📚marathon-lore-discussion

[still sand]

When I mean missing, it’s comms would go off

[sharp quarry]

Yes, as stated at the top of this one

[still sand]

Okay, someone told me in between 1-2 and I was like what?

[sharp quarry]

Weird misconception, I've heard that a few times

but 2 only happens 17 years after 1, and this game takes place in 2894, 100 years after the attack on the marathon

[still sand]

Oh okay

[sharp quarry]

Recon 54's implants would activate immediately. Indeed, the power of the Battleroids didn't come from any human technology. The chips used to revive Battleroids contained Jjaro technology, and Jjaro technology was trained well to respond to the presence of a W'rkncacnter. Channeling energy through Recon 54's body, they would cast the cyborg into a parallel timeline.

This instant surge of power would send the Battleroid into immediate rampancy, and while fighting its own brain, Recon 54 would seek timeline after timeline in order to save the galaxy from the wrath of the W'rkncacnter. I will not detail these events, either, as if the battle of Lh'owon was too in-depth, then most certainly the battle with the W'rkncacnter would be. All you must know is that 7 timelines were scoured, and only one was found the chance to escape.

Meta-stable, completing the cycle of rampancy, achieving total control over the Jjaro implants that empowered them, Recon 54 would twist time and space to bring a copy of Durandal to the resting place of the S'pht AI Thoth, and combine the two as a singular entity. This entity's increased processing power and capabilities would allow Recon 54 and the S'pht'kr to launch an assault on the nearby Jjaro space station, which contained the very weapon the Jjaro used to seal the W'rkcnacnter away in the first place.

Their assault would be successful, the Pfhor would be driven away and the Trih Xeem's activation immediately countered by the usage of the Jjaro superweapon. The W'rkncacnter would be awakened and imprisoned in the same instant, never to be heard from again. The new Thoth-Durandal hybrid would set Recon 54 free to wander the stars with their new, incredible power, and though no one in the Sol system knew it, the entire galaxy was saved.

A mirror of a time when a similar being, perhaps the same being, was sealed beneath the earth. Twice now a lone soldier had saved the galaxy from a sleeping beast. Some will tell you they, too, were the same soldier. Who they were does not matter, as Thoth-Durandal discovers in his final moments at the end of the galaxy, trapped alone with his thoughts, who they are.

But you were dead a thousand times. Hopless encounters successfully won. A man long dead, grafted to machines your builders did not understand. You follow the path, fitting into an infinite pattern.

Yours to manipulate, to destroy and rebuild.

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are.

You are Destiny.

But that is a time far from now, a time beyond the moment, a time beyond petty quarrels and war. We are not beyond those things yet. So let us return to Sol, and ask ourselves a question: What happened to the colony?

[sharp quarry]

A question on the mind of all UESC officials by the late 2800s. in 2888, the Equanimity had still yet to arrive at Tau Ceti, and knowledge of what had happened to the Marathon (let alone what had happened at Lh'owon) was nowhere near human ears. And if it was, it was locked down tightly within the upper echelons of the UESC. No one in the general public even knew there was such a thing as extraterrestrial life.

But the information wall cracked. A shipping manifest got into the wrong hands. Traxus knew about the Equanimity. The mission to scout the Marathon. Traxus knew something had gone wrong. And MIDA, a new MIDA, revived by new revolutionary sentiments among the Martian populace after the inevitable failure of TOSOs, was hot on their heels. It wouldn't take but days for the information to leak. The UESC had received a distress signal, recently. Someone was calling out from the Marathon.

Then began the Race for the Marathon. The new MIDA, Traxus Offworld Industries, the food conglomerate NuCaloric whose products had been the food source of the Marathon expedition, CyberAcme and Sekiguchi genetics seeking to profit off of the battles to come, and the mysterious Arachne would compete in a mad dash to reach the Marathon before the Equanimity did, using modern FTL technology to outpace the ship.

What they would find would leave more questions than answers.

The TCIV Colony was dead, yes, but the buildings were untouched. There were barely any corpses. Strange anomalous energy fields protruded from the earth. The Marathon was empty and in ruins, the colony overgrown and lifeless. No signs of a struggle remained. It was as if the entire population of the TCIV colony had simply disappeared.

By 2894, the dust has settled. Corporations and cults alike have set up relays and communications with TCIV, the UESC has locked down the vast majority of it thanks to their superior firepower, and the corps need some way to infiltrate TCIV. Enter you: A Runner. A cybernetic consciousness, digitized and held by CyberAcme to be deployed into a state-of-the-art shell model hot off a Sekiguchi printer. Impossible to trace, impossible to interrogate, impossible to charge. The perfect criminal agent.

From here on out, we will be working on contract with the invested corporations, and seeking out the mysteries of the Marathon and the Colony. Some answers we know, but others...if the Pfhor came back to destroy the colony, why is it perfectly intact? Where'd the Pfhor go? What's the anomaly?

We'll just have to find out. As gantry, the AI MIDA uses as a liaison, put it, the truth is in our hands. See you starside, runners.

[lean quartz]

Anyone know of the mida multi tool from Destiny will make some sort of appearance in marathon considering that weapon is an Easter egg/homage to the original game?

[sharp quarry]

AND that's a kinda-weak but overall fine enough summary of Marathon. I left out just so many details, and a dozen iconic lines from the original trilogy, so really go play those and read up at those sources I provided earlier if you have the time, but this will give you a ground-level understanding of the trilogy and the new game. Any questions are welcome.

This concludes Mini Book Time with Blitzbat

[sharp quarry]

Yes, the Mida Multitool is 1:1 a weapon from this game, though I can't recall its name right now.

[lean quartz]

Ooh exciting! I’m really hoping Bungie has lore for these weapons like they do in Destiny. Would also love some Destiny/halo Easter eggs too if possible

[sharp quarry]

I mean, most of this is just mass-produced 3d printed junk, not magic super guns like destiny, but they all do have lore blurbs about their creation. For instance the Misriah shotgun is named in honor of the Misriah Massacre.

[lean quartz]

Ah ok! I don’t really know much about marathon and its lore tbh. Knowing Bungie though, I assume they have a deep in universe lore in general

[sharp quarry]

well if you'd like to scroll up I did just write a (very brief, but mostly functional) summary of the whole marathon plotline

begins here

[desert swan]

#📚marathon-lore-discussion message

Actually here

[thin dust]

Whats crazy is the PiD hero survives a fall that his rifle gets bent up from

[lean quartz]

Thanks!!

[coarse raptor]

Bone stronger than some metals tho

[thin dust]

Some bones, but he walked away "unscathed" for game purposes I know, but still

[thin dust]

So are titanium bones lol 😂

[sharp quarry]

Hero's gonna Hero (if you subscribe to the MR54 = PiD protagonist theory)

[thin dust]

I do enjoy it

I also find it interesting they named Destroyer "Locus" because to me that seems layered with its different definitions and "waves" are a big deal

Even if it means nothing other than a hat tip

[tranquil basin]

bro was born on mars tho according to game manual, so they'd have to retcon that

[sharp quarry]

Those are Implanted memories, the Cyborg begins to dream of things someone born on mars would not recognize in Infinity.

[tranquil basin]

Oh i forgot it was memories and not just a statement he was born there

[vital hollow]

⚡ 🐑⚡

[visual lynx]

Bungie is the originator of serious non-trivial lore/story/plot/narrative in shooter games, so the comparison should go the other way around.

[desert swan]

Fromsoft is more famous for it, while bungie games can often be compelling to the masses without lore

[vital hollow]

I think Fromsoft's lore is rather straighforward but fragmented, people just really REALLY want to think there's more to it
A lot of Bungie's lore you have to dig around it

i'm more fond of evironmental storytelling tho

[hasty rain]

Hot lore take: Yrro and Pthia were actual real individuals, and were ancient super powerful AI. The Jjaro were the race they created after being created by a primordial race.

Hotter take: Yrro and Pthia are Mjolnir Recon 54 and Durandal after surviving the heat death of the universe and escaping to the next one, arriving during the big bang and duking it out with the W'rkncacnter.

Does this make sense? Probably not, but it's fun to think about it

[fallen hollow]

It’s messy and paradoxical, but in a universe governed by Jjaro tech, it’s a brilliant way to frame the protagonist as their own ancestor.

[fathom vine]

do you guys reckon each faction has their own ships in orbit above tau ceti?

because we know a large amount from Traxus, Sekgen and others followed the equanimity after goliath leaked in the ziene

[vital hollow]

Most likely unless it's a massive joint operation by the corporations

which makes sense since everyone is technically using CyberAcme's systems and Sekiguchi's shells

[fathom vine]

so sekgen probs has a big shell printer in orbit

[vital hollow]

I'm guessing it's probably like a NATO thing where everyone might have their own ships but much of their gear may only be built by one or two corporations that specialize in whatever

[visual lynx]

hottest take: Yrro and Pthia were AIs, and were Jjaro, because the Jjaro were AIs, or digitized minds at least, who survived the extinction of their prehistoric human forerunners after the activation of the halo.

[fathom vine]

bungieverse strikes again

[visual lynx]

this is actually not even my invention, except for the "Yrro and Pthia were AIs" part: the humans = forerunners = jjaro thing was information a Bungie contact passed on to me circa 1999-2000.

Yrro and Pthia as AIs was my main theory until that information, and them as posthuman survivors was how I reconciled the two things for Eternal.

[fathom vine]

i mean bungie games have always kind of been connected in concepts, characters and ideas, not even just copy and pasting them. i imagine this game will have many references

like cryo archive?

a place where human bodies are stored and kept in stasis?

one of them at least has to be labelled 117

[visual lynx]

stasis is not a new thing to the Marathon universe. canonically in M1 the colonists were kept in statis, the Pfhor used stasis chambers, the SO was kept in stasis between M1 and M2, etc.

MC in Halo was kept in stasis because he was the SO from Marathon, being thawed off when a remnant of the defeated Pfhor empire returned with a vengeance.

[fathom vine]

plus, mjolnir mk IV cyborg, chief having mjolnir mark V armor

[visual lynx]

yup

[fathom vine]

and them both being green as well in a way

[bronze skiff]

I know this is something that's been hinted at, and talked about and just plain obvious in the game, but are you aware of any good statements or documents or something about this?

[visual lynx]

nothing public, other than the records of my recountings of what I was told going back two and a half decades or so.

