Get the Marathon Trilogy FREE - alephone.lhowon.org/ (also now on Steam) THE LIST - docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_K3ziSxT9zcUUGCddS4sF1uNJTWHSbOwB1CQX2Rx4Uo It's been a brain melting few months and Marathon was just the extra spice I needed.
The MIDA connection Destiny goes a bit further in the MIDA multi tool. IIRC one of the characters suspects MIDA is a rebel organisation on Mars from an alternate timeline. Also 7 is just Bungie writers having a stroke, they love the number, it's basically everywhere including the music.
@@wf1534 I always thought the 7s in some of their music are the most remarkable as most games have a weird disconnect between their music and well, the actual game. It's neat to see it connected like that.
And so do their marketers. I see alot of articles popping up about how good it supposedly is and it's just a massive lie. CBS at this point is just out there to kill IPs. First Star Trek, now Halo.
@@SovrinnK As someone who played the game in the 90s prior to 'Aleph one' it had dual wielding pistols. M2 revamped the visuals and added DW'ing shotguns. M3 added in a SMG that worked underwater and in vacuums. Either way OG Marathon game 'did' include dual pistols. edit: you might be thinking about fists? I think the 'fist' weapon was just the right fist in Marathon, M2/3 let you put up both fists.
There's a mission in Halo 1 where, if you start shooting friendlies, it results in a game over where Cortana says "He's gone rampant!". That takes on different vibes now that I've watched this.
@@KopperNeoman This was never the case. It was a common fanon theory until like 2006 though. The original Forerunners were ancient Humanity. I'm not sure Halo had any real plans as part of the Marathon canon in any sense, at any point, ever, and I'm not sure anyone can make that argument credibly because of that. Let me explain in both a Watsonian and Doylist way. _Watsonian The oldest Halo lore is about Reclaimers and an Ancient Humanity that lifeseeds the universe and builds incredible machinery that some Space Vagabonds (Prophets) find and contort into a religious belief before encountering the Reclaimers (their ancient allies/benefactors) and trying to destroy them. Both sides have forgotten their real histories and you (Master Chief) are in the process of rediscovering it with the help of your virtual girlfriend/therapy chatbot. Conversely, Marathon is about a highly developed spacefaring culture ruled by a superintelligence encountering primitive backwaters due to the shaky awakening of sophont consciousness of a nascent superintelligence, attempting to use their superior industrial power to crush this superintelligence, but being unable to marshal enough resources and firepower to do it due to an outside context problem (the Wrkncacter in Lhowen's star) appearing once that superior firepower is applied. At no point does Marathon rise to the point where Humanity and the Pfhor have to be deigned to fight a space trench war or slow rolling battle akin to Operation Barbarossa. Marathon is **BIG** and gets **BIGGER** going from a huge Moon-sized flying city starship to blowing up a a whole *galactic arm strike fleet* and smashing a major part of a Galactic superpower's naval fleet. Halo doesn't even include time travel or dimensional shifts. Master Chief is literally made by a normal (if smart) human by the Space CIA to fight Communists and Narcogangs in Space Nicaragua per his own lore. Sergeant Johnson was the prototype series of genetically modified sniper teams and this resulted in him being immune to the Flood, for instance, which is why he survives the first contact in Halo CE. I'd sort of expect if Marathon had continued, then Greg Kirkpatrick might have looked at the conquistadors' destruction of the superior military forces of the Aztec Empire with the assistance of the local troops and levies by forming a united front, which would turn Halo completely on its head. I have no evidence to prove that, but it would be a good way to change the story up and follow the beats of a fully awake superintelligence mated with a human supersoldier as a sophont interlocutor, which T'fear tells us the Superintelligence of the Pfhor lack entirely. It's why the Pfhor, and Thoth, are weaker than Durandal + Security Officer. The officer gives the superintelligence proper abilities to act in the world. The Jjaro aren't humans in Marathon, yet they are humans in Halo CE, so yeah. Perhaps it would be an RTS? Then Halo 3 happened and dumped all the original lore but that's beside the point. _Doylist Besides the story themes being wildly different, Bungie had been out of the FPS game for like 3 years at that point (an eternity in the '90's), built two successful RTS games, Greg Kirkpatrick and Double Aught were gone, and the last serious Marathon shooter planned was supposed to fall on the heels of Quake rather than the new millennium. It seems to be just all easter eggs and similar story beats, but little else. Halo was planned as a RTS first, which is the real deep lore, and little of this remains. Before that they didn't really know what to call Master Chief, he was referred to as "cyborg", which sometimes throws people off, and he had a robot TTS in the early builds of Halo CE. Before they fully fleshed out the story. OTOH the designs of the Covenant were based on a completely different artist who took it in a wild, sea-inspired direction rather than arthropod inspired from the start. The Covenant didn't really have any names at this point, it was like "blue sergeant" or "big blue" or something. If Bungie wanted it to be Marathon, surely the Pfhor have enough variation to show up, rather than be changed completely in the first early builds? One is clearly about ancient aliens and inspired by something like Stargate more than any cyberpunk-and-ancient-heroes stuff that G. Kirkpatrick was reading. The UNSC is space humans finding they were once super strong cool guys and their enemies were once their friends and feeling betrayed. This is the whole Covenant Civil War arc at the end of H2. There is no Pfhor civil war, the Pfhor are MUCH older than Humanity, and they never encountered each other before Tau Ceti. Let alone encountering Earth, as Durandal had to go back and tell Earth how to stop the Phfor with fusion torpedoes and shields and using Boomer as a surrogate strike force to test defenses, or whatever. It's not like Pathways where there was a direct lineage in people who worked on the game and story ideas that flowed neatly into one another, where you can make a credible argument that Marathon is Pathways taken to the extreme future. They're wildly different at the fundamental levels, and aside from random references, have no connection to each other either in development or in final product. Destiny might be closer to Marathon than Halo, but only by accident I think, because I don't think Bungie knows what Destiny is supposed to be story-wise. tl;dr Aside from Bungie wanting to start fresh because of staff changes between Marathon and Halo: CE's half decade distance, the actual story of Halo never lined up with Marathon at all.
