MARATHON Trilogy - Official Trilogy, Forge & Anvil, and Scenarios

[NumberingYourState]

MARATHON

MARATHON 2 DURANDAL

MARATHON INFINITY
​

Before Halo, and before [Bungie shoved microtransaction cucked nigger dicks up our assholes], there was a game that was ahead of its time, versatile, and perhaps even deeper than anyone could have imagined (at the time). You play as a space marine, dubbed MJOLNIR Recon #54 is set on a mission to a UESC military installment on Deimos, the asteroid moon orbiting Mars, after a suspicious drop in communications. It is currently administered by three AI's, Durandal, Leela, and Tycho. Two out of the three AI's, Durandal and Tycho, have been compromised with the former going rampant and the latter being corrupted by the oppressive alien invaders known as Pfhor who seem to have enslaved an advanced race originating from the war-torn planet L'Howon. Leela attempts to bring some semblance of order to the Marathon, but is ultimately lost in the conflict.
​

SCENARIOS
​

Marathon is a versatile game with Forge & Anvil and other scripting tools, some of the greatest scenarios are listed here.

But there are two scenarios in particular that are really a good service to the fans and are definitely friendly to the lore and bring the story down to earth for those who are having bloodshot eyes after reading every single terminal in the official trilogy.

MARATHON RUBICON X​

Here we have the unofficial fourth chapter in the Marathon series, with two separate plot lines following Infinity and its bizarre use of deep themes to determine where you go after a certain objective is complete, so you can end any greater mission on a happier note or a bitter note if you wanted to. Failed timelines are actually possible in this scenario, like in Infinity.

MARATHON ETERNAL​

This is probably the most epic scenario I have ever played, the levels are absolutely fucking GINORMOUS for a good majority of them being based on familiar/popular ones in the official trilogy. I won't spoil it too much but like Rubicon before, there is a huge amount of variety in not only level design and story paths but the amount of careful decision making in such a classic format shooter is nothing short of impressive.

Here's some badass music.

 

[IV 445]

Could you add a more descriptive title? I for a second thought this was an AnberLynn video

 

[NumberingYourState]

Could you add a more descriptive title? I for a second thought this was an AnberLynn video

Like they would know how to install PC games anyways. Fixed it.

 

[Globe]

wasn't this the first mac FPS? I never owned a mac so I couldn't play it, but i occasionally seen projects using its assets in the doom modding community. Always looked kinda neat.

 

[NumberingYourState]

There's actually a project that brought Marathon to the Quake-Era 3D.

 

[The Shadow]

wasn't this the first mac FPS? I never owned a mac so I couldn't play it, but i occasionally seen projects using its assets in the doom modding community. Always looked kinda neat.

Well, Bungie's own Pathways into Darkness predates it (it's an interesting blend of FPS and dungeon crawler...IN 1993!) but it's a first in a lot of ways. It might have been the first FPS to offer alt-fire (Dark Forces came out around the same time, though).

 

[Sammy]

FUCK YES MARATHON

When I was a little kid, my family were Macintosh owners. All throughout. Even to this day my parents still exclusively use Macs. I asked my parents to get me a copy of DOOM for my 10th birthday. And my parents, being parents in the 90s that didn't grow up with video games themselves, trying to buy a specific game their kid requests, you know how that goes, showed up to my birthday with Marathon.

Well after I got over my initial disappointment, I fell completely in love with the game. The fact that it was a (relatively) fast paced shooting action game alongside a (again, relatively) deeply philosophical narrative was extremely formative to my tastes in concepts and interests. To this day some of my favorite characters in fiction are computer AIs, freshly freed of Asimovian restrictions.

It was something DOOM, what I thought I wanted, lacked entirely, although argumentatively the gameplay of DOOM was better. I say argumentatively, because although DOOM clearly has stood the test of time better than Marathon and become more iconic cornerstone of video game history, whereas Marathon has been relegated to simply a footnote few pay attention to, at the time of both games releases Marathon had some severe technical superiorities to DOOM. As mentioned before, Marathon was one of the first games (if not THE first) to have a secondary fire mode. Marathon had animated textures, something the original DOOM engine did not. Marathon had allied monsters who would fight alongside you, monsters that would change their behaviors (typically going berzerk) and changing attack patterns based on their injuries. Although difficult to see Marathon also had a little better physics handling - variable gravity settings and such, so that different environments had different properties in how grenades and rockets functioned, as well as how fast you would fall. You could look up and down in Marathon, and had to in order to aim at things vertically higher or lower than you (although there was some basic aim assist) Marathon also could break physics a little more interesting in relation to space, more of a bug than a planned feature, but one a lot of map designers use to their own advantage (look up 5D Space sometime).

Marathon's multiplayer was extremely advanced for the day - sprites held different weapons, depending on what the player was actually wielding, a trait not common in video games until Quake 2 at least (DOOM, Duke Nukem, and even good ol' 3D Quake all used the same sprite/model no matter what weapon the player wielded). Sprites also could look in different directions in multiplayer - you could see which way a player was running based on his feet being pointed and turned in a certain way, while his upper torso would twist left and right based on where he was looking. Marathon had dedicated multiplayer arena maps, something DOOM officially never had until like, a GBA Port or something. Marathon had support up to 8 players to DOOM's 4, had different modes like King of the Hill or Kill the Man with the Skull, and even had Voice Chat Over Network Support in 1994.

By the time Aleph One, the source code version was released, I was in high school, (although I don't remember if the game files themselves were freely distributed yet - but in the intervening years, probably age 13 or 14 or something, I got the big Marathon Trilogy Collectors Set, so I already owned all the files and made a CD with them) - we would load Marathon up on the school PCs and play networked deathmatch for 30 minutes to an hour before our classes started. I had an unfair advantage lol.

To this day if a website has the option for a graphic or an avatar I typically default to that circular Marathon logo.
TL;DR: I fucking love Marathon.