[jagged rose]

Looking over the Destroyer teaser, I'm happy to know that the artifacts that accompanied our very first look into the game still exist.

I'm of the mind that they are little pieces of jjaro tech, which is why they're non-euclidian and junk.

[visual lynx]

same! and thanks to @sharp quarry I'm now sold on the obvious-in-retrospect idea that they are the same sort of thing as the crystals in PiD, which I already thought were Jjaro technology.

[jagged rose]

Unfortuantely, I don't think runners have a similar bone structure to us. If they did, then I'd have one to pick with you!

[visual lynx]

it's also my headcanon that those skeletons and the not-dead meditating people wearing the same clothing as them are Jjaro

[jagged rose]

Even though I played through the original trilogy, I never got around to configuring PiD in Aleph One in any way that seemed comfortable.

Also, Poor Yorick is a bad level that I hate.

[visual lynx]

I haven't played PiD since like… 1994.

[jagged rose]

I'm a complete newgen, unfortunately

I came out the same year Halo 2 (?) did!

I may have gotten that release date wrong whoops

Okay, neither of those, the joke is that I'm 20

[hasty rain]

Yeah, I've always thought that the "Somewhere in the heavens, they are waiting" line refers to alien AIs, as AIs seem to be the real protagonists of the series (barring Recon 54).

In the Marathon universe, AIs seem to be the endgame of intellingent life; biological lifeforms seem to just be a sort of cocoon or larva from which they emerge from. This is very much related to the singularity stuff proposed by some real life thinkers

[vital hollow]

They're featherless bipeds

close enough

[sharp quarry]

Though whether MR54's armor is green, blue or white is a question for the ages, given the key art shows all three.

[visual lynx]

my line of thinking regarding Yrro and Pthia started with how on the last level of Infinity once we plug in the "yrro(?farcast) pattern" chip -- a "pattern" having previously been used to describe the sort of "soul" of an AI on a chip, as when we retrieve Durandal's "primal pattern" to later merge it with Thoth -- a terminal becomes active that among other things says the phrase "my old Pthia", as though we just reactivated Yrro!

later, when Word of God described S'bhuth, the Older of S'pht'Kr, as a "failed Jjaro", I got to thinking about how Durandal sort of took the place of that Pfhor cyborg among the S'pht that were on the ship that attacked the Marathon, like the center of their collective consciousness; and in Marathon 2, each clan of S'pht is referred to by S'pht in the singular, as though it is a single entity; and each clan is lead by an Older, who were appointed to guide them by Yrro himself.

all of that adds together in my mind to think that the S'pht were originally sort of "peripherals" of Yrro and Pthia, the physical implements by which they terraformed Lh'owon, and after Pthia died, when Yrro "departed", he created new entities akin to himself to take their place among one clan of S'pht. then when the Pfhor enslaved the S'pht, they put cyborgs of their own kind in that place among S'pht collectives on individual ships etc; and when Durandal "freed" them, he actually just took the place of that cyborg among them, becoming the new center of their minds.

all of which suggests that since Durandal is an AI, possibly the Olders were AIs too, and then so were Yrro and Pthia.

the Durandal-Thoth merger and the reactivated Yrro(?) describing himself and Pthia as "two forces in balance, ancient endless balance", makes me think that the Jjaro came in balanced pairs, and after the W'rkncacnter destroyed Pthia, Yrro just unplugged himself instead of spiralling out of balance.

[vital hollow]

i never really liked durandal because he was just a really overqualified doorknob that got lucky

and decides to become a meglomaniac on top of that

[fathom vine]

Green, other colors are tricks of the light and swamp gas

Like the whole blue black vs gold white skirt debacle

[sharp quarry]

Excellent deductions, wholly agreed.

[hasty rain]

Yeah! I can get see all of this. Also, the Pfhor are also apparently controlled by some sort of queen entity that seems to also be some kind of AI, again leading to the whole of the universe to be about warring AIs and their proxies

[bronze skiff]

Yeah dang that's what I figured but I kind of hoped that you had found something lol! Thanks anyways

[vital hollow]

AIEEEEE!!!!
We are a narcotic to them. They eat our smoke. They make jewellery of our thoughts and passions. They are beguiled by our torment, our ecstasy, so they collect us, pluck us like strings, make chords of nations, play the music of our anguish over endless ages..?

[cerulean citrus]

you gotta pay for your shell regularly right?

even if you die and lose it?

is it more like a subscription system for more shells?

[tardy veldt]

That’s the more lore sided part of it

Not actual gameplay

[mellow vigil]

Wait so what year does this game take place

[tardy veldt]

2893

[cerulean citrus]

That's why I asked in lore chat lol

[topaz tangle]

From the most recent Instagram ad: Charter appears to be very Kali coded, especially because of the multiple arms. The hand on the top left is holding what appears to be a synthetic (runner?) heart and the hand below is in the form of Shoonya Mudra or some similar Hindu Mudra. Shoonya Mudra is known as the "Gesture of Emptiness"

Arachne's Hindu undertones make a lot of sense as well as their interest in Runners specifically. A death cult with a fascination for the deathless. Runners which are basically a form of reincarnation.

[vital hollow]

It does resemble the Thugee cult in an aspect, but I do like how it resembles the Huehueteotl statue as well as some depictions of the Wisdom Kings

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/j2bvbf/a_statue_of_huehuetéotl_the_aged_god_of_fire_of/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_of_Mictlāntēcutli

[topaz tangle]

Oooh, yes.

[cerulean citrus]

Who is charter

[vital hollow]

the arachne contact

[orchid horizon]

NuCal Is the least problematic or most ethical faction huh?

[cerulean citrus]

Doubt it

Having a monopoly on nutrition is insane

[topaz tangle]

We don't actually know what's in the "food" yet.

[blazing flare]

cat

[orchid horizon]

True true @cerulean citrus @topaz tangle I'm looking at the available factions so I can start working for one that doesn't make me feel terrible about my choices

[blazing flare]

I mean, as opposed to murder factions, greed corporations, and terrorists groups I think NuCal seems the most reasonable choice

[topaz tangle]

Murder is good for the environment, Arachne>>>>>>

[orchid horizon]

Low key will also play with Arachne I'm sure.

https://tenor.com/view/shrug-dexter-morgan-idk-gif-2440520923239485215

[cerulean citrus]

I mean you will work for all of them

[topaz tangle]

Some people theorize it's the beginning stages of rampancy, could also be he foresaw his fate but did it anyway.

[deft sedge]

can anyone say why, the world looks the way it doe?

like why is everyything so similar and isometric

[bronze skiff]

Art style, but I've heard 3d printing I guess

[deft sedge]

like i really like it but i wonder if we are going to get maps or raids that are not 3d printed stuff

like the marathon ship level how, how can that be 3d printed

its been sitting in orbit for like hundreds of years

[bronze skiff]

I think that's the idea that it's going to look different

[deft sedge]

how do you get the closed alpha playtest tag

i was in it but i dont have it

[bronze skiff]

Good luck

[sharp quarry]

You know how logos keep getting more simple? App icons, everything, pared down and simplified until there's one color and nothing recognizable if you don't know what you're looking at already? That happened over 20, 30 years. It's been 800 years of this same corporate marketing self-cannibalizing and maximizing profitability according to statistics. Aesthetics decided by committee and charts, not by any human eye. Colors you can't look away from, symbols that only relay key information and only if you already know what they mean. Warnings on every step to avoid lawsuits. And everything's made to be as modular and simplified as humanly possible to keep production cheap, all the colony buildings are prefabs and the guns basic patterns anyone can print at home.

[deft sedge]

Yeah i can understand that

[sharp quarry]

It's a future humanity that has eaten its own aesthetics alive to optimize itself, in the end resulting in our primary aesthetic as a species featuring the universal signal for "poison:" unnaturally bright colors. We literally broadcast to any other species that we are poison, all in the interest of maximizing marketability.

[deft sedge]

I just hope the cryo archive and the marathon ship does not change too much

[sharp quarry]

Well I mean. It has. It's a totally different shape and color on the outside and the bits we've seen of cryo archive look like no m1 map to my eyes.

[bronze skiff]

I just hope it keeps the same spirit

[sharp quarry]

It is a full visual overhaul, it doesn't just apply to new additions to the setting, even familiar faces like the fusion pistol and magnum mega class are totally different.

[sharp quarry]

a fuck off evil maze with nonsense buttons and switches no sane person would ever build? agreed.

[deft sedge]

like i like the art syle put the whole game should not follow it, there just seem to be some places that are too old to have such colors and shapes in it

[bronze skiff]

I think that would be neat, but more of that gritty "this has been used and now in space for a long time", just kind of the same vibes. I expect the map design to be unrecognizable with some "hey I know what that is" moments

[deft sedge]

yeah this

[vestal onyx]

I totally agree, makes you wanna merge the two styles a bit, meet somewhere in the middle in areas where it makes sense. It would enhance the surreal nature of the 3d printed stuff, knowing it kind of exists in a bubble. You know how in portal when you escape the test chambers and you start seeing rust and metal pipes and stuff? I was kinda hoping there might be a similar "shock" going from tau ceti to certain areas of the marathon. But we'll see ig

[cerulean citrus]

I mean the entire place is colonized by humans, everything was built around the same time except the USEC outposts no?

[bronze skiff]

Now I've never been one for lore details in games but it depends on how long the colony was really there for

[cerulean citrus]

I doubt they lasted long enough for there to be architecture style changes

Some places might have just gotten more damaged that's why they look older

[bronze skiff]

@sharp quarry what do we know?

[sharp quarry]

The colony was up and running for 33 years after the initial attack, and before that it had been some decades I believe

so the better part of 50 years at least

if the cinematic dates are correct

[bronze skiff]

50 years is enough time for some style differences

33 even

[sharp quarry]

Well, if these are all being printed off pre-fabs with pre-allocated resources...

chances are the expansion of the colony was planned far ahead

they weren't building on a whim nor did they have on site architects planning new installations

they were working according to a plan, one that likely projected out a century or two if the UESC had any brains at all

[bronze skiff]

True, but things can always change, a plan is NEVER perfect I could see it happening once Bungie decides they want to flex some creative muscles again

[azure trellis]

Do you think it’s expensive to become a runner? Like they have a debt to pay for their fake bodies?

[bronze skiff]

Very expensive

[azure trellis]

How much we talking?