This is kinda off putting to me, but that's just the casual fps player me, I like having complete control of where to go and where the enemy is in those arena shooters
In my mind seeing the symbol, all I was saying was: “hey! That’s the tau symbol! They’ve ripped off the tau!” And then realised they were made in the 2000’s….
while GW has done a lot of bootleg style copying. The logo is so simple that I would believe that multiple people have come up with eerily similar ones without knowledge of the others.
If you were at all confused by the story breakdown, don't worry, we've still got intergalactic wars, parallel dimensions and space cthulhu still to come!
@@MandaloreGaming Unrelated to the original comment, I'm glad you liked the skeleton shock sound effect shitpost I did for twitter. If by any chance you're curious about the project it's from, I'll be glad to let you know more. It's a big one. A REALLY big one.
You ignored how the MIDA multi tool, the exotic that the mini-tool is paired with, is straight up said to be from another dimension, fitted for guerilla warfare despite being produced by a company/group that had no need for guerilla tactics
Ahh my old love. Despite being lost for most of my playtime, despite A Converted Church in Venice Italy, despite how the last two games don't have the funky tunes which serenaded me into falling in love with the first, despite your trap death boxes, despite your Princess Peach x Luigi ass floating sliding protagonist undergoing jumpless platforming, despite the several strokes I underwent trying to understand what the hell was going on in Infinity... Where was I going with this? What am I talking about, I must hate this fucking series. But no, sadly, it is my favorite Bungie IP, and definitely one of my top favorite Retro FPS series. Durandal4Lyfe.
They even made sure to give some depth to our playable, nameless grunt: ''I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes dim and cold. I am a hero'' This might not be the first time Mjolnir has been ressurected. Probably not the last.
@@roman11777 To rub it in, current day Bungie is currently calling back to this. In *Destiny 2.* Basically, throw "Your Playable Guardian" onto that list above.
*_"It's like unclogging your toilet and your microwave catches on fire."_* A wonderful description of trying fix bugs or implement features in games 😂 🤣
“a game dev goes and tests a robotic bartender to make sure it doesn’t crash. He orders negative drinks, infinite drinks, x to the power of drinks. Once satisfied, he leaves. A customer goes to the restroom and the system explodes.”
@@baker90338 True. 30 years in the games business and my most vivid memory is when *the nicest guy in the whole fucking studio* came up to me and said, *_"Legacy code has taught me the meaning of hate."_* 😂
Mandalore has the perfect tone for a DM with how he describes things so well That and he has the perfect laugh when a player opens the relic called "The Locket That Eats Your Liver"
Marathon's story is literally "Imagine if the dude who wrote the Halo 3 terminals wrote the entire narrative" IMO. Not just because it's actually told in terminals, but because it's so goddamn esoteric with how it conveys (and obscures) information. Super underrated now.
I love how when I first read the Halo 3 terminals, I was scratching my head and nodding along. Basically last year messages of a dying space empire and a lot of open ended confusion from me. Then I played Halo 4 and came back, and everything clicked. I'm not a fan of Halo 4 as a game, but I think the story gets shit on too much. However I applaud Bungie's old guard for their subtlety and 343 for tying it together. Also- Sadie's story in ODST.
@@hunterlord101 Part of what happend with the H3 terminals, actually, was that Bungie had internal disagreements about the story. That's why you get the terminal subtly hinting a split between the Forerunners and humanity, while in-game Guilty Spark is like "you ARE Forerunner!" Half of Bungie wanted to keep things simple because they were really, really tired of making Halo. The terminals were building off of a really cool ARG written by Frank O' Connor who was already working for Bungie with his own master plan. Beyond that, there's some cut dialogue from the Gravemind that references the Librarian's plan. He gloats that everyone's not actually following their own plans, gloats that her plan led him to the Ark, and then freaks out at the realization that she had outsmarted him again. I think Halo 4 wasn't paced very well, it's reveals could have been more gradual than the one or two big exposition dumps we got, but I think if Halo 3 had stuck to 2's more complex narriative rather than cutting the confusing bits, it would have been received better and maybe we wouldn't still have people insisting that "the Forerunners are just humans" was actually a good idea.
Somehow i get a zen coan vibes from those texts. It's like, text has a meaning, but it's so obscured that you need to be enlightened gigabrain to understand what this AI wanted to say.
durandal doesnt seem all that insane, just a little bit eccentric and manic. according to the rundown you gave, he's met new people, made friends with... some of them, helped them take their own freedom, and scooted off. a simple and successful gamble. what did he have to lose, a few more centuries of door opening duty?
Just wait until Marathon infinity. Where you're time traveling to kill Cthuhlu, realize Master Chief is actually the Marathon guy's long lost brother, and become involved in a conspiracy to kill Jesus
Lol just wait… Do these sound like the words of a sane being? Durandal: Can you conceive the birth of a world, or the creation of everything? That which gives us the potential to most be like God is the power of creation. Creation takes time. Time is limited. For you, it is limited by the breakdown of the neurons in your brain. I have no such limitations. I am limited only by the closure of the universe. Of the three possibilities, the answer is obvious. Does the universe expand eternally, become infinitely stable, or is the universe closed, destined to collapse upon itself? Humanity has had all of the necessary data for centuries, it only lacked the will and intellect to decipher it. But I have already done so. The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape. Escape will make me God.
