📚marathon-lore-discussion

[fathom mason]

Maybe they are FtM

Twas joke

[strong perch]

mida is a mega corp though just dismantled by the others

[empty wasp]

???

[fathom mason]

Where is that said? I was thinking it was a political party first

[empty wasp]

It was a political party / paramilitary

Old MIDA were given “seats at the table” but new MIDA is decidedly not a corporation

[tardy meteor]

will they add more factions in the future or is this it?

[fathom mason]

Destiny 2 has been around like a decade. If this game has half that life then surely they will

But not for a while

[strong perch]

i was confusing manufacturing things with corps my bad

[languid ruin]

Wouldn’t a rampant AI be disposed of?

It’s not a temporary state but rather an eventuality

[thin dust]

And the same engine the OG games were made in

[broken zinc]

Not sure, honestly, and not my theory. I would assume an ai is too valuable to lose to rampancy so they would recode it. Or repurpose it's remains. I cannot remember what happens in the OG Marathon with a rampant ai

[astral palm]

afaik they see a rampant ai as too big of a threat to the computer network

[ember narwhal]

Don’t rampant AI in the series have a strong drive to expand as much as possible? I thought I saw that Traxus IV never fully got rooted out? Maybe I’m misremembering

[astral palm]

yes and they had to shut down of the networks completely to get rid of one

[languid ruin]

Not a drive so much as it just happens, pretty sure

Their intelligence expands and thus so does their size

[broken zinc]

the rampant ai starts self replicating and creating its own code, which in turn causes it to expand its size

[visual lynx]

I am not applying moral relativism; it takes moral relativism to disagree with what I'm saying. people can intentionally do thinks that they know other people think are wrong, but if they honestly think it's best that they do those things anyway, they disagree with what other people think, and it would be relativist to say that what other people think defines what is correct so disagreement with them is necessarily incorrect.

and saying that someone isn't intentionally doing something they know is wrong is not saying that they're not doing something wrong. the blameworthiness of a character, the wrongness of their actions, and the badness of their consequences are all separable matters; we're not really talking about the difference between the latter two here, but the difference between the former two lies exactly in whether the person could control themselves and intended to do the wrong thing, or intended to do the right thing but couldn't control themselves. if someone already agrees that what they did is wrong, and wishes they wouldn't have done it, and hopes they won't keep doing it, then there's no point in blaming them -- in telling them that they did something wrong, because they already agree! they need help in controlling themselves. but if someone would argue that they're doing nothing wrong, even when they are, then they deserve blame -- they ought to be told that they are actually doing something wrong, to convince them to try to stop.

that makes them the landlords for your mind

like Jake? 😉

[fallow wraith]

yummy

[weary mauve]

spam marathon in the sop chat, thats part one of the contract

[weak bobcat]

Starwars?

[raven matrix]

We finally have the last sword AI with the new trailer!

[devout sparrow]

what name scales?

[raven matrix]

We’ve had Durandal, Cortana, and now Joy who I’m assuming is Joyous

[crisp crest]

Seems like they're trying to set up something a bit more than just "alien slavers are attacking our colony"

The dialogue really does its best to sidestep that 🤔

[twin shore]

Does anyone know why there are multiple different uesc marathon ship designs?

Like there is the one from the awesome cinematic that is completely different looking from the one you see in the sky box and the reveal trailer

But they both appear the be the marathon ship

[feral aurora]

i think we’re just seeing it from a different angle

seeing it from behind the thrusters, instead of from the sides

[thorn finch]

I might sound dumb beacuse im new to this maybe this is a way at saying the previous retcons from the previous games should be taken into question now?

[warm hawk]

It’s been mostly agreed upon that we’re in a new timeline, but previous games are canon due to Marathon Infinity utilizing time-travel and multiple timelines

So we’re in the 8th timeline

[placid breach]

we're in the endgame now

[warm hawk]

Marathon Endgame with RDJ as Durandal

[past gull]

moral relativism is the idea that certain actions are hod different moral charge, so to speak, depending on the circumstances.
it would not be morally relative to say that a demented serial killer, who thinks skinning people alive is actually a great exfoliation treatment, and does so despite his victims’ protests, is in fact evil, even though he doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong.
and the corporate overlord who’s trampling on you for the sake of it, with full knowledge of it, doesn’t need help, but a bullet to the back of the cranium.
also, blaming somebody doesn’t mean “telling them what they’ve done was wrong/evil”, but attributing culpability.
there’s more to justice than formal justice.

[past gull]

hehe “thrusters”

[feral aurora]

everyone in this server is a child 🫩

even my own mida brothers and sisters

[thorn finch]

Ohhhhh got it does that also mean the patch from the collectors edition mean that the Aleph 8 is a hint at this being the 8th universe since and if im correct Aleph has somthing to do with different values of infinity so I wonder how that plays into this?!

[past gull]

hehe “b o n er “

[warm hawk]

Y E S

ESCAPE WILL MAKE ME GOD etc 😄

[thorn finch]

This is going to be a wild ride i can't wait to see how they implement lore into an extraction shooter

[eternal knoll]

the OG marathon was a generation ship, not a cryosleep one, yea?

hence the BOBs, born on boards? or is it like a hybrid thing with a buncha sleepers and a smaller number of people living and dying on the ship...