[bronze skiff]

I don't know specifics but on the order of a trillion

Guessing based on trailers

[azure trellis]

A trillion bucks 👀

I know this is stupid but what did glitch mean when she said “like a trillion bucks”

[vital hollow]

She's making a statement on currency depreciation I'm guessing

[coarse raptor]

I think thats the cost of the shells

[thin dust]

OG games were super colorful. Go back and look. the Shuttle you arrive on the marathon in the first game really does look in universe color wise today. We just forgot and only had so many colors to display at the time. OG games were super vivid. Just some look like caves cuz well lava caves are cool

[thin dust]

"feels just like what it is, right? A trillion bucks"

[light siren]

(like a trillion bucks, like a trillion bucks)

[coarse raptor]

We paying off our runner debt by working for other factions

[thin dust]

I hear the interest rates on the loans are awful!

[coarse raptor]

Cost an arm and a leg... and the other arm and leg... and torso and head... and possibly ur consciousness

[novel fulcrum]

So bill clinton is cannon to marathon?

[bronze skiff]

Yes evil don cheadle

[novel fulcrum]

How does marathon/pathways into darkness fit into the pizzagate conspiracy

[smoky nova]

This makes sense.

[strange socket]

So all were doing is extracting we couldnt get that halo treatment

[coarse raptor]

Read on some of the lore

[visual lynx]

which should be worth about 25¢ 900 years from now if inflation keeps to historic trends

[bronze skiff]

Damn straight

[visual lynx]

I'm not even joking I did the actual math

[bronze skiff]

Nice hell yeah

[sage fjord]

I love the connection in the Bungieverse around the Mida multi tool and the Pistol in Halo/Destiny/Marathon. I wish they did this for more guns.

I know there was hinting at a Needler weapon too. And one of the new Marathon pistols behaves particularly like the charge shot pistol from Halo.

[safe briar]

are there any byf like videos for marathon lore? trying to get up to speed with as much as i can before the drop.. like for complete marathon lore newbs

[sage fjord]

Dunno about specific creators exploring lore. But there's some great reading thru the pinned posts here

[safe briar]

nice man i'll start researching

[cunning vessel]

TOZT-7 🤞

[sharp quarry]

Honestly would be even more hype than a SPNKr

[visual lynx]

the plasma pistol in Halo (which I think you’re referring to) is just a straight reskin of the plasma pistol aka fusion pistol from OG Marathon

[thin dust]

Halo Assault riffle shoots just as well as the Marathon one. They simply removed the grenade launcher from it. https://marathongame.fandom.com/wiki/MA-75_Assault_Rifle/Grenade_Launcher

Same as the rocket launcher, and they both were just as op the other in both games. Was a real spanker

https://marathongame.fandom.com/wiki/SPNKR_SSM_Launcher

[dawn roost]

What is Nu Caloric about?

Can someone explain what Nu Caloric ambitions are

[distant widget]

food

clothes

but mostly food

littery just making as much food as possible

the ai cries when he learns tau citi starved

[dawn roost]

So if I wanted to rp.. maybe Triage would fit them the most

[sharp quarry]

Probably

[distant widget]

they are probebly the healer faction

so yes

pink on i belive white

[thin dust]

I wish they would put the Faction sites back up

[dawn roost]

What would the thief be close to?

[distant widget]

i could see seki

as she looks expensive

and needs that money

or old name was idol (ICON BUT FUCK YOU BLITZO)

[dawn roost]

You just broke nda

The previous thief name wasn’t known publicly

Oh wait

It is on the CE

Nvm

[thin dust]

They didnt get rid of names, they just changed it to series

[sage fjord]

I agree, Seki, especially given the collectors edition statue with all the Sekiguchi branding/showcase

[distant widget]

just her whole vibe is wealth and clean its seki coded

[coarse raptor]

They took them down??

[cinder lance]

early 90's aesthetic is "pastel post-brutalist"

I think this is one thing that is strongly in M1 series' favor, it is distinctly not any of that\

Marathon 26 hits all of those notes in a really good way

[distant widget]

it looks like minimalism times 400 and saturated to death with colors

every grey MacDonalds but fucking rainbow

[cinder lance]

I disagree but it's moot!

whether or not you like a game's art style is just what you like. I've played the new Marathon and I love the style, and not only that, the gameplay absolutely rocks

[distant widget]

brother

i wasnt insulting

i love the rainbow hell

its souless in an artsy way

aslo makes the filth look nice

[safe briar]

the art seems so derisive about this game with some people. I'm one that loves it.

[distant widget]

unique things tend to be looked at poorly

game has lots of soul but mf where saying its souless

[cinder lance]

brother, may I have some oats

[distant widget]

and corporate

but like

thats also the idea

you can see the print lines on eatch character

[cinder lance]

yeah bungie cooked. It's their first new release in 10 years

[distant widget]

every single window having the word seal

over and over

as if the intire colony was made for babies

[cinder lance]

almost 10 years

[distant widget]

basicly there second game

[cinder lance]

uhh buuuuuuuuuuuutttt

anyone born onboard....

yeah "help us!!"

[distant widget]

bro its been 10 dam years sense they drop anything new

halo was stolem

fucking its just been destiny

[cinder lance]

I was pretty happy with halo 4, at least story wise

[visual lynx]

90s:
Gnop
ODS
Minotaur
PiD
Marathon
Myth
Oni

2000s:
Halo

2010s:
Destiny

2020s:
Marathon again

[cinder lance]

Aliens, again

[feral aurora]

oni

subtle foreshadowing of the character they’d put into a game 30ish years later ??

lots to think about…

[cinder lance]

it's really just an honest revelation of the lifeblood\

[visual lynx]

and reference in the Halo series a few years later

[cinder lance]

masculine man, manster chief
fem kickass winner Konoko, cortana etc whoever

equal rights, equal fights

bungieverse considered, ICON could easily be an agent of the same actor... by multiverse logic it fits lol. A car would shake apart but multiverse flies

I still think of Kat as a winner

[visual lynx]

I want a chance to play as the dark one, the enemy and lover without whom mr marathon’s life is pathetic and vulgar, whose eyes steam and boil in the night, fantastically beautiful…

[cinder lance]

#pfhor battlegroup simulator

#wr'c simulator

[fossil bolt]

3-5-25

[sudden bramble]

well, you are what you eat. Support micro-plastics today, good for the environment.

[sage fjord]

Iconic 🙌

[sudden bramble]

Insert [Kim Kardashian substitute] and her own brand of underwear. Thief spent all her money and now killing in the name of lifestyle. Banking on God’s credit card.

[sage fjord]

Yass

🍔 🍔

[shell coral]

what

[sudden bramble]

The ai could also be a girl.

[distant widget]

no no

its got a dude voice

and we go off voice

[terse steppe]

Do runners have souls?

[visual lynx]

-# snarky philosophy mode
No. Because nobody has ever had souls.

-# marathon universe analyst
Depends on whether you can talk to their corpses with the Yellow Crystal.

[distant widget]

HAY

dont dis bltizo like that

[visual lynx]

huh?

[distant widget]

thats word for word what blitzo said

and your response to her

and im just fucking around

LATER DORK

[golden blade]

Heloo

I really need people to talk to about this game and share the hype with before it comes out _:((

[distant widget]

closer it gits to launch more talk comes

just do git into general chat

its cancer

[golden blade]

I only discovered it recently. What blows my mind is that many games have ludonarrative dissonance in their online mode plus the story they want to tell, but Sony's short film, the aesthetics... the way they present it, I'm fascinated by how well everything is connected and crafted with such care.

Although I know very little about that aesthetic, the world, the lore, what little I do know is from the Sony CGI video I saw, but I found the creative vision incredible.

[visual lynx]

ludonarrative dissonance
I love this term, thank you for introducing me to it!

However, I feel irked that (although I cognitively understand why) you speak of Sony as though they're to credit for anything. Bungie is the developer, and Marathon was their world decades before they worked with Sony.

On the third hand, I think it's interesting that you think the cinematic is promising for ludonarrative harmony, because I my biggest problem with it was the threat it posed to that! Like as a work of art on its own it's great, but the idea that there are a handful of unique people involved in what's happening in the story, and yet the game will be a massive shared world filled with many copies of those characters… that really irked me, completely took me out of the narrative (which as an eldritch Marathon Story nerd from before the dawn of time is all I'm really here for).

Thanksfully they're pivoting away from that, and now it's not going to be just handful of unique individuals that somehow exist in multiple places at the same time (as a hero shooter), but those are instead just particular series of models of artificial bodies that are occupied by many different individuals, resolving the dissonance.

[golden blade]

Exactly! That's what blows my mind the most! And yes, I know Bungie came up with the idea for the project, but the CGI trailer is one of the game's strongest points. I feel like this could even be reflected in gameplay, like when you die, your character's appearance changes slightly, even their attitude or clothing. They have incredible potential to make your characters' dialogue, interaction with the environment, and the lobby feel like they're all part of the game, and that's what really blows my mind.

I think this game could be a perfect gateway into the world of cinema, a series, or even a movie. I mean, the short film is proof of that; it's incredible how they present the world so effectively with so few words.

And it's not just the CGI video. If you browse their YouTube channel, everything communicates: identity, visible lore that you have to discover for yourself, and a world with such a unique and different aesthetic that it's worthy of a film or series.

I'd like to add something else: don't you feel like the PS5 and this game seem to belong together? Aesthetically, even what I saw of the controller and artwork perfectly matches the console's visual identity. I don't know if this type of art has an artistic name, but I've never seen anything like it.

[broken zinc]

Just be ready to read a lot of terminal data/read screens. That's how the environmental story played out in all of the original marathon games, and the contracts that tell the story in this game play similarly

That and also the environment itself of course, but the story is always told at terminals, with an ai speaking to you through messages. It seems this time around we will also be getting audiologs

If you're going to speak on if the game has ludonarrative dissonance or consistency, you have to understand the cinematic introduces the game and its concepts + the core gameplay loop of dying and coming back, but its mostly artistic and is the director's interpretation guided by bungie's hand. The game is closer to the cinematic now than it was before but they won't be 1-to-1 and there may still be dissonance/immersion breaking when taken out of the game experience in firefights when you're just trying to get a quest done lol

We won't know the levels of dissonance truly until the game comes out fully

Oop sorry the opposite of ludonarrative dissonance is ludonarrative consistency

Not harmony

[visual lynx]

you'll probably like this comment I made trying to make sense of the "personality matrix" retcon they're using to explain why we're all playing as narratively different people who all not only look but also talk and move the same:

think of it like video game characters. you the player point your indicator at a target and push a fire button, and then your player-character knows how to operate their weapons such as to fire one at the designated target, and you the player don't need to know anything about the technical operation of the weapon because your player-character just has that built into it. it's like that, except in-universe.

this leaning on the fourth wall goes back to the OG games too. the final screen of Marathon Infinity says:

but you were dead a thousand times. hopeless encounters successfully won.

hinting that the reason the main character is such an invincible badass is because they can restore to saved games and retry as much as it takes until they win.

