Dead Space fans think ‘indecipherable’ New Game+ log points to more remakes in the future
Fans believe the text, found in a New Game+ log, refers to events in Dead Space 2 and 3.
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Like many games these days, theDead Spaceremake has a New Game+ mode that becomes available after the game is finished for the first time. It enables players to start a new game loaded up with all the weapons, suits, and upgrades they’ve already earned, ostensibly making for an easier experience, and it also adds a number of new text logs that provide additional narrative background to life aboard USG Ishimura.
One of those NG+ logs is a supposedly “indecipherable” scrawl of marker symbols—basically a Dead Space hieroglyphic. But it’s actually very translatable: It’s a straight character-for-character exchange that wasdecodednot long after the original Dead Space was released.
(Here’s aGameFAQsthread from 2011, if you have doubts.)
Fortunately for those of you who, like me, are curious but not especially inclined to go to the trouble of decrypting the message yourself, redditorGingyYouTubehas already done the job. There are a couple mistakes in the translation, but corrections are noted in the comments below.
This is what the message looks like in the game:
And this is what it translates to:
They walk in whiteUntouched by redThey order the livingThey shepherd the dead
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A finger’s touch—We’re frozen stillThey are the answerThey are the will
Beyond the starsThe brethren waitOracles, deliver usFrom humanity’s fate
While the content of the message is easy to figure out, what it actually means is a different matter. Several people in the thread believe the opening lines are a reference toOracles, a mysterious group of high-ranking cultists seen in the Dead Space 2: Severed DLC whose origins and motives are unknown. “Order the living [and] shepherd the dead” is taken to mean creating necromorphs and bringing them toconvergence, while the second stanza is believed to be a reference toTau Volantis, a planet in Dead Space 3 that was turned into a frozen wasteland eons ago in an attempt to halt a convergence event.
It’s all very deep-lore stuff, but the general consensus is that the references to events that occurred in later Dead Space games means EA is planning to remake those games, too—or is at least open to the idea. That theory is bolstered by the earlier discovery ofanother NG+ text logreferring to the Sprawl, a space station on Titan that served as the setting for Dead Space 2.
Thesuccess of the Dead Space remakepresumably makes similar updates of Dead Space 2 and 3, and maybe even more sequels beyond that, much more likely to happen. Even so, it’s cool to know (or at least reasonably theorize) that EA was thinking about it long before this remake saw the light of day.
Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill.Lotsof Henry Cavill.
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