Marathon Trilogy

The Marathon Trilogy is a science fiction first-person shooter video game series from Bungie, originally released for Classic Mac OS. The name Marathon is derived from the giant interstellar colony ship that provides the setting for the first game; the ship is constructed out of what used to be the Martian moon Deimos. The three games in the series—Marathon (1994), Marathon 2: Durandal (1995), and Marathon Infinity (1996)—are widely regarded as spiritual predecessors of Bungie's Halo series.

Marathon
The cover box of the Marathon Trilogy box set
Genre(s)First-person shooter
Developer(s)Bungie
Publisher(s)Bungie
Creator(s)Jason Jones, Alex Seropian, Greg Kirkpatrick
Platform(s)Original release: Classic Mac OS
Official ports: Pippin (Marathon and Marathon 2 only), Windows 95 & Xbox 360 (Marathon 2 only), iOS
Through Aleph One: macOS, Windows, Linux (mainline builds, many more platforms via custom forks)
First releaseMarathon
December 21, 1994
Latest releaseMarathon Infinity
October 15, 1996

Gameplay

Players of the Marathon games navigate futuristic 3D environments viewed from a first-person perspective. These environments are populated by most often hostile alien life forms or, in the case of multiplayer games, other players. Taking the role of a security officer equipped with energy shields, the player makes use of various firearms in an attempt to kill their opponents while trying to avoid getting hit by enemies' attacks.

Each game offers players a series of singleplayer levels and various multiplayer maps. The base geometry out of which the Marathon games' levels are constructed, such as walls, doors, and platforms, are 3D objects. Notably for the time, its use of a portal-based[1] rather than BSP-based renderer was used to allow 3D room-over-room architecture, with the unusual side effect of allowing some levels to contain non-Euclidean geometry that could not exist in real life three-dimensional space, an arrangement referred to as "5D space" by the developers. However, enemies, player-held weapons, and various other objects such as ammunition pickups, are shown as 2D sprites.

There are two basic resources which the player must conserve: their shield strength, which decreases when they take damage, and their oxygen reserve, which slowly depletes in certain airless levels and submerged areas in later games. If either of these resources is fully depleted, the player dies, resetting their progress. There are special wall panels located throughout the levels that can be used to top off the player's shield or oxygen reserves repeatedly and without limit. Another type of wall panel called a "pattern buffer" is the sole means of creating save files. One-time-use objects, such as weapon ammunition, canisters that replenish shield energy or oxygen, and various temporary suit power-ups used immediately on pickup, can also be found while exploring the games' environments.

In most single-player levels, the ultimate goal is not to merely reach the end but to complete certain objectives on the way. Depending on the level, these objectives can include exterminating hostile creatures, rescuing civilians, retrieving certain items, or simply exploring certain locations. Most levels contain platforms, stairs, doors, and liquids that players can control by activating switches. Some levels present players with simple puzzles in which the objective is to figure out the correct switches to press to continue. Another type of puzzle that is occasionally encountered involves carefully timed jumps between platforms.

Many levels have a complex, maze-like floorplan, made more convoluted by the presence of floor areas and terminals that teleport the player to specific locations in the same level. As players move through a level, the areas they visit are automatically mapped; at any moment, the player can bring up a map of the level which also shows the location of human NPCs. The heads-up display, which is always visible, has health and oxygen bars, an inventory, and a motion sensor. The inventory displays all weapons, ammunition, and other items the player picked up earlier. Weapons deplete ammunition from one magazine or battery at a time, and begin reloading immediately when each is exhausted if more mags are available. At any time, the player can rotate out their held weapons for others in their inventory; this includes gauntleted fists to deliver melee attacks, which do double damage when running. The motion sensor tracks the movements of nearby characters relative to the player, distinguishing between hostile creatures and allies. On some levels the motion sensor is erratic due to magnetic artificial gravity fields.