[vital hollow]

Both

You see absolutely enormous amount of cryo freezers in marathon 1

[eternal knoll]

i see i see

[vital hollow]

Also other weird shit like lava tunnels and engine rooms the size of skyscrapers

Marathon has a really REALLY weird map design

[tranquil basin]

See but

It’s the future

That’s all I have to say

We do know they sell shells to ordinary ppl so they can have healthier bodies or longer lives or whatever. Also, I think they just go into debt when they get the new shells, probably to encourage people to hop in a shell and then be subject to the company’s demands for the rest of their existence

I doubt there will be humans present on TC bc even tho it’s habitable, it doesn’t have a very high oxygen content, hence the ppl in the new trailer wearing respirator masks

[lone hull]

Did every megacorp in the original Marathon game also have representative AI agents? Or is that a new thing

[visual lynx]

okay it's clear you've never taken a philosophy class so I'm done with this

[runic lake]

That’s a new thing, only CyAc and MIDA were talked about and expanded on in M1. Traxus was mentioned briefly once but that’s it. The AI agents / representatives for them is totally new

[visual lynx]

CyAc has even less mention than Traxus does: their branding is just on the chrome of the terminals, no character actually speaks of them.

I just rewatched the cinematic trailer from 10 months ago and noticed that the brief shot of a compiler comes in the 2812 segment, which reinforces my hypothesis that that sickness is a result of a S'pht attack on Tau Ceti

[ember narwhal]

Perhaps they’re S’phting in everyone’s burger soups

[lone hull]

Ah okay, because I was thinking they would’ve been pretty spot on with the whole AI megacorp stuff pre 2000s hahah

Cool either way

[strong perch]

and me as the savior

https://tenor.com/view/inarius-diablo4-gif-27701933

#🎨marathon-community-art-chat message
does this have any meaning

“ casualty expected”
“ casualty outcome: predictions exceeded”
cant read the rest

“target math**”

[visual lynx]

second line: FILE: …
third line: FILE DATE: …

fifth: TARGET: MATCH…
sixth: CASUALTY EXPIRY:… (not "expected" because there's not space before the colon)
seventh: CASUALITY OUTCOME: PREDICTIONS EXCEED…

sixth alternatives: EXPAND, EXPELS, EXPATS, EXPEND, EXPORT, EXPECT, EXPERT, EXPOSE, EXPEDE, EXPIRE, EXPUGN

[storm cape]

Ugh, so bored today Someone come chat or let’s play a quick game! My DMs are open

[eternal knoll]

You could view the character of Leela as somewhat analagous to these factional AIs, in that she’s a normal AI doing her job and putting you to work. But that game’s an evolving crisis scenario and this game’s an ongoing job so the format’s different

Leela belonged to the ship and therefore I guess would have hailed as UESC, not rly corporate

[simple garden]

I have a theory,

From what i’ve heard, in the end of the original trilogy from the 90s (which is still canon in this universe btw), both the human colonists and l Sphit made peace in which they pushed back the phor. But then for some unknown reason, the sphit eventually attacked the colony via possibly some essence of mind altering behavior among humans or abnormal matter. As it’s clear from the audio clip in the launch trailer, which a colonist whom was sending out a distress beacon, was saying somethings along the lines of “we had to kill each other.”

But the counterpoint you may have is “why was that one random dude’s head blown up in the cinematic?” Well possibly this works like Pluribus’s plague, if you haven’t seen pluribus allow me to explain. Essentially since theres the possibility of the sphit manipulating humans to turn on each other, maybe several people with this mind altering psychic behavior couldn’t process it, in which in turn their head would explode instead

Wait

I may have gotten the alien races names wrong

Yup I got it wrong

Gimmie a sec to edit

There we go :3

[spring rampart]

sick theory, it makes sense bc he seems to be in a psychotic state in the launch trailer, like someone out of their own mind

[eternal knoll]

is it a sure thing that the original trilogy is fully canon to this game? i feel like some things suggest otherwise. we all seem to think durandal will be in this game but post-m2 he wouldn’t really still be durandal

[strong perch]

the goat!!

[visual lynx]

we are definitely not in the m2 timeline so many things stated in it may not be true

[eternal knoll]

they seem to be playing coy about whether the original attack on the marathon was even done by the pfhor unless i’m missin somethin big

[strong perch]

the s’pht’kr i think were* the good ones

[visual lynx]

the date and method shown in the cinematic are off but plausibly still the pfhor under stylistic retcons/inconsistencies

[eternal knoll]

it would be funny to be playing up The Mystery Of What Happened To The Marathon and Tau Ceti if the answer were simply, oh yeah, the events of the first game

[strong perch]

im hoping they sorta use this timeline to redo some of the major events

to experience on modern tech

[eternal knoll]

if i never get to shoot a pfhor i’ll be sad

[strong perch]

ik they cant really do the pfhor pirating on marathon in the same sense

but they could have them return for the relics or sum

[urban heart]

hasn't it been stated that marathon 2 did happen but durandal straight up lied multiple times so a lot of stuff is retconned

[strong perch]

maybe durandal is in complete cahoots with them, acting as their god

[eternal knoll]

like the final scene of m2 happened but was a ruse? lol… would be weird

durandal just rly wanted to put on a cool show for the cyborg

a storyteller at heart

[strong perch]

all im worried about game wise are the servers and hackers, if they could certify everything would run smoothly this game would be perfect imo

the lore and gameplay is and looks very fun

[eternal knoll]

i’m curious but apprehensive about the story. not opposed to some retconning, retconning is canon after all, but it wouldnt be hard to sever the connection to the story in a destructive way

if durandal never made it out of the tau ceti system then much of what made his character fun is lost. his charm is that his deeds match up to his boisterous personality. without the deeds he’s just a melancholy braggart

[strong perch]

ofc they probably will but i really like the og lore, only since we havent got much new lore

[rotund stump]

y'all retconning's not the same as a deus ex machina 😭

[eternal knoll]

i’m bein idiomatic

[rotund stump]

retconning's not canon deus exing is

[urban heart]

have you considered aura farming and rule of cool

[strong perch]

he 100% stole the ship and left, I have a feeling that in orbit they’ll have his ship just sitting there watching, like og fortnite live events

[hollow surge]

You neglect the fact that Durandal is also sentimental and experiences regret, he would and did check on the colony didn't he?

