A fourth Marathon??

[RyokoTK]

oh okay, well i guess if u say its a piece of shit then nvm

[ukimalefu]

The question is, will Marathon 4 be released before or after Half Life 3 (confirmed)?

[philtron]

Bungie died 16 years 2 months and 6 days ago. Their corpse is old enough to drive in most states.

And that's how you know that Pfhorrest is the truest Bungie fan of us all.

But at least Halo 2 felt like a Bungie game. It had the same complex backstory as the Marathon games. Destiny has nothing.

The hell it did. It felt nothing like a Bungie game. Halo 2 basically got wrong everything you could possibly get wrong with a Halo sequel: weapon design, level design, enemy design, the architectural style of alien and human locations, physics, vehicles taking collision damage, playing half the game as an alien, levels that make driving a vehicle mandatory, Jackal snipers, and I could go on and on.

And the less said about the garbage story, the better. Halo 2 doesn't have a complex story, it has a convoluted and ridiculous plot. I mean the game starts off months after the end of the first Halo with no explanation of what you're doing or what happened in the intervening time. That right there tells you most of what you need to know about the competency of whoever wrote the story (either Joe Staten or Frankie O'conner, I believe). Then there's the fact that the entire Halo 2 story is just a rehash of the Halo 1 story: Flood get released and you have to destroy the place they got released on to contain them. This story happens twice in Halo 2. Also, Halo 2 ends in the exact same spot that it started at, both geographically and narratively; nothing changed, the situation is basically the same, so the entire plot served no purpose. Okay, I'll stop now. (But if you're, by some slim chance, interested in reading more about my hatred of Halo 2 here's an unfinished blogpost I made about it, focusing mostly on the opening.)

I feel like Bungie has completely exterminated all of their Halo good will...

Honestly I don't think there's any reason Bungie should make another Marathon game. I'd like to see another company, like Machine Games (who made the modern Wolfenstein games), take a shot at it. Their take on Wolf was really remarkable and memorable, they made a fantastic character out of BJ Blazkowicz, and it had fundamentally solid gameplay backing it up. Like, they understood what made Wolf 3D good back in 1992, but they also remembered that it wasn't 1992 anymore.

This is probably true. But at the point that another company is making a Marathon remake that takes what worked back then but adapts it for modern sensibilities, then they might as well just make their own IP and just mention Marathon as an inspiration.

[Crater Creator]

Fallout 3, one of the most highly acclaimed American RPGs of all time, and with a massive community of fans both of the original game and of modding it, and a game good enough to get a spinoff game (New Vegas), was a piece of shit?

That's not fact, that's just bandwagon. Come on, we learn this shit in 6th grade.
"Just because everyone says so doesn't make it so"
If everyone in this community starts to hate me because of that, guess what? Fallout is still a piece of shit.
If I get banned because I offend a rabid fallout admin, fallout is still a piece of shit.
If I get shot in the head by a retarded bethesda fanboy, fallout is still a sack of monkey shit!
I'd rather drink a tub full of lion piss than play a Bethesda Fallout.

And by 6th grade I had learned that backing up your assertion with supporting evidence is a lot more convincing than simply proclaiming MY OPINION IS VERY STRONG AND YOU WON'T CHANGE IT AND ALSO I KNOW SOME SWEAR WORDS.

[RyokoTK]

By sixth grade you didn't know that, c'mon. Think of all the 12-year-olds you've met out there.

Unrelated, but could anyone describe how a game, any game, feels like a Bungie game?

This is probably true. But at the point that another company is making a Marathon remake that takes what worked back then but adapts it for modern sensibilities, then they might as well just make their own IP and just mention Marathon as an inspiration.

What makes Marathon stand out from the contemporaries is the writing, not the gameplay. Divorce the game from the terminals and you have a fast run-and-gun game, pretty much the exact same stuff that Doom did previously and Duke 3D would follow with. Not that that's a bad thing whatsoever, mind you.

The reason that I suggested Machine Games specifically is because they understand both old-school gameplay as well as good writing. For Quake's 20 year anniversary they released a Quake 1 episode, that runs in the original game and all that, and as it turns out, it's really good! It was made by people that actually liked Quake and understood what made it work. But they can also write the hell out of a game, which is evident in the modern Wolfenstein games. Blazko is this moody, melodramatic psychopath, and his monologues are just delicious to listen to because they're delivered without a hint of irony. And it fits in the world since it's a world where Nazis use dark magic to enslave humanity.

"You put a Nazi on the moon. Fuck you, moon."

