Pat MillerBefore Halo took the gaming world by storm, developer Bungie was refining its style on a similar series. Pat Miller looks at Marathon, a classic trilogy ahead of its time.
Issue 45 - From '94 to Infinity: Before Halo
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Original Comment by: Chris Brinkley
I wept -- wept! -- at this article. A sophomore in high school in 1994, Bungie was one of my all-time favorite companies. Still is, and ranks right next to Ambrosia Software as one of the best game makers of all time.
Thanks for the memories. I'm off to install Aleph One now.
I wept -- wept! -- at this article. A sophomore in high school in 1994, Bungie was one of my all-time favorite companies. Still is, and ranks right next to Ambrosia Software as one of the best game makers of all time.
Thanks for the memories. I'm off to install Aleph One now.
Original Comment by: Cineris
http://www.cineris.org/blog/
An excellent article that hit everything it needed to. My only issue is you didn't mention Marathon: Resurrection (http://resurrection.bungie.org/) a much more expansive project than Marathon: Rampancy aimed at recreating both Marathon's multiplayer and its entire singleplayer campaign in the Unreal Tournament engine. I also blog about the mapmaking process for the M:Resurrection project (occasionally) on my blog.
http://www.cineris.org/blog/
An excellent article that hit everything it needed to. My only issue is you didn't mention Marathon: Resurrection (http://resurrection.bungie.org/) a much more expansive project than Marathon: Rampancy aimed at recreating both Marathon's multiplayer and its entire singleplayer campaign in the Unreal Tournament engine. I also blog about the mapmaking process for the M:Resurrection project (occasionally) on my blog.
Original Comment by: Nick
I remember all nighters with my group of friends in high school playing and playing Marathon. The never ending search for network serial numbers, installing the game at dusk, Mt. Dew and Cheese-It's, "Frog Vent the Blast Core", high-fives and hoots of joy, dodging angry sys-admins at the local university, nearly getting in an accident frombeing so damned tired, and doing it all again the next night. All to just get our fix of Marathon.
To play Bungies games going from Minotaur to Pathways Into Darkness to The Trilogy and then being sucked in by Microsoft and producing HALO(2) was like reading about Charlie in ?Flowers for Algernon?. Bungie say?s they did it to be able to put their games in front of more people. They say that was always their goal. Well they accomplished that, but at a great loss. It will be a long time before another FPS series like Marathon ever comes along.
I remember all nighters with my group of friends in high school playing and playing Marathon. The never ending search for network serial numbers, installing the game at dusk, Mt. Dew and Cheese-It's, "Frog Vent the Blast Core", high-fives and hoots of joy, dodging angry sys-admins at the local university, nearly getting in an accident frombeing so damned tired, and doing it all again the next night. All to just get our fix of Marathon.
To play Bungies games going from Minotaur to Pathways Into Darkness to The Trilogy and then being sucked in by Microsoft and producing HALO(2) was like reading about Charlie in ?Flowers for Algernon?. Bungie say?s they did it to be able to put their games in front of more people. They say that was always their goal. Well they accomplished that, but at a great loss. It will be a long time before another FPS series like Marathon ever comes along.
Original Comment by: Pat M.
I've never seen a game company as inextricably tied to its community as Bungie was in the Marathon days. Infinity was the standard for our LAN get-togethers long after Quake III came and went. I heard the news that Bungie was being bought out by Microsoft a little bit before everyone else did and it hit me harder than any SPNKR ever could have.
It's not easy to see them grow up when it means they grow out of us. They've gone from an extraordinary niche game developer to a studio that is arguably spearheading an entire console's future, and I imagine that there's a lot that gets lost in that transition - including a lot of the people, I might add, who made Bungie so awesome back in the day. I played through Halo and felt a little bit of the Marathon spark left in it, but I'll be honest, I never even got around to trying Halo 2 for more than a few minutes. Ultimately, all we can do is keep on playing the same old games, or pay our respects, move on as best we can, and do your best to find the games (and make the games) that evoke the same intimate sense of connection and craftsmanship that we found in our beloved Marathon series.
In other news: huh. Kind of humbling to find that my first Escapist article gets the "Best of" issue.
I've never seen a game company as inextricably tied to its community as Bungie was in the Marathon days. Infinity was the standard for our LAN get-togethers long after Quake III came and went. I heard the news that Bungie was being bought out by Microsoft a little bit before everyone else did and it hit me harder than any SPNKR ever could have.
It's not easy to see them grow up when it means they grow out of us. They've gone from an extraordinary niche game developer to a studio that is arguably spearheading an entire console's future, and I imagine that there's a lot that gets lost in that transition - including a lot of the people, I might add, who made Bungie so awesome back in the day. I played through Halo and felt a little bit of the Marathon spark left in it, but I'll be honest, I never even got around to trying Halo 2 for more than a few minutes. Ultimately, all we can do is keep on playing the same old games, or pay our respects, move on as best we can, and do your best to find the games (and make the games) that evoke the same intimate sense of connection and craftsmanship that we found in our beloved Marathon series.
In other news: huh. Kind of humbling to find that my first Escapist article gets the "Best of" issue.
Original Comment by: Jared Cash
http://web.mac.com/jaredcash/
I absolutely loved this article! As someone who (semi-)actively participated in the deciphering of the Marathon Story at the Story page, and a veteran of the Great Potatoanus War (a rather entertaining joke between friends on the alt.games.marathon newsgroup), it reminded me that I was a part of something so large that it took more than a decade to play out. And, although I was a member of the "team" that felt bitter at Bungie's eventual sale to Microsoft, I've continued to have faith in the one game company that could tell a story so involved, so detailed, and so riddled with symbolism and historical, mythological, theological, & literary references that it has yet to be met with any competition. Even their own "Halo" has been unable to compete depth-wise (although, that is in no small part due to the fact that to tell such a story through cinematic and audio commentary would be virtually impossible).
Perhaps it is a shame that technology has advanced to the point wherein NOT having to read has actually had an inverse effect on the effectiveness of storytelling. I cannot wait to see where Bungie will take us when they finish the story of "Halo" and move on to their next big thing. My one hope is that those that made Bungie's "Marathon" so incredible (Alexander "The Man" Seropian, and Jason Jones) will one day work together again and bring us the final chapter in great storytelling through a medium oft-times too focused on twitch-action and raw horsepower to remember that it is the stories that bring us back for more.
http://web.mac.com/jaredcash/
I absolutely loved this article! As someone who (semi-)actively participated in the deciphering of the Marathon Story at the Story page, and a veteran of the Great Potatoanus War (a rather entertaining joke between friends on the alt.games.marathon newsgroup), it reminded me that I was a part of something so large that it took more than a decade to play out. And, although I was a member of the "team" that felt bitter at Bungie's eventual sale to Microsoft, I've continued to have faith in the one game company that could tell a story so involved, so detailed, and so riddled with symbolism and historical, mythological, theological, & literary references that it has yet to be met with any competition. Even their own "Halo" has been unable to compete depth-wise (although, that is in no small part due to the fact that to tell such a story through cinematic and audio commentary would be virtually impossible).
Perhaps it is a shame that technology has advanced to the point wherein NOT having to read has actually had an inverse effect on the effectiveness of storytelling. I cannot wait to see where Bungie will take us when they finish the story of "Halo" and move on to their next big thing. My one hope is that those that made Bungie's "Marathon" so incredible (Alexander "The Man" Seropian, and Jason Jones) will one day work together again and bring us the final chapter in great storytelling through a medium oft-times too focused on twitch-action and raw horsepower to remember that it is the stories that bring us back for more.