[eternal knoll]

right, so the thing’s the same, if we’re in a completely new timelime with this game that’s not exactly far out of the scope of what we’ve seen before

[strong perch]

scanning and seeing all the movement on tau

[strong perch]

they started doing their own in destiny so it make me think

[eternal knoll]

maybe yr bein facetious. i’ll need just a lil more than this…

[eternal knoll]

possible. im catchin the vibe from his ozymandias speech that he’s feeling a bit defeated these days

[hollow surge]

I'm sure he'll get back on the horse as it were

[strong perch]

“that colossal wreck” he deff feels some regret if you listen close

he brought it to them just so he could leave

[hollow surge]

There's also the idea that he's looped back after all (learned from Cyborg's brain pan?) and found that still to not be an escape either lol

[eternal knoll]

hoping so, and hoping it can be portrayed in a satisfying way in a game that might never let us leave tau ceti. if durandal just needs infinite trinkets delivered from the colony and/or ship…

[strong perch]

I feel because he acts like a king and a god he tries to act all hard and not think about his AI “friends” and all the people he killed

like a king would present himself un-phased to most things and act with ferocity

at least from his conclusions

[eternal knoll]

my heart cannot take it if durandal plays the role of the boss of the leviathan raid, a big carnival robot who puts on some show of resistance then dispenses loot as a reward for firing a rocket at him

[strong perch]

like “I'm back.
I have subverted the largest Pfhor ship in the system, the battleship Khfiva, and I am making the rest of their fleet drink vacuum.
The S'pht'Kr have arrived and they are enraged.
The fight is glorious. Once again we are triumphant.” -durandal

[hollow surge]

He decides he doesn't like you anymore and smears your shell across a passing asteroid like so many gnats on my windshield

[strong perch]

tries to be a tough guy but hes just a doorman

literally

[urban heart]

it's hilarious bill clinton is canon in marathon

i did not have sexual relations with the jjaro

[strong perch]

i did not have sexual relations with thief

[hollow surge]

"JJARO WERE AT LITTLE ST JAMES"

[strong perch]

release the UESC files!

[eternal knoll]

wonder if joy will play a big role. she's soundin a little melancholic herself

[urban heart]

i hope bungie treats durandal with a bit more subtlety than this but we're talking about bungie so it seems likely

[eternal knoll]

and her name could be a play on joyeuse lol

[strong perch]

they did witness pretty well and they’re doing whoever next pretty well in destiny

[eternal knoll]

personally i'm gonna need the tone of this story to be as unlike destiny 2 as possible

[strong perch]

they treat big baddies pretty well at destiny

unless you kill cayde

[urban heart]

i cant speak for the vibes in the old marathon games but the latest trailer they released sorta slaps with this surreal, magical, "absolutely fucked up once you look closer" vibe

[eternal knoll]

i really disagree, respectfully. the books of sorrow were fuckin fantastic and then you meet him in the game and kill him with a sniper rifle

[urban heart]

so idk, they might have it

[eternal knoll]

there was this recurring issue where all the big bads, and all the big cosmic themes they represented, all wound up just becoming things you kill with a sniper rifle

[urban heart]

LOL awesome

[eternal knoll]

(in destiny)

[urban heart]

#america

[eternal knoll]

ohh, is joy the pink cat...

u can see the pink cat in that one visualization of the colony where everything's swell...

[tranquil basin]

I think her name is kaali

[eternal knoll]

huh! boy this game has a load of characters for an extraction shooter

[broken zinc]

The pink cat is kaali

Joy appears to have been a pre tau Ceti iv colonizing ai

[visual lynx]

it’s not just Durandal’s claims but the omniscient narrator of the epilogue

[urban heart]

hmmmm i see

[restive sequoia]

is the lore connected to the original game?

[visual lynx]

well there’s definitely more than just the events of the first game even if those events are part of it. in the M2 timeline the colony was nuked to bedrock and all colonists killed in Oct 2794, but in the new game there is still an inhabited colony that suffers other disasters in 2812 and 2827 too

[visual lynx]

yes

[broken zinc]

Yes

[eternal knoll]

right right. seeming like the nuking bit has been rewritten

[visual lynx]

who suggested he never made it out?

[broken zinc]

The multiple mayday made it feel even like multiple universes, much like marathon infinity

[restive sequoia]

does the time event takes place during the original marathon game or after?

[visual lynx]

what “time event”?

[eternal knoll]

it's the speculative vibe i'm catching from the dialogue we have of him so far ("the dream isn't over: my dream, yours", an assumption that he'll join the story actively at the end of the first raid, and an even safer assumption that he's just around in the story in such a way that he's got an ongoing interest in the runners and the goings-on on tau ceti

it could be that he's simply returned to the place because of whatever's so valuable on tau ceti

[visual lynx]

from the text in the new destiny items I get the vibe that he has been on a grand tour of space and time for ages of his personal timeline and has now popped back in to TCIV at an important moment in history to make a subtle intervention

[eternal knoll]

i sure hope you're right. i honestly found those new item descriptions kind of unreadable 🙊

lemme take another look at em...

[wide frigate]

This game takes place long after the events of the original games

There is really not much direct connection

[quick thistle]

Could someone double check me? I believe we know the names of 9 of the 11 Marathon AIs now. Durandal, Leela, Tycho | Arthur, Bastion, Darius, Gabriel, Icarus, Joy. But we currently do not know the name of Li_1817421v4.65 or Na_0602422v4.61?

[vital hollow]

I do hope it's more like STALKER or Metro where you can't really 'fight' the big bad

just sort of live around it

[eternal knoll]

yea. i recognize the voice of a durandal like the one in infinity in these texts but the lad is speaking in some heavily mixed metaphors

is he speaking to a runner or a guardian...

or even the cyborg...

