- Eckhardt: "They're adapting."
- Weller: "What?"
- Eckhardt: "Adapting. To their environment."
- —Warren Eckhardt and Gabe Weller after encountering a Grabber in the Ishimura's sewers.
The Grabber is a Necromorph form featured in Dead Space: Extraction and in the animated movie Dead Space: Aftermath.
Overview
Concept art of the Grabber.
The Grabber is a Necromorph whose inclusion in the original Dead Space was ultimately scrapped, but it later made its first appearance in Dead Space: Extraction. Consisting of a seemingly inconspicuous human corpse, albeit slightly damaged, the Grabber uses the element of surprise by extending the mutated corpse's head an impossibly long distance towards the player and latching on to the player to either hold them still and distract them or drag them towards its body while a serrated blade (formerly the corpse's spine) bursts out of the same orifice to kill the player. Most of the main body's mass has been transformed to make and store the Grabber's extremely long, muscular neck and spinal blade.
The Grabber first appears in Chapter 6 of Extraction when Nathan McNeill approaches a corpse partly submerged in the water which does not appear to have been infected. Once he is closer in range, however, the Necromorph's head begins to shake before whipping upwards and startling the survivors. The Grabber then splits its human head in half and begins to shake McNeill's head violently with its tongue flailing around. Once it is dispatched, Warren Eckhardt states that the creatures are adapting to their surroundings. Several more Grabbers are found throughout the drainage system, surprising the team by lying in wait before lunging up from beneath the surface of the murky water. It is unclear whether the bodies were infected in the drains and simply mutated to best suit their needs, or if they were infected elsewhere and then moved to the drains by other Necromorphs. Although they do not appear to be able to move in the game, it is possible that they might be able to drag themselves into suitable ambush positions.
Strategy
- Given the overall small size of the Grabber, weapons like the Plasma Cutter and Rivet Gun are not very effective.
- Grabbers can spawn from any waterborne corpse. Keep an eye out for bodies that lack a head, or the head is stragely propped/twisted in an odd angle, as these are the most likely to turn.
- The biggest target on the Grabber is its head. While using precision weapons like the Pulse Rifle and Contact Beam, this is the best place to aim at.
- Weapons covering large areas like the Force Gun, Line Gun, and Flamethrower are about the best weapons to use against the Grabbers. With these weapons, the best place to aim is the neck, especially for the Line Gun. The Force Gun and Flamethrower are straightforward enough, just aim and fire, but the Line Gun, if aimed well, can take out multiple Grabbers at once if they appear in front of the player in numbers.
- Alternatively, you can Stasis the head, making it an easy target.
Trivia
- For its appearance in the original game, the Grabber was meant to grab Isaac Clarke with its jaws and pull him close to itself, whereupon it would eviscerate him with its long spinal blade.
- Because of its greatly extended neck, the Grabber resembles the Rokurokubi from Japanese folklore. It is also similar to the Spitters from Left 4 Dead, both being variants of the common infected with elongated necks that spit acid, and both are first encountered by the protagonists in sewer areas of their respective games.
- In Dead Space: Extraction, the Grabber only appears in the Ishimura sewers, where it is described to be "adapting" to the aquatic environment.
- The Grabber seems to appear in Dead Space: Aftermath. The Grabber, formerly a crew member named Jenny, is found by its host's roommate, Lana. As Lana approaches "Jenny", the Grabber raises its head and spits acid on Lana's face, completely dissolving all the skin and hair on her head. It is then destroyed by an incendiary grenade. An interesting thing to note is that this Grabber can move, a trait which others don't seem to have (or at least not the Extraction Grabbers who were stationary at all times). It may not be the Grabber at all, as the movie contained odd variations/combinations of different Necromorphs.
- If it is a Grabber, this would make Jenny and Lana the first and only known characters in the franchise to be turned into and killed by a Grabber, respectively.
- In Extraction, the lower body of a Grabber is almost never seen, as Grabbers are only found in the sewers. In fact, the Grabber's lower body can only be seen twice, including the first one encountered at the beginning of Chapter 6: Nowhere to Hide.
Gallery
Appearances
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