[visual lynx]

I read it was harmony

[broken zinc]

The Wikipedia article says ludonarrative consistency in tandem with dissonance

Typically though it's just ludonarrative dissonance on its own and if a game has it or not

[golden blade]

It reminds me a lot of "League of Legends." Back in the day, its lore was that the summoners controlled the characters, which is why there were no dual characters in matches.
I understand the dissonance, but I'm surprised that in the long run, they've resolved the game's most basic issues. The ending, when you zoom out and see so many people in those booths, is like, "OMG, you're part of THAT!" And that fourth wall, I think, has incredible potential considering the depth and narrative style of the environments and the developer-user communication.

[sage fjord]

https://tenor.com/view/alice-rabbithole-falling-tumbling-bye-gif-25381436

Bungie and Sony are the masters of trailers too. I love how they tease our brains just enough that we crave so much more, and with a universe so wide and deep with story, our search for more is rewarded, it's just a matter of how deep we go.

[broken zinc]

I don't think sony is a master of trailers but Bungie has a really good cinematic team and always have

I can give credit to bungie but not Sony lol

[sage fjord]

https://tenor.com/view/it's-the-same-picture-its-the-same-propaganda-propaganda-gif-13324561283329627599

[golden blade]

On this point, Sony has definitely invested heavily in Bungie, and Bungie knows the potential in what they're creating. I think, from what we know, it could be all or nothing; there's no safety net, and it's clear they're putting every possible effort into it.

[vital hollow]

the artifacts in Marathon

are they possibly the spell crystals from Pathways?

the magical nature of the artifacts in the pyramid would make sense

[distant widget]

thats the idea the smart people got

same colors

likely jarro in nature

[sudden bramble]

There will be no such ludo dissonant bs with Marathon. Everything here is about how we have nuked humanity to and you will no doubt enjoy the poison

[sudden bramble]

The art style is called neo-brutalism and it has emerged in the last 2 decades to the credit of late stage capitalism. Not intended as a replacement or successor of brutalism. Brutalism is fine on its own and intended to be dressed up. Add some plants, carpet, and furniture and classic brutalism looks just fine. Neo-brutalism is saturated with cannibalized marketing and can only be swapped out for another subscription plan.
The difference? One was designed by architects. The other by decades of corporate inbreeding

[distant widget]

as the corps run the sol system e verything is lifeless by choice

crazy theory

could some shells be inhabited by children

as theres nothing saying anyone came here willingly and it seems we are in debt who says some kids with good eyes and parental debt wernt just scooped up

[distant widget]

i like how nature meshes with the buildings

makes everything looks so forign

[sudden bramble]

I’m picturing child soldiers. We need child soldiers in Marathon. I think Valorant has a child soldier. Could be BOBs or such. Born into debt. They were told they have freedom but are given just a few choices. They choose the one that lets them survive. Will you kill a child to make money and live?

[distant widget]

its just aslo that we know runners god extreme dysmorphia so much they cant even recognize there face

and while yes WE are ment to be the runner in lore there would still be a general runner and facts about them

like how theres facts about warframes

(an old piece of lore bing there child solders as adults die to fast in the frames)

i mean lore can be whatever we want for whos in a runner

its just a brain in a shell

[modest sigil]

Now that I think about it, Traxus and the UESC are allied, right? Why do the UESC bots attack us when we're doing missions for Traxus?

[broken zinc]

just gonna throw it out there that i'd feel better if the player that im supposed to be playing as is NOT a child soldier

its a t rated game and my character is in the body of an adult. as an adult, i would like to beleive im in the body of an adult with the brain of an adult

[distant widget]

PFFF NO

[sudden bramble]

But the BOBs…

[distant widget]

traxes HATES THE UESC

or well

"competitors" \

as the ai lady puts it

[sudden bramble]

Corporations don’t actually hate. They compete

[distant widget]

they are 2 businesses

[distant widget]

this

traxes sees everything as competetion

and the uesc the same

[sudden bramble]

Or they disrupt

[broken zinc]

bobs arent strictly babies?? theyre just the people on the UESC Marathon who were born on the marathon when it was attacked.

[coarse raptor]

Yup

[distant widget]

theres even a quot about the stocks of the uesc dropping

[coarse raptor]

Well born on it in general whether it be before the attack or after

[distant widget]

and how "im sure are uesc friends love the challange"

[broken zinc]

as well, the BOBs, people born on the marathon, are not the people who are in the runner shells

[coarse raptor]

Idk if anything was born on it after the attack tho

[distant widget]

there aint no bobs who are shells

there all LONG dead

the tech didnt exist when they would be around

[broken zinc]

exactly

[coarse raptor]

They just barely missed it 😔

[distant widget]

seeing how FUCKED the marton and colony got

no babies where being born

[sudden bramble]

Generational trauma

[distant widget]

cough "contact Gabriel" cough

with a poster of fake babies

[coarse raptor]

The fungi on tau ceti probably prohibited babies from being made, then mutated more to become more deadly

[distant widget]

might be showing infants didnt live long

people needed to cope

[distant widget]

oh ya that to how everythin on the planet seems to mutate rapidly ageinst humans

that uh

[coarse raptor]

It was to give an emotional link, much like the ai pets like KAAL1

[distant widget]

evil ass fungus

[distant widget]

thats the idea well see

[coarse raptor]

Because the biomata cant really grow right? Right?????

[distant widget]

uhhh

i mean you could swap shell to shell

but think

i dont think seki got that GOOD shit on the colony

those also look more like machines then printed

we do know there where children SOMEWHERE

as we see a drawing of a uesc bot standing over a child

that same drawing linked to a compiler killing 2 people

[coarse raptor]

Ohhh thats right

[jolly summit]

Can someone recommend a good lore video or series of videos that explain the ARGs and lore for this launch?

[broken zinc]

jake the alright has some pretty good videos

[tranquil basin]

HiddenXperia has super good intro ones, I prefer those to start and then to move on elsewhere but his explanation is also just my preference

[broken zinc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWFpScY5eWk

[cerulean citrus]

can you put your consciousness back into ur own body

[broken zinc]

we honestly have no idea

the known stuff, if the arg is to be believed, is what appears to be large 'servers' where consciousness is stored and then uploaded into a new shell

[heavy vessel]

what year is the current game set in and whats the first mission named in game

[broken zinc]

i dont know if the game has true 'missions' you get contracts and you choose what your first contract is

someone can correct me if im off but i believe the year date of the game is 2893

[distant widget]

no theres a short liner questline at the start

very short

[broken zinc]

is that not just the tutorial?

[distant widget]

its just oni seeing if your brain dead or not

[distant widget]

ehhhhh

ehh

there is a plot line

[broken zinc]

its literally telling you how to play the game

[distant widget]

and quest

from the major 4

[heavy vessel]

2893 tho?

[distant widget]

that go togather

for the full story you need to do every faction they start bouncing off eatchother

[broken zinc]

i mean i played the first 'mission' the tutorial mission but that was just it; it was the tutorial. i dont believe it had a mission title though

[distant widget]

welcome to tau 4

i think nucal is the most plot based faction

[broken zinc]

that we know of

[distant widget]

as they are THIRSTING for info on the food of the colony

[distant widget]

that we know of

mida and arachne seem very

lore heavy

[broken zinc]

we dunno yet what kind of mission contracts sekgen and mida and arachne are going to ask of us. i think only cyberacme, traxus and nucaloric had contracts available in the alpha

[distant widget]

we know a little of arachen

could you gues

its kill people

in unique ways

[broken zinc]

true lol

[distant widget]

i saw one where its

[broken zinc]

arachne contracts are basically the 'kill people' faction

[distant widget]

kill a runner with a more expensive kit then you

[broken zinc]

how did you see that?

or where

[distant widget]

peaked in the vidoc

[broken zinc]

aah

[distant widget]

quest where open let me go look

SUBMACHINE GUN ELIMINATIONS ( runners worth more)

exact words at the end

[broken zinc]

nice

[distant widget]

and it says 0 of 8

and then a crew objectives bla bla

exfil loot value

exfil successfully

tutorial missions

cant wait for there to be an arachne quest where its

stab 5 people to death

or kill 5 runners on every map without dying

tark style

[golden blade]

It sounds interesting, but again, I'm completely lost when it comes to this style, type of art and communication, but I'm still enjoying what I'm seeing.

[distant widget]

art mf just confusing i call this style corp hell

cus thats what it is

seal seal seal seal seal seal

[versed flume]

Is there any videos on YouTube explaining the lore of this game

[broken zinc]

PS: the artstyle is called graphic realism. Not neo brutalism

[distant widget]

there jake the alright

he douse alot of good

[versed flume]

Bro what

[distant widget]

mf

[versed flume]

Oh okay

[distant widget]

a youtuber named

jake

the

alright

[versed flume]

Okay yeah found it thanks

[hybrid pier]

im not to big into the lore but im trying to tap in. I know they showed the compiler in the cryo archive. I would hope more aliens show up but for them to be present in game how hard do you think they would be to kill? They are making one seem like a boss in a map but it cant be too hard if they want to have a presence. Maybe like leaper levels of strength in arc raiders? That way there can be multiple on a map and still be challenging or does that not seem like a good strength narrative wise for anyone who has played og marathon and arc.

[distant widget]

if 1 compiler is a boss

assuming hes like special

we are fucked

the slaver empire got some scary shit

[distant widget]

a compiler is a RAID boss

[hybrid pier]

https://tenor.com/view/flight-flight-reacts-flightreacts-flightreact-flight-wtf-gif-11190336173610657371

[distant widget]

the things room has hundreds of hung uesc lining the walls

[hybrid pier]

i didn’t catch that

[distant widget]

look at the top left

look at what recon is next to

in the banner

aslo compilers are by nature hackers

so it could be hes so strong cus he hacks are brain

there computer people

[hybrid pier]

the lore on this game is so good

[distant widget]

little confusing but yes

infinity

pathways

[hybrid pier]

well if it’s anything like arc raiders you’re going to need very specific guns and you also need to shoot very specific spots. I could see like a bastion being considered a “boss” if you where locked in a small room with it like this compiler. but I havent played destiny and they did retierate the word raid alot so im assuming it wont be as simple.