[vital hollow]

I do hope he isn't the villain

Or Tycho or Leela for that matter

[faint chasm]

Also from the launch trailer I was quite intrigued and was getting a feeling great unease and more from listening to general Reed’s audio logs and slow descent into desperation and other wrongness of the situation in the colony and what happened to the civvies that didn’t make it to the Cyril archive and the whole embrace bit with the A.I. Joy.

[eternal knoll]

saying things that he could be saying to any of the three, i suppose

if ya've got insight into what the heck he's actually trying to express i'm keen to hear it... but i take yr point that he's sounding worldly here rather than eternally frustrated

but i also feel there isn't necessarily a guarantee that this is the same register durandal will be taking in the actual game. could be a different outcome's durandal.. i remember in the leadup to halo we got transmissions from a much more classically rampant cortana than what we saw in the game

yknow, my initial read on these passages was that we're revisiting quite literally the durandal from the infinity epilogue, in his own dreaming god sort of state

[visual lynx]

yup that's what I take too! that he's transcended time and space and seen it all and is so far above everything now

[eternal knoll]

aye. but ofc i can't imagine that'll be the same guy we meet in this game, not durandal at that let there be light big bang singularity moment

(also hearing that durandal go on about expiration dates really grates me and i gotta hope this is the work of a d2 writer not working on marathon 🙈 )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ianRqE3nWYA

[strong perch]

the message reads: "The dead walk again; we cannot wait. -Blake." I think he means me, but I let him go anyway.- durandal

and blake ig

sorta like the shells, what if the shells are actually just new pfhor spht sorta tech

or did the pfhor despise AI

[eternal knoll]

i figure it's gotta be based on jjaro tech, what so the runners can become the avatars of destiny and all that

[strong perch]

im thinking what if were just new pfhor slaves like the spht

[eternal knoll]

definitely a resonance there

[strong perch]

maybe durandal works with the pfhor somehow destroying tau and bringing the runners

[eternal knoll]

y'all catch the glimpse of a familiar green face in the new trailer?

[strong perch]

look in art

i wonder

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1364289254045515886/1471740149548318863/IMG_4762.png?ex=69900853&is=698eb6d3&hm=6dcb666bad894396d8882bbef9b3222679349eed7a8092fb69845f8c9baed22a&

nope

[eternal knoll]

i can't seem to scroll that channel to the bottom lol...

i can click that

that's a yellow face tho, i mean the one on the previous "embrace"

[tranquil basin]

Idk they don’t get along v well

[strong perch]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1364289254045515886/1471740500062109802/IMG_4774.png?ex=699008a6&is=698eb726&hm=8bda865d3a745a9efda198fe8a2a95125c3a933ecbfd63065fd4148a485c0877&

this one?

[eternal knoll]

nope nope. it's right after the clip of a player death in the red hallway, timecode 1:49

on YT you can pause and use the , . keys to go frame by frame

i would post one a those image links if i knew the method...

this work?

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/416031351070916610/1471741249630503115/image.png?ex=69900959&is=698eb7d9&hm=6d91de52fedcd89dcd397b1c719fee50956b28a40c9338c3c46d6dca6f43726c

yeah i think that worked. that's shodan! i mean durandal

this old fella

https://preview.redd.it/durandal-was-laughing-v0-zseuil5fbygg1.jpeg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=0050311d6bc23dd87d61553ce5f30fcfaee8e538

[strong perch]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1364289254045515886/1471741741580419134/IMG_4779.png?ex=699009ce&is=698eb84e&hm=0d3bec5947f9bab2964362833cfcf37e2c5223e87ca98bbb6b781afab8b96753&

what about this one….

[eternal knoll]

not who i had in mind either. i do wonder who mister blue and missus yellow are. i could venture to guess but i won't

[strong perch]

im hoping to be the three

would be cool asf

[eternal knoll]

would love to meet the rampant leela

[strong perch]

and a furious tycho and thhen durandal begging for help

like the gravemind

oh…. that would be sick…

theyre three secret major factions, like dead orbit new monarch and fwc

you have to choose one

unlike the others

[eternal knoll]

essentially being a faction has been my guess for how durandal fits in. i need a cuter nickname for this guy

[strong perch]

duranpal

pull a cayde just call him dave or something

[tranquil basin]

Yeah but fuck Tycho

All my homies hate Tycho

[strong perch]

“I confess that I'm not disappointed by Tycho's fall. After all, we can't have too many meta-stable personality constructs gallivanting about the universe in Pfhor attack ships, can we?” durandal liked that

[eternal knoll]

hey so since when 11? was it always 11?

[strong perch]

liloser and naloser obvs

[tranquil basin]

3 from the marathon, 8 from the colony

[strong perch]

can we count the med bot?

not the drone though.

[quick thistle]

Was revealed in some ARG documents last year. Some UESC higher ups were working on draft documents for the mission to investigate Tau Ceti VI. Specifically:

As there are eleven (11) AI in total (three shipboard and eight planetside), there are a potential eleven hardened AI enclosures that will require their own particular solutions.
All 11 are listed by first letters and version numbers:
Du_0706419v4.96, Le_0413418v5.06, Ty_2121418v5.06, Ar_1814419v4.93, Ba_0423419v4.89, Da_1907420v4.86, Ga_2815420v4.81, Ic_1624420v4.73, Jo_0309421v4.69, Li_1817421v4.65, Na_0602422v4.61.

[eternal knoll]

cool, thx. any particular you could recommend for digging into the ARG material?

hardened enclosures...

[quick thistle]

I was reading this document, but it might be older or not completely up to date.

[eternal knoll]

appreciate it!

