It was certainly a pleasant surprise when Bungie announced Marathon reimagined as a PvP extraction shooter at the PlayStation Showcase on May 24th. From his comments on Twitter and his live chat on stream, it was clear that an entire generation of gamers were unaware of his 29-year incredible legacy behind the name.Let’s be honest, why would they? free release Designed to run on modern Mac, PC and Linux systems in 1999, the Xbox Live arcade port of Marathon: Durandal in 2007, the iOS port in 2011, and both Halo and Destiny A large number of Easter eggs (symbols of the marathon) are hidden in the For example, in the first three of his Halo games (which appear all over the place) the series has been neglected since his third game in his trilogy, Marathon: Infinity, released in October 1996. I’m here.
The new game features Altered Carbon-style transfer of human consciousness into customizable clones to fight in competitive extraction shooter scenarios (if you’re familiar with this most popular genre of modern live-service shooters). If not, Escape from Tarkov or Hunt: Showdown, where you collect loot and battle objects and other players in the environment before escaping unharmed) The 1994 original is a methodical story-based first-person shooter An early example of and in some ways similar to Warren’s Spector’s System Shock, which shipped the same year.
Released in December 1993 for MS-DOS-based PCs, Doom is remembered for establishing many of the conventions we take for granted today, but it’s a lexicon of modern game design. Marathon’s contribution to is often overlooked because it was a Mac OS game.
There was a time in the early 2000s when Marathon was frequently included in many of the top 100 games of all time, alongside Doom, Quake, and their ilk. Over the past few decades, it has slowly faded in our collective memory. Either way, its contribution to the way we play games cannot be ignored. Here are just a few of the most significant ways games have influenced the modern era.
mouse style
It’s not the first game to allow you to look around in first person (Dark Forces, Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Heretic all went back to 1992 and allowed you to look up and down using the keyboard). , Marathon was its first game. It’s a game that combines camera and mouse control in a way that we now take for granted. It wasn’t until a year later, in March 1995, when Interplay released the motion-sickness-inducing Descent, that Bethesda’s unpopular and extremely crappy game, Terminator : It wasn’t until Future Shock came out that it became the default standard for games. August of the same year. Most people attribute this mechanic to his Quake, his 1996 release from iD Software, but it was Marathon who got us down this path.
environmental storytelling
It’s become something of a cliché, as many games these days tell their stories through audio logs or diaries conveniently left on your nightstand. Most people probably think of Ken Levine’s 2007 release of Bioshock as the quintessential “pick what’s happening from what’s lying around” game, but the tech is marathon. was pioneered. All major plot points come from the entry of a terminal (a giant colonial ship carved out of the Martian moon Deimos and currently orbiting Tau 4 Cetus) found during the UESC Marathon and what exists there. Three artificial intelligences (Leela, Durandal and Tycho.
Friends of AI
Bungie was acquired by Microsoft in 2000 and Halo: Combat Evolved was released as the launch game for the original Xbox in November 2001. The road to release was rocky, seeing Time as a real-time strategy game, a third-person action game, and a first-person shooter, but in reality Marathon, his second game in the Marathon trilogy. started as an indirect successor to Durandal. In retrospect, much of that connection manifests itself in the relationship between your cryptic security guard and charismatic artificial intelligence. Many of the moments we cherish between Master Chief and Cortana throughout Bungie’s Halo games were inspired by designers Jason Jones and Alex Seropian when Marathon’s command AI Leela and later his more manipulative Durandal I owe a lot to the work I did when I wrote the message from. Even the term “runaway” used to describe Cortana and Guilty Spark’s enraged state is a throwback to the conversation in the first Marathon, with Leela describing Durandal in the same term and Durandal himself. Describes how he thinks freely and is very frustrated as a result.
Existential musings on dizzying subjects
Sometimes games garner a reputation for being controversial for their psychological or sociological speculations and for making you think outside the experience itself. The Metal Gear games were about modern geopolitics and the military-industrial complex, and the first Bioshock games were about objectivism and the player’s lack of true freedom. Marathon than either he tackled a similarly brainless subject more than a decade ago. When the artificial intelligence Durandal guides Leela through the objectives of the game, she begins to speak about the concept of freedom and its developing self-awareness. As the story unfolds, we learn that the guards are actually cyborg super-his soldiers called Mjolnir Mark IV Cyborgs. This indicates an unquestionable willingness for the player to follow the instructions of his AI on board and complete the task. Similarly, Durandal begins to question and rebel against his own slave-like existence. This emphasizes that not only are her two characters in the game very similar, but so are you, the player.
It remains to be seen to what extent Bungie’s new title will reflect the established lore of the original trilogy. Judging by the small amount of information shared on the game, websiteand what fans have unearthed from it Refined ARG As to corroborate the game’s launch, the new Marathon is set 56 years after the first, and appears to retain the original giant colony ship and Tau Seti IV settings. Around 48 seconds into the new teaser, we get a glimpse of S’pht, a cloaked floating cyborg alien with a large green glow on his chest who appeared as both an enemy and an ally in the original trilogy. It is possible that some of the PvE elements of the new title will be. As stated in Bungie’s original article, the artifacts players collect probably do. Vidocand the “long-dormant” AI cited in early material is a throwback to the early games, and it’s possible the new game will follow the original in that it reveals its narrative through environmental story elements. suggests that there is
According to Bungie, the game’s development is approaching the alpha stage and will be in the dark for a long time before revealing the actual gameplay and revealing the game’s release date. At launch, Marathon will be available on his PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC, with cross-play and save functionality across all platforms.
John Davison is the publisher of IGN