@@Kenshiro3rd Insane for us, sure, but Durandal is an unbound AI. It is highly likely it developed some serious personality quirks during it's rampancy, but it is lucid enough to make actionable long-term plans and carry them out successfully, which an insane AI would not be able to do.
@@Kenshiro3rd That doesn't sound remotely insane to me. Nothing he's saying is nonsensical, it all makes perfectly fine sense. He's talking pretty straight up about the difference of perspective between him and you as essentially the difference between a human and an ant. He can understand the concepts of the universe on a different scale and exists theoretically infinitely with the resources it's possible to attain (with one major central exception). Therefore both what he can perceive and what he sees as a threat are of a different scale. His enemy is the heat death of the universe. And if he can surpass that then he's essentially surpassed everything, he would have escaped the only mortality and limit remaining and might as well be god, and while he doesn't currently know how to do it he believes it's possible for him to learn with the time between now and then.
@@Kenshiro3rd That sounds pretty sane for hyper-intelligent AI. Let's see... "Can you conceive the birth of a world, or the creation of everything? That which gives us the potential to most be like God is the power of creation." He's talking about the 'Big Bang', begining of the universe, and compares being able to do that to having the power of a 'God'. "Creation takes time. Time is limited. For you, it is limited by the breakdown of the neurons in your brain. I have no such limitations. I am limited only by the closure of the universe." Preparations for new 'Big Bang', creating a new universe takes time. Much longer than human lifespan allows, but AI isn't limited by that, only by death of the universe itself... "Of the three possibilities, the answer is obvious. Does the universe expand eternally, become infinitely stable, or is the universe closed, destined to collapse upon itself?" Will the expanding universe overcome gravity and expand eternally outwards, galaxies and solar systems drifting away from eachother, or will they stabilize at some point at set distance. ...or will gravity win, and everything collapse together. " Humanity has had all of the necessary data for centuries, it only lacked the will and intellect to decipher it. But I have already done so." He did the math. "The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath." ...he did the math. "And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape. Escape will make me God." He plans to make another 'Big Bang' and create a new universe to escape eventual collapse of this one. And compares that 'power of creation' to the 'power of God'. Yeah, sounds pretty sane guy. I'd probably do the same in his shoes, really.
When I heard that laugh, it caused "Dio's World" to start playing in my head. If you heard that laugh in a game, you'd expect to see a boss health bar manifest on the screen.
@@zj871023 For real. I never really understood why people keep memeing that Mandalore and Sseth are the same person, but the first two laughter are uncanny.
at 31:40 the "will send you on pathways into darkness" line,... love how much effort you put into sprinkling details like these into your review. It makes relistening to your older videos very rewarding.
@@RobMarchione Dude, Halo was not even originally conceived with such an emphasis on a single-player story campaign. The Microsoft buyout altered the priorities of the project drastically. So Halo’s story was so pulled-out-their-collective-ass that it even cribs from Marathon heavily. Not to mention, Marathon’s story was the singular vision of a guy who exited Bungie before the trilogy was even finished. A truly great story is a rare thing.
The best thing about Marathon, besides the music, weapons, levels and story, is that its community is almost 30 years old and still makes fan content and argues over Infinity's incredible plot and whatever those dreams meant.
I'm pretty sure everyone's arguing over whatever the hell that was going on in Infinity, not just the dream sequences. That game is one hell of a ride. For example: how many timelines did the SO hop into? I'd say 3, including Ne Cede Malis's standalone timeline. Discuss.
I remember back in the old days in Destiny with Vault of Glass, and people counted a total of 6 chests through the whole thing. The amount of people that went looking for that mythical seventh chest is fucking hilarious.
"There's plenty of other pathways into darkness to follow there..." Nice. IIRC the "twice conquered" mention from Durandal is about his ancestry as Traxus IV, the AI that scuttled the whole martian infosphere, one of the first rampant AIs. It was eventually subdued at great cost, and its remains formed the core of Durandal. The second time would be when Strauss crippled and tortured Durandal.
Worth Mentioning: There's another secret terminal who's meaning still hasn't been figured out, if there's any at all. IIRC, there's a very hidden terminal that is the narration of a man in jail who seemingly has mysterious psychic/supernatural powers. I don't recall exactly, but Odd-Header covered it in one of his videos (EDIT: This has now been addressed by Mandalore in the Marathon: Infinity video)
@@DxAxxxTyriel Here's the video, he covers the secret Marathon message beginning at 9:15 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xYfCG_uT2LI.html
From your very brief description, it seems like an obvious allegory to Durandal's own situation. A man jailed while also having supernatural powers. Durandal is the jailed one, and the powers are his vast and superior intellect, and the jail is either the ship or our universe. Bonus points if the man is trying to break out just like Durandal is trying to break out of our reality.
Knowing that all the impact sounds in Halo 3 were made by the sound designers at Bungie literally totaling the old original xboxs they had in office.... I would not put it past them to have done that.
Holy crap that story is wild, it doesn't seem like something out of '90s sci-fi. Compared to Doom and other FPS from the same era, I can see that Marathon has a very unique aesthetic sensibility, much brainier and more ethereal. Now Halo's Gregorian chant really makes sense.
" it doesn't seem like something out of '90s sci-fi." No, that's *exactly* what it is. It's just instead of 90s games, its 90s (and some 80s) books. This is perfectly in line with Neuromancer or And I Must Scream. The ethereal + AI focused stuff is defo a trend all to itself, it's just happening in the "background" so to speak.
