Marathon Trilogy: Difference between revisions

'''''Marathon''''' is a series of groundbreaking [[Science Fiction]] [[First-Person Shooter|First Person Shooters]] developed for the [[Macintosh]] by [[Bungie|Bungie Software]]. The game has a ridiculously in-depth story even compared to modern games, and its plot can get very complex and sometimes even headache-inducing. In the pseudo-random clues provided by in-game terminals, it comes close to [[William Gibson]] ambiguity: lots of surreal textual scenes (in the middle of convincing runtime errors) will scratch your cortex; plausible quotes from technology design documents, history records, and standards guidelines that make you wish no AIs will ''ever'' be put in working order.

In '''''Marathon''''', set in July 2794, a hapless security officer returns from shore leave on the fledgling Tau Ceti IV colony below the titular spaceship, only to discover that he is going to have a ''very bad day at work''. A massive alien spaceship has appeared out of thin vacuum and attacked everything in sight, breaking two of the ship's three resident AIs and generally making a giant mess. The security officer and the still-functioning AI Leela are dutifully fighting off the alien menace, when it turns out the AI Durandal didn't so much shut down as go completely crazy. And it seems he's got plans of his own… The gameplay in this game is mostly dark claustrophobic hallways and corridors, with a few open areas, but it's all inside of ships.

[[Time Skip|Seventeen years later]], '''''Marathon 2: Durandal,''''' the simplest and shortest game in the trilogy to complete, drops the security officer into the middle of an interstellar war between Durandal and the Pfhor. It turns out Durandal kidnapped you and put you into stasis after the first game, and now he's sending you to explore ancient ruins on the S'pht homeworld of Lh'owon while he beats up a whole fleet of Pfhor ships. All in a day's work, right? This game is mostly wide-open outdoors. There is a lot of swimming to do.

'''''Marathon Infinity: Blood Tides of Lh'owon''''' returns to the [[Mind Screw]] attitude of the first game, and then some. In a [[Alternate Continuity|parallel timeline]] where the second game's events never happened, the security officer is stranded on a claustrophobic space station haunted by Durandal's dying words about an [[Eldritch Abomination]]. And then he proceeds to… [[Reality Warper|uh...]] Well, [[Epileptic Trees|nobody's really quite sure]] [[Going Cosmic|what's going on in this one]]. [[Nintendo Hard|It sure gets hard, though.]] This game has the Jjaro and Pfhor ship levels, which are similar to the first game's levels, and the levels on Lh'owon, naturally, being similar to those in the second. However, the levels in this game tend to be a lot bigger than those in either of its predecessors. Two of them approach the engine's limit for polygon count.

'''Note: These games are now freeware.''' Shortly before its acquisition by Microsoft, Bungie open-sourced M2's engine and five years later re-released [http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org/ all three games' assets] for free download. (''Infinity''<nowiki>{{'</nowiki>}}s source was finally released in 2011). Fans have [[Video Game Remake|upgraded the engine]] to support (optional) shiny graphics and lots of new features, and ported it to every major [[Operating System|OS]]. You can grab the games and the Aleph One engine '''[http://marathon.sourceforge.net/ here]''' and the various mods, enhancements and maps '''[http://www.simplici7y.com/ here]'''.

* [[Dream Tropes]]: Employed in ''Eternal'' and ''Rubicon'' amongst other scenarios. The story in ''Rubicon''{{'}}s dream levels [[Mind Screw|may or may not]] be a continuation of the story in ''Infinity''{{'}}s dream levels. ''RED'' has a series of dream flashbacks towards the end of the game.