Dead Space 3 Ending Explained, Including Awakened

Dead Space 3 came out in February 2013, made by Visceral Games, with the story DLC Awakened following in March. It's the last chapter of Isaac Clarke's story so far. Set in 2514, three years after Dead Space 2, it takes him to the ice world of Tau Volantis, where the Markers came from, and finally explains what they're for. This page covers the whole plot, the ending and the Awakened ending, so it has full spoilers. (Dead Space 3; Dead Space 3: Awakened)

Before the story begins#

After escaping Titan, Isaac and Ellie Langford hid from both EarthGov and the Church in the Red Moon Apartments on the New Horizons Lunar Colony. Ellie ended things when Isaac refused to face what had happened to him. Meanwhile the Church of Unitology was at open war with EarthGov, and its militant arm, the Circle under Jacob Danik, was freeing Markers at sites across the colonies. (Dead Space 3)

The comic Dead Space: Liberation covers the lead-in. Sergeant John Carver lost his wife and son on Uxor, and with Ellie and Captain Robert Norton he found old Sovereign Colonies records pointing to a "master signal". Ellie went toward its source and contact was lost. (Dead Space: Liberation)

The game itself opens two centuries earlier, in 2314. On Tau Volantis the Sovereign Colonies expedition was wiped out by its own government's Scenario Five order, and General Spencer Mahad killed Private Tim Caufman to stop a device called the Codex leaving the planet. (Dead Space 3)

Luna and the Eudora#

Carver and Norton broke into Isaac's apartment and told him Ellie was missing. He agreed to come. At that moment the Circle attacked New Horizons and set off the colony's Marker. Danik caught Isaac and made him watch the Marker lab destroyed, then Isaac escaped through the falling city to the EarthGov ship USM Eudora. (Dead Space 3)

The Eudora jumped blind to Tau Volantis and ran into a minefield left in orbit since 2314. Isaac, Norton, Carver and the pilots Mark Rosen and Locke got away in an emergency pod and reached the wreck of the CMS Roanoke, the old Sovereign Colonies flagship. (Dead Space 3)

The flotilla#

Isaac found Ellie alive among the derelicts, with two survivors from Keyhole Station, Jennifer Santos and Austin Buckell. She was now with Norton. In the quarters of Admiral Marjorie Graves, Isaac read the Marker script she'd written on the walls before she died. It described an alien Machine that controlled the Markers, and repeated one phrase: "turn it off". Norton wanted to leave. Isaac, Ellie and the scientists wanted to go down. The group fixed up the shuttle CMS Crozier from the CMS Terra Nova and went down to the surface. (Dead Space 3)

On the ice#

The Crozier crashed. Rosen and Locke died, and Isaac woke alone in the snow. He followed the others' trail, found Buckell dying, and caught up with the team in the old Sovereign Colonies bases. Santos pieced together the records of the expedition's lead scientist, Dr. Earl Serrano. In a warehouse lay a frozen Hive Mind, the Nexus, that could be used to triangulate the Machine's signal. (Dead Space 3)

Then the Circle arrived. While they were thawing the Nexus, Danik's soldiers captured Isaac and Carver, and Danik revealed who had told him where to find them: Norton, who had traded Isaac for a way off the planet. Danik broke the deal and meant to kill them all, and Isaac tackled him to save Norton just as the thawed Nexus woke. It swallowed Isaac and was killed from inside. Afterwards Norton turned on Isaac, blamed him for every death on the mission and fired at him. Isaac shot back and killed him. (Dead Space 3)

The trail led up a mountain to Serrano's lab. On the climb, a huge creature, the Snow Beast, hit the cargo cage carrying Santos, and Carver cut it loose to save the rest. Santos fell to her death. Isaac killed the beast, and at the top he apologised to Ellie for everything, and the two began to patch things up. (Dead Space 3)