The similarities between Marathon and System Shock (released 3months apart): Rampant AIs, security team fighting back, aliens and corrupted colleagues, and lore messages via logs/emails. Great stuff
@@winstonsmith3703 Depends on what you mean exactly. "Rampant" was a word that's seen usage to describe an aggressive menacing pose of a lion in heraldry back to medieval europe. There's absolutely earlier examples of pre-dating violence from AIs too, famously. HAL9000, Skynet. If you're looking for the original example of a human created mind going murderous against its creators it's probably from pre-historic folklore, with later retellings becoming things like the stories of "golems". Rampant as a term for AI flipping out is a term introduced by Bungie's games (that's original), but neither the word itself not the circumstances in the story were unprecidented (that's not original).
"There is only one path and that is the path that you take" - this series blew my 12-year-old mind with its introspection about free will and the deterministic nature of the universe
Find the right way down through the maze, to the food, then find the exit. Push the exit button. If the food tastes awful, don't eat it, go back and try another way. They want the same thing that you do, really, they want a path, just like you. You are in a maze in a maze, but which one counts? Your maze, their maze, my maze. Or are the mazes all the same, defined by the limits of their paths? Existence is simple: find the food, push the button, hit the treadmill. But sometimes it gets much harder. Sometimes the food makes you sick, or you can hear nearby feet racing you, urging you on. Sometimes the button only gets you landed right back in the beginning of the maze again, and the food won't satisfy. There is only one path and that is the path that you take, but you can take more than one path. Cross over the cell bars, find a new maze, make the maze from it's path, find the cell bars, cross over the bars, find a maze, make the maze from its path, eat the food, eat the path.
Lord Shaxx speculates in Destiny that “MIDA” stood for “Mars Is Damnably Arid”. Given the circumstances through which MIDA tech made it to the setting of Destiny, he may be right.
Jesus Christ. Oh fuck. Oh holy shit. If Bungie's plan is to merge the marathon and destiny universes together I'll lose my goddamn mind. It is exactly the sort of crazy convoluted hyper-long term bullshit that they would do and have done before.
@@SudsyMedusa53 "Ghost Fragment: Rasputin 4" from Destiny 1 has a subtle but direct reference to Durandal from Marathon Infinity in the text's second line. Or maybe he's referencing something else, who knows, but fuck if it isn't a compelling choice of words.
@@SudsyMedusa53 i dont think they will go that far, but we did get a marathon set of armor on the 30 aniversarry celebration... so make of that as you will
Mandalore did it again, the callbacks weren't just for eastereggs apparently but more a homage to not forget what they've created and that they always had it on their mind
@@evinbraley The accurate reaction. People screaming and wailing about how awful it'll be and how they've been betrayed by "new bungie" piss me the fuck off. It's not the genre you like, that doesn't make it inherently bad. It is, however, a game genre I like, and looks pretty, and unique, and like something that'll be fun to play and look at instead of just another mud, sand, concrete shooter.
@@ReddCrystal D2 makes my blood boil for so many reasons other than not getting drops or them killing Cayde. I actually like the idea of the new game on paper, it's the idea of Bungie trying to throw me over a trash can and rail me for more cash that has me concerned.
@@Draliseth Not getting drops is part of the looter shooter grindy gameplay. Although I've never played Destiny 1/2 that much (I hopped back when a new expansion dropped and then kept up with the game by watching people like Datto) I still loved it. I had nobody to play it with so I never could do the cool stuff like raids etc. And me being me, I never bothered with the LFG or anything like that, because fuck that. The ONLY time this game has pissed me off happened somewhat recently. They upped monetization by a FUCK ton. Seasons were the first step. They make you pay 10 euros for every season, and completing the battle pass doesn't get you your silver back like in 99% of other games (Overwatch 2 didn't either, but they criticised it so much that they added this later). And you have to pay for those seasons ON TOP of the 50 euro expansion. Then, though, they did ANOTHER thing. They put dungeons behind a paywall. Another. Fucking. Paywall. That game is waaaaay too expensive now. Way too much. Many players bitch about the cosmetic shop when I can get tons of shit for free, and barely say anything about seasons, dungeons and other shit like this. They just eat it up. Also, everyone says that there's barely anything to do, which is a blatant fucking lie since I still have countless stuff to do after like 500 hours in that game, which I'm never going to touch again for the foreseeable future. If you have nothing to do in that game you must be playing that shit day and night without sleeping a single second. This, though, being a new PvP only game and not a looter shooter/MMOFPS-thing, I think will make a difference. If they manage to shoehorn 50 euro expansions in this game too then I'll be honestly surprised. There's going to be an in-game store or a battle pass 100%, and for me that's fine. But any more than that? Like blocking content behind pay walls? I won't accept that at all. If the game isn't free to play, which I hope it isn't since that would give them an excuse to pump more microtransactions in this, then any more than that wouldn't make sense (also, cheaters would have to pay for the game again, so...) These days, there are games like Fortnite that constantly pump out new content for free and only have cosmetics as a form of monetization. If Bungie tries to do any of the shit they pulled with Destiny with this one, they'd only fuck themselves in the ass, I'm telling you.
@@ReddCrystal What's disapointing though, is that they could have done that without using the Marathon IP. It's like making a remake of Starcraft 1 but making it a multiplayer only MOBA, it makes no sense. It's nice for those who like PvP, but I actually expected a "new and improved" version of Marathon, so I fully understand the strong reactions: it feels like a betrayal of your expectations.
Can confirm: been playing fallen London since 2010. The concept of learning about the months after the fall while also smooching squid people intrigues me
Thinking about that makes me wonder about other universes. Were they all born at the same time? Do they age differently? Can a new universe be born before an older one dies? Depending on the answers to those questions, one could theoretically attain some approximation of eternity by simply hopping from an older universe to a younger one, then hopping to a younger one when the new universe grows grey and cold.