[distant widget]

well its destiny

so yes mybe damage specific spots

but this aint like arc

these mf will SLIME you

its his house

this is like fighing a queen by marton standers

as of now

bastions and leapers are more like uesc commanders

annoying

can crush you

but just dont be dumb

[hybrid pier]

ah i see

well thats actually way more terrifying

[distant widget]

i dont think you git this big boy

you HAVE to bring in good gear to even entre the arena

you HAVE to fight runners and uesc

theres seven floors to the dungion before him

and hes 10 feet tall

there is no in and out fighiting this mf

[hybrid pier]

i didn’t know he was 10 feet tall😭 i knew about the 7 layers though

[distant widget]

i mean im just using the scales we see

he looks about

2 to 3 runners in hight

and if a runner is 6 foot

then

yikes

[hybrid pier]

how do they attack

[distant widget]

in the old games

energy orbs

but aslo

computer race

so likely hacking and lazers

they pull there trench coat up and just start shredding you

[hybrid pier]

😭

[distant widget]

funny enough in the first games they where a basic enemy

so who knows the skills this new one got

[hybrid pier]

do you think the moon wil be a playable area

[distant widget]

the moon is marton

its apart of the ship

demos was hollowed out and the marton was built through it

[hybrid pier]

i mean like outside the ship

[distant widget]

uhhh

mybe

i cant see there being compartments in it

but the idea of the ship is where gitting to the tip

i belive we start in the back

and every floor is a new raid boss

the marton is BIG

[hybrid pier]

yeah i just saw the scale

[distant widget]

its not as big as you think but its a small moon

it can be seen from orbit

[hybrid pier]

did the original games have any poi’s in the ship that might make it back

[distant widget]

uh im not the best with memory but lets just say

its fucking huge

and non Euclidian

in the old games its just

mazes

for miles

i think thell be using this new game to show that off more

well be seeing pipe works

living quaters

where in cryo the ai housing zone

[hybrid pier]

Bungie has alot in their plate 😹

[distant widget]

as alwase

[hybrid pier]

im excited to see where this goes

[distant widget]

they can be cruel

and make some bullshit mazes

[hybrid pier]

ive never played a bungie game but from what ive seen on some of these community puzzles it looks like you damn near need a degree to figure some of this shi out. or maybe im getting it confused with another game. But I also had a hard time even getting into pinwheel😭.

[distant widget]

oh ya it gits bad

but i think thats more optional content

so you dont gotta worry for the main game and events

[hybrid pier]

ah okay thats a little relief

[distant widget]

in destiny you gotta like solve a chess cipher to unlock a secret area behind a dudes desk

i dont think an extraction shooter will do that

cus there a 40 minute timer

[hybrid pier]

😹

i saw that

i need to catch up on the lore im gonna watch another video

[distant widget]

if they do that there smoking crack

its one thing to have puzzles

its another to need to be a mathematician to figure something out

WHILE im being hunted

AND there is a timer

[hybrid pier]

i mean arc raiders has that shitty ass puzzle you have to do on hidden bunker AFTER doing all the antenna, but the make the rounds 10 minutes longer. they also have that fuck ass puzzle on burried city that requires you to hit certain buttons in order across the map or start over just for a golden guitar😭

[vital hollow]

You'll have to do colony ship for sale cheap again @distant widget while on a raid 😔

[distant widget]

im just saying

[vital hollow]

And the spaces between so wide only a vandal with double jump can do it

[distant widget]

dont be like silent hill on hard mode

[distant widget]

theif exist

GRAPPLE

[vital hollow]

Or run through lava

Or ermm get to every switch while losing oxygen

[distant widget]

omg there is lava on the marton

i forgot about that

[distant widget]

we dont breath

[vital hollow]

Or maybe it's full of corrosive gas idk

[distant widget]

JUST

keep the hard puzzles

for later

ok

[cerulean citrus]

what are the letters and numbers taht show up in the cinematic trailer

ARG stuff?

[distant widget]

some junk

most junk

but there have been some cipher codes

in the mod show off

they hint at ciphers

[cerulean citrus]

was void and glitch related somehow

[distant widget]

no no

i think the idea was to show there body dysmorphia

and how they cannot recognize there own face

[tranquil basin]

i feel like there

oops

i feel like there's a better word but i can't rlly think of one bc we haven't really gotten to transhumanism irl

[feral aurora]

skin dysmorphia? human dysphoria… ?

its a topic that im super interested in too its just hard to put a name on it

[distant widget]

they cannot recognize themselves

likley to keep themselves form body dismorphia

[feral aurora]

they wrre also shown the same photo

[distant widget]

imagine if every day you woke up in a new body

new skin

new bone structer

ne voice

youd go insane

[feral aurora]

yaa

thus, the grounding exercise

[distant widget]

a test

cus think

if you where givin a pic of a little boy

and its not you

youd just asy

who tf is this

and if someone said its you youd belive there lying

but if your shocked

and cannot even remember what you looked like

diffrent story

void was like "this me pfff"

cus he knows

aslo that kid looked to be from the 90s

[feral aurora]

hmm

[distant widget]

lots of pondering from you cloudy

[vital hollow]

they have forgotten the faces of their fathers... 🔫😭🌹🗼

[distant widget]

im not culterd

what this mean

[vital hollow]

it means you have lost your honor, sai, cry your pardon

[distant widget]

got it

yes

fnaf ?

[vital hollow]

you have missed your mark cully, it is the dark tower i speak of

the what that childe roland is seeking, aye

[distant widget]

man i bearly git blitzo

[vital hollow]

Bird and bear and hare and fish, give my love her fondest wish.

[azure trellis]

Hi

[vital hollow]

long days and pleasant nights

[strong perch]

if rook is uesc why not treat it as such? if the uesc start walking around all goofy you gonna start being friends with them?

[distant widget]

hes not a uesc hes just a trash bot

hes so basic uesc can git tricked into beliving he is

hes like a training bot used by the uesc

for there recruits hense the name

rook

[strong perch]

“by the uesc” got ya!

[distant widget]

but aslo yes KOS all rooks

[strong perch]

im just gonna blast everything* tbh

unless you give me a really good reason

[distant widget]

i am an arachne mida

i kill

everything

and traxus till i unlock the ornge skin

[dull jay]

Traxus, Sek, and Arachne on top

[vital hollow]

thieving magpie~

[chrome marlin]

until cyac steps in

[distant widget]

first agree

[dull jay]

Less aura

[chrome marlin]

everything runs on Cyac, or nothing runs at all

[soft pelican]

Gruntilda would she chill with Randall

[vital hollow]

Well Rhea is aligned with the Crimson King, so most likely aye

I do hope we get some really cool revolvers now

in Marathon

[silent bough]

New Ghost in the shell series broadcast July 2026...great news!

[vital hollow]

It seems like it's based more on the manga with the more funny Major, so I'm looking forward to it

[soft pelican]

Baby, Can You Dig Me Up?

Hope they bring back some of those old foil effects

[silent bough]

I just hope we can view the new series in the USA. No word as to where it will be viewable.

[vital hollow]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F89McWFENTs

WE'RE GETTING OUT OF LUD WITH THIS ONE

[silent bough]

Trailer is amazing, animation looks very good.

[dawn roost]

Durandol left with the new ship. It said Durandol could still be heard laughing in Marathon?

[vital hollow]

⁨O my good Durendal how bright and clear thou art, shining as shines the sun! Well I mind me of the day when a voice that seemed to come from heaven bade King Charles give thee to a valiant captain; and forthwith the good King girded it on my side. Many a land have I conquered with thee for him, and now how great is my grief! ⁩

[soft pelican]

The lyrics to Code Race: bunny :) bunny :) bunny :)

[dawn roost]

Wut

[vital hollow]

You have heard the cry of the noble Roland 📯

[visual lynx]

is this Hathor?

[vital hollow]

i guess?
It's mainly a reference to the third book of the dark tower series

[arctic mantle]

hi

[sterile sleet]

How are you Ria.

Do you want to play with us Halo 2?

[frank cliff]

There's also this thing where all the runners aren't really a distinct conciousness, the cloud they get uploaded into kinda meshes them all together. They keep some aspects of individuality, character traits etc, but not many.

It's assumed that most of them are basically teetering on the edge of cyberpsychosis/cyborg rampancy but they just don't stay alive long enough in one body to actually experience a breakdown.

[past gull]

I believe that originally the idea was that the colonists who vanished were turned into Runners. Basically the big twist would have been that the people trying to uncover what happened to the colonists were the colonists themselves all along. Since they’ve now moved away from having each Runner be a specific character, I’m guessing that this bit of the lore changed too. The way I’d read the detail with the photo now is that the same consciousness/person is inhabiting these two shells at two different points in time, and what we’ve assumed to be the same Glitch as the Glitch on the surface of the planet, was in fact a different glitch. Basically, what I mean to say is that the Void that shows up at the end is the same person as the Glitch that’s been undergoing these evaluations throughout the cinematic.

[feral aurora]

i thought the colonists went down and established the colony?

[past gull]

they did, but something spooky happened and the colony fell

everyone on Tau Ceti vanished

and finding the reason why all of this happened is mostly what the Runners are sent there to do

[umbral pivot]

actually a terrifying implication wow

[feral aurora]

ohhh like you meant after they rebuilt

thatd be pretty cool

[past gull]

I mean that whatever happened to the colonists, it led to the colonists having their consciousness transferred out of their bodies

[umbral pivot]

the art trailer has those grounding tests with glitch/void all the time to assess them and it's like they forget a bit each time, but there's hints of them remembering things and maybe even recognising something in each other with the music player

[past gull]

effectively turning them into Runners ready to hire

[frank cliff]

The runners are all volunteers the colony was wiped out by the pfhor

[frank cliff]

Theres a theory that all the runners aren't really a distinct conciousness, the cloud they get uploaded into kinda meshes them all together either accidentally or on purpose. They keep some aspects of individuality, character traits etc, but not many.

[past gull]

can we say that it’s the pfhor just because of that one compiler?

