They do that in gameplay, too.
- Speaking of Unitologists, one kills a totally innocent woman at the the start of the game. Why? Because she didn't know where Isaac was.
- Even worse if you remember that Isaac was living there for a while, and likely befriended her at some point.
- Even if she had known and gave up the info, would that have made a difference?
- Speaking of the random killings, the Unitologist militants are indiscriminately killing every living thing to help spread the Necromorph infection.
- By far the worst is what is revealed when they activate the marker on the colony, explaining that there is a Marker research lab on every colony and world that humans inhabit... and the Unitologists are activating all of the Markers. Worse, because the Unitologists have already defeated the government and destroyed the army before anyone was aware of it, there's no one in any position to stop it. Every place that humans inhabit is undergoing a Necromorph outbreak and a Unitologist uprising at the same time, and no one is coming to save them.
- The Fodders. Just the way they walk up to you muttering unintelligible things while trying to kill you. They usually are former security forces or military men who are the first authority figures fleeing civilians would run to for help in a crisis situation like the necromorph outbreaks on the colonies. It's likely that they are chosen deliberately to be turned into these necromorphs for that very reason as them being former authority figures and unassuming almost human like appearance as a necromorph would make it easier for them to surprise any desperate people trying to run from other necromorphs.
- At one point you find a Fodder trying to use an ice axe to free itself from some ice debris. That's right, these horrible murderous monsters are smart enough to both recognise a tool, and also accurately what situation to use that tool in. What level of intelligence and planning are they actually capable of?
- From a distance the Fodder necromorphs appear human for the most part. Of course Isaac who has been fighting Necromorphs for a long while and saw the first Fodders appear would know that they are necromorphs that just look a bit human at first glance. Most civilians won't know that Fodders are necromorphs too until they run to them for help and get hacked to pieces or beaten to death by their batons. To make matters worse Fodders only identifiable necromorph trait unless you start dismembering them is their glowing yellow eyes and mouth which is harder to see if they are wearing armor or heavy clothing...which is usually the case. Most civilians won't have a chance a identifying a Fodder necromorph until its too late.
- An entire civilization is consumed in the creation of a single Brother Moon. Now, how many moons are there?
- An entire civilization on a single planet. It's implied the ones in Dead Space 3 probably never had colonies given they are an aquatic species. Humanity on the other hand, how many colonies do they have? How many aliens managed to make colonies before finding the marker and convergence happening?
- The logs in Dead Space 3 imply the opposite: Seranno believes that the aliens stretched across many star systems and had a population of trillions. His telling of it is rather chilling: "They must have been trillions strong before falling to the Markers. And perhaps that is the point. Allow a species to thrive until they are so many in number that they can no longer sustain themselves… then descend upon their worlds to feed."
- The hallucinations you see in the sidequests can be truly disturbing, and Carver's are some of the worst of the lot.
Awakened DLC
The entire DLC counts as this. The developers said that Awakened was intended from the start to hark back to the terror of the first 2 games, and even surpass it.
With 3 chapters chock full of Mind Rape, Body Horror and self-mutilation, they succeed to quite an extent. And you thought the Necromorphs were scary.
- For starters, the main menace of the game: a Necromorph-worshiping Unitologist cult, a cult hit with a final, pure dementia signal from the fallen moon right before its demise. The insanity of the cult as a result is so horrific and ungodly that even devout Unitologists think they are batshit insane. One Unitologist, who had already witnessed all the horror of the main game and maintained his religious beliefs, outright lost his faith upon witnessing the cult for himself.
- Their main religious practice is the main source of the terror. They cut off pieces of their body voluntarily as a mad symbolic offering of dead flesh to the Necromorph moons. That isn't even the worst part: they use their body parts to decorate the ship. They string up their dismembered limbs on strings like Christmas lights. At one point, you discover mini towers made up of human hands made to hold candles.
- To matters worse they replace their human hands with grafted on Necromorph limbs, fresh Necromorph limbs. Considering how most of the Necromorphs on Tau Volantis are two hundred years old this suggests that the Unitologist cult made these fresh Necromorphs to feed their insanity.