As far as writing goes, Bungie is overall pretty good at making characters but they are horrendous at making a plot. Their stories tend to spiral out of control and never get concluded in a satisfactory manner. Their lore is even worse; they try to gesture at backstory and lore but do it in the most sloppy, inconsistent and contradictory ways. So it's not like Bungie-and-only-Bungie can write Durandal.

[3371-Alpha]

And by 6th grade I had learned that backing up your assertion with supporting evidence is a lot more convincing than simply proclaiming MY OPINION IS VERY STRONG AND YOU WON'T CHANGE IT AND ALSO I KNOW SOME SWEAR WORDS.

I could go on & on about everthong wrong with it, but that's just going to make Ryoko post another "no one cares" meme.

What makes Marathon stand out from the contemporaries is the writing, not the gameplay. Divorce the game from the terminals and you have a fast run-and-gun game, pretty much the exact same stuff that Doom did previously and Duke 3D would follow with. Not that that's a bad thing whatsoever, mind you.

The reason that I suggested Machine Games specifically is because they understand both old-school gameplay as well as good writing. For Quake's 20 year anniversary they released a Quake 1 episode, that runs in the original game and all that, and as it turns out, it's really good! It was made by people that actually liked Quake and understood what made it work. But they can also write the hell out of a game, which is evident in the modern Wolfenstein games. Blazko is this moody, melodramatic psychopath, and his monologues are just delicious to listen to because they're delivered without a hint of irony. And it fits in the world since it's a world where Nazis use dark magic to enslave humanity.

"You put a Nazi on the moon. Fuck you, moon."

As far as writing goes, Bungie is overall pretty good at making characters but they are horrendous at making a plot. Their stories tend to spiral out of control and never get concluded in a satisfactory manner. Their lore is even worse; they try to gesture at backstory and lore but do it in the most sloppy, inconsistent and contradictory ways. So it's not like Bungie-and-only-Bungie can write Durandal.

Just saying, nothing ever turns out like it should, So be careful what you wish for.

The hell it did. It felt nothing like a Bungie game. Halo 2 basically got wrong everything you could possibly get wrong with a Halo sequel: weapon design, level design, enemy design, the architectural style of alien and human locations, physics, vehicles taking collision damage, playing half the game as an alien, levels that make driving a vehicle mandatory, Jackal snipers, and I could go on and on.

And the less said about the garbage story, the better. Halo 2 doesn't have a complex story, it has a convoluted and ridiculous plot. I mean the game starts off months after the end of the first Halo with no explanation of what you're doing or what happened in the intervening time. That right there tells you most of what you need to know about the competency of whoever wrote the story (either Joe Staten or Frankie O'conner, I believe). Then there's the fact that the entire Halo 2 story is just a rehash of the Halo 1 story: Flood get released and you have to destroy the place they got released on to contain them. This story happens twice in Halo 2. Also, Halo 2 ends in the exact same spot that it started at, both geographically and narratively; nothing changed, the situation is basically the same, so the entire plot served no purpose. Okay, I'll stop now. (But if you're, by some slim chance, interested in reading more about my hatred of Halo 2 here's an unfinished blogpost I made about it, focusing mostly on the opening.)

I feel like Bungie has completely exterminated all of their Halo good will...

Honestly I don't think there's any reason Bungie should make another Marathon game. I'd like to see another company, like Machine Games (who made the modern Wolfenstein games), take a shot at it. Their take on Wolf was really remarkable and memorable, they made a fantastic character out of BJ Blazkowicz, and it had fundamentally solid gameplay backing it up. Like, they understood what made Wolf 3D good back in 1992, but they also remembered that it wasn't 1992 anymore.

This is probably true. But at the point that another company is making a Marathon remake that takes what worked back then but adapts it for modern sensibilities, then they might as well just make their own IP and just mention Marathon as an inspiration.

My point was, at least gameplay wise, it wasn't that bad. Destiny had almost everything wrong. The entire US has only one currency, yet the fucking tower has over 20. The patrol missions are so damn redundant, it doesn't even feel like an open world game anymore. Even I have to admit, Bethesda did get the open world part right when it comes to their fallout games. And those complaints are just the beginning.

[RyokoTK]

Just saying, nothing ever turns out like it should, So be careful what you wish for.

Said in response to a post talking about a game that did turn out just like it should have.

[philtron]

Unrelated, but could anyone describe how a game, any game, feels like a Bungie game?

A crisp outer shell with a warm, juice center.