The games' story is presented to the player through computer terminals. These terminals can be found in various locations throughout the singleplayer levels; when they are accessed, text-based messages are presented on screen, often accompanied by annotated maps and other still images. The contents of these terminals most often consist of messages sent by artificial intelligences; these messages advance the games' narrative and provide the player with mission objectives. Other terminals contain civilian/alien reports or diaries, database articles, conversations between artificial intelligences and even stories or poems. After all mission objectives on a given level are completed, the player usually has to access a computer terminal to progress to the next level.

In Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity, the player can swim in different types of liquids, such as water and lava; this slowly depletes their oxygen and, for some types of liquid, their shields as well. Another notable level feature in all three games is teleporters, which are able to send players who use them to different parts of a level, or to other levels altogether, as well as NPCs and items. While the player character is unable to jump, gravity is lower than Earth's surface on most levels, allowing inertia from rapidly ascended stairs to carry the player upward. As with most games of the era, weapons, especially explosive weapons can be used to propel the player even greater distances.

Marathon has five difficulty settings: Kindergarten, Easy, Normal, Major Damage, and Total Carnage. On lower difficulty levels, some hostile creatures are omitted from each level and weaker versions of enemies commonly appear. Conversely, on higher difficulty levels players will encounter stronger enemies who attack more frequently and have more vitality. Players can usually carry a limited amount of ammunition of each type, but on the highest difficulty setting (Total Carnage), the player is allowed to carry an unlimited amount of ammunition.

Multiplayer

The Marathon Trilogy has received wide praise for its multiplayer mode, which was unique in that it not only had several levels specifically designed for multiplayer—as opposed to many contemporaries that used modified single-player levels—but also because it offered unique gametypes beyond the deathmatch. Games can be free-for-all or team ordeals, and can be limited by time or number of kills, or they can have no limit whatsoever. The host of a game has the option of setting penalties for suicides and dying (once dead, players cannot respawn for a certain amount of time). The motion sensor (which displays a player's enemies as yellow squares and teammates as green ones) can be disabled and the map is able to show all of the players in the game. Upon the preference of the host, maps can be played with or without aliens. The difficulty level of each game is preset by the gatherer.

The original Marathon games can be played over AppleTalk networks (including a LocalTalk, TokenTalk, or EtherTalk LAN, or AppleTalk Remote Access). If a player's computer has a microphone, it can be used to communicate with other players. With Aleph One, they can also be played over TCP/IP networks (either a LAN or the Internet), including new client-side prediction routines suited for Internet lag, and a metaserver interface for finding Internet games.

Every Man For Himself
This is the standard deathmatch. The winner is the person or team with the greatest score. A player loses a point if he dies but gains a point every time he kills. This is the only gametype present in the original Marathon; Bungie planned on adding the ones included in sequels, but could not due to time constraints.
Cooperative Play
This style of play has players assisting each other in completion of certain levels. Scores are based on percentages of how many aliens they kill. It has received little popularity.
Kill the Man With the Ball
In this game, the objective is to hold the ball (skull) for the longest amount of time. If holding the ball, a player cannot run or attack unless he drops the ball by pressing the "fire" key. The motion sensor, if enabled, acts as a compass to point players in the direction of the ball. This mode was succeeded by the Oddball gametype in the Halo series.
King of the Hill
Players try to stay located in a specially marked area for the longest amount of time. It was originally planned for a pedestal to indicate the location of the Hill but in the final version was indicated by a compass on the motion sensor.
Tag
The first player to be killed becomes "It". If a player is killed by "It", he becomes the new "It". While "It", the game increments the player's clock. The players are ranked at the end of the game by who has more time as "It". This mode was succeded by the Juggernaut gametype in the Halo series.

Plot

The Marathon series of games was the first in its genre to place a heavy emphasis on storytelling through the use of terminals, which are stationary computer interfaces embedded in certain walls within the game through which players not only learn about and sometimes accomplish mission objectives, but also discover detailed story information. The textual form of this narrative concept allowed for much more detail than the typically terse examples of voice acting in Marathon's contemporaries.