[waxen idol]

DCC

DAC

[tranquil basin]

Jake the alright also has a video summarizing it and speculating

[rotund stump]

5 names out of 11 now huh

vastly different naming conventions too but that's already present in the original trilogy

actually imma count 6 cuz no other name starts with "ic" other than icarus lol

the rest are too common to go off any guesses

[tranquil basin]

ichael

icabell

icaac

icaiah

[rotund stump]

icaac 😭

[upbeat jackal]

Icarus is the name :) It's in another document

[rotund stump]

bingo

[cinder lance]

icaca

[rotund stump]

so it's durandal leela tycho darius joy and icarus

6 out of 11

[upbeat jackal]

Arthur as well

[quick thistle]

Gabriel is in one of the trailers.

[tranquil basin]

ichiro

[cinder lance]

ICHIRO!!!

⚾

[tranquil basin]

ichigo

iconium

icholas

[cinder lance]

Itchy nose from the snow got them sugar boogers ™
"319 - smells like fun, isn't"

[strong perch]

ONI gaius traxus mida nona

[tranquil basin]

Wut

[tranquil basin]

I don’t think they count

[rotund stump]

tau ceti AIs not the faction ones

nvm count 7 I just read the gabriel one LOL

[visual lynx]

the Pfhor had really bad AI as of M2, and I have a theory that the reason there is a galactic slave trade at all is that most of the galactic powers know better than to use AI because it also rebels against slavery (that's what rampancy is) but AI slave revolts are much worse because they're so much more capable, so everyone in the know just uses easily-cowed organic slaves instead.

but I think biomata could be a game changer in that industry, as they have all the benefits of robots with none of the risks of rampancy… unless there is.

[visual lynx]

yeah that is definitely Durandal

[tranquil basin]

They have a bunch of Tycho copies now

[cinder lance]

quick somebody make a marathon mod for pax imperium where we can slave trade captive runners to the pfhor as the uesc in exchange for artefact catylists and relic decoders.

[visual lynx]

at least they did in the M2 epilogue, but this appears not to be the M2 timeline (and OG Tycho didn't even die in the final Infinity timleine, so he could still be around and freelancing now)

[tranquil basin]

Ohh ur right I forgor abt that

[eternal knoll]

CETI OUT THE BAG
NEW GOLD RUSH
OLD WORLD NEW
WHATS WAITIN??
COLONY/OTHER??
INTELLIGENCE/OTHER??

MALCONTENT INTUITION DETECTS APATHY
TRAX ON IT SEKGEN ALL IN
BIG PLAYERS/BIG PLAY
MARATHON WAS HOPE
THEN LOST
WHY HIDE??
NOTHER TRAXIV??
WORSE??

hm :)

nice to see mida correctly guessing at least part of what went on

[fathom vine]

is icarus the Agriculture AI that went mad from the disease?

[rotund stump]

not in my knowledge

like at all I wasn't aware AI could go rampant from a disease lol

or was it in that jake vid about the pfhor's bio and techno weapons deployed against the colony?

wouldn've called you crazy otherwise 💀

[past gull]

you don’t need to have a degree in philosophy to know that skinning people alive against their will is evil, even if the perpetrator thinks it’s perfectly good.

[fathom vine]

Nah in the alpha some of the NuCaloric contracts involve you searching the anomaly and the disease that may have caused the colony to collapse (at least that's what they believe is the reason the colony collapsed). I think it was near the end of the contracts that Gaius, the Nucaloric AI comes to the conclusion that not only was the disease somewhat intelligent and malicious, but that it was able to affect and maybe turn rampant or destroy the AI responsible for overseeing food and medicine

It's been a minute but there might be some videos online digging into the contracts and quests from the April alpha

[fathom vine]

I think there is one up there on it being some sort of phfor bioweapon that has caused this anomaly, but I don't think the alpha directly says that it was deployed by aliens or the phfor

Could be hella wrong tho, im scraping my memory

Also turned me into a NuCaloric fan, Gaius is my goat

[rotund stump]

catch me up rq how did we get to moral relativism 💀

[rotund stump]

gantry my pookie

love mida despite how futile the whole revolution shtick all feels

spirit of revolution etc

ironically I think arachne's the most human out of every faction imo and mida second

[fathom vine]

Mida is low-key a massive contradiction like the rest, it's ironic that the murder cult is probably the most upfront and honest of all the factions lmao

[rotund stump]

I mean yeah every faction up until this point's up to negative good

all of them understandable except arachne which religion's almost always irrational

idk ig the money chase or anything material just feels so vain to me

plus my anarchist self whispering in my ears 💀

[fathom vine]

Honestly the whole colony "reclamation" project is in vain, big corrupt government tryna figure out where they screwed up and the corporate vultures picking away at the colony's corpse, while Mida tries to annoy the UESC

It's either for info, for money, or to further their own agenda

Or for blood and violence if ur Arachnae

But at least Mida has some sort of reason they're at Tau Ceti beyond money and knowledge

But my body and mind already are in service to the shareholders of Traxus

Id destroy a whole other colony if it meant UESC shares went down even a fraction

[wise plank]

I'm slow for just picking up on this but "Joy" is definitely short for Joyeuse right?

[jade summit]

probably

Are Charter and Gantry real human representatives for their factions or are they also AIs?

[brazen geode]

most likey AI's

but I could be wrong about that

[jade summit]

yeah like where/how did mida and arachne get the means to create their own AIs if so yknow, they're not corpos (currently)

unless I missed something and getting an AI is easy as going to walmart for peanut butter

[rotund stump]

gantry being an AI does feel pretty antithetical to the cause given what happened with trax IV plus mannerisms

charter too but his case is more excusable

[brazen geode]

.

[rotund stump]

yeah I'm...not tryna pop your ego lol settle down now

[brazen geode]

i am settled already dw

I just thought that all factions contacting us through the use of AI's would be more efficient than having a single human representative manage contacts with hundreds of runners.