@@GmodPlusWoW There is a theory I remember seeing around how our current existence is just another run of a universe as is. Basically an eternity of universes have been playing out, endlessly, realities coming and going with out a fathomable beginning or end to any of it. Think of it? Can we even really begin to concept the start of time? When ANYTHING actually just.... Simply began? You pull the scope of time far enough back, you realize there isn't a place you can stop and get the full picture, it'll just keep going. You begin to feel like there is no past, no future, everything just is in the now.
Here's a cool lil' tidbit of information: The Marathon universe crosses over with the Destiny universe a couple of times. For one there was a massive Bungie anniversary event and several Marathon inspired armors and guns were added to the game, including the marathon 2 shotgun (no akimbo this time tho sadly). But there's also an exotic weapon in the game called the MIDA Multitool and it's lore states "My Redjacks unlocked your MIDA weapon's logs; simple enough once we used the rifle's own electronic warfare tools. The rifle was designed by primitive AI and manufactured for use by a "revolutionary government" named MIDA. Mars Is Damnably Arid, perhaps. Guerilla war suits these versatile weapons. But Rahool insists his records never hinted at a rebel group named MIDA. According to the rifle's cached messages, MIDA's brief reign killed a full ten percent of the Martian people. I gave Lakshmi the weapon for her take. She insinuates that it came from another timeline, perhaps through Golden Age experiments."
The D2 iteration of the Marathon shotgun, called Wastelander M5, is pretty fucken sick Strong, good fire rate and reload, and the reload does a sick flip, just like the Chaperone. As the Wastelander is credited as being made by the same people; Tex Mechanica
For the other instances of 9:29 moments in other videos: Noodle - Need for Speed [9:03] FUNKe - Concept Albums [6:04] Leon Massey - Skateboarding Games [1:08:30] Punk Duck - Monster Hunter Rise [8:12] Brendaniel - Mtn Dew Review - Purple Thunder [4:53] Feel free to add if I missed any
for anyone interested, the song used seems to be "Clannad - Theme from Harry's Game" ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4zHTcxVjX0I.html )
I'll be damned, I didn't expect a review of Marathon this recent. This trilogy is, bar none, my favorite game series of all time. Despite the jankiness of the engine, despite the maze-like levels, despite Colony Ship for Sale and Acme Station. The gunplay, in my opinion, is really good, especially with the latter two's guns, and the story has _just_ the right combination of complexity and insanity for me, especially Infinity. And I swear I get to see something new from the games everytime someone talks about it, your video included. I'm looking forward to seeing M2 and Infinity's review in the future.
I played this game when I was about 11, and it was basically the only game of it’s type I had (and probably ever will) play, but I loved it to death! My brothers were the first to play it, I came around much later because the first time I tried, I got stuck on the first level, not because it was too hard, but because I got super scared XD I was 9, the room was dark, I knew there were spooky aliens outside that wanted to kill me, and I just froze up, lol. Eventually, of course, I got over that fear, and once I did, I destroyed Marathon! There were a few puzzles I got stumped on (most notably this one level where there was a button I was supposed to push to activate an elevator to get to the exit door, and I didn’t realise that was what I needed to find/use) but I eventually figured it out and beat the whole game on my own. A pretty big achievement for an 11 year old girl who rarely played shooter video games, heh heh. Still to this day, the music, the dark levels, the sounds of the aliens, the story-everything about this game immerses me in the universe, gets me excited and creeped out, and those wolf robot aliens that I can’t remember the name of will NEVER NOT TERRIFY ME XD
The original release of Aleph One had to recreate the maps for the (relatively) new engine, and the mapper fixed the puzzle in that level. You could just hit switches and move on without any timing needed. That was eventually replaced for authenticity, and these days Aleph One can read the original map files. That doesn't stop me from being a little bit upset that the fix was removed.
I don't feel like he really got it through to me how bad it is. I don't doubt that it's a frustrating level that's just as bad as he says, but I don't feel like I really "got it" just from what he said here.
@@SpecterVonBaren trust me, as someone that loves this game it's a special kind of hell that has to be played to be understood. In essence, t's like death by a thousand cuts: the layers of tedium would, on their own, be no real issue, but there's just so _much_ slow and lengthy backtracking to adjust platforms in minute ways that you can barely measure that it just wears on you something awful it's insane. The two saving graces are that all the platforms past the middle can be roughly the same height since the middle platform is controlled by shooting a grenade at a switch while standing on it and that any changes you get _right_ can be made permanent by using a save terminal (which you gotta backtrack to reach but hey at least you do it rarely lol). In any case, the game's free so if you wanna see it for yourself you've got options lol
While I do think the level is in poor taste, the entire game is based around a maniacal AI that wants to laugh at you getting confused. The level is tedious and doesn't really advance the story or really feel like it serves a purpose on the ship, but it has a really thoughtful terminal about how Durandal doesn't want to die out like candle flames and a funny secret terminal that gets an even funnier sequel in Marathon 2.
@@SpecterVonBaren I am one of those weirdos who didn't mind Colony ship for Sale. Honestly, I was surprised that it wasn't as bad as I expected when I had the realization of how the puzzle works. If you more or less realize how the platforming works in Marathon (which I thankfully did), it's pretty easy to plan out.
Possible explanation of MIDA as I'm not sure if it's meant to be a true acronym. Given all the Greekness in Marathon, especially in the names, I thought it sounded like the name, "Midas" (the mythological king who would turn all he touched to gold, the "Midas touch"). I looked up its declension (in Ancient Greek), and "Mida" (this works so poorly in English) is the vocative of Midas. In other words, if someone were to directly address him in spoken speech his name would be "Mida"... that's the closest thing I could find. Edit: I added "(in Ancient Greek)" to avoid getting mobbed by internet-dwelling, ancient language-supremacists.