What makes Marathon stand out from the contemporaries is the writing, not the gameplay. Divorce the game from the terminals and you have a fast run-and-gun game, pretty much the exact same stuff that Doom did previously and Duke 3D would follow with. Not that that's a bad thing whatsoever, mind you.

I'd disagree a bit there. Marathon had vertical look, alternate fire on different guns, significantly different gun behaviors, projectiles (and the player) being affected by gravity, and the ability to pick up the dropped weapons of enemies. For me, this makes Marathon a significantly different gameplay experience than its contemporaries.

As far as writing goes, Bungie is overall pretty good at making characters but they are horrendous at making a plot. Their stories tend to spiral out of control and never get concluded in a satisfactory manner. Their lore is even worse; they try to gesture at backstory and lore but do it in the most sloppy, inconsistent and contradictory ways. So it's not like Bungie-and-only-Bungie can write Durandal.

Again I have to disagree. I think lore and storytelling is handled very well in Bungie's pre-Halo2 games. The ambiguous style is in keeping with the type of literature I usually enjoy. Of course, I think M:I was an ingenious and well executed story, while I know most people on these forums see it as a swirling pool of garbage.

My point was, at least gameplay wise, it wasn't that bad.

And my point was that, gameplay wise, it was that bad. I know I went on a tangent about story, but the gameplay in Halo 2 is shit. There's little things like getting rid of the health bar in favor of just an energy shield. There's medium things like the vehicles taking collision damage (this isn't a racing game, players shouldn't be punished for being bad drivers). Then there's big things like the redundant weapon design between human and alien weapons; that's a rookie mistake and should not have come from a veteran game studio. Halo 2's game design is a perfect of example of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". There were plenty of aspects of Halo's gameplay that worked perfectly well, but for Halo 2 Bungie went ahead and tried to "fix" all those things that didn't need fixing.

[General Tacticus]

Am I the only one who liked destiny a heck of a lot more than halo?

It did have a massive story told in text format outside the game, and aforementioned story wasn't a shoddy marathon knockoff.

although it wasn't great on launch, the progression problems were fixed in taken king. They merged the tower currencies, made the acquisition of items far less random and added a large number of quests and side missions.

With ttk the characters were fleshed out into memorable individuals, and a large amount of story info was made available via the quest page.

Honestly it felt like the first good game of theirs in well over a decade.

[3371-Alpha]

And my point was that, gameplay wise, it was that bad. I know I went on a tangent about story, but the gameplay in Halo 2 is shit. There's little things like getting rid of the health bar in favor of just an energy shield.

To be fair, even Marathon does this. Sure it has 3 levels, but it still does it. In fact, it kind of make you wonder, is the energy shield really the only thing protecting you? Is that thick green armor for nothing but looks? And what about the cyborg's health? Is he really that weak that only a single hit after his shields have depleted that it's an instant kill? Or perhaps it's the Pfhor that have powerful enough weapons to instantly kill any unshielded human.

There's medium things like the vehicles taking collision damage (this isn't a racing game, players shouldn't be punished for being bad drivers).

Ok, that part I can't blame you. Even Halo 3 has this problem. Hit just a little bump going over a hill & you flip over.

Then there's big things like the redundant weapon design between human and alien weapons; that's a rookie mistake and should not have come from a veteran game studio. Halo 2's game design is a perfect of example of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". There were plenty of aspects of Halo's gameplay that worked perfectly well, but for Halo 2 Bungie went ahead and tried to "fix" all those things that didn't need fixing.

Although Halo 3 did have more variety, Halo 2 did also have a lot of cool unique weapons on both sides. I guess they made some weapons redundant because they wanted equivalent counterparts on both sides.

I'd disagree a bit there. Marathon had vertical look, alternate fire on different guns, significantly different gun behaviors, projectiles (and the player) being affected by gravity, and the ability to pick up the dropped weapons of enemies. For me, this makes Marathon a significantly different gameplay experience than its contemporaries.

That's what I thought too. Halo shared many of these elements with Marathon which is what made Halo unique too. While Doom was essentially just a "shoot everything that moves" game, Marathon was different. Ironically though Destiny lacked a lot of these elements, for one you couldn't pickup your enemies weapons. Sure they drop weapons, but that's not the same.

Again I have to disagree. I think lore and storytelling is handled very well in Bungie's pre-Halo2 games. The ambiguous style is in keeping with the type of literature I usually enjoy. Of course, I think M:I was an ingenious and well executed story, while I know most people on these forums see it as a swirling pool of garbage.

Agreed, Bungie has always had excellent story telling, with an exception to Destiny.

