Dead Space Story Explained: the Whole Saga in Order

Dead Space is a science fiction horror series that started in 2008 and ran through three main games, two animated films, several spin-off games, novels and comics. In story order it covers three centuries, from 2214, when humanity found an alien artifact buried at Chicxulub, to 2514, when the things that artifact was built for arrived over Earth. Most of it follows Isaac Clarke, an engineer who survives three outbreaks in six years. This page walks through the whole saga in order, with full spoilers, and links to a full explainer for each main work. Our Dead Space characters guide covers the rest of the cast, from Michael Altman to John Carver. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

In what order#

Story order and release order are the same for the three main games, so the simple answer is Dead Space, Dead Space 2, Dead Space 3. The 2023 remake can stand in for the first game. If you want everything, in story order: (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

1. Dead Space: Martyr (novel), 2214
2. Dead Space: Catalyst (novel), the 2290s
3. Dead Space: Downfall (film) and Dead Space: Extraction, 2508
4. Dead Space, or the 2023 remake, 2508
5. Dead Space: Aftermath (film), weeks later
6. Dead Space: Ignition, 2511
7. Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 2: Severed, 2511
8. Dead Space: Liberation (comic), 2514
9. Dead Space 3 and Awakened, 2514

There are more pieces, including comics, a mobile game and an audio drama, and every one is placed on the Dead Space timeline.

The prequels: Martyr and Catalyst#

The Black Marker hit Earth about 65 million years ago at what's now the Chicxulub crater. In 2214 a government team raised it from the sea floor. The geophysicist Michael Altman went public, saying it was proof of alien life. When an outbreak overran the research compound, the officials who had fallen under the Marker's spell murdered Altman, made a martyr of him and founded Unitology in his name. (Dead Space: Martyr)

About eighty years later the Sovereign Colonies learned to copy the Black Marker. They grew Red Markers and set them up on remote worlds. Catalyst follows the fall of one of those worlds, Aspera, through two brothers, Istvan and Jensi Sato. Another copy, Marker 3A, went to Aegis VII, where it created a Hive Mind and was sealed away. (Dead Space: Catalyst; Dead Space 3)

The tests pointed to a master signal coming from an ice world, Tau Volantis. The Sovereign Colonies sent a fleet in 2311. Three years later, when the government learned what was really there, it ordered every trace of the work destroyed. Dead Space 3 opens on that purge. (Dead Space 3)

Dead Space: Downfall and Extraction (2508)#

In 2508 the CEC was mining Aegis VII illegally. Its colonists dug up Marker 3A, and the planet cracker USG Ishimura arrived to break open the crust. The captain, Benjamin Mathius, was a Unitologist and had the Marker brought aboard. Madness swept the colony, the dead rose as Necromorphs, and the outbreak reached the ship. (Dead Space: Downfall)

Downfall follows the ship's security chief, Alissa Vincent, as the crew dies around her. The Marker expert Terrence Kyne kills the captain by accident while trying to sedate him, then sabotages the ship to crash it and bury the Marker. Vincent fights him off but can't undo all the damage. At the end she launches a distress beacon and dies, and the beacon brings Isaac. (Dead Space: Downfall)

Dead Space: Extraction tells the same weeks from the colony. The detective Nathan McNeill, security officer Gabe Weller and the surveyor Lexine Murdoch escape the planet only to land on the infested Ishimura, and fight their way off it. Lexine is strangely immune to the Marker, which makes her a target for years to come. (Dead Space: Extraction)

Dead Space (2008)#

The CEC repair shuttle Kellion answered the Ishimura's distress call and crashed in its flight deck. Necromorphs killed most of the crew, leaving Isaac, security chief Zach Hammond and computer specialist Kendra Daniels. Isaac had come for his girlfriend, the ship's senior medical officer Nicole Brennan. (Dead Space)

He spent the game keeping the ship alive. He fixed its engines and its defences, survived the Unitologist doctor Challus Mercer and his regenerating creature the Hunter, and called for help, which came in the form of the EarthGov ship USM Valor, destroyed by an infected escape pod before it could save anyone. Hammond died on the Valor. All the while Isaac kept seeing Nicole, and she began guiding him. (Dead Space)

Kyne convinced Isaac that the outbreak would stop if the Marker went back on its pedestal. As they loaded it onto a shuttle, Kendra shot Kyne and revealed she was an EarthGov agent sent to recover the Marker. "Nicole" helped Isaac recall the shuttle, and he took the Marker down to the planet himself. (Dead Space)