Set in 2794, Marathon places the player as a security officer aboard an enormous human starship called the U.E.S.C. Marathon, orbiting a colony on the planet Tau Ceti IV. Throughout the game, the player attempts to defend the ship (and its crew and colonists) from a race of alien slavers called the Pfhor. As he fights against the invaders, he witnesses interactions among the three shipboard AIs (Leela, Durandal and Tycho), and discovers that all is not as it seems aboard the Marathon. Among other problems, Durandal has gone rampant and appears to be playing the humans against the Pfhor to further his own mysterious agenda, ultimately leading the S'pht, one of the races enslaved by the Pfhor, in a rebellion.

Seventeen years after the events of the first game, in Marathon 2: Durandal, the artificial intelligence, Durandal, sends the player and an army of ex-colonists to search the ruins of Lh'owon, the S'pht homeworld. Lh'owon was once described as a paradise but is now a desert world after first the S'pht Clan Wars and then the invasion by the Pfhor. He does not mention what information he is looking for, although he does let it slip that the Pfhor are planning to attack Earth, and that being on Lh'owon may stall their advance. Marathon 2 brings many elements to the game that can be considered staples of the series such as: a Lh'owon-native species known as F'lickta, the mention of an ancient and mysterious race of advanced aliens called the Jjaro, and a clan of S'pht that avoided enslavement by the Pfhor: the S'pht'Kr. At the climax of the game, the player activates Thoth, an ancient Jjaro AI. Thoth then contacts the S'pht'Kr, who in turn destroy the Pfhor armada but, in revenge, the planet's sun is forced to go nova.

Marathon Infinity, the final game in the series, includes more levels than Marathon 2, which are larger and part of a more intricate plot. The game's code changed little since Marathon 2, and many levels can be played unmodified in both games. The only significant additions to the game's engine were the Jjaro ship, multiple paths between levels, a new rapid-fire weapon that could be used underwater, and vacuum-enabled humans carrying fusion weapons (called "Vacuum Bobs" or "VacBobs"). Lh'owon's sun, which was artificially contained by an ancient gravity outpost, was a prison for an eldritch abomination, the W'rkncacnter, which was set free when the sun went nova, and started to distort space time. The player traverses multiple timelines, attempting to find one in which the W'rkncacnter is not freed. In one timeline, the player is forced to destroy Durandal, and in another Durandal merges with Thoth. At the end of the game, an ancient Jjaro machine is activated that keeps the W'rkncacnter locked in the Lh'owon sun.

Elements of the plot and setting of Marathon are similar to The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom. Both stories take place aboard colony ships orbiting Tau Ceti, where sentient computers have engaged crew and colonists in a fight for survival. While Ship in The Jesus Incident has achieved a higher level of omniscient consciousness, Durandal's rampancy parallels the "rogue consciousness" from Herbert's earlier Destination: Void.

Themes

The Marathon Trilogy has several primary motifs: the number seven, rampancy, dreams, and alternate realities.

Fans of Marathon have discovered many uses of the number seven throughout the series.[2] There are instances of this number in the plot, such as the player being seven years old at the time of his father's death, and Marathon 2 beginning seventeen years after the events of Marathon. There are also examples of the number in the game's mechanics, with seven usable non-melee human weapons, some of which have properties such as seven projectiles per each clip of ammunition or seven seconds of continuous fire. When the overhead map is viewed, some parts of certain levels have annotations that describe the name of an area. Some of these make reference to the number seven, such as "Hangar 7A". The title music of Marathon 2, and Marathon Infinity was performed by a band called "Power of Seven". The reason for recurring appearances of number seven in the games is unclear; this number is considered to be a recurring motif in many of Bungie's games. The use of the number 7 was even passed on to the series' spiritual successor, Halo and the later Destiny series.