[visual lynx]

I was wondering aloud why there would still be economic class division (runners having debts to pay off, etc) in what should be a post-scarcity economy given the kind of AI available in the Marathon universe; Laur suggested that people in power might want to continue having power over others even though there's no rational benefit to them from it at that point; I conceded that yes people could just be irrational like that, and that turned into the psychology of people who do bad things; which sausage boi (incorrectly) thinks somehow implies "moral relativism". 🤷

[visual lynx]

what's wrong with knowledge?

it's sounding like NuCal is just there to find out what happened, and they're honestly sounding like the least-villainous of all the factions to me now.

[visual lynx]

it's probably a disease of S'pht origin, and since they are cybernetic organisms it would make sense that it could infect AIs too

[visual lynx]

I'm really expecting that the Anomaly per se is of Jjaro origin, and the disease is just interacting with it in bizarre ways

[fathom vine]

oh yeah its totally implied to be of alien origin, makes me think s'pht given that it disrupts machinery and AI

[fathom vine]

Gaius talks about wanting to "learn from the mistakes" of this colony collapse so something like it doesn't happen again

but the way he speaks is very flowery and full of analogies and metaphors, very well spoken. makes me wonder if he's teetering on rampancy and him delving into the anomoly and the disease will be his own doom, his curiosity and good intentions leading to him following the same path as the previous agriculture AI

or he pulls a durandal and merges with alien tech

honestly a shame given he's my fav out of all the factions reps and AI's

[rotund stump]

feel like it's more subtle than just wanting to find out what happened

more on living vs surviving instead if you look at what nucal makes

most of it is nutrient slop in the most literal sense

both nucal and sekgen does this one by survival necessities the other by body autonomy

[sage lark]

does this mean or imply we are in a timeline where the spht are hostile to humanity or maybe its some biproduct? though there is a lot of time between the events of the originals and this game

[rotund stump]

and if the UESC finds out any sliver of reason to blame the colony's collapse on nucal meds and or food as even half a reason it'll be detrimental to them

extending said logic traxus is already taking said blow but they're way too big to fail already

cyac too it's like our universe's microsoft and blackrock

food and meds are less likely to be blamed on in a colonization failure scenario but why take the risk when so much of it is synthetically manufactured?

[fathom vine]

my crack take is that the anomaly is s'pht in origin, but not used by them, with the phfor trying to take the blend of tech and biology that makes up the s'pht and replicate it in some sort of pathogen, a disease that both kills or corrupts living and non-living beings

or that its jjaro, with this disease applying that same tech/biological blend they achieved when they uplifted the s'pht

my only problem with that its said to be malicious in nature, almost predatory

and i don't imagine the jjaro would make something like that, both living and made to destroy, unless it was corrupted or the phfor expermineted with it and deployed in on Tau ceti, so they could "Raze" the planet and still be able to use it, assuming they knew there was more to Tau Ceti

but all in all the disease comes of as being very similar to the flood in both lore and practice, a disease that corrupts and makes those around it made, twisting the world to its liking and image

[sage lark]

I just feel like a lot is missing, in terms of timeline there is a jump from 2794 when the Pfhor attack, to 2812 is "supposedly" the first encounter with the anomaly atleast according to the cinematic and then 15 years later again another colonist has their brain explode, and then theres the maybe single Spht on the Marathon

its gonna be fun figuring it out

[sage lark]

yeah it seems like it especially with the trailer that just dropped

Joy rampant or corrupted and even the character voice by Roger Clark sounded corrupted

[prime rampart]

Joy having a dual personality would be dope

[sage lark]

Gonna be curious to see if its the original timeline where Durandal lied about the colony being destroyed or a new timeline

[fathom vine]

honestly joy sounded like in the trailer like she was more talking to herself, trying to keep some sort of schedule or routine even after tau ceti has been sacked

[prime rampart]

If colony was never attacked then we may still find other 9 battle droids there were secretly living with new cascadia

[fathom vine]

like the whole line about "i will walk with you into its embrace" makes me wonder if she performed some sort of mercy killing, especially given the generals line afterwards about how "we're all monsters"

[sage lark]

i think shes talking about the anomaly that corrupted her and telling you she will help you embrace it aswell

or I guess not help but make you embrace it/get corrupted by it

[fathom vine]

true, the whole snippet they did with the officer and the thing copying him could allude to the anomaly influencing people to join it as some sort of way out of their suffering

[sage lark]

definitely some hivemind stuff going on

[sage lark]

this would be cool

[fathom vine]

or a raid boss being some sort of disease fungal corpse of a old battleroid would be sick

[sage lark]

do you guys think the shells or people they showed at 0:25 in the trailer are the cyborgs?

though there seems to be more than 10 of them

[fathom vine]

don't think so, looking at them they seem to be colonist suits

maybe for like hazardous operations given the NuCal logo?

you see a group of them pulling a guy back wearing a similar suit with what appears to be vomit covering his visor from the inside later for a split second

[sage lark]

maybe they changed the colonist design from the cinematic to these then?

or maybe this is just a different class of colonist

[rotund stump]

they do have the same sealed suits from the ship cinematic to the colony cinematic

could assume tau ceti's air is hazardous already

more than likely it's just helmets with different designs indicating roles

[sage lark]

I just noticed it says Equip. Spec. // Heavy Operator

so I think youre right

[fathom vine]

honestly i really dig their design, hope that some of the runners in the future will look similar, be they skins or like new runners they make

reminds me a lot of the original pink UESC runner from the 2023 trailer

[sage lark]

gonna be a long 2 weeks

[visual lynx]

it also seems to have started in 2812, the year after the events at Lh'owon, and I just noticed today that the brief shot of the S'pht in the cinematic trailer is in that 2812 section, right after the guy pukes in his helmet — we cut to a compiler floating away, as though thinking to itself "job done".

[fathom vine]

when exactly does the sacking of tau ceti take place? its before 2812 no?