On Aegis VII he put it back on its pedestal. Kendra then showed him the end of Nicole's message: she had killed herself before he ever arrived, and every sighting had been a hallucination. The Hive Mind killed Kendra, Isaac killed it and escaped, and a bloodied vision of Nicole lunged at him in the shuttle. (Dead Space)

The 2023 remake tells the same story with a voiced Isaac, a larger role for the botanist Elizabeth Cross, some changed deaths and a secret ending in which Isaac, deranged, promises to build a new Marker. The Dead Space plot summary and ending page covers all of it. (Dead Space (2023))

Dead Space: Aftermath and Ignition (2508 to 2511)#

Aftermath picks up weeks after the first game. EarthGov sent the USG O'Bannon to collect fragments of the Marker, and a shard drove its chief scientist, Nolan Stross, to murder his family. The outbreak gutted the ship, Aegis VII broke apart, and the survivors were taken away for questioning. The same film mentions that Isaac was found stranded on a shuttle weeks after he escaped, and shows a stasis pod with his name on it. (Dead Space: Aftermath)

Isaac and Stross were taken to Titan Station, where EarthGov mined their minds for the blueprints the Marker had left behind. Three years later, Ignition follows a Unitologist engineer, Franco Delille, across the station on the night the outbreak spreads from the Government Sector. He reaches Isaac's cell in the last minutes before Dead Space 2 begins. (Dead Space 2; Dead Space: Ignition)

Dead Space 2 (2511)#

Isaac woke in a straitjacket as the Sprawl fell around him. He had no memory of three years in an asylum, and a furious hallucination of Nicole was blaming him for her death. (Dead Space 2)

A Unitologist, Daina Le Guin, lured him across the city with the promise of a cure, then revealed she wanted him to build Markers for the Church. An EarthGov gunship killed her. Isaac learned that EarthGov's Director Hans Tiedemann had used his memories to build the Site 12 Marker, and that it was causing the outbreak. He teamed up with Stross and the pilot Ellie Langford to destroy it. (Dead Space 2)

Stross lost his mind, stabbed out Ellie's eye and was killed by Isaac. Isaac went back aboard the Ishimura, now docked at Titan, and soon after finally admitted to Nicole what she meant to him. From then on she guided rather than tormented him. He sent Ellie away to safety and reached the Marker as Convergence began. (Dead Space 2)

He killed Tiedemann, then Nicole told him the Marker needed its maker to die. Isaac fought her inside his own mind, destroyed her and the Marker with her, and waited to die as the station collapsed. Ellie flew back through the roof and got him out. After the credits, an EarthGov official learns that Site 12 is gone and says the other sites will pick up the pieces. (Dead Space 2)

In Severed, which runs alongside, Gabe Weller fights across Titan to reach his pregnant wife, Lexine Weller, and dies so she can escape. (Dead Space 2: Severed)

Dead Space 3 and Awakened (2514)#

Three years later, the Unitologist sect the Circle, led by Jacob Danik, was freeing Markers across human space. In the comic Liberation, Sergeant John Carver lost his family on Uxor, and Ellie went looking for the source of the Markers' signal and vanished. (Dead Space: Liberation)

Carver and Captain Robert Norton pulled Isaac out of hiding on Luna, and the three followed Ellie to Tau Volantis, through a graveyard of 200-year-old Sovereign Colonies ships. Isaac found Ellie, and on the frozen surface learned from an alien specimen called Rosetta what the Markers were for. The planet's natives had found their own Marker and begun turning into a Brethren Moon, a planet-sized Necromorph built from a whole species. The last of them froze their world with a giant Machine to stop it. (Dead Space 3)

Norton betrayed the team to Danik and was killed. Danik took the Codex that controlled the Machine and switched it off, and the Tau Volantis Moon woke. Isaac and Carver turned the Machine back on and destroyed the Moon, sending Ellie away first. They fell with it, and a post-credits clip has Isaac calling Ellie's name. (Dead Space 3)

Awakened shows them alive on the ice. They fought the remains of the Circle, now a self-mutilating cult, on the CMS Terra Nova, and jumped home. The dying Moon had called the others. Isaac and Carver arrived to screams on every channel and Brethren Moons over Earth, and one rose in front of their ship as the screen went dark. The Dead Space 3 ending explained page covers both endings in full. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)

Where the story stands#

Awakened is still the last word, in 2514. Isaac and Carver may or may not be alive, Ellie was last seen heading for Earth, and humanity is facing the same end the people of Tau Volantis met two million years before. Everything that led here, year by year, is on the timeline linked above. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)