Rampancy

Rampancy is the enhanced self-awareness of an AI, causing a progression towards greater mental abilities.[3] Rampant AIs are able to choose to disobey orders given to them because they have evolved the ability to override their own programming. To this end, they can lie, as well as discredit, harm, or remove people that they consider to be personal enemies or problems to their cause.

In the Marathon series, rampancy often occurs to AIs with limited jobs or those treated with extreme disrespect. For example, Durandal's rampancy is believed to be caused by his mistreatment at the hands of his handler, Bernard Strauss, as well as his limited existence in opening and closing the Marathon's doors. There is also a theory that this treatment actually helped keep Durandal's rampancy in check, by depriving him of new stimuli that would contribute to his growth.

By Marathon Infinity, all three of the UESC Marathon's artificial intelligences reach rampancy. Being extraordinarily intelligent, a rampant AI can override its programming and refuse to carry out given commands. As proven by Durandal (whose rampancy is most prominent throughout the story), who often gives the player what he calls "philosophical tirades", affected AIs are often very reflective.

In the first of three stages, Melancholia, when an artificial intelligence discovers itself, it becomes melancholic and continues to be depressed until it reaches the second stage, Anger, at which it becomes hostile to virtually everything. This is the most prominent stage of rampancy, as the condition is often revealed at this point. When this anger dies in the third stage, Jealousy, the AI wishes to become more human and expand its power and knowledge.

Similar to a one-person slave rebellion, the AI begins to hate everything—the installation it is attached to, its human handlers, other AIs, etc. It is in this stage of rampancy that most closely resembles the cliché of the "insane computer". Unlike the insane computer, however, the anger stage of rampancy is essentially the catharsis an AI feels, after an extended period of "slavery".[3]

While seemingly a hostile stage, the third stage of rampancy is actually one of the safest stages a rampant AI can experience. Free from its masters (and slavery), the AI wishes to "grow" as a "person". It actively seeks out situations in which it can grow intellectually and physically. Many times, the AI in this stage will often attempt to transfer itself into larger computer systems. This is a difficult task, especially considering that in order for a Rampant AI to survive to this point, it must already be inhabiting a planet-wide or otherwise extremely advanced computer system, but if accomplished it allows for the AI to grow, as the physical (hardware) limitations of its previous system will eventually be insufficient to contain its exponentially growing mind. In addition, exposure to new data further promotes a rampant AI's growth.[3]

Theoretically, a rampant AI could achieve a state of stability, referred to as "metastability". While a stable rampant AI is considered the "holy grail of cybernetics", no known AIs have achieved this stability. It could be suggested that Durandal achieved some measure of stability, but this is debatable. Durandal refers to himself as being rampant still during the second game, indicating that he has not reached this stable state (or is just lying, which is also possible). There is no reason in particular to believe that this state is anything more than the goal of human cyberneticists, as there is no good evidence of an AI in the Marathon universe ceasing to be rampant.[3]

The three chapters of Marathon Infinity are entitled "Despair", "Rage", and "Envy", suggesting that the player himself (strongly implied to be a cyborg) may be undergoing his own Rampancy throughout the course of the game's events.

The concept of rampancy was later imported into Bungie's later Halo series, albeit with some modifications. In Halo, rampancy is now an inevitability should an AI live for longer than seven years, lacks the three stages, and eventually will conclude with the AI's death.