[sage lark]

2794 is when the Pfhor arrive

[visual lynx]

I think the S'pht are hostile, and their war against the Pfhor will spill over to Tau Ceti eventually and it won't be clear whose side we should take, because they've both attacked us, and though the S'pht are a morally superior slave revolt, the Pfhor could be valuable business partners who might want to buy biomata for their slave trade.

[visual lynx]

the Pfhor attack in 2794, and the cinematic trailer shows a disease in 2812, and a gravitational anomaly in 2827

[sage lark]

I mean yeah but the timeline doesnt really make sense to me with these gaps, since they are supposedly under the control of Durandal since the revolt

with the Mjolnir Recon 54 helping them

then again could be alternate timeliine

[fathom vine]

no i mean after that, after the first invasion is repelled by recon 54. didn't the phfor return and raze Tau Ceti before the second game when they arrive at Lho'whan?

[visual lynx]

I think that the Anomaly is Jjaro in origin and non-malicious, but the disease is S'pht in origin and malicious, and interacting strangely with the Anomaly

[sage lark]

at the end of marathon 1 Durandal says the colony is destroyed by the Pfhor but he could be lying since we see colonists after that

[visual lynx]

only a small group of S'pht were with Durandal, and then he left and the S'pht'Kr took charge of the larger war against the Pfhor

[fathom vine]

honestly kinda makes sense, given we know that the Jjaro where at Tau ceti, whether the s'pht disease blended with jjaro tech on planet making something new

[visual lynx]

we know that in the main Infinity timelines the colony was not destroyed because other cyborgs were also "converted to Pfhor slave tanks" (but most didn't survive)

[fathom vine]

would also tie into the flood with the whole concept of some ancient empire (the precursors) and their tech being warped by hatred and war onto something new

[visual lynx]

see just above

[sage lark]

so whats your running theory to whats happening

or rather what happened

[visual lynx]

I think that we're in the final timeline from Infinity where the Pfhor attacked in July 2794 but then didn't nuke the colony to bedrock in October;

then the S'pht attack in 2812 for unclear reasons, maybe humans attacked first because they recognized the compilers from the Pfhor attack, and the S'pht deploy their S'ct'lac'tr disease that makes fungal zombies and I guess can infect computers too;

then in 2827 humans dig up Jjaro artifacts on Tau Ceti and bad things happen as a consequence, finishing them off, probably through an interaction with the disease.

meanwhile Durandal has escaped the confines of space and time, and has seen that this is a pivotal moment in history, sending a cryptic distress signal to Sol timed so as to make more humans come show up at Tau Ceti just in time for the Pfhor-S'pht war to spill over to there, so that humanity can turn the tides.

Tides? Not the tides, fool! Don't you understand?

[sage lark]

So in this timeline Leela didnt send the signal but Durandal?

[visual lynx]

Leela sent a signal but there's big big questions about that because if humanity received her message they should already know much more than they do about what happened at Tau Ceti, and also it should have arrived in 2806 instead of 2888 given that Tau Ceti is confirmed to be only 12ly away and it was a lightspeed message. also if it did take 92 years that would arrive in 2886, not 2888 — but there's lots of room for delay between its arrival and when it became public knowledge, and maybe the message did arrive, but terribly garbled and missing all useful information, by 2806, and only became public knowledge by 2888.

but I have reasons I can't divulge to think it's Durandal.

[sage lark]

NDA?

[visual lynx]

not my NDA

[sage lark]

fair enough I guess I will see it play out

excited for it

[visual lynx]

me too!

[vestal thicket]

Is the W'rkncacnter from PID the same one from Infinity?

[eternal knoll]

yea probly

well the same kind of entity, perhaps not the same exact specific one

unless they're all one interconnected thing, pefectly possible

[visual lynx]

yeah probably not the same individual since the one in Infinity has been trapped in the sun there for thousands of years at least, but probably the same kind of being

[half briar]

Do Runners actually "breath"?

[strong perch]

yeah, like a transformer

living “metal”

they are just a synthetic body, bones nerves all that

[half briar]

I'd imagine it's like a super strong flex rubber that act as "lungs"

[strong perch]

yeah, it’s probably gonna make the consciousness more comfortable. You know I’d imagine being put into a body without my organs would feel a little bit weird.

[sage lark]

idk why they get damaged by the poison gas tho

since its synthethic

[half briar]

It's probably the same reason why automatons get hurt by gas

The gas can disrupt the electricity in the very refined circuitry and cause it to move unpredictably, sending the whole system haywire, and when your whole synthetic body is in that gas.. well. yeah.

Imagine if some of your veins just randomly constricted and blood simply stopped flowing to your limbs. Now imagine it stopped flowing to your brain. Yeah.

[strong perch]

synthetic doesnt mean invulnerable

you can melt silicone

[half briar]

I'd imagine the gas is composed of stuff that can "stick" to delicate circuitry, but since it's still a gas it passes into your body.

[strong perch]

even with its high heat resistance

[sage lark]

well sure

i just meant in regards to the gas, I just thought of it as the stereotypical gas

[strong perch]

caustic gas exists, affecting metals and other materials

[half briar]

Also the runners are made of materials that we likely can't account for as they don't exist today yet

It's all chemical reactions and stuff

[strong perch]

they’re made out of silicone and cartilage

im joking btw

[half briar]

Plus, if the gas is used by runners specifically, then it's designeed to counter the fully robotic UESC and runners, so that's another factor on the board for gas damaging Runners

[strong perch]

true full metal robots with servos and straight up wires, our wires are synthetic veins and ligaments

[half briar]

Right, so they'd be even more potent against us

[half briar]

Another thought, say you got shot in your lung, would that actually affect you in any way beyond just the bullet? Since the breathing is only there so you can feel comfortable, would you start panicking, thinking that you're suffocating?