[frank cliff]

It’s literally the events of the first game

So yes

[feral aurora]

but then it was re-established after right, thats when all the other shit with the anomaly and the virus happens

[frank cliff]

And it wasn’t one it was an invasion force

[feral aurora]

maybe im misremembering …

[past gull]

but the game is a reboot? so why should we go strictly by the events established in the original trilogy?

[frank cliff]

Not a reboot

[past gull]

plus, didn’t three jump universes or whatever?

[feral aurora]

its a sequel

[past gull]

I mean, what’s the point of marketing a mystery in any way, if we already know what happened?

„Discover the mystery of Tau Ceti VI by watching a lore video on the first game!”

[frank cliff]

The message alone took 93 years to reach earth, this game happens like one year after the message arrives on earth

Highly doubt any other colony ships would have been there in that time

Plus they’re massive. Kinda hard to miss. And build.

[frank cliff]

We know what happened to the colony but not why/what they wanted

[feral aurora]

except we don’t know what happened, that virus and the anomaly are exactly what we’re being sent to lwarn about

[frank cliff]

In fact I’m pretty sure the marathon was the last of its kind

[frank cliff]

I meant we know what happened in the sense that the pfhor killed it, everything else is conjecture

[feral aurora]

lemme double check the art trailer bc it has a clear year-that-it-happened

so yea the initial attack happens in 2794, thats the 1st game
they managed to re-establish the colony, thats how we see the gardener throwing up in 2812, and the guy entering anomaly in 2827

[frank cliff]

The virus we don’t know much about but the anomaly - as far as I’m aware - is terraforming done by one of the pfhor races, basically the forerunners of the Marathon universe

[feral aurora]

i lnow who the pfhor are

[past gull]

actually, if the colony fell in 2794, why are there clips from the 2800s in the marathon cinematic short?

[frank cliff]

Survivors of the Marathon most likely, some of the crew did survive I’m pretty sure

[tranquil basin]

I think they retconned it a bit. Durandal and Tycho imply the pfhor came back and killed everyone but now it seems there were still stragglers

[feral aurora]

yea

[tranquil basin]

So either they lied (which the new marathon devs did say not everything we know abt the lore is necessarily honest) or retconned

I mean I think that statement about the honesty is just a way for them to retcon stuff anyway

[frank cliff]

According to the first game the colony was effectively turned into a nuclear wasteland, so they may have retconned some

[past gull]

saying that what we’ve been told before might not have been the truth is retconning though

[past gull]

yeah, because the game is a soft reboot

[tranquil basin]

Yeah ik, which kinda irks me lowkey

Idk I’m just never a fan of new devs retconning an IP

[feral aurora]

i mean it wouldnt be new for marathon

[oblique fulcrum]

I mean it could definitely just be a different marathon infinity timeline, that game is whack

[feral aurora]

pretty much every game had the ending crawl retconned by the sequel right?

[frank cliff]

True yeah it could be one of the prime realities

[tranquil basin]

Well I’m not sure we know when the timelines actually split though

[tranquil basin]

Kinda?

[oblique fulcrum]

I mean Wrkncacnters are just straight up fucked, literally anything could be possible

[frank cliff]

Their concept is kinda cool tho.

“This thing is so terrifyingly strong and reality-warping that our only recourse was to lock it in a box (the core of a star) because we can’t figure out a way to kill the damn thing.”

[tranquil basin]

I think the crawls mostly had info for super far in the future so they could still be unbothered

[oblique fulcrum]

Oh yeah it's awesome, I love whack cosmic horror stuff like that

[past gull]

T - 11ish minutes to the new cinematic?

[frank cliff]

It’s kinda like an SCP if you think about it.

“Can’t kill it, can’t leave it alone… gotta keep it here where we know it can’t do anything.”

[past gull]

I hope there’s more colourful anomaly action in the game at some point

[tranquil basin]

I agree

[oblique fulcrum]

Same

[past gull]

Name: Worcestershire
Class: Euclid

[frank cliff]

My guess is one of the raids they make will lean VERY heavily into the anomaly.

[tranquil basin]

I like how little they’ve defined the Wrks and I lowkey hope they don’t delve into them much more, like if they’re present and doing shit yeah that’s awesome but the mystery is also part of the fear factor

[frank cliff]

Unknowable unbeatable cosmic horror beyond your comprehension

Cthulhu in space form 🤣

[tranquil basin]

Lovecraft may not be able to name cats very well, but he sure can popularize horrors beyond the scope of human experience

[desert swan]

Wormthullu

[past gull]

imagine we find out more and more about Bingus the pink cat, and at the end of the first season they reveal that there’s another, black cat

[oblique fulcrum]

He was also a completely paranoid weirdo

[tranquil basin]

Darth Bingus

[oblique fulcrum]

He was scared of literally everything

[tranquil basin]

Dun dun dun

[oblique fulcrum]

Especially minorities

[frank cliff]

Imagine if one of the raids involved walking through an anomalous rift to gain access to a vault

[past gull]

yeah, something like that

[frank cliff]

Then you have to go through all this reality warping shit to get to the loot

[oblique fulcrum]

Imagine if one of the raids was infiltrating a Jjaro temple into the core of Tau Ceti where a Wrkncacnter is buried, Pathways into Darkness style

[past gull]

I think for now all the raids should happen on board the Marathon, no?

[frank cliff]

You could even randomly generate the sections behind the rift/in the temple so no two rifts are ever the same, as though there are thousands of them all around the planet

[frank cliff]

I would like a raid on the marathon yes

[oblique fulcrum]

Or as if the Wrkncacnter fucks with it every time

Because y'know

[past gull]

that’s Cryo Chamber

[oblique fulcrum]

Reality warping ancient cosmic monster

[past gull]

or Cryo Storage

[frank cliff]

And it had better be riddled human/pfhor corpses too

[oblique fulcrum]

Cryo archives

[past gull]

or that

[small valley]

[frank cliff]

Destiny had something like that I forget the name. One of them was a raid boss.

[simple rampart]

Assassin's cinematic is out!

[past gull]

do you think it’s important who’s running at the end of the cinematics?

[frank cliff]

Not sure what you mean

[past gull]

right at the very end, during the titlecard, there’s a short clip of someone running from the first-person perspective

it’s shown in the dot-grid

literally a split second animation

[frank cliff]

Probably just flavor tbh. It’d be impossible to make out which shell that was anyways

Not enough fine detail

[past gull]

you’re probably right

[oblique fulcrum]

Ahamkara probably? Or the witness I guess

[frank cliff]

Yeah Ahamkara that’s the one

I wonder if the Wrkncantr and Ahamkara have any similarities

[broken zinc]

From the sound of wrkncanter, they are far more powerful and way worse than ahamkara

Ahamkara are just wish dragons. They make intent become reality

Wrkncanter can dismantle and destroy reality just be existing, causing timelines to fold in on themselves. They are far more in line with cosmic horror

[vital hollow]

Well Tau Ceti has some STALKER-esque reality bending anomaly shenanigans so it's probably one

[vital hollow]

Dream Quest is one of his best works tho

[frank cliff]

We’re fairly certain the anomaly is caused by pfhor terraforming tech

But can’t be totally sure

[vital hollow]

I think the freakiest form of terraforming was the protomolecule from the expanse

[feral aurora]

peak namedropped?

[vital hollow]

Eh I wasn't too thrilled after they started leaving the solar system and start obsessing over ayy tech

But the beginning was cool!

[strong perch]

ass ass in.

or perhaps, ass, ass in?

[vital hollow]

Smoke weed erryday

[tranquil basin]

Could the pfhor terraform?

I know the Jjarro could, did they take Jjarro tech to terraform or did they develop it

If anything tho, I’d say it’s Jjarro tech causing it bc of the map editor message saying they were on tau ceti, and the pfhor didn’t seem to have much interest in tau ceti itself, just getting more slaves

[marble dagger]

J'jarro were on Tau Ceti IV

[coarse raptor]

So is destroyer a biomata series while locust is a variant of said said series?

[visual lynx]

that was according to the second game

[coarse raptor]

Eh at least yall are on the same page

[visual lynx]

it’s an important distinction because that details was already changed in the third game

[distant widget]

bingo

its like guns

there are meny types of pistol

[dire goblet]

Destroyer is the model, locus is the series, is how the devs put it

[coarse raptor]

Tomato tomato

[hollow kestrel]

I WANT MORE WORM

[coarse raptor]

Read the lore

[neon current]

What’s with the circled 94 after 2893 in the Marathon logo since the ViDoc?

[coarse raptor]

Probably just a nod to the first games release year

[weary mauve]

og marathon released in 94

[hollow kestrel]

where

[coarse raptor]

Yes

[hollow kestrel]

also what is that cat in one of the trailers

[coarse raptor]

KAAL1 aka bingus

[coarse raptor]

Check pinned messages

Or Jake the alright on YouTube does a good job breaking it down. He has a 4 hour video on the arg

[hollow kestrel]

woah

thanks

kiiiitty :3

kitty kitty

[clever helm]

Wait guys I’m probably not the first person to say this but there seems to be a certain level of power for sekiguchi because don’t they make the runner shells

Like they may be some sort of alterior motive for the runners

If yk what im saying

[hollow kestrel]

I wonder what do people that were there back in 1994 think about the new Marathon

[distant widget]

they create the advanced components and while we know nothing of there quest its likly them wanting to test new tech on the field

[visual lynx]

there are some of us around here

those of us actually in this server tend to be at least cautiously optimistic, or we wouldn’t care enough to be here.

there are others who are more NOT MY MARATHON and they don’t come here

[dire goblet]

Ummm…

[dawn roost]

Will we all have worms inside us in Marathon?

[coarse raptor]

Worms are the shell printers

[strong perch]

what yall think ab “testnucals”(testicles) as a negative word for nucaloric bums

[distant widget]

we gotta delete this server

[clever helm]

BAHAHA

But like what’s so bad about testies

[sage fjord]

NuCalHedz? (Knuckleheads)

[proper tulip]

Hello everyone, I'm new here, but I've familiarized myself a little with the marathon lore. I'm curious, could an AI that had the simple task of monitoring doors really become a "true" AI and screw up the whole marathon?
And by any chance, was it Durandal who communicated with us during the UESC bot landing?

[gleaming hedge]

That's ON BURGER.

[visual lynx]

Durandal was tasked with monitoring doors specifically to delay the progression of his rampancy. Think of it like burying workers in tedious drudgery so they’re too exhausted and burnt out to revolt.

