Today's just-for-fun topic is about Markers from Dead Space. Why are they such a pain in the ass?
 
It seems to me after playing Dead Space and the sequel, the Necromorphs seem to be some kind of copy protection if you try to replicate a marker. All the human made ones have brought plenty of death and grotesque creatures into the world along the lines of "You didn't build it right. Monsters." However, this would mean a whole lot more if I knew what the original marker did. The Black Marker they keep talking about on earth obviously doesn't spawn Necromorphs or planet Earth would have been a nasty graveyard by now. The other idea is that Markers do a bunch of different things. Red ones fuck shit up. Black ones spawn creepy space religions. Blue ones tell you about great deals. Stuff like that.
 
You also have the Aegis Marker that acted as a Necromorph suppressant that wanted to be in a very specific spot (or else). And the Titan Marker that was a lot more sinister trying to pull off a Convergence Event (I guess that's how Hive Minds are born? LOTS of bodies in one place). To be fair, the Titan one was freaking gigantic compared to the pillar sized one the Ishimura picked up. Size could also be a factor. Also, since Clarke helped build it he probably had plenty of his own personal anguish and beliefs about how these things work channeled during construction.
 
Basically, I'd love to see what a Marker does when it isn't creating Necromorphs. Why would EarthGov keep building these things if all they do is kill millions of people. It'd make a great weapon, but Tiedemann seemed to believe it could do a lot more than that. Also, it seems like the only two distinct factions in this world are Unitologists and Government dudes.
 
 I'm aware there's a ton of Dead Space fiction in the form of books and movies... but since the game came first, that's all I'm really interested at the moment. 

The marker stuff is really weird, I guess different ones doing different things makes sense because the ending of the first game and then the second game are conflicting. I got the impression that the Hivemind was the main guy that had to be taken out and the marker is what kept the beast dormant. Then in Dead Space 2, the marker there is what created all the monsters and it has to be destroyed. I'm guessing the marker project that was alluded to in the endgame may have been going on for quite some time so they are different variants. I just wish that was more elaborated instead of having to wait till Dead Space 3. Also there isn't a whole of unitology stuff in the new game. It looked the government was in running the operation unless the church is funding in the background and will be explained later.