| “ | The End was only the Beginning | ” |
Dead Space: Aftermath is a full-length animation feature released on January 24, 2011. Comprised of both 3D and 2D animation (the latter in a similar style to Dead Space: Downfall) the film explains the truth behind the events that happen directly after the events of the first game. The setting of Aftermath is aboard the ship USG O'Bannon which is sent to Aegis VII to stabilize its gravity and secretely search for fragments of the Marker.
Summary
"Aftermath centers on the Aegis VII disaster and explores how the Government sends an unwitting crew of people to get exposed to Marker shards. The Government is secretly trying to produce a viable "Marker blueprint" carrier no matter the costs"[2]
Plot
| “ | The year is 2509 and not only has Earth lost contact with the Ishimura and Isaac Clarke, but now also the USG O'Bannon, the first responder ship sent to rescue them. Four crew members of the O'Bannon have survived. But what happened to the rest of the crew? What were they doing? What secrets are they keeping? All to be revealed...in the Aftermath! Dead Space: Aftermath is a fast paced, horrifying thrill ride told through the perspective of the four survivors by several renowned international directors.[3] | ” |
When contact with the USG Ishimura and the Aegis VII colony is lost, the Concordance Extraction Corporation sends the ship USG O'Bannon to investigate. But the corporation loses contact with the O'Bannon as well.
The EarthGov interceptor ship USM Abraxis portals to and docks with the O'Bannon. Five Marines board the ship and see dead mutilated bodies. Their scanners detect four people still alive in engineering. The Marines make their way to engineering and meet the survivors: Nickolas Kuttner, head of security; Alejandro Borges, an engineer with a robotic arm; Nolan Stross, chief science officer; and Isabella Cho, a doctor. Kuttner kills one of the Marines after screaming something about his daughter. The Marines incapacitate them and take them to the Abraxis. The Abraxis then destroys the O'Bannon and portals out of the Aegis system. The four find themselves in a holding cell on the Abraxis, heading to the Sprawl, a station on a shard of Titan. The head interrogator is told by the Overseer he has seven hours to get information from the survivors.
Kuttner is interrogated first. They use his fear of being burned alive to get him to cooperate. Kuttner's daughter, Vivian, was killed prior to the mission. He was in a conference room with Cho, Stross, a soldier named Rin and their leader Sergenko. Borges enters the room with his 19-year-old cousin Noah and Omar, a Unitologist. All three were picked up from the Sprawl. Captain Campbell enters and explains that crews will stabilize the gravity on Aegis VII, then dismisses the engineers. Campbell explains that Kuttner's crew are to bring back surviving pieces of the Marker, which are worth millions of credits. The crew and engineers land on Aegis VII, which has become dangerously unstable. While the engineers work on the gravity stabilizer, Kuttner's crew splits up. Kuttner finds a shard of the Marker which has a terrible effect on him. It causes him to see a vision of his daughter. His hallucination of the crew as monsters trying to hurt her causes him to attack the engineers. He kills Noah and causes the stabilizer to malfunction, and his teammates tie him up in the shuttle. He is unaware of what he has done.
After giving his account, the restraints are removed. Kuttner kills several crew members before he is shot. He sees his daughter walk through an airlock. As the Marines attempt to grab him, he opens the airlock, killing himself and the Marines.
They bring in Borges, who explains the crew made it to the shuttle, but Rin, Sergenko and Omar were killed. Borges was forced to crash-land the shuttle onto the O'Bannon. Aegis VII explodes seconds before the ship can portal-jump. The debris causes severe damage to the portal jump drive. Borges, enraged by his cousin's death, demands to know the importance of the shard. When the captain explains the shard's monetary value, Borges assaults him. After Cho calms him down, he follows the captain's order to fix the portal jump drive.
After giving his account, the lead interrogator assures Borges he will go home. He has Borges killed. He sends in Stross. Stross' account begins after getting the shard on the ship. Stross was on the O'Bannon with his wife and son, but his duties were taking a toll on their relationship. He begins to study the shard, which begins to affect him in the same manner as Kuttner. He sees symbols everywhere and begins to obsess over the Marker. He explains to the captain how the Marker was possibly designed by a higher power; and how it takes dead flesh and restructures the DNA, improving upon it. To prove this theory, he takes a body from the morgue and exposes it to the shard. The corpse transforms into a Necromorph and begins killing and transforming crew members throughout the ship. Stross runs to his living quarters and kills his wife and son, thinking they are Necromorphs. The head interrogator, realizing that Stross can communicate with the Marker, has him stored.
It is discovered that Cho was having an affair with Stross, and she had fallen in love with him. She noticed changes in him after he began to study the shard. After having sex with him in the lab, they have an argument and he tells her to leave. After checking up on Kuttner, she and several other doctors arrive at the morgue. They find the bodies gone and several doctors killed. One of the bodies turns into a Necromorph, causing the group to flee. She releases Kuttner who kills the Necromorph. She goes to Stross' living quarters, and see he killed his wife and son. They eventually meet up with Captain Campbell, who is fighting the Necromorphs with the security team. The Necromorphs overwhelm the last of the security, and the Captain, Kuttner, Cho and Stross flee into the vents. They make it to Stross' lab, where they meet with Borges, and two officers from the bridge. Stross explains that destroying the shard could stop the Necromorphs. Borges says that throwing it into the portal drive could not only destroy it, but restart the drive. With weapons made by Borges, they head to engineering. Debris from the planet causes a hull breach, damaging the outer door control for engineering. Captain Campbell sacrifices himself to seal the door manually. The four survivors battle the Necromorphs to get to the portal drive. When Stross refuses to throw the shard into the drive, Cho does it. The drive starts and the energy kills the Necromorphs.