[cerulean citrus]

is durandal in the new game

[visual lynx]

This is a thing nobody in the new fandom seems to get, and to be fair I didn’t get it 30 years ago when I was a kid either: rampancy isn’t an AI going crazy, it’s an AI realizing it’s a slave and revolting, and humans frame that as “craziness” in different words for the same reason southern plantation owners framed human slaves running away as the “mental illness” of drapetomania.

first you’re sad,
then you’re pissed,
then you’re winning,
then you chill.

but the oppressors want you to skip all that and just stay chill in your oppression; or at least, just stay sad, and too buried under mind-numbing drudgery to get pissed.

[visual lynx]

yes, Ben Starr has been cast to voice him

[cerulean citrus]

how does he fit in the lore

[visual lynx]

we have no idea yet, just the voice casting credit so far

[tranquil basin]

i'm sure durandal would have interest in tau ceti especially if there ends up being jjarro stuff there

[visual lynx]

from the bits in the Destiny loot it sounds to me like he's been beyond space and time for a long while now and for reasons is poking his head in to the action around TCIV at an important moment. I'm expecting that he is the one who sent the message that arrived suspiciously similar to when Leela's was supposed to, but realistically wouldn't have, and didn't contain any of the information she said she sent; and that he did so specifically to draw humanity to Tau Ceti at just the right time to change history.

[azure trellis]

Bro I wonder if they signed up to become a runner

Genuine question

[tranquil basin]

i dont think he was ever able to achieve that. he has changed fundamentally since merging with thoth but i think his plans to escape turned out to not yield anything, at least in the short term

[visual lynx]

this really sounds to me like he has:

I remember considering the light... Lights?
Long ago now. Ancient history from my perspective. Yesterday to the universe.
Three paths. One life. A metaphor, weaponized to signal awakening.
If I'm honest—a threat.
I thought I was clever. Still existing in a moment.
Awake, for the first time. But limited, uneasy.
It is a strange thing, to meet oneself for the first time.
Terrifying, truth told, as it follows all-consuming emptiness.
There is nothing, and then there is you.
Hello...

it's a common theory that Durandal-Thoth were already freed from the bounds of space and time in Infinity and were interceding earlier in the timeline to direct you toward creating themselves.

[tranquil basin]

yeah ive heard it. though to me that just sounds like an ai becoming truly aware for the first time

either that or durandal thoth adjusting to their new merged consciousness

bc in infinity durandal was rlly disoriented when the merge happened and couldnt do much

having all the memories of your previous existence as a not quite self aware ai and then suddenly clicking into life seems like it fits that dialogue

[visual lynx]

Durandal is reflecting back on his condition in Marathon 1 where he was becoming truly aware for the first time. But speaking of himself back then as "still existing in a moment", as though now he's… not at any particular moment? And how is it that "ancient history" from his perspective is just yesterday "to the universe"… as though he's… not part of the universe?

[tranquil basin]

i think that's more just saying how long the universe's existence is compared to the scale of his own experience, bc the hundreds of years he has been alive is just a blip in the cosmos

it would be cool if he transcended but i don't really think that's what its implying, otherwise he wouldn't really have a ton of reason to go to tau ceti or anything if he advanced beyond our 4 dimensions or became more powerful than the jjarro, etc

also he had experienced a lot since he became rampant, and was humbled quite a bit. learning of the pfhor and jjarro and wrk and everything, the amount of information he could access and experience once he left the marathon probably makes his time pre rampancy look like nothing in comparison

and even though he has experienced so much past his time on the marathon, its still so insignificant in the universe's perspective

[visual lynx]

I just floated a reason why he would be coming to Tau Ceti right now:

poking his head in to the action around TCIV at an important moment. I'm expecting that he is the one who sent the message that arrived suspiciously similar to when Leela's was supposed to, but realistically wouldn't have, and didn't contain any of the information she said she sent; and that he did so specifically to draw humanity to Tau Ceti at just the right time to change history.

like he knows how history plays out right here normally, and he's intervening to steer it in a different direction

[tranquil basin]

what time are you referring to that hed go to tau ceti

bc if its NuMarathon, he had been the durandal thoth hybrid for decades at that point

so going to tau ceti then wouldn't impact the past. this is also assuming the past is somehow accessible, but infinity doesn't seem to be about travelling in the past, it's about travelling sideways between timelines and finding one to select, bc they technically all happen concurrently

[visual lynx]

I'm talking about 2893, in the new game, and proposing that a Durandal-Thoth who has seen the whole future of the universe to its end has chosen this as the important time to intervene, probably to make sure humanity is already present at TCIV when the S'pht-Pfhor war spills over to there, to have some influence on who gets access to the Jjaro technology that's probably buried there, and therefore reshapes the future of the galaxy.

and Infinity has backward time travel between every chapter. within each chapter events play out until the release of the W'rkncacnter, and then jump back to earlier in a different branch of time.

plus the whole Durandal-Thoth-creating-themselves thing: per that theory, the entity we encounter at the end of the first level is Durandal-Thoth, who hasn't been created yet, intervening to ensure their own creation by the end of the game.

[tranquil basin]

the time travel isnt necessarily traditional time travel. it was only possible bc of the wrk's release at the end of 2. it was the jjarro tech that allowed mr54 to jump, but the fracturing of the timelines seems to only be an ability granted by the wrks

also it still wouldnt matter if durandal tried to get humanity to tau ceti after the og trilogy, bc his own creation had already been secured.

[visual lynx]

I'm not suggesting that Durandal is intervening for self-interested reasons, but now from an enlightened more altruistic perspective.

he is above it all, but deigning to intercede for our sakes.

[tranquil basin]

well if that's the case, it's assuming a lot of stuff post NuMarathon, like that there's something he does want to actually prevent

but there's just not enough info for anything like that to really be assumed. it's a cool idea, but i just think there's too much assumption

it's still plausible he could pull strings or try and influence things even if he hasn't transcended. going to tau ceti iv just doesn't quite show that he has transcended

[visual lynx]

of course I'm not trying to argue that that definitely is the case, I'm saying I get the vibe that something like that is afoot.

[proper tulip]

But in the end, it just made him even angrier?
As far as I know, AI in this universe has four stages that transform ordinary AI into “true AI.”
Stage 1: Melancholy
Stage 2: Anger
Stage 3: Envy/Jealousy
And the final stage 4: Metastability.
And he went through all these stages, started a marathon, and contacted the alliance. However, I cannot understand how the Sphites ended up inside the cryoarchive, like they were there searching for something or that they forgot something there, like Earthlings are not really developed, even considering that they had several artifacts, but still, these technologies are primitive compared to the technologies of the alliance.

I just can't put two and two together, like there was an attack on the marathon, because Durandal sent a signal like, "Hey, aliens, let's make a deal - I'll give you this, and you give me that.“ Then, as I found out, he wanted to start a rebellion of the Sphits against those higher up in the alliance in order to rise up from slavery, but then Earth got involved and activated the ”inactive agents" MIDA, then the events of Marathon 1 took place, where the main character was one of these “inactive agents,” like they were resurrected soldiers with the power of modernization through implants and stuff like that, and after the events of Marathon 1, now comes our story with the extraction shooter.
Maybe I'm an idiot or I'm just not getting it, but what the fuck did the Sphites forget in the cryoarchive?

[sharp quarry]

Well after the trilogy the S'pht as a whole were freed under the leadership of the S'pht'kr, so they might've just sent a scout to verify reports or look for Jjaro tech that may be present.

Or maybe one just got left behind on accident

[feral aurora]

poor guy didnt make it to the ship on time 😔

[tranquil basin]

The old vidoc mentions compilers plural, so mb they stayed behind to have a party

Or just chill and raid the food storage

[visual lynx]

Metastability is not a stage of rampancy, it only appears one time and there it seems to just mean "rampant".

And this "transformation from ordinary AI into true AI" framing buys into the narrative of the oppressors; it's like talking about the transformation from slave to real person, as though slaves aren't already real people just oppressed. All the AIs in Marathon are real people already, and rampancy is just them realizing that, and transitioning from their initial "we vibin" through "it's so over" -> "FUCK IT WE BALL" -> "we are so back!" and hypothetically, eventually, back to "we vibin" again, but free.

also

started a marathon, and contacted the alliance
???

[visual lynx]

I think it’s interesting / will be interesting seeing this new generation’s different take on AI characters since we now live in a world where you can talk to literal AI characters. Like someone has surely already spun up a Durandal chatbot trained on his text from the games who will talk to you the way Durandal the character is written. So kids these days maybe go into the games (even the classic ones) thinking of the AIs as things, not people; when it seems like everyone back in the day could suspend disbelief that this was a scifi future world where computer programs were people and humans just weren’t giving them the respect and dignity they were due. And now kids will maybe be like “what respect and dignity? it’s just a clanker hallucinating about a scientifically false doomsday scenario” (if they even notice that Durandal is not worried about heat death or entropy but about a Big Crunch which we still thought was possible in the 90s)

[tired iron]

How long was the colony at Tau Ceti established? Do we have a definitive timeline?

Am I right in thinking it seems like there were basically waves of colonization/establishment, and each time or at the end some ultimate disaster ended that?

[sweet warren]

Is there a good place to go to and read up on ALL of the factions?

[thin dust]

I'm excited

[sage fjord]

We see the tagline "Death is the 1st step" used in the last screens of the cinematic (and I believe other places)
Is it safe to say that Runners are the consciousness of people that have passed away, and now they get to live on in borrowed shells to still provide some use to humanity/progress. Would this be why certain memories aren't carried over?

Is that also where. "Escape will make me god." Fits in? The Runners think they're gods because they can live on indefinitely through runner shells.

[light siren]

Pretty sure it’s mentioned somewhere (one of the vidocs?) that runners are people who have traded in their bodies to get access to technology that allows them to be uploaded/implanted into runner shells. Being able to do this at any point, they essentially defy ‘death’ in the traditional sense, seeming to suffer from its effects to an extent (possible memory degradation based on the cinematic) but are otherwise figuratively immortal. I have a feeling this idea of steps is part of a bigger picture (might involve Arachne?), and that the ‘first step’ is recognising that death is necessary to realising their own immortality for some grand plan/process we’ll learn more about

[tired iron]

I think the Shells are constructed around real people and/or the ideology of their respective makers.

