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An Iconic starship and the funhouse of horror you find yourself stuck on in Dead Space, the USG Ishimura is a vessel with quite a track record. First appearing in the original game, it wouldn't be the last time we would see this ship of the damned drifting in the void.
But even before the Event Horizon-esque events of the first game, a lot of horrible stuff goes down on the ship before Isaac Clarke can even get there. The entire timeline is mostly shown in the movie Dead Space: Downfall, but there are also plenty of notes and audio logs left behind to piece it all together. To simplify it all into one big nice timeline, here's what happened on the Ishimura before the first Dead Space game.
Beware of spoilers for the first two Dead Space titles.
The USG Ishimura Before Dead Space
Before the tumultuous end to its career as a mining vessel above the Aegis VII Colony, the USG Ishimura had an ignoble run for 62 years with numerous captains at its helm. Breaking down the strata of dead worlds and orbiting hunks of rock with its crew quite happily without any incident. It was the flagship of the Concordance Extraction Corporation (C.E.C), and it got the job done well.
It was its lack of notoriety that made the ship the perfect cover for the church of Unitology. During the events of Dead Space, the crew of the Ishimura was told they were going to the Aegis VII Colony to do what they do best, crack planets. But in reality, this was just a front as the Church of Unitology, whose members were in abundance on the ship, used the mission as a cover for their real goal the retrieval of the Black Marker. So the Ishimura set off into the gloom for the colony and a doomed future for all onboard.
What Happened On The Ishimura Before The Game
To sum up the utter hell that the ship descended into after arriving at Aegis VII in one paragraph wouldn't do it justice. So instead we're going to run through the events to establish a timeline for how just how quickly things got out of hand.
It'll also help convey just how brutal the carnage was and generally help cement how absolutely ruined the Ishimura became before Isaac Clarke gets there.
The True Purpose Of The Trip
Originally, the Ishimura told its crew that they were being dispatched on another routine planet crack and to recover a strange alien object, which would turn out to be the Marker. However, unbeknownst to many, the Church of Unitlogy used its influence within the C.E.C to install several of its members within high-ranking positions within the ship, such as Captain Mathius. Essentially ensuring that complete control of the vessel without question could be theirs if required.
When the ship arrived in the system, Captain Mathius gave out a no-fly order. Quarantining the ship from any curious vessels and ensuring no one onboard would leave and accidentally break their cover story. Down on the planet, the Marker was prepped for transport and all the relevant data gathered on the monolith, along with any bodies found around it were also gathered up and packed alongside it. After it was brought aboard, the planet crack continued to keep up the charade.
Communication Is Lost
After the mining began, things went sideways almost immediately. All contact was lost with the colony below, only for wailing screams and images of blood-filled carnage to fill the screens when coms were re-established. Seems the Necromorph Infestation below had finally gone into full swing as the original pile of bodies found at the Marker suddenly re-animated, transmogrified, and then massacred their friends.
Any brief connection with pockets of survivors was brief, uninformative, and abrupt as the body count rose rapidly. Down below, those that were lucky enough to get to the sparse number of shuttles at the colony began a slow ascent to space with whomever they found left alive, armed with whatever they could use to keep the rotting force at bay. Several shuttles managed to successfully make it out of the planet's atmosphere. But sadly this wasn’t the end of their troubles.
The Ship Is In Lockdown
As the shuttles with their precious cargo screeched out of the planet's atmosphere. the USG Ishimura sent message after message pleading for them to return to the planet and not breach the no-fly rule. The calls went on deaf ears and so Captain Mathius made the grim decision to open fire.
A cascade of projectiles from the ship's asteroid demolishing ADS cannons tore towards the ships. Many were shot down, with even more colliding with each other and asteroid debris left floating around the ship from the cracking process. All but two were destroyed, their passengers dispersed into the unforgiving vacuum of space.