[philtron]

Am I the only one who liked destiny a heck of a lot more than halo?
...
Honestly it felt like the first good game of theirs in well over a decade.

Based on five hours of playing on a friend's account, I thought the game was pretty good. Gameplay seemed really tight and polished. But, the initial release lacked a lot of content and definitely wasn't worth the full price.

[3371-Alpha]

Destiny's original concept was excellent. For those of you that don't know, GameTheorist's video on Destiny reveals exactly that (I'm obligated to give you a spoiler warning about the video for obvious reasons). The problem arouse when Activision, in an attempt to make their mindless CoD fans play Destiny, began sawing off pieces, simplifying the story, & making vital content DLCs as well as other stupid shit. To make things worst, Bungie did nothing but submit. They even fired Martin O'Donnell (the Composer for the Myth, Halo & Oni games) because Activision didn't like it when he separately released the soundtrack for the game.

[philtron]

To be fair, even Marathon does this. Sure it has 3 levels, but it still does it. In fact, it kind of make you wonder, is the energy shield really the only thing protecting you?

I don't think you understand how to critically analyze game design. Marathon does not do this, so it's not a fair comparison. Even though both Marathon and Halo have "shields" they are completely different systems. In Marathon the shields are just static health. The enemies take it away and you can get it back, that's it. In Halo, the shield+health system works completely differently: some weapons do more damage to shields and some do more damage to health, while the shields come back on their own and health requires you to find an item to get it back. This means the player has some interesting choices to make both defensively and offensively. You take away that system in Halo 2 and you lose those interesting choices and you lose the dynamic nature of the weapons. Mechanically there's a big difference between an assault rifle and plasma rifle in Halo 1, but the difference is smaller between the SMG and plasma rifle in Halo 2 . This is why I consider it to be a bad change, because it changes the nature of the game in a negative way, not because I checked an arbitrary box that said, "shields with no health are bad, just because!"

Although Halo 3 did have more variety, Halo 2 did also have a lot of cool unique weapons on both sides.

Like what? The only unique weapons were the Sentinel beam, the Needler, maybe the sword (which is kind of the alien version of the shotgun), and maybe the Brute shot. Pretty much every other human/alien weapon has a mirror twin on the alien/human side.

I guess they made some weapons redundant because they wanted equivalent counterparts on both sides.

Yes, that's obviously why they did it, but that's lazy, amateurish design. And it's all the more noticeable when Halo's weapons were aymmetrical and it worked well and everything was pretty balanced (except for the pistol and the needler), but then in Halo 2 they just start adding nearly identical weapons on both sides like this is Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness all of a sudden.

[Pfhorrest]

They even fired Martin O'Donnell (the Composer for the Myth, Halo & Oni games)

Marty didn't do the Oni soundtrack, that was Power of Seven, the same people who did the Marathon 2 & Infinity title themes.

[3371-Alpha]

Marty didn't do the Oni soundtrack, that was Power of Seven, the same people who did the Marathon 2 & Infinity title themes.

Actually doing a bit of research into it, turns out we were both wrong. The composer for Oni was Michael Salvatori, a close colleague of Marty.

[Pfhorrest]

Marty didn't do the Oni soundtrack, that was Power of Seven, the same people who did the Marathon 2 & Infinity title themes.

Actually doing a bit of research into it, turns out we were both wrong. The composer for Oni was Michael Salvatori, a close colleague of Marty.

[citation needed]

[w00se]

Just look up the credits on youtube. "Sound & Music Lead Marty O'Donnell"
As well as an Original Music credit to Marty O'Donnell, Michael Salvatori, and... Power of Seven.

[philtron]

That kind of reminds me that Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori did a lot of the sound design for one of my favorite games: Riven (the supremely underrated sequel to Myst). I know that's a little off topic, but does anyone really give a shit about what's going on here anymore?

[Pfhorrest]

Just look up the credits on youtube. "Sound & Music Lead Marty O'Donnell"
As well as an Original Music credit to Marty O'Donnell, Michael Salvatori, and... Power of Seven.

Credits on YouTube as in... a YouTube video of someone looking at the credits screen in-game? Or a YouTube video of the music, with those credits written in the description?

Also, since Total Audio (Marty and Michael) was Bungie's complete sound team at the time, they undoubtedly did all of the non-music audio at least, so that doesn't mean that Power of Seven didn't do the soundtrack proper.

That kind of reminds me that Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori did a lot of the sound design for one of my favorite games: Riven (the supremely underrated sequel to Myst). I know that's a little off topic, but does anyone really give a shit about what's going on here anymore?