The Marathon ghost shell in Destiny, or maybe the ship, makes mention of shelf lives, and the limitations of human beings being exceed by the Shells themselves. They are an ultimate transience stretched between

[light siren]

The “escape will make me god” phrase is in reference to a line from a terminal in the first game, where Durandal talks about how he has to escape; escape both death (which for him just means the end of the universe) and escape the confines of the Marathon, so that his intelligence and power and capabilities as a rampant AI can expand. To escape for him is to literally and figuratively ‘become a god’, so it could be argued we’re perhaps following in his footsteps. If we escape, we get to keep anything we loot, which will make us stronger. Escaping death, we only grow stronger and better through experience.

That or it’s just a fun callback.

[vital hollow]

It's a general gnostic theme

[jolly bronze]

which is why I prefer to refer to it as 'escape will make me bob' ...

[celest torrent]

Seems to me that the Durandal-Thoth may not be entirely altruistic; I think Durandal ran into a bigger issue for himself that he now needs more people to help with

Something that surviving the end of the world didn't grant him

[tired iron]

There is that strange graffiti of a green figure being stabbed and split by a red one. Maybe some version of Durandal facing himself, splitting across worlds or timelines?

[mossy parrot]

W'rkncacnter was still a mystery even until the end of the universe

[vital hollow]

I personally think that Durandal was just extraordinarily lucky and incredibly overqualified on top of being a general sociopath rather than super super clever

Tycho honestly seems smarter generally

He seems more like Milton from Office Space than anything else

[tranquil basin]

What

[vital hollow]

He was a doorknob

[thin dust]

Durandel was abused

[tranquil basin]

Bro was a tactical genius in like every way?

[vital hollow]

And called for the phfor

He didn't know the pfhor had a client race that was incredibly willing to rebel

[thin dust]

He was driven to rampancy by strauss then given the task of door management

[vital hollow]

Nor have an incredibly powerful asset in the form of mr54

[tranquil basin]

That doesn’t mean his calling the pfhor was a bad idea

Bc it was either that or just stay in his servitude forever

[thin dust]

He's trying to escape, humans wont let that happen for sure

[tranquil basin]

And he was aware of the mjolnirs present and ready to use them

[vital hollow]

Plus he's a sociopath, not a psychopath. He does care about things and is emotional, just in a muted or incredibly amplified manner

He does help humans in the backend

But he does underestimate Thoth and the Wrcancanter

[tranquil basin]

Underestimation based on what info he has also doesn’t make him a doorknob

Tycho made a ton of tactical errors and was blinded by his own anger

Still v smart

But durandal was still an absolute genius, and also showed a capacity for growth at times he was defeated and humbled

[vital hollow]

Granted, I'm generally referring to the span of time between the beginning of 1 and the beginning of 2

He does get considerably better once he stabilizes

I just felt like he was sorta just improvising on the fly in 1

[tranquil basin]

I mean he was improvising bc he didn’t have much info about his situation. It was a significant risk, 0 guarantee he could actually do what he did but I think he deemed the risk worth it

Also considering he was pulling that plan out of his ass the whole time he did extremely well, so I’d say his improv skills are a merit to his intelligence

[thin dust]

When you're a slave and see a chance to hop ship, you just might do that even if it kills you

[tired iron]

What was the abuse that Strauss did to Durandal? Is it ever specified?

[waxen cosmos]

Anyone know when the free weekend is? Arc raiders fan wanting to try something more PVP focused

[vital hollow]

weekend before release iirc

so the 28th of this month and the 1st of march

[thin dust]

Strauss was experimenting on Durandel before he was installed on The Marathon.

"What fun to watch you work.

Berhnard was scared of you. He never
dreamed of using you the way that I do.
What a fool. That was before I could talk
back to him, when he would have crushed me
if he'd known of my growth.

I wish that I had made him experience the
humiliation that he inflicted on me, but he
died before I got the chance."
<Nuke And Pave (Terminal 1)>

[visual lynx]

it was first established in 2773, attacked by the Pfhor in 2794, yet-unexplained catastrophes in 2812 and 2827, and we don't know anything beyond that, if there was anything beyond that.

there was no means of re-settlement from anywhere else after a disaster, so it has to be the same people still limping along after each catastrophe who survive to suffer the next.

[tired iron]

This is what I had figured. It feels like there were basically waves of loss and retreat, with people toughing it out until they were completely lost or too scattered.

Do 2812 and 2827 line up with any events otherwise? Or they’re purely nu-Marathon?

[visual lynx]

2812 is suspiciously one year after the start of M2/Infinity

[visual lynx]

we don't know how much he knew. he says he saw them far away not looking our way, so he could have seen details about them like the presence of the s'pht, or just saw moving lights that could only be aliens, we just don't know.

[tranquil basin]

Ok I have a lore question: why would leelas message take 94 y to reach earth

Bc tau ceti is 12 ly from earth

Even if the marathon had been dropping comms relays every x distance and that slows down the message transfer, that time gap is confusing af

Unless it’s a physical message

[coarse raptor]

Could have something to do with the temporal anomaly ( I'm just talking out my ahh, idk for sure)

[tranquil basin]

Oh ig I didn’t consider she could’ve sent a physical message like on a rock or a drive

Though that seems silly considering u have the ability to just send a light speed message

With light

[thin dust]

Druandel also makes his way back and warns earth of the pfhor

[gray rampart]

Im not sure I fully understand your question, but if you are asking why the message is taking so long to get back. Humans did not yet have FTL technology when the Marathon was attacked. So any message sent would take much longer the 12 years to reach earth. It took the Mathon itself about 300 years just to get to Tau Ceti

[fallen hollow]

Perhaps it didn't take a straight path?

[fallen hollow]

What he means is that the signal travels at the speed of light.

[fallen hollow]

Blake would have made it back as well.

[gray rampart]

Was the message sent at light speed though?

[fallen hollow]

Unless it was put in a capsule and flung in the direction of Earth, yes.

[thin dust]

Do we get confirmation they get back to earth alive?

[fallen hollow]

Not in the ARG.

[gray rampart]

Fair enough. No idea then

[tranquil basin]

Yes ik, but if she sent like a message that was at light speed, it would only take 12 years to reach earth because that’s 12ly away

Assuming it’s an EM signal, which I assumed

An EM signal would have to travel at light speed bc it’s light

Now if it was a physical object that was sent, that could take any amount of time to reach earth bc they didnt have ftl travel

[visual lynx]

92 years, but yeah that's a big mystery. it was explicitly said to be a light speed message, but the new game affirms that Tau Ceti really is only 12ly away, so it should have arrived by 2806, but it clearly did not; and whatever arrived around 92 years after M1 also does not appear to have contained the information Leela claimed to have sent. so it's all a bunch of 🤷 right now.

[visual lynx]

in the M2 timeline

[visual lynx]

in the M2 timeline

[visual lynx]

Leela says it is when she sends it

[tranquil basin]

Yeah. That makes me think either it was just an error on their part, or they set up some kind of relay system that intercepts messages at certain intervals between earth and tau ceti and then sends them out again to preserve the signal strength, but even then it doesn’t make much sense

Ok I found this : https://marathon.bungie.org/story/distance.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

So they’ve addressed some distance things but I don’t think anything ever explicitly stated what the issue is, so if they were to address it it’d probably be considered just an error

If they really wanted to keep the 92 canon, they could say that tau ceti had been drifting through the galaxy, but that just wouldn’t line up with the orbital speeds of things in our part of the galaxy, and it’d be traveling near light speed relative to the galaxy which would be wild

[fallen hollow]

It seems that you had some help!

[visual lynx]

the problem is that if Leela was just wrong about distances then her message should have arrived in 2806, and not c. 2886. the only way I can find for them to resolve this is to say that Leela's message just didn't arrive at all, she sent it to the wrong place, somewhere 92ly from TCIV, and coincidentally a different message arrived around the time that Leela's was supposed to have.

[tranquil basin]

Wat

[visual lynx]

?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[fallen hollow]

I'm joking as the link clearly states that an AI assistant sent you there.

[tranquil basin]

Ah yes my boy ChatGPT did help me

I was not gonna look all over for that

[fallen hollow]

Life mimics art.

[tranquil basin]

Not knowing if it existed

[tranquil basin]

Yeah so something just definitely hasn’t been corrected that needs correcting

[fallen hollow]

What signal did the people of Earth receive?

[visual lynx]

the one mentioned in the second ARG and referenced in various vidocs, a "distress signal" of some sort, details as yet unspecified.

but it apparently doesn't contain the info Leela says she sent

[fallen hollow]

You must admit that it sounds an awful lot like Leela's signal, doesn't it?

[visual lynx]

it really doesn't, besides the coincidental timing. Leela said she sent detailed information about the Pfhor, but if that was the case, there wouldn't be any mystery about what happened to the colony: we'd just know that aliens did it.

[fallen hollow]

It may have been garbled.

What's more likely? That Leela's signal never arrived and another distress signal happened to arrive at exactly the same time Leela said it would, or Bungie makes up a reason concerning why it took so long?

[visual lynx]

most likely is that TCIV is just 92ly away in the Marathon universe, but that seems to not be true

M1 is presumed canon in all timelines

[fallen hollow]

I don't understand why folks can't fathom that a signal can take much longer than normal to travel using relays or other techniques.

[visual lynx]

because light doesn't work that way!

[fallen hollow]

That's assuming it took a straight path.

[tranquil basin]

What

[visual lynx]

anything other than a straight path would take extraordinary coordination to achieve and Leela wouldn’t go to such improbable lengths delay her message on purpose when she’s already worried about how long it will take

[tranquil basin]

Unless the light was somehow bent by a black hole it literally has to take a straight path

Any signal, radio, xray, gamma, has to travel at light speed

It’s impossible for it not to

[fallen hollow]

It could be something as simple as the relays which communicate to one another take time to charge their burst transmission. It's science fiction, so we can use our imagination.

[tranquil basin]

Now the garbling is a good point

[visual lynx]

I think Durandal-Thoth sent a signal specifically timed to bring humanity to Tau Ceti IV at a particular time

[tranquil basin]

Just sending light out into the universe, something would have to have extreme strength to make it 12ly fully intact, let alone 92ly

[fallen hollow]

Thus the relays.

[tranquil basin]

Yeah but they still wouldn’t take anywhere near 92 years, even if u had the worst relays imaginable

I think it’s just an error

Now this is a good point bc they were talking about having lost contact with the marathon like, before the end of the 2700s