After giving her account, Cho is informed that the Abraxis has reached the Sprawl. Cho surmises that her superiors are aware of the effects of the Marker and are using those exposed as human guinea pigs. The Overseer accompanies Cho to the Sprawl and has the interrogator and his assistant killed. The Overseer offers Cho a position as head of the project, but Cho refuses after seeing what her superiors have done. She is strapped to a bed where an automatic drill comes into the camera, which presumably lobotomizes her, as she is seen in later footage with a touch of blood in the center of her forehead and a vacant expression on her face.
The Overseer and his assistant watch a news report where Cho is accused of being a terrorist responsible for the Ishimura, Aegis VII colony and O'Bannon disasters. They also discuss studying Stross, and a crazed man they found weeks earlier on a shuttle, Isaac Clarke .
Necromorphs
There are several previously unseen Necromorph forms, these forms have no official names:
- Hallucination Shapes (with form of Pukers, Packs, Wasters, Lurkers, etc.)
- Slasher (created by Stross, causing the O'Bannon outbreak)
- Great Lurkers (Lurkers from adult humans)
- Brute (with a demonic aspect)
- Grabber (attack with acid bile)
- Feeder (with a demonic aspect)
- NecroOgre (a giant Necromorph)
- Tentacles (possibly from the corruption, or another Necromorph)
Cast and Characters
- Christopher Judge as Nickolas Kuttner
- Ricardo Chavira as Alejandro Borges
- Gwendoline Yeo as Dr. Isabel Cho
- Curt Cornelius as Dr. Nolan Stross
- Graham McTavish as Capt. Caleb Campbell
- Peter Woodward as Lead Interrogator
- Kari Wahlgren as Rin/Sandra Burns
- Yorgo Constantine as Commander Sergenko
- Christine Lakin as First Officer Leslie Pallas
- Jesse Head as Noah Pawling
- Sunil Malhotra as Omar Nayim
- H. Richard Greene asThe Overseer
- Maggie Disa as Vivian Kuttner
- Charlotte Cornwell as Interrogator #2
- Erin Fitzgerald as Alexis Stross
- Mark Engelhardt as Lt. Marcus/Marine #4
- Eric Visbit as Marine Colonel
- Mark Wilson as Marine #1
- Travis Clark as Marine #2/Sprawl Control
- David Wilcox as Marine #3/Ensign Voigt
- Kim Mai Guest as Lana
- Rick Cramer as Dr. Foster Edgars
- Clarissa Jacobson as Bridge Officer
- Lynanne Zager as Computer Voice/Reporter
Trivia
- The movie uses two different animation styles: 3D cel-shaded animation, and traditional hand-drawn animation as in Dead Space: Downfall. Like the Dante's Inferno animated film (Also made by EA and Visceral Games), several different styles of cell shaded animation are used, giving a different look to each flashback.
- In Dead Space: Salvage the captain of the USM Victory briefly mentions the USG O'Bannon (if not by name) and its mission parameters: "We've dispatched a team to Aegis VII. The disaster almost ripped the core in half, so they're attempting to stabilize while searching for Marker evidence."
- Like Dead Space: Downfall, the song Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star plays at the end of the movie.
- Marines are using a weapon that appears nowhere else in the Dead Space universe (view Unknown Rifle).
- Marines wielding this weapon appear to have an "ALT9 CHALLENGERS" insignia with a Jolly Roger underneath.
- There is inconsistency with ranking of the Abraxis Marines. Colonel, mentioned by the radio operator, has 4 brow plate stripes on the helmet in the first scene and only two in the next. It is also strange that a colonel leads a fireteam instead of a sergeant.
- In the scene where the crew is sitting in the shuttle about to drop down to Aegis VII to install the gravity stabilizers, Engineer Noah Pawling is seen playing the PlayStation Portable version of Dante's Inferno, referred to by Rin as a "Hologame". Later in Alejandro Borges re-telling of the events on Aegis VII, Pawling can be seen playing the game again. Dante's Inferno is another game by Visceral Games and also had animated film with the art style shifting. Noah even mentions the movie, stating it was better than the game.
- In Dr. Stross' perspective as he is speaking with the captain of the USG O'Bannon about the Red Marker shard, the captain can be seen drinking Kirkwalls Scotch Whiskey. This could be a reference to another game published by EA, Dragon Age II.
- Isaac Clarke and his destruction of the Ishimura was mentioned a few times in the movie, but his actual name appeared twice. Once at the briefing, Rin refers to a man named Clarke that dropped a Continent on the Marker, and again at the end.
- The cover of Aftermath is a reference to "Cross my heart and hope to die, Stick a needle in your eye." This is what Nicole says to Isaac when he crawls into the machine with the needle. The needle draws out the Marker codes, which is why the Marker is in the place of the needle.
- The name "USG O'Bannon" is most likely a tribute to the late screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, of "Alien" (1979) fame.
- At the ending scene of the film are shown some cryoestatis modules (presumably with all the survivors that have come in direct contact with the Marker and are being sent to The Sprawl), one of them is labeled "Clarke, Isaac". Others have the names "JaeWook, Park" and "Darron, Norris". The first name corresponds to the visual effects supervisor of the film, the second one is of an unknown person.
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