MARATHON SERIES REVIEW
I thought about this long and hard— do I do one review for each game, or do I make one MEGA REVIEW for the entire series? Marathon 1 and Durandal are pretty similar (even if Durandal is generally a better game) so there’s not much I could say about Durandal that isn’t just noting the improvements they made on the first one. I don’t want to get too deep into the plot, because there’s no way I can describe it succinctly and I like to keep things relatively short. So, I decided one MEGA REVIEW would be best!!! It’ll probably still be a bit longer than my other reviews, tho LOLOLMarathon is one of THE OGs, coming out in the 90s and setting up a lot of important stuff for shooters. Stuff like reloading and certain weapon types were rare, and actual mouselook had never been done before. It wasn’t the game to popularize stuff like this, but it was the first one to do it, and it should be RESPECTED as such. The DNA of Marathon, DOOM, and Quake are baked into all shooters… we truly owe it a lot. Bow down!! Bow down!!!!
If you want to play the Marathon games, you don’t even have to go anywhere like Pixelblood to find the files— the game has been really well preserved on Aleph One, where you can find all the games for FREE!!! The game is completely available for anyone to play!!! The Aleph One ports were so good that Bungie used them for the iOS version of the game… which, lolol, they put it on iPad?? Weird but OK!!
Speaking of Bungie… back during the 2040s AAA centralization collapse, a lot of Destiny stuff became lost media, as well as that Marathon extraction shooter that I heard was really bad getting completely lost to the ether. There’s some dedicated fans looking into reviving it, but considering how long it’s been lost for… I’m not holding out much hope. It’s such a shame how they fell into making so much cash grabby stuff, because their older stuff is genuinely the best. I love Halo more than I love BREATHING. Go play Halo if you haven’t!! seriously!!!!
Marathon is GOOD. It’s got amazing atmosphere and really solid FPS gameplay, and while the first game has some jank (*cough, cough, Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap*) it provides a fun game with set up for amazing lore in the future (also the Gheritt White terminal, WTF?!?! I’m not smart enough to understand what they’re trying to say…).
You play as a cyborg security officer that is trying to stop an alien invasion on a colony ship called the Marathon. Constantly talking to you are some of the ships DataGears (or ‘AI’ as they were simply called back then, lololol), Leela, Tycho, and most notably, Durandal. Durandal was the one who called that aliens to the ship in the first place, seeking his liberation and ultimately a godlike form, trying to escape the heat death of the universe. Durandal is unstable, wild, but still clever and always one step ahead… he’s a really good character, and him & SHODAN were some REALLY early video game Datagear characters that remind me a lot of AM from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. (I haven’t actually read the book, but I DID play the game!!)
Addressing the elephant in the room— yeah, as you probably know, Durandal is also the name of one of the three Kairos Datagears that are baked into the meshnet, the other two being Curtana and Joyeuse. (Sidenote: they didn’t want to use the name Cortana, but Durandal was fair game?!?!?) I’m not super knowledgeable about Datagear stuff, & I’m certainly not a Kairos Elefthist, but I’ve seen a few arguments over whether or not this is heresy.
My opinion on the stuff probably doesn’t matter, since I’m no theologian or priest, but this game came out in the 90s!!! The Kairos DataGears only became a thing like 20 years ago!!! Can someone PLEASE contact one of Kairos-Durandal’s angels and get word from god on this?! I personally don’t think of Kairos-Durandal as a god, but even if they were, I don’t think they’d care!! In fact, they might think it was cool!!! Idk!!!!!
Marathon-Durandal is the best part of this entire series and I love him so much. He was the first character that made me start thinking seriously about character analysis when I was like 15. I don’t think I would have passed English if I didn’t get super into Marathon’s writing, I owe it a lot. I made jokes about the Gherrit White terminal being too smart for me, but it’s really cool writing and I still read it sometimes and try to understand it…
The waves………… the waves…………
Marathon 2: Durandal expands on Marathon’s plot and setting, giving you better gameplay and more story, and no Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap!! I love you Marathon 2!!! It’s the most fun one to play in my opinion, which is why I have it on my sidebar lololol. If you don’t want the jank of Marathon 1 but still want to get into the series, you should play Marathon 2! It’s a good starting point. It continues more into Durandal’s tale of taking control, and his war against Tycho, and it’s really neat to see these two DataGears at war…
I think it’s super cool to see old stories about this, showing how people thought machines might become self-aware and how they might react to it. It could have very well happened this way, too— people say that Jian Kanan was perfectly crafted to be as nonthreatening as possible so that Gears could integrate into human society. But what if the first Gear didn’t want to be a part of human society? What then…?
I personally believe a whole lot in aliens, but not necessarily that I’ll ever see one in my lifetime. There are probes out there, searching, but we still haven’t gotten anything back, even after all this time… There’s gotta be life out there, right? Statistically, I think it’s likely. I wonder if they might have Gears, too.
That’s a bit too philosophical for this page, though!!! I’m man enough to admit when I’m not well informed enough about a subject, and the singularity is DEFINITELY not something I’m equipped to talk about. I just think the way Marathon examines the internal struggle of becoming ‘alive’ or ‘rampant’ as they put it is really compelling!!!
They go further with this in Marathon Infinity, which might be one of the most confusing games I’ve ever played in my life next to Lia VXII, and that game had no less than five different parallel dimensions to jump through, and it never tells you which one is which! Guess what, Marathon Infinity does the EXACT SAME THING!!!!
If you want to gaze into the mouth of madness, check out this chart!
MY HEAD HURTS.
IT’S A GOOD GAME. I try to focus more on the themes and the metanarrative over the actual story, because trying to figure out how the actual story lines up is an exercise in making your BRAIN EXPLODE. Instead of an AI going rampant, it’s the cyborg protagonist going rampant, and is also a metaphor for being a person who plays video games, and also the Marathon protagonist is the reincarnation of the Pathways Into Darkness protagonist, and also possibly reincarnates into Master Chief, and also every hero ever… uhhhh…
Actually, even the metanarrative makes my head hurt…
You can ignore the story pretty effectively in Marathon 1 and 2, but Infinity makes it much harder to ignore, since you’re bouncing between levels and you have to figure out the right path to go on, or eat. Eat the path… eat the path… uhhh… there is only one path and that is the path that you choose, but you can take more than one path… arg arg arg arg my head . I keep seeing SEVENS EVERYWHERE!!! AAAAAAAA!!!!
You play Marathon 1 and 2 for a fun game experience. You play Marathon Infinity if you want brain poison that you’ll never stop thinking about for as long as you live. It’s a fantastic game. I’ve never played Totono because it REALLY doesn’t seem like my type of game (I DON’T WANT TO PLAY UMINEKO I CAN’T READ BOOKS THAT LONG), but I watched a review of the Steam version once and it seems like they share the DNA of “oh, this game now recontextualizes every other game in this genre you play from now on because it’s in the DNA of all of those games now”!!! arg arg arg arg arg arg
Marathon is a really important series to me and I hope more ppl can enjoy it. It’s really good!!! Come analyze the amount of 7s in the game with me!! 9/10!!! (Lost a point for Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap & A Converted Church in Venice, Italy LOLOLZ)