Marathon (series)


Marathon is a science fiction first-person shooter video game series from Bungie, originally released for the Classic Mac OS. The name of the series is derived from the giant interstellar colony ship that provides the main setting for the first game; the ship is constructed out of the Martian moon Deimos. The series is often regarded as a spiritual predecessor of Bungie's Halo series.

Games

The Marathon series consists of four games:
Marathon 2: Durandal was released for Windows several months after the Mac OS release, on September 20, 1996. All three games were later ported to other operating systems and to modern versions of Windows and macOS after the game engine was open-sourced in 1999.
TitleYearPlatform
Marathon1994Classic Mac OS
Marathon 2: Durandal1995Windows, Classic Mac OS, Xbox 360
Marathon Infinity1996Classic Mac OS
Marathon2026Windows, Playstation 5, Xbox Series X/S

Gameplay

In the Marathon series, players can navigate futuristic environments in a first-person perspective. These environments are populated by hostile alien life forms or other players in multiplayer. 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.
There are two basic resources that the player must conserve to prevent death: shield strength, which decreases when the player takes damage, and oxygen reserve, which slowly depletes in airless levels and submerged areas. Wall panels located throughout the levels can be used to recharge shields or oxygen. Another type of wall panel called a "pattern buffer" is used for saving your progress. Ammunition and canisters which replenish shields or oxygen can be found while exploring the game's environments, as well as various temporary power-ups.
Single-player level objectives can include exterminating all hostile creatures, rescuing civilians, retrieving certain items, or exploring certain locations. Most levels contain platforms, stairs, doors, and liquids which players can control by activating switches. Some levels present players with simple puzzles where the objective is to find the correct switches to advance or to carefully traverse platforms.
In Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity, the player can swim in different types of liquids such as water and lava; this slowly depletes the player character's oxygen and, for dangerous types of liquid, their shields as well. Another notable feature in all three games is teleporters which are able to send players to different parts of a level or to other levels altogether. They can also be used by the AI characters in the game to transmit ammunition to the player. While the player character is unable to jump, gravity is lower than Earth's, which allows momentum from rapidly-ascended stairs to carry the player upward. As with most games of the era, explosive weapons can be used to propel the player great distances.
Many levels have a complex floor plan, made more complicated by the use of teleporters that connect different locations on the same level. As players explore a level, the areas they visit are automatically mapped, and the player can bring up this map at any time. The game HUD shows the status of shields and oxygen, the inventory, and a motion sensor. 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 interference. Weapons reload only when the current clip is exhausted. At any time, the player can swap their held weapon for another in their inventory; this includes gauntleted fists for delivering melee attacks, which do increased damage when running.
The game's story is presented to the player through computer terminals throughout the single-player levels; their textual content is often accompanied by annotated maps or other still images. The contents of these terminals most often consist of messages sent by artificial intelligence on-board the ship; 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 intelligence, and even stories or poems. After all mission objectives are completed, the player usually has to find a terminal that teleports the character to the next level.
The Marathon games have five difficulty settings: Kindergarten, Easy, Normal, Major Damage, and Total Carnage. The difficulty level primarily determines the number and strength of enemies as well as the frequency of their attacks. Players normally can carry a limited amount of ammunition, but on the highest difficulty setting, the player is allowed to carry an unlimited amount.

Multiplayer

The Marathon Trilogy received wide praise for its multiplayer mode. Not only did the games come with several levels specifically designed for multiplayer, as opposed to many contemporary games which used modified single-player levels, but the sequels offered unique game types beyond the standard deathmatch mode.
The host who gathers a game has many options available. Games can be free-for-all or team-based. They can be limited by match time or number of kills, or they can have no limit whatsoever. Respawn time penalties can be set for suicide-kills and for all player deaths. The motion sensor can be disabled, and the map is able to show all of the players in the game. Maps can be played with or without the presence of alien enemies controlled by the AI.
The original Marathon games can be played over AppleTalk networks. Voice chat can be used to communicate with other players. Using the modern Aleph One engine, games can be played over TCP/IP networks, with client-side prediction routines added to compensate for Internet latency and a new 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 and gains a point every time he kills another human player. This is the only game type 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 to complete the single-player levels. Scores for each player are based on the percentage of aliens that they killed.
  • Kill the Man With the Ball: In this game, the objective is to hold the "ball" for the longest amount of time. When holding the ball, a player cannot run or attack, but he can drop 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 game type in the Halo series.
  • King of the Hill: Players try to stay located in a specially-marked area of the map pointed to by a compass in the motion sensor. The player wins who stays on the hill for the longest amount of time.
  • 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 spent more time as "It". This mode was succeeded by the Juggernaut game type in the Halo series.

    Plot

The Marathon series was among the first titles in the first-person genre to emphasize storytelling, which it accomplishes through the use of terminals within game levels. These wall-mounted computer interfaces allow the player not only to learn their mission objectives and the aspects of the level map but also to become acquainted with the characters in the story as well. This narrative approach could convey much more detail than the typically terse voice acting in Marathon contemporaries.
Set in 2794, the first Marathon game 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. The player must defend the ship and its inhabitants from a race of alien slavers called the Pfhor. As he fights against the invaders, he witnesses interactions among the three shipboard AIs, and discovers that they are working against each other. 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.
In Marathon 2: Durandal, taking place seventeen years after the events of the first game, the AI named 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 due to the S'pht Clan Wars and the invasion by the Pfhor. The Pfhor are planning to attack Earth, and Durandal believes that something found on Lh'owon may stall their advance. Marathon 2 added elements to 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; in revenge, the Pfhor deploy a weapon that causes the planet's sun to "go nova."
Marathon Infinity, the final game in the series, contains more levels than Marathon 2, and they are larger and part of a more intricate plot. Significant additions to the game's world include the Jjaro ship, non-linear level progression, a high-speed flechette gun that could be used underwater, and vacuum-suited human allies carrying fusion weapons. Lh'owon's sun was being used as a prison for an eldritch abomination called 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 to keep 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. Durandal's rampancy parallels the "rogue consciousness" from Herbert's earlier Destination: Void.