- The ending. The Brother Moons are attacking/devouring Earth now. For the first time, it appears that Isaac has outright lost.
- The lead-up to the ending: Isaac and John shock into Earth orbit, elated that they've finally returned home. They signal the planet to get in contact, but no response comes. Confused, they try radio channel after radio channel, wondering if their ship's ancient equipment might be the problem... until they switch to a channel that is broadcasting nothing but bloodcurdling screams and the sounds of tearing flesh. Then we pan to a shot of Earth, revealing Brethren Moons slowly cresting the horizon, reaching their tendrils down to the planet's surface; but this is quickly superseded by another Brother Moon that rises into view right in front of Isaac and Carver's viewport. The duo cry out in terror and lose control of their ship, marker iconography chaotically flashing on-screen before abruptly cutting to black. Cue credits.
- Not an exaggeration. Unless there is a sequel, humanity is literally done for. Even after the desperate struggle against the Necromorph scourge of the last 4 years of games, books, and movies, The Bad Guy Wins effortlessly. This really is the darkest the series has gotten.
- "They are hungry. They are coming."
- The combined moons emit a signal strong enough that it can make pretty much anyone insane, even from light years away, and even if they have overcome Marker sickness. They can move so fast that they can even outrun shockpoint drives. There is no way of escaping them. Just their active presence in the galaxy can destroy civilization. So unless there is an actual sequel or a new DLC release, it's game over. The bad guys have won. There is absolutely nothing out there that can stop them.
- Making that even worse, Isaac and Carver get hit with a massive blast of Marker signals, before a Brother Moon flies right in front of their ship. The last thing we see of them is them being just a moment before crashing into the side of one of the moons, cockpit first, full speed, with no time to get away from the impact.
- Think about just how many people or organic beings died via being killed by Necromorphs or Marker/Brother Moon induced violence over the entirety of the Dead Space universe by Dead Space Awakened. Just think about it for a second. Millions died in the Sprawl Outbreak back in Dead Space 2. Hundreds upon hundreds died in the Ishimura, and Aegis 7 back in the original Dead Space. Hundreds also died in the old Sovereign colonies on Tau Volantis. By Dead Space 3: Awakening, the death count is likely in the billions or maybe even the trillions at that point, as more and more stations and colonies are being butchered by Necromorphs, Unitologists, and Markers. The New Lunar Station was just doomed to a Necromorph outbreak at the very start the game, and it's very likely no one could stop it either, as most of the armed forces were killed (in fact, the dead soldiers are the very first Necromorphs that you see). And this isn't even getting into the other alien civilizations that were consumed and used to birth new Brother Moons....
- There is strong evidence that the reason humanity hasn't yet encountered any alien races is because everything else was consumed by the Brethren Moons. Just think about how many species could evolve in a galaxy as big as our own in the last 13 billion years. The true body count may exceed numbers we can NEVER comprehend.
- Dead Space 3 interpreted "make us whole again" as a plea from the Tau Volantis moon to finish its convergence, however the completed Brethren Moons keep chanting it. Are the Moons not in fact the final Necromorph phase? Are they themselves going to be made whole again into something larger?
- Or it could be worse - it's not just "Make us whole." It's "Make us whole again."
- The Necromorph that formed of Captain Robert Norton. For some reason, the infection didn't remove the skin of his face like it does for most of the creatures leading to some pretty horrific Uncanny Valley feelings. It's clearly Norton with the bullet hole in his forehead and everything, but the eyes don't look right and the head twitches and moves unnaturally.
- The Pack inexplicably shows up in this DLC with disturbing mutations that make them look alien in contrast to their pale forms in the second game. Considering the Pack we previously saw were human children the implications of where these Pack Necromorphs came from are unpleasant to say in the least. Either the soldiers on Tau Volantis did actually have children who were turned, the Unitologists brought these children with them for likely disturbed reasons, or these actually are alien children that were turned into Necromorphs. Every option is both disturbing and tragic.