One surviving ship was piloted by Colin Barrow, a Dig Foreman on Ageis VII that had unwittingly brought the Necromorph infection onboard in the form of his deceased wife, who quickly turned during the flight over. The other is Gabe Weller, a supporting character from Dead Space: Extraction and protagonist of Dead Space 2: Severed. Gabe's exploits don’t impact the USG Ishimura or the overall plot of Dead Space, but he’s worth mentioning.
The Outbreak Begins
After the shuttle carrying Barrow collided with the hangar, it carved a wide swathe of destruction that would hide the escape of his wife-now-full-turned-Necromorph. The debris would be mostly cleared, but the damage was done. Deep below the decks of the ship in the morgues, an army was being created by the former Mr’s Barrows and a stowaway Infector.
These shambling assassins made their way through the ship's vents, abducting and dismembering isolated crew members in the space of a few hours. The sudden disappearances went unnoticed at first, but over time as more and more decks stopped responding to hails, tensions amongst the crew began to increase.
Despite continuing on with their normal work days, problems started to arise as machines that were normally crewed by large groups had their numbers whittled down and these monolithic contraptions began to finally seize up and stop working. Error messages flashed everywhere as crewless sections of the ship started to shut down and when order disappeared, the entire crew finally realized just how much danger they were in.
There’s Nothing To Stop Them
General alarms began to sound and barricades were erected all over the ship as the crew tried their best to stem the tide of monstrosities that had the faces of people they knew clawing at their doors. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no general plan of action, and entire decks were left to fend for themselves. Some faired better than others, but there was always a crack, a vent, a weak point, or a weak-minded person for them to exploit and get inside.
The crew was whittled down, floor by floor, with the mining crew reportedly lasting the longest before being completely overwhelmed. The bridge of the USG Ishimura didn’t fare any better. After the Captain was brutally murdered by fellow Unitologist Dr. Terrence Kyne, the ship's few escape pods were launched completely empty. Leaving those onboard trapped and with no way of escaping the screeching demons patrolling the corridors outside their rapidly dwindling safe-havens.
In Dead Space: Downfall, there’s a brief appearance of Isaac’s girlfriend Nicole Brennan. She tells Vincent she has a boyfriend she needs to survive for, and she’s never seen again. It’s brief but it’s a neat cameo.
We’re Not Making It Out Of This.
As all hope seemed lost, Dr. Kyne took it upon himself to deactivate the ship's engines. An act that would see the ship slowly plummet towards the surface of the planet, with the hopes that re-entry would destroy the ship and burn up everything onboard. The plan was to stop the Marker from leaving the system and coming into contact with humanity at large.
Though Alissa Vincent, the ship's Chief Security Office, would try to stop this act, she ultimately would fail. Instead, she managed to send out a distress signal before being sucked into space when nearby hangar doors opened. However, what would seem like a valiant act to get help was in fact manipulation by the Marker to lure more victims into its trap. It wouldn’t be long until the USG Kellion would arrive responding to this call for aid and from there the events of the first Dead Space game play out.
The USG Ishimura After Dead Space
The finale of Dead Space is far from the last time that the USG Ishimura is seen. After the Aegis VII Colony exploded in a visceral, planet-shattering blast, the ship was thrown into deep space by the shockwave. The vessel would be declared lost in a terrorist attack by the C.E.C, and the Earth Government with the events onboard being swept under the rug.
The Ishimura would drift for a time, occasionally being battered by passing asteroids that would destroy large chunks of the ship. Entire decks were smashed, catwalks collapsed, and gaping holes were left throughout the superstructure. It would float like that for a time until its appearance in the graphic novel Dead Space: Salvage, where it was found by a salvage crew known as the Magpies. They would encounter the Marker, now broken into shards, which were just as potent when they were whole.
First, they would turn on each other, then the sludge that the previous Necromorph inhabitants had rendered down into would reform and the infection would begin anew. A lone survivor of the crew would leave, notifying the EarthGov forces, who were quietly looking for the lost ship of its location. From there, it would be taken to the Sprawl where it played a part in the events of Dead Space 2. The ship itself would finally meet its end when it was destroyed alongside the Sprawl station at the end of the game. An ignoble end to an eventful career.