FWS News Feed: BUNGIE Goes Back...Way Back to MARATHON

 

Two days ago, the gaming public was gifted with the latest offering from the magic makers at Bungie: MARATHON. The trailer dropped while I was recovering from oral surgery (fun times) and it was shocking and damned interesting. My mind, such has it was, lit up with pleasure. Then I watched the Bungie Vid-Doc on MARATHON and my heart was sad. This resurrection of the title that founded Bungie allowed for the world to be given the gift of HALO is now a fucking online only, no first-person experience, extraction shooter. *Sigh*. Let us spill the Hot Tea on this old Military SF title that is coming back. 

The trailer is amazing in every way with a banging sound that slaps so hard it is in your brain for days. The sound is a remixed by SebastiAn of the sound "Heavy Metal x DVNO" by Justice...that I never heard of until now. For many of us alive during the time of the original December 1994 release of MARATHON, it was a game we saw, but many of us could not play...it was Apple Computers and in 1994, Mac was seemingly done for. My brother had an Apple Macintosh Classic that we found in a box in a business we bought and it was a free computer for my brother to go to university with. 

Written off by some as a creative DOOM clone, MARATHON was a complex shooter taken place in the 28th with aliens, a colony ship made from one of the Martian moons, cybernetic super-soldiers, an AI that has more personality than the character-player, and lots of gunfire mixed with complex lore. Sounds familiar  doesn't it? That's because it is the basic DNA sequence that Bungie used for HALO and DESTINY. Original MARATHON is still celebrated despite never been ported to modern consoles and the its only console release was on the Apple Pippin. Oh. Dear. God. Anyways, MARATHON has been modernized by fans for the fans and it lives on well passed the last official release of 1996. It is believed that the new MARATHON will drop in the next two years or maybe in 2024 for the anniversary of the first game.

The modern game is a PvP focused online extraction shooter game that pits various factions of "Runners" against one another on the colony world of Tau Ceti IV. In Nerd Lore, Tau Ceti IV is the planet were the Kobayashi Maru commercial starship from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan home port was. The location is real, and the star of Tau Ceti is 11.912 LYs from the Sol System. In 2012, five exoplanets are believed to be in the Tau Ceti system. The new upcoming game has the Runners searching for loot to improve their own cybernetic character and help their team against the other players and AI enemies as well. Runners can discover new items and locations in the game and those Runners get credit in the game. There will be a story that is set years after the 2nd game, likely in the 29th century. 

I am holding out hope that the Shoot-n-Loot formula from DESTINY 2 is improved and there is less hard work for gear and God Rolls of that gear. I currently play D2 (and addicted to D2, which is what is wrong with FWS at the moment) and I will give MARATHON an opportunity but I will have to up my gear to an Xbox X or S console due to Bungie confirming that MARATHON will be not be available on the Xbox One. Ugh. I wished that there was more here than just Bungie jumping onto the current meta in shooter games and I am worried that the opportunity to have an experience will be lost and MARATHON will be more like DESTINY, where the lore and story is hidden to the point that I have to watch the Destiny Lore Daddy, ByF to understand what the hell is going on. 

Let us be Frosty and wait for MARATHON my fellow Guardians.