Rosetta and the truth#

In the lab was Rosetta, the dissected body of one of Tau Volantis's natives. Isaac pieced it together and saw its memories. The aliens had found their own Black Marker and built copies, and the outbreak that followed had begun a Convergence: their dead, the Necromorphs and the Marker drawn up into orbit to form a Brethren Moon. The last of them built a city-sized Machine that froze their ocean world solid, and stopped the Tau Volantis Moon half-formed. The Markers' whisper, "turn it off", was the Moon asking to be let out. (Dead Space 3)

Isaac had said all of this in Danik's hearing. Danik took the Codex. The lab flooded with gas and Ellie was trapped on the other side of a door, telling Isaac to close it and go. Isaac and Carver chased Danik down, took the Codex back and went into the buried alien city to the Machine. (Dead Space 3)

The ending explained#

At the Machine's core Danik was waiting with Ellie as his hostage. She had got out of the gas alive, only to be caught by his reinforcements. He offered her life for the Codex. Carver grabbed it and threw it to him. Danik let Ellie go, used the Codex and switched the Machine off. (Dead Space 3)

The Moon woke. It came down on Tau Volantis and stripped the ice off the planet to reach the city and the Machine, which began to break apart and rise toward it. Danik was impaled by falling debris, still delighted. Isaac knew there was no way for everyone to get out. He kissed Ellie goodbye and she left on a shuttle. (Dead Space 3)

Isaac and Carver fought their way across the rising wreckage, were pulled up into the Moon, and set the Machine back to its original purpose. The final fight is against the Moon itself. The Machine came on, the Moon lost its grip and fell, and it crashed into the planet with the remains of the alien city. Isaac and Carver went down with it. (Dead Space 3)

On her ship, Ellie grieved, but her instruments showed the Marker signal was gone. She set a course for Earth. After the credits there's a short clip: Isaac's voice calling "Ellie", and his breathing. (Dead Space 3)

What it means: the main ending is a win, and a costly one. The Markers were never gifts or gods. They're seeds, and their job is to wipe out a species and turn its dead into a Moon. Isaac stopped one Moon, the one that had been calling every Marker in human space. But the Moons are linked, and destroying one tells the others where humanity is. The post-credits voice says Isaac lived. It doesn't say for how long. (Dead Space 3)

The Awakened ending explained#

Awakened picks up immediately. Isaac and Carver woke on the surface, alive, on a planet where the Marker signal was still driving people mad and making Necromorphs. They found that the surviving Unitologists had been lifting off for the Terra Nova in orbit. The shuttle they took had no ShockPoint Drive, so the old ship was as far as it could go, and they'd have to find a drive aboard to get home. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)

On the Terra Nova the Circle had fallen apart. Danik's second-in-command, Randall Carr, had tried to lead the survivors home, but many had followed a new prophet, the Cult Leader, into a cult that cut themselves to pieces as offerings to the Moons. The Cult Leader spoke for the Moons and tormented both men with visions. They broke his hold by smashing the Red Markers inside one of those visions, and left him beaten and still raving that the Moons would find Earth. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)

The Moons kept working on them. Isaac became convinced that if they flew home, the Moons would follow them to Earth. He and Carver fought each other inside a shared hallucination, and then the Moons themselves told them the truth: the delay was all they'd been doing. They had always known where Earth was. Isaac gave in, they overloaded the reactor to power a jump, and the Terra Nova went to Sol. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)

They tried to call Earth and heard only people being slaughtered. Outside the cockpit, Brethren Moons hung over the planet, already attacking. One of them rose up in front of the ship and seemed to crash into it, knocking both men out, and the screen went dark. Whether it really struck the ship, whether it was another vision, and whether either man survived are all left open. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)

So the Awakened ending explained plainly: humanity lost. The fight on Tau Volantis was meant to stop the end of the world, and it only bought time. The Convergence the Unitologists prayed for had arrived at Earth itself. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)

Where it fits#

Awakened is the latest point in the Dead Space story. No sequel has been released, so Isaac, Carver and Ellie's fates are unknown, and Earth is under siege by the Moons. For what led here, see Dead Space 2 story explained and the series overview, Dead Space story explained. The Dead Space timeline traces the Moons from the first Convergence on Tau Volantis two million years ago to their arrival at Earth in 2514. (Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3; Dead Space 3: Awakened)