Primarily set in a 26th century science fiction universe featuring environments, weapons, and characters typical of the genre, the Dead Space franchise centers on a series of video games beginning with the release of the first Dead Space, which centers on starship engineer Isaac Clarke and mutated undead horrors that surround him.

After the financial disappointment of 2013's Dead Space 3, no further media for the franchise was produced until a remake of the first game was developed by Motive Studio and released on January 27, 2023.

Systems engineer Isaac Clarke joins a search and rescue team for the USG Ishimura, which had gone radio-silent, after receiving a message from his girlfriend Nicole.

The ship is overrun by Necromorphs, forcing Isaac to defend himself by weaponizing his mining tools and "Resource Integration Gear" (RIG) spacesuit capabilities.

Dead Space 2 reveals that Isaac has become mentally disturbed and unstable after he destroyed the Red Marker on Aegis VII, and that he was captured by EarthGov and taken to the Sprawl, a massive space-station built into the remains of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

Isaac succeeds in escaping with another survivor, Ellie Langford, before the explosive destruction of the station, and goes into hiding from EarthGov authorities as his mind still retains information about the Markers.

As he is struggling with the breakup in his apartment on the moon, Unitologists led by Jacob Danik activate a Marker near the colony, causing a Necromorph outbreak.

Isaac is rescued and enlisted by EarthGov soldiers to help locate Langford, who had traveled to Tau Volantis, one of Earth's oldest off-world colonies, in search of the true origins of the Markers and a means to stop the Necromorph scourge once and for all.

The ending of Ignition directly sets up the opening of Dead Space 2, where Delille is ordered to find and free Isaac Clarke from an EarthGov asylum, only to be killed and transformed into a Necromorph.

The game features an appearance from Titan Station's director Hans Tiedemann, a major antagonist of Dead Space 2, and provides context behind the Necromorph infestation of the Sprawl.

The Marker emits a persistent electromagnetic field from seemingly no source, which researchers believe could be used to provide limitless energy and solve Earth's ecological crisis.

Work begins to reverse engineer the Marker on various research stations across the colonies, but they are forced to use bismuth instead of an unidentified alien material, resulting in these duplicates being colored red instead of black as the original.

In the 26th century, a planet-cracker vessel mining the world of Aegis VII called the USG Ishimura discovers a Red Marker buried near an abandoned colony.

The "Stasis" module causes its target to undergo an extreme slowdown for a short period of time, allowing characters to dart through rapidly moving obstacles such as fan blades, or hinder onrushing enemies.

Because Necromorphs are re-animated and re-purposed corpses, lacking dependence on nervous, respiratory, and circulatory systems, the conventions of stopping power are largely irrelevant to them.

Electronic Arts (EA) Redwood Shores had developed a number of movie and tie-in games, though they desired to make their own intellectual property.

Around 2005, the studio presented the idea of making a second sequel to System Shock to EA executives but had not gotten much support until the release of Resident Evil 4 in 2005, which quickly became a top-selling title.

[21] The concept behind the fictional religion of Unitology, which has its own scripture of some kind, is supposed to represent people's illogical thinking about things they don't understand, such as the Marker and the Necromorphs.

Visceral had planned out ideas for a fourth Dead Space game, but at that point, EA transitioned the studio to work on other existing projects, shelving the series after the developer's closure in October 2017.

Originally a ship system engineer, his life changes for the worse when a seemingly-routine repair mission becomes a struggle to survive the Necromorph scourge.

Stross was once a high-ranking scientist but suffered from dementia after coming into contact with the Red Marker, and was placed in a psychiatric ward of a hospital on Titan Station.

EA's multimedia efforts to market the franchise includes novels, comic books, animated films, and other licensed products like action figures of series protagonist Isaac Clarke.

Set roughly 200 years before the events of the video game series, Martyr tells the story of geophysicist Michael Altman, who discovers a mysterious signal within the Chicxulub crater and after secretly obtaining a piece of the Marker, leaks it to the public and spreads the visions he received from it.

The second novel by Everson, the 2012 Dead Space: Catalyst, is set two hundred and fifty years after the events of Martyr, where EarthGov decides to tamper with dangerous technology from the Black Marker in the hopes of saving humanity from an energy and resource crisis.

Dead Space: Downfall is a 2008 animated film prequel to the first game which takes place after the limited comic series of the same name was released direct-to-video in October 2009, before seeing a television showing on Starz Encore the following month.

It details the events leading to the Necromorph infestation on the USG Ishimura following the transportation of the Red Marker from the Aegis VII Colony to the ship.

[59] At release, Dead Space reached tenth place in North American game sales, compiled in November by the NPD Group.

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello revealed that the company would have to lower its expected income for that fiscal year due to multiple commercial disappointments like Dead Space.

[63] In February 2009, Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown confirmed that all versions of Dead Space had sold one million copies worldwide.

[65][66] While Electronic Arts reported seemingly strong sales figures for Dead Space 2 when it shipped nearly 2 million units in the first week of its release,[67] these were considered financially disappointing.