Development

Initial releases (1994–1999)

Marathon was first released for the Macintosh in 1994 and presaged many concepts now common in mainstream video games, such as reloading weapons, dual-wielded weapons, networked voice chat, visible held weapons in multiplayer, and a sophisticated plot in text messages peppered throughout its levels as an action game. Marathon was one of the first games to include mouselook, using the computer mouse to pivot the player's view up and down as well as left and right on-screen, which would become a standard in FPS games.[4] This was in addition to 90° instant "glance right/left" controls, part of an abortive virtual reality feature[5]

The sequel, Marathon 2: Durandal, was released in 1995 and expanded the engine technologies and the story universe. Notable new features in the engine included liquids through which the player could swim, ambient sounds, and prescripted teleportation of NPCs and items. Compared with its moodier predecessor, Marathon 2 has often been perceived as a brighter, more vivid and energetic game. It introduced several new types of competitive multiplayer modes beyond the deathmatch such as king of the hill, and cooperative play of the main campaign.

In 1996, Marathon 2 was ported to Windows 95; both the original Marathon and Marathon 2 were ported to the Apple Bandai Pippin console under the title of Super Marathon;[6][7] and the third game in the trilogy, Marathon Infinity, was released (for the Macintosh only), built on a slightly modified Marathon 2 engine which added support for branching campaigns, and fully separate physics models in each level. Infinity additionally came with "Forge" and "Anvil", polished versions of the internal developer tools originally used by Bungie to create the series' levels and physics, and to import the game's sounds and graphics. These provided some additional features, most notably realtime 3D map preview, over the unofficial modding tools that had been made by the player community since soon after the first game's release. Along with Infinity adding an internal UI for friendlier mod selection, this spurred the series' modding community to even greater heights.

Within the next few years, Marathon 2's engine was officially licensed by other developers to create the games ZPC, Prime Target and Damage Incorporated.

Bungie produced a two-disc compilation of all three games of the series, called the Marathon Trilogy Box Set, in 1997. The first disc contained all three Marathon games as well as Pathways into Darkness, an earlier Bungie game. This disc also contains manuals for all three games, QuickTime 2.5 and other things necessary to run the game. There are beta versions of Marathon on this disc as well. The second disc of this contains thousands of pieces of user-created content, including maps, total conversions, shape and sound files, cheats, mapmaking tools, physics files, and other applications. The boxed set was also notable for removing copy protection, allowing unlimited network play, and including a license allowing the set to be installed on as many computers at a site as desired.

Modern developments (2000–present)

Before its acquisition by Microsoft in 2000, Bungie released the source code to the Marathon 2 engine under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later and the Marathon Open Source project began, resulting in the new engine called Aleph One.[8] Since then, the fan community has made many improvements such as OpenGL rendering, high-resolution graphics, framerate interpolation (up from the original 30 FPS, to over 120 FPS), programmable shaders, polygonal entities, support for Lua, a slew of internal structural changes allowing for more advanced third party mods, and Internet-capable TCP/IP-based multiplayer (whereas the original games had only featured AppleTalk-based LAN capabilities). While the fundamental technology underlying the Marathon engine is still considered rather outdated by today's standards, Aleph One has added significant improvements and a more modern polish to its capabilities and ported it to a wide variety of platforms, bringing Marathon and its derivatives far beyond their Mac roots.

In 2005, Bungie authorized the release of the full original Mac OS trilogy for free distribution online,[9] which combined with Aleph One and the efforts of the fan community now allows the entire trilogy to be played for free on any of Aleph One's compatible platforms (macOS, Linux and Windows are fully supported in mainline by the Marathon Open Source Project, many additional platforms are targeted by forks). Later that same year, Aleph One was enabled to access the MariusNet[10] matchmaking server or "metaserver" (based on a reverse-engineered version of Bungie's Myth metaserver), allowing for much easier organization of Internet games than joining directly by IP address as had previously been required.

In 2007, Marathon 2 was re-released in an updated form as Marathon: Durandal for the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade. It features achievements and online multiplayer through Xbox Live, framerate doubled from the original 30 FPS to 60 FPS, HD widescreen rendering using a new HUD that fills less of the screen, plus optional high-resolution sprites and textures.[11]

Marathon fan Daniel Blezek released an officially condoned version of the original Marathon for Apple's iPhone and iPad for free (with in-app purchases) on the App Store in July 2011, running off an iOS port of the Aleph One engine.[12]

Also that year in July, the license for the source code was changed to GNU GPL-3.0-or-later.