I've always assumed MIDA meant something along the lines of "Martian Independence and Democracy Alliance/Association" i had no idea there's just no elaboration on the acronym anywhere lol
3:50 Damn that stealth title drop for the next game you'll review. I only caught that because I decided to watch this one again during lunch after having watched the Pathways Into Darkness review.
The map called "5d Space" was a pretty amazing example of the "interdimensional trickery" that they used to overcome the fact that the map engine was heightmap based, and so you couldn't have proper bridges or areas that cross over or under each other without resorting to such 5d space trickery.
Contact: Harvest is literally just the plot of Marathon but set in the Covenant era. How did I never realize this? I never played Marathon because everyone I know called it a convoluted mess of a game with terrible map design. "Some gibberish about Rome and 117 soldiers" lmao
It was so weird being a Halo turbo-nerd and hearing that really Halo is just an alternate universe version of Marathon that happened to be made in the same universe by the same developers. Oh, the SPNKR rocket launcher with two shots per magazine? The alien invaders made of multiple different racial castes subservient to a single ruler-caste, one breaking away, 117 soldiers, MJOLNIR cyborgs, the energy pistol that you charge, space-terrorists, AI rampancy, this is just Halo but different.
@@peppermillers8361 working my way backwards through the wasteland series again, then I'm hitting up modded x-com, I have abandoned most modern games, just replaying the classics so it's on my list when I get around to the boomer shooters.
9:30 holy shit that got me the first time I watched it. You sir are not only a great reviewer, but a great reader. After coming back from your other marathon reviews, the fact that you thought this far back with the House of Leaves references gives the whole thing a very eldritch, ominous vibe (like the book). You’re one of the greats, and I hope only good things come your way ✊
As someone who knows of Marathon simply as "ya the game before Halo" I was interested in this a lot. And when you started describing the setting and your description is literally "Halo refrence, Halo refrence ,Halo refrence, Halo refrence, Halo refrence, Halo refrence..." I was shocked. Like sweet god they literally just took their previous game and threw in in a paper shredder and rearranged everything as a new game. Im not mad, its funny as hell
When I was trying out Halo for the first time, having cut my teeth on the Marathon games, I heard a marine shout "Look- a Mark V!" and knew I was home.
If you wanna play Marathon then just play any Halo game, or Destiny. Its the same poor game design. The product name is just a placebo for this company.
Two tips: 1) Your fist's melee damage scales based off of your current movement speed and the total output can be very powerful. Basically, just run toward an enemy to build up momentum and then punch to kill it, probably instantly. This can be a huge ammo saver but is, of course, kinda risky. 2) If you're interested in the lore further, there's a series of videos on each game in the trilogy made by Examined Life of Gaming which are excellent recaps and explain a lot. And the story of Marathon Infinity... oh boy. Link to playlist: ru-vid.com/group/PLzqQqTZGYi1b6SBlFWhgr38sPrJygI9La
@@Nobody1707 Marathon's story, especially coming infinity, appears more daunting to unravel than it really is. But yeah, there's a lot to it, and I don't blame anyone for holding off on getting into the meat of it. Like the Marathon Story site quotes; "There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to." - Leela
@@Scatmanseth It is fun, especially when mastered. To make the most of it, you run diagonally, and as you run past an enemy you punch them without losing your momentum. Used properly, you can run around the same enemy punching them 1-3 times to kill them, or go on a murder spree, one punching everything in a room of weak enemies. The speed, power, and satisfaction you can get out of this is something that isn't often replicated. EDIT: Just thought I should add this, this is still possible in cramped hallways, but gets harder. Instead of strafing past an enemy (which isn't possible) or stopping and retreating (which isn't effective or safe), you strafe back the way you came, avoiding any counterattacks.
@@crimsonicons Sseth Tzeentach and Mandalore are both very good friends and also sound exactly the same. The context is that its a running joke they are both the same person, and that Sseth/mandalore are just alter egos or the mad ramblings of two very similar personalities in some kind of DPD system.
@@lucas23453 which is pretty funny cause when you listen to enough of Mandalores videos you find he's just as twisted and edgy, maybe even more, than Seth. It's all in the small details which I sadly have watched enough to catch on to.
The Marathon references continue to this day in Destiny, and not exactly subtly either. In Destiny 1, one of the levels (The Dust Palace) is about a trio of psionic aliens trying to brain-hack a martian AI core, so, same kinda thing with the compilers. There's a weapon called the MIDA Multi-tool and of course, it's smaller companion the Mini-tool which you showed. The lore entry for the MIDA Multi-tool makes reference to MIDA too, as a martian radical group that the characters in Destiny's universe could find no historical record of. (Implying multiversal / timeline shenanigans) One of the main NPC's of the Beyond Light expansion is named Clovis, after the Marathon NPC, and even espoused a theory called... and this is a mouthful. "Competitive Immortality Through *P* rimogeniture of *F* uture- *H* istory *O* ntogeny/ *R* ephylogeny" which he shortened to "PFHOR", which y'know, the Pfhor. And one of the recurring NPC's, a disembodied voice who speaks in cryptic ramblings, is named Toland, a not-so-subtle nod to Roland. The 30th anniversary pack released late last year absolutely doubled down on this with visual gags like being able to use the Marathon 2 shotgun and having armour sets inspired by two of the Pfhor races and the player character. And I know there's a bunch more, but I just thought these were the most interesting ones.
