| “ | The End was only the Beginning | ” |
Dead Space: Aftermath was a full-length animation feature released on January 24, 2011. Comprised of both 3D and 2D animation (It was in a similar style to Dead Space: Downfall), the film explained the truth behind the events that happened directly after the events of the first game. The setting of Aftermath was aboard a ship called the USG O'Bannon which was sent to Aegis VII to stabilize it's gravity and secretly search for the fragments of the Marker.
Summary
"Aftermath centered on the Aegis VII disaster and explored how the Government sent an unwitting crew of people to get exposed to the Marker shards. The Government was 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 was lost, the Concordance Extraction Corporation sent a ship called the USG O'Bannon to investigate. But, the corporation lost contact with the O'Bannon as well.
The EarthGov interceptor ship called the USM Abraxis portaled to and docked with the O'Bannon. Five Marines boarded the ship and saw dead and mutilated bodies. Their scanners detected four people still alive in Engineering. The Marines made their way to Engineering and met the survivors: Nickolas Kuttner, the head of security, Alejandro Borges, an engineer with a robotic arm, Nolan Stross, the chief science officer and Isabel Cho, a doctor. Kuttner killed one of the Marines after screaming something about his daughter. The Marines incapacitated them and took them to the Abraxis. The Abraxis then destroyed the O'Bannon and portaled out of the Aegis System. The four found themselves in a holding cell on the Abraxis, heading to the Sprawl, a station on a shard of Titan. The head interrogator was told by the Overseer that he had seven hours to get information from the survivors.
Kuttner was interrogated first. They used 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 entered the room with his 19-year-old cousin Noah and Omar, a Unitologist. All three of them are picked up from the Sprawl. Captain Campbell entered and explained that the crews will stabilize the gravity on Aegis VII and dismissed the engineers. Campbell explained that Kuttner's crew was to bring back the surviving pieces of the Marker which are worth millions of credits. The crew and engineers landed on Aegis VII which became dangerously unstable. While the engineers worked on the gravity stabilizer, Kuttner's crew split up. Kuttner found a shard of the Marker which had a terrible effect on him. It caused him to see a vision of his daughter. His hallucination of the crew as monsters trying to hurt her caused him to attack the engineers. He killed Noah and caused the stabilizer to malfunction and his teammates tied him up in the shuttle. He was unaware of what he did.
After giving his account, the restraints are removed. Kuttner killed several crew members before he was shot. He saw his daughter walking through an airlock. As the Marines attempted to grab him, he opened the airlock, killing himself and the Marines.
They brought in Borges who explained that the crew made it to the shuttle, but Rin, Sergenko and Omar are killed. Borges was forced to crash land the shuttle onto the O'Bannon. Aegis VII exploded seconds before the ship can portal jump. The debris caused severe damage to the portal jump drive. Borges, enraged by his cousin's death demanded to know the importance of the shard. When the Captain explained the shard's monetary value, Borges assaulted him. After Cho calmed him down, he followed the Captain's order to fix the portal jump drive.
After giving his account, the lead interrogator assured Borges that he will go home. He had Borges killed. He sent in Stross. Stross' account began after getting the shard on the ship. Stross was on the O'Bannon with his wife and son, but his duties are taking a toll on their relationship. He began to study the shard which began to affect him in the same manner as Kuttner. He saw symbols everywhere and began to obsess over the Marker. He explained to the Captain how the Marker was possibly designed by a higher power and how it took dead flesh and restructured the DNA, improving upon it. To prove this theory, he took a body from the Morgue and exposed it to the shard. The corpse transformed into a Necromorph and began killing and transforming the crew members throughout the ship. Stross ran to his living quarters and killed his wife and son, thinking that they are Necromorphs. The head interrogator, realizing that Stross can communicate with the Marker had him stored.
It was discovered that Cho was having an affair with Stross and she fell 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 had an argument and he told her to leave. After checking up on Kuttner, she and several other doctors arrived at the Morgue. They found the bodies gone and several doctors killed. One of the bodies turned into a Necromorph, causing the group to flee. She released Kuttner who killed the Necromorph. She went to Stross' living quarters and saw that he killed his wife and son. They eventually met up with Captain Campbell who was fighting the Necromorphs with the security team. The Necromorphs overwhelmed the last of the security and the Captain, Kuttner, Cho and Stross fled into the vents. They made it to Stross' lab where they met with Borges and two officers from the Bridge. Stross explained that destroying the shard could stop the Necromorphs. Borges said that throwing it into the portal drive could not only destroy it, but restart the drive. With the weapons made by Borges, they went to Engineering. The debris from the planet caused a hull breach, damaging the outer door control for Engineering. Captain Campbell sacrificed himself to seal the door manually. The four survivors battled the Necromorphs to get to the portal drive. When Stross refused to throw the shard into the drive, Cho did it. The drive restarted and the energy killed the Necromorphs.
After giving her account, Cho was informed that the Abraxis reached the Sprawl. Cho surmised that her superiors are aware of the effects of the Marker and are using those exposed as human guinea pigs. The Overseer accompanied Cho to the Sprawl and had the interrogator and his assistant killed. The Overseer offered Cho a position as the head of the project, but Cho refused after seeing what her superiors did. She was strapped to a bed where an automatic drill came into the camera which presumably lobotomized her as she was 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 watched a news report where Cho was accused of being a terrorist responsible for the Ishimura, Aegis VII colony and O'Bannon disasters. They also discussed studying Stross and a crazed man that they found weeks earlier on a shuttle, Isaac Clarke.
Necromorphs
There are several previously unseen Necromorph forms. These forms had no official names:
- Hallucination Shapes (With form of Pukers, the Pack, Fodders and Lurkers)
- Slasher (Created by Stross, causing the O'Bannon outbreak)
- Great Lurkers (Lurkers from adult humans)
- Brute (With a demonic aspect)
- Grabber (Attacked 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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