I thought I'd write something a little different this time. I'm a fan of survival horror and really enjoyed the first game, though not so much the second and I've not bought the third, but thanks to YouTube, I didn't miss out much.
What really interests me in games are the story, and because a source of fear is the unknown, the story in horror tends to be more intriguing. This is also a problem, as later games in the series tends to get less frightening (not shocking) as the player knows more and more of what's going on.
- SPOILERS BEGIN -
Dead Space 1 ended with a lot of questions left unanswered. Where is the original marker from? Why is the Red Marker both a source and a curse of the necromorph infection? Why did it help Isaac stop the infection while asking him to 'make us whole'?
Some questions I was left asking before and after reading the novel was if the man-made marker faulty and what of the original Black Marker? Was the original Marker also damaged by the recovery team that discovered it? Is the Marker a source of life or does it have a different purpose?
If you've been following the story, you know that the Markers are meant to spread the necromorph infection, creating a large pool of necromorphic tissue which then triggers a convergence event, combining all the dead tissue to form a Brethren Moon, the true form of the organism which will then locate the Markers within its influence and use them to search for prey.
Why then did the Nicole hallucination help Isaac, and why did the convergence event not trigger on Aegis 7? It could very well just be a ret-con, but if I were to try to make sense of it, the reason could be a lack of biological material to trigger the convergence. As logs in the various games have proven, the Marker seem to be sentient to a certain extent, able to manipulate its own creation and controlling the hallucinations on certain subjects. If so, it could have realized that there are not enough living organisms on Aegis VII and also that Isaac is a viable candidate to receive (a log states that smart people see codes and blueprints from the Marker signal, while others get noise that drives them mad) the Marker blueprints, and used the hallucinations to help Isaac escape to create more Markers to spread the infection to other, more suitable planets. It could also be that Isaac has yet to properly understand the signal fed to him (unlike in Dead Space 2 where the instructions from Nicole are clearly in favor of the Marker) and so is understanding it in reverse.
But whichever it is, the Marker is built to create a necromorph infection (whether it is by sending DNA codes in it's signal to biologists to create or its mere presence eventually generates the virus) and spread it. To aid the spread, the signal it transmit has a side effect of driving people mad, making them suicidal, as well as homocidal, creating for bodies for the virus.
What is the ultimate purpose of the Brethren Moon? If the Moon consumes all life, it eventually kills itself by depleting all food source. And why does it signal the other Moons to share in its prey? It would make more sense to keep everything for itself. Considering the facts, it is likely that there's another stage, a convergence of Moons to form something bigger, which will explain the Moons converging on a single food source. With regards to food sources, perhaps ironically, the Unitologists have gotten it right, that the Marker is indeed a source of life, but life that's to be ultimately consumed by the Moons, and if so, they are right to say that dying and forming the Moon is part of the cycle. Isaac's fighting against the necromorphs could indeed be defience of the ultimate fate of man. If so, it would likely be that the moons would awake and then sleep for millions of years until intelligent life inevitably awakens a marker which will wake them up to feed.
To answer the question on whether the Moon or the Marker came first would be impossible without further details, but considering the necromorph virus, it is quite possible that the original life-form was a virus infecting and combining dead tissue. The virus possibly gained the ability to infect its host's brain and retain intellegience, or form a hive mind that can think. Eventually, the first large organism was formed. Realizing that its home planet would eventually run out of its source of food, the creature created the Markers to either create life, or direct it and consume available organisms. Eventually, the Markers were also made to help reproduce Brethren Moons and become part of the Moons' life-cycle.
If the original organism was a virus, it would explain the need to consume all life - a quote from Agent Smith from the first Matrix film, 'I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus.'