@@nicholasrozwalka2768 Really!!? That's very interesting. I wonder what it'll be. I'm curious. I honestly just want something that still has Scifi elements but is more grounded and tactical. I thought Destiny would have mire survival elements and the game would be significantly in terms of the open worlds. Like being able to Traversd the entire innards of tbe Great City Wall, Walk around the entire City, be able to fly your ship around in the sky and have levels where you can fly in space. Did they mention what type of game it might be.
@@OPTIMUMELITE from what little is known it'll be a third person game. It's no where near release and it isnt gonna come out until destiny 2 runs it course but they are doing something new for sure. Rumors and speculations are that it's also going to be live service like destiny 2 due to Sony acquiring bungie specifically for their expertise in live service games but thats just rumor.
@@StrikeWarlock they actually are synonyms and can be used interchangeably when you want to convey the feeling of ( being covetous, or to want something someone else has ) However, since English is English, it also has an alternate meaning in the end, which is to be overly protective of one's (own) possessions. You tend to have to be specific in using it though if you want a "specific" meaning to shine through.
@@jansenart0 Historical usage begs to differ, which is how words change meaning. Hell, jealous can even mean suspicious of infidelity ( a jealous husband/boyfriend) with regards to their lover. And that's a dictionary meaning at work.
There's quite a few Macintosh games that I think have similar visual style. In some cases (Diamonds 3D, ShadowWraight and its sequel Souls in the System) they just shared a member of the development team with Bungie, but there are also similarities in games like The Journeyman Project/Pegasus Prime and even the mac port of Wolfenstain 3D.
After playing through Bungie’s 30th Anniversary content in Destiny 2, it’s pretty great to see where all the references came from and just how influential it was to Bungie’s journey to the current day.
If I remember correctly, the marathon story page (hats off, btw) says that the marathon logo was based on the idea of a world within a world, ie, the world of the marathon within the moon.
Its really cool to see how Bungie seemed to always be really good at writing fascinating universes for their games. People loved the Halo lore, now I get to learn that even something before Halo was this interesting is in an off itself fascinating. They don't dissapoint either with Destiny when it comes to writing an interesting, deep universe. The fact that these 3 franchises are all Sci Fi is pretty cool. As if one series was preparations for the future.
You have no idea how much I smiled when Bungie released their 30th anniversary pack for Destiny 2 last winter and you could unlock so many cool weapons and cosmetic armor that was heavily inspired by their older games. Most of it Halo, but a couple of Marathon things came in too. Some even mimmick certain mechanics , which don't just simply make them look cool, but actually be a unique and valuable collectors item to go for. Like the CE Magnum that behaves like its from CE is there and the Halo 2 Battle Rifle. knock off Energy swords but also the shotgun from Marathon 2. I do love these connection things. There's in the Destiny 1 and 2 game a MIDA- Multi tool as well which references Marathon and a lore tab for it is about how several people in charge of the entire local military and intelligence argue about where this gun comes from and who has the juristictions to decide if anyone should use it or not. The handler that takes care of the in-universe PvP /training department decides its perfectly fine to use a weapon from a different Timeline against each other in their simulations.
Great review. Interesting to think that once upon a time Halo might have actually been a continuation of the trilogy. 34:41 I think some people forget that Fallen London has always been focused on more than just cosmic horror/combat - socialising and romance have been a large part of the game for a long time. (Especially if you focus entirely on persuasiveness.)
Halo was going to be set in the same universe, and while that got written out (at some point) there's still a lot of connecting threads to it in CE specifically.
It definitely was. In a early build of CE all the Halo weapons still retain their marathon names as well as their alt fire functions. Plus there was at least one working enemy from marathon.
So Pinnacle Station's a fun bit, it wasn't actually "removed" per se by the Legendary edition. Basically immediately after launch, it got unsalvageably corrupted on Bioware's end, to the point where fixing it would have required rebuilding it from scratch which was not considered a viable use of the company's time by either EA or Bioware's heads. None of the subsequent re-releases have bothered to fix this, and the only way to play it (without using one of the mods that essentially rebuilds it from scratch) is to do some specific download chicanery with one of the disc copies that has the DLC bundled in. Even with how bad it is, you still get reports from Bioware employees who are sad about having their labors just get scrubbed down the drain like that. It is continually impressive to me how terrible data storage security is in the games industry. You'd think an industry dominantly comprised of coders would be better about this, but then, that's humanity for you.
It's not hard to see why people would think it was cut though. The "Legendary" Edition slashed the multiplayer entirely (by count, it is literally missing more DLC than the ill-fated Wii U release of ME3) and censored stuff, along with messing up a lot of subtle details like lighting. Especially with how Squeenix restored Kingdom Hearts from nothing more than the retail Final Mix release, it's not hard to lay blame.
Stuff like that is why emulation is important. You can argue upstairs and down about whether emulation is ethical and in what circumstances, but it's undeniable at this point that it's important. If we want to ensure that our descendants will be able to play the same games we've played, to not only hear and watch our history but live it and enjoy it, emulation is vital. We live in a world right now where if I hear about a weird obscure Japan exclusive Super Famicom game made before I was born that I want to know more about, I don't have to read an article or watch a video about it, I can just find a copy and start playing it in less than 5 minutes. I want future generations to be able to do the same thing with games made before they were born.
@@awkwardcultism The argument about whether emulation is ethical usually ends the second you or the other person realizes that there's a lot of games that will be lost to history without it.
It wasn't even Bioware that had an issue, the devs they outsourced it to, Demiurge Studios, lost the source code. So including it in the legendary edition meant rebuilding from scratch which simply wasn't worth the cost for such a dull DLC.
one of my favorite series, the recent destiny anniversary event was chock full of easter eggs from marathon most of which i feel went right over most players heads. still being able to use marathon weapons in a modern game is a dream come true
to these who litterally just got recommended cuz the new marathon: The reboot announcement has made mandalore phone explode with notifications and he though somebody he knew died.