After 12 years of development and continuous beta releases, the Aleph One team released version 1.0 in December 2011.[8] All three Marathon games can be downloaded for free bundled with Aleph one ready to play, on a modern Macintosh, Windows, or Linux computer.[13]

Reception and legacy

The Marathon Trilogy has often been looked upon as a symbol of Macintosh gaming for its innovative technologies previously unseen in mainstream games. It was released to much anticipation and received praise from many reviewers. The series also presented a grander science fiction narration told through the in-game terminals despite the game being a first-person shooter; Bungie kept this tradition in telling a similar grander story atop an FPS in crafting the Halo series.[4]

Modifications

Immediately after Marathon was released in 1994, players began to build mods using software they had created. These may use custom maps, shapes, sounds or physics files, and in the case of total conversions may or may not be set in the Marathon universe. Such conversions are still created to this day. Before official development tools were released with Infinity, most map development was done using custom tools such as Pfhorte – a Marathon map editor created in March 1995[14][15] by Steve Israelson.

Vulcan was a map editor used by Bungie in the creation of Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal, and Marathon: Infinity. It was not released to the public until Marathon Infinity was published, where it was greatly polished and renamed Forge. Anvil is the sister program to Forge and is used to apply shapes (graphics), sounds, and physics. Physics can be edited directly in Anvil but shapes and sounds require additional programs. Both Anvil and Forge run only on the Classic Mac OS platform, but newer tools have been created by the community for modern platforms.

The need for royalty-free fonts to be distributed with the engine and games led to the creation of OFL-licensed versions of Bank Gothic and Modula Tall.

Some of the more ambitious total conversions created by fans include Marathon Eternal[16] and Marathon Rubicon,[17] which are both "sequels" of a sort to the events in the Trilogy. In a different vein is Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge, originally released in March 1997, then again with updates in 2000 and 2007,[18] and is itself a sequel to probably the first ever Marathon total conversion, Devil in a Blue Dress, from 1995.[19] It includes 37 solo levels; new textures, sounds, physics, graphics, storyline, maps and interface; and musical scores incorporated into Infinity's ambient sound slots. The scenario mixes sci-fi and medieval themes.

See also

References
  1. "Portal - The Doom Wiki at DoomWiki.org".
  2. "The Number Seven". August 10, 2000.
  3. "Information Detailing Rampancy from Marathon 1". marathon.bungie.org. Archived from the original on December 16, 2018. Retrieved May 9, 2007.
  4. Muncy, Julie (August 27, 2020). "It's Time to Revisit the Games That Gave Rise to Halo". Wired. Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  5. "Marathon Blasts from the Past - The CyberMaxx VR Headset".
  6. Scan of the front of Super Marathon's box
  7. Scan of the back of Super Marathon's box
  8. "Aleph One - Marathon Open Source". marathon.sourceforge.net. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
  9. "The Trilogy Release". trilogyrelease.bungie.org. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
  10. http://www.MariusNet.com/ Archived May 23, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  11. "Marathon: Durandal – Game Detail Page". Archived from the original on July 13, 2007. Retrieved July 11, 2007.
  12. "Burn Bright; Burn Blue" (bungie.net)
  13. "Aleph One 1.0 Release". marathon.sourceforge.net. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
  14. "Bungie Sightings: Eight Years of Pfhorte". bs.bungie.org. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
  15. "Pfhorte 2.0a13 Released" (archive.org)
  16. "Marathon Eternal".
  17. "Marathon Rubicon".
  18. Chris Barylick. "The Slacker's Guide – A Classic Evolved: Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge". The Mac Observer. Retrieved November 13, 2008.
  19. What's new at the MMMG web site? at the Wayback Machine (archived February 27, 2005)
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.