I had a hell of a hard time finding Myth 2 in stores. Everyone always asked me "you mean Riven?" No, I don't have a damn lisp!

[w00se]

Credits on YouTube as in... a YouTube video of someone looking at the credits screen in-game? Or a YouTube video of the music, with those credits written in the description?

Also, since Total Audio (Marty and Michael) was Bungie's complete sound team at the time, they undoubtedly did all of the non-music audio at least, so that doesn't mean that Power of Seven didn't do the soundtrack proper.

I meant an upload of the in game credits. Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYEMYuq0wPw
0:46 and 1:46 are probably what you are going to be interested in, but it will basically just say what I said in the previous post. I would imagine that the people credited for "Original Music" were the people who composed the songs on the soundtrack (meaning all 3 contributed at least one song), but maybe that is more open for interpretation that I thought.

[hawkeyefile]

Fallout 3, one of the most highly acclaimed American RPGs of all time, and with a massive community of fans both of the original game and of modding it, and a game good enough to get a spinoff game (New Vegas), was a piece of shit?

That's not fact, that's just bandwagon. Come on, we learn this shit in 6th grade.
"Just because everyone says so doesn't make it so"
If everyone in this community starts to hate me because of that, guess what? Fallout is still a piece of shit.
If I get banned because I offend a rabid fallout admin, fallout is still a piece of shit.
If I get shot in the head by a retarded bethesda fanboy, fallout is still a sack of monkey shit!
I'd rather drink a tub full of lion piss than play a Bethesda Fallout.

Alpha thinks it's a piece of shit because it's the hip thing to do.

[General Tacticus]

-destiny-

If you would actually do some research instead riding the "everything new sucks" bandwagon, you would know that most everything you just said there was very inaccurate:

The original story was abandoned because the creative director (Jason Jones) and other leadership thought it was awful. The words "campy" and "simple" were how they described it. The next year was spent doing catch-up, as they had to rebuild the campaign from near scratch without a complete writing team (the lead left to work on Halo 5). This was revealed by an anonymous employee who did an interview with kotaku a while back.

The Taken king was the first development cycle they had where someone didn't fuck up, and I think it turned out excellently.

O'donnell was fired after a dispute over music rights, and he started harassing his co-workers(the court documents from his dismissal state that pretty clearly)

*edit*
Oh, I loved riven. It is still my favorite game ever made. You will find that most of it's music was composed by Robyn Miller, the brother of the design lead.

[RyokoTK]

If you would actually do some research instead riding the "everything new sucks" bandwagon, you would know that most everything you just said there was very inaccurate:

lmao

[RyokoTK]

What makes Marathon stand out from the contemporaries is the writing, not the gameplay. Divorce the game from the terminals and you have a fast run-and-gun game, pretty much the exact same stuff that Doom did previously and Duke 3D would follow with. Not that that's a bad thing whatsoever, mind you.

I'd disagree a bit there. Marathon had vertical look, alternate fire on different guns, significantly different gun behaviors, projectiles (and the player) being affected by gravity, and the ability to pick up the dropped weapons of enemies. For me, this makes Marathon a significantly different gameplay experience than its contemporaries.

Those are things that would make Marathon distinct from Doom if they were both sitting on a shelf in a game store in '94, and you could only buy one. Vertical look was a technical inevitability (just like jumping and crouching would be) and plenty of Doom successors had all of those. Gravity affecting projectiles I feel the same way about. To wit, Dark Forces did all of these about half a year later (as well as jumping/crouching and limited room-over-room). Doom already had weapons drop from enemies. Alternate fire on weapons though, I think I could give you that; they wouldn't see another iteration in a major way until Unreal, I think.

What I meant was looking back on these games today, in which case these sort of incremental technical advancements don't really matter that much. People (justly) lump Doom, Marathon, Dark Forces, and Duke 3D into the same pool of games even though that's a three-year spread right there; Dark Forces and Duke 3D were much more technologically robust than Marathon was. Nobody interested in old-school shootmans picks Marathon because you can look up, but it does garner a bit of commentary about the writing (the level design gets some mention for not being as good as Doom, but definitely being interesting and moody, which Doom did not do).

Nowadays, the only real tech advancement that the average gamer would probably care about from that era of FPS is the jump to 3D environments with Quake.

[General Tacticus]

Another gameplay difference of note: of the games you listed, marathon is the only one with weapon reloading and non "medkit" based health. Those features didn't become a thing in other shooters until long after quake.