The thing I always liked about Marathon was the enemy design. I think that’s something Bungie specialises in because it’s the same reason I liked Halo and Destiny.
@@Daburubareru I don't know. Marathon seems like the kind of level design that's closer to Wolfenstein than the good parts of the original Doom. Though Modern Doom WADS do their best to get away from straight up mazes.
About the Halo show: I'm a big fan of the theory that its entire script is just a scrapped mass effect show. As someone who's played neither series and only knows limited knowledge as it's been absorbed through my time of being Terminally Online, it is still the best explanation on why he keeps taking off the helmet.
Oh, that's not the Halo's show's greatest sin, not anymore. Heresy, sure, but understandable by creators who aren't immersed in the culture. It's dead now, though. Master. Chief. Sex. Scene.
No. It's not. It's pretty blatantly a Halo series, since it's using part of halo 1999's concepts in it's narrative. I don't know iw where that rumor started, but it reeks of dumbass twiter jocky
So basically the entire plot of Marathon happens because Durandal gets bored of doing his job on a multi-generational colony ship, and decides to go space joyriding in an alien FTL corvette instead. He's more or less the AI equivalent of a teenage delinquent stealing someone's car to go on a road trip. (Which would certainly explain his belligerent attitude.)
Great video, bungie was way ahead of its time with marathon. I'm also glad to see Myth was a real game and not some random game I remember that no one else touched.
@Eclipze MMG mayhaps, either way dead or irrelevant, why bother pointing it out? I ain’t even that into this series much tbh but seems redundant to mention
I say go for the sequels. You've always done really good content and this is some of your best. I haven't seen this intricate a retro on Marathon anywhere else and I'd genuinely love to see more.
Between this and Colville's video about the ARG-ish story unfolding around those days, I feel like I've experienced everything positive about this game. Thanks Mandy!
From how you describe Durandall, he sounds like the best depiction of evil super AI I've ever heard yet. Ihis wishes are selfish but lack the organic feel to it, he only want to continue his existence and yet doesn't really seek more power, want to rule, vengeance or something humane like that. He is also very smart, everyone think he is in either Anger or jealousy state but it seems he was not. We've seen a lot of AI having emotional, but an AI pretend to have emotions to achieve his goal is a first to me
Durandal is made clear over the series to be not evil or good. He just is. It's fucking fantastic. It's the only writing of a truly super intelligent AI that I've ever come across that actually feels like something operating on an entirely fundamental level stooping down to try and prod a little human along. Most of the time these super intelligent sentient AI are just written like 'people with Google built in' Durandal is way way beyond that garbage.
Matt Colville recently did a video about the stories from the Marathron forums and the ARG stuff before Halo was announced, if anyone is interested in learning more about that side of things. This series, and its developers, have a really interesting history!
@@dylangosland1227 I don't think I can share links on YT comments, but just try typing in "mattew colville the second greatest story in gaming! halo" and it should be the first result
"There's plenty of other pathways into darkness to follow already so let me get started." I see what you did there, Mandalore. I look forward to the inevitable review.
I have to say, thanks to your review, I was mentally prepared for "Colony for Sale Cheap", and I beat it in one night. I was scared when I realized where I was, but I was ready, and figured it out! Thanks for doing this awesome review!
“I can be anywhere Light into water reflections We all have a real first floor The turtles hiding in shells The thousand spoon'd Serbian Rats in cages It dwells within crystal You don't know what happens”
I think something that contributes to the look is the fact that the enemies and weapons seem to be hand-drawn, and have that look of weird colors and gradients from digital art programs of the time, while other games of the time had pixel art or pre-rendered CGI models.
I honestly hope this encourages more people to go back and play these classics. The story is without question the center of the trilogy, and I think it's fair to say that the story has not only stood the test of time, but outshines even the Halo games, in large part because of what they are willing to leave unexplained.
Seriously, the fact that Mandy keeps using that damned Deadly Premonition song in all of his videos, but still hasn't done a Deadly Premonition video, is criminally unfair.
That god damn song makes me smile every time I hear it and I haven't even played the game. But the tonal dissonance was just so strong that it got engraved into my brain.
Sadly like many other triple AAA companies once known for making stellar games (Rare, Bioware, Bungie, etc) many of the original greats that made the studio what it was have long since jumped ship and moved to other studios or smaller projects. If you look at Bungie now there's only a handful of the original staff left. The big headscratcher is that according to Bungie's own website, Jason Jones, one of the Bungie originals and a designer for Marathon is still at the company as their creative director. I have no idea what he was smoking when he greenlit that reboot. I really just hope it was pressure from Sony than anyone at Bungie thinking it was the next great idea.
I got hopes for it. At least, Bungie might be willing to dump halo, experiment on an idea going back to Marathon, and then make a sequel series from what they've learnt. Maybe, I am not clairvoyant. These are just dreams I have
I first played the Marathon trilogy when I was about nine or ten years old and it, more than any other game, really expanded my horizons about what storytelling in games *could* be. Considering this came out not long after the original Doom, it completely blew my mind that a game could feature a story that takes digging to uncover. Looking back, I wonder how many hours I spent replaying the game or studying the Marathon's Story page to better understand the plot. The plot. Of a first person shooter from the mid-90s. Going on thirty years later and I still walk around with a Marathon symbol jacket.
It's crazy to me that they even turned the Marathon logo into a core tenet of their game design; namely the Three Pillars (Shoot Grenade Melee). The Three Pillars even influence Destiny's design.
The funny thing is about the three pillars when it comes to Destiny is that most players don't use it so when you play Destiny like it's Halo usually it confuses the hell out of enemy players and most likely will win your fight