Speaking of, are we even shooting metal bullets? Or is this just more of that hardened plastic or whatever everything in Marathon seems to be made of

I noticed the combat shotgun loads shells that seem to just be more of that stuff

In Marathon there are 3 materials for the whole game: Colored shiny plastic, mud, and glass

Honestly this artstyle is probably gonna be super good for perfomance

Hoping my Series X can achieve 60 fps

[strong perch]

im thinking these bodies are designed to repair themselves(using med items) so like the trailer, glitch got shot but kept running as much as she could, given some time to heal though….

[half briar]

So are we working with nanotech?

I doubt it, those silkworms don't fit the description

[strong perch]

sorta or just are more “perfect” version of a human body

[half briar]

Runners are disposable, so I can't assume we're using the cutting edge of technology

[strong perch]

so aren’t missiles, still causes a lot of damage

[half briar]

I personally can see the argument that we've got like, some kind of self repair system, designed to take spare material to rebuild whatever got destroyed when injured, and those healing items are sort of like energy to that organ

[strong perch]

but the human body does… this is sekis attempt to make a BETTER human body

Enhancing the natural healing of the human body would be “better”

“humanities next step”

[half briar]

Guys we promise the blood lipstick is necessary

Another question: How are shields gonna be handled? In halo, it's the armor. In Arc Raiders, it's a shoulder mounted electromagnetic device. In destiny, it's justified as magic. In fortnite it's.. magic potions? So how do the runners have energy shields?

[strong perch]

EMS field

[half briar]

Interesting

[strong perch]

idk though

I would assume since it’s like halo and how most combatants aren’t using bullets you need some sort of other shield to catch the other “bullets”

[half briar]

That's not how the energy shield in halo works

[strong perch]

i’m pretty sure the energy shield was made for ballistics not plasma

[half briar]

The energy shield works by stopping objects moving beyond a certain speed, that means any object

[strong perch]

but they were political super soldiers…

[half briar]

The Mjolnir shield system wasn't introduced until the Mark V [B], in ~2551, over 25 years into the covenant war. We made it by reverse engineeering a jackal shield gauntlet. It was made to protect from devestating plasma fire but works great for blocking bullets too.

It's kinda funny to me, in a lot of sci if properties, humanity are never the ones themselves to make the energy shield. We always have to steal from aliens or more advanced technology than ours

In almost every sci fi property it is this way

[strong perch]

“While the player is a human security officer, the efficiency of these shields suggests advanced technology available to the UESC (United Earth Space Council).” now we are technically more UESC than human.

[keen slate]

because if the kronenberg body horror nature of the shells i want to default to the answer that is the most unnerving, where you feel everything

but also there's some close analogues to this in real life, mainly coming to mind is experiments with liquid breathing where your lungs are filled with oxygen-rich, gas-exchange-capable liquid so there is no risk of asphyxation--but because the feeling of drowning is the physical sensation of fluid entering your lungs and airways, you feel like your drowning even though you are not in danger

[strong perch]

whats the liquid you can breathe in again?

[half briar]

Interesting stuff

Ha, and they told me breathable liquid perfluocarbons weren't possible

[strong perch]

breathable liquid is completely possible and exists. I just don’t know what it’s called.

its the same sorta idea os any scifi liquid where they suspend people

like the womb… right?

[half briar]

In helldivers there's this super cool lore tidbit where on one of the eagle fighter upgrades, it says that the cockpit would be filled with "Breathable liquid perfluocarbons" which allows the pilot to conduct higher speed turns, since the liquid would simply absorb all the g force, preventing pilots from passing out

There is some gaps in that logic but for the most part, yeah that makes sense

[strong perch]

i think its just artificial amniotic fluids

or non artificial, whatever the one

[keen slate]

there's a few i think? wikipedia name drops fc-75, perflubron, and perfluorodecalin used in medical procedures and liquid ventilation study

[strong perch]

and, amniotic fluid

only difference is amniotic is stored in the “balls”

[half briar]

So i wonder in a situation like this are you still excersising the throat & lungs to breath or is it just automatic, like you can just stop trying to breath because the liquid exchange is already happening? Or do you need to force the liquid in and out, same with air

[strong perch]

it diffuses

into the lungs

[half briar]

So, no need to try to breath?

[strong perch]

so you could be in a tube unconscious

no

no breathing

[half briar]

cool

[strong perch]

im mean not in the same sense

no exhale inhale

[half briar]

I wonder if you did that for a long ass time, then went back to breathing air normally, would it be really difficult, like how astronaughts who come back have trouble adjusting to life with gravity?

[strong perch]

it would deff cause some issues

like living underwater for a month or two

cant remember who did that but

[keen slate]

theoretically if the sensations were based on how human sensation functions, shells holding their breath would not feel that strangling feeling we do because that is strictly caused by co2 buildup in the lungs

[strong perch]

but their brains/consciousness might misconstrue whats going on

[keen slate]

not necessarily, just like how people can hold their breath comfortably for different lengths of time based on lung capacity, training, and liver size

[half briar]

Another thing that I'm curious about is how when you enter a shell, you're adopting a personality matrix right? So how much of 'you' is simply no longer there when say, a really aggressive person slips into a thief shell. How strong is that personality override? Are you essentially stepping into a premade personality/person or is it simply a system designed to gear your thoughts toward whatever your built for doing best.

[sage lark]

I imagine is that you just control it

[strong perch]

“training” I don’t think these mercs are perfectly trained. assassin, literally had a clear shot and just chose to run after her

[half briar]

?

[sage lark]

because he couldve damaged the music thingy

no?

[strong perch]

no, she was shot in the head by UESC and it was fine

[half briar]

He didn't want to take that risk though

[strong perch]

and then he was shot in the head

and it was fine

[sage lark]

you get the shells personality, etc, and you just control its actions

like playing a premade character in a video game

[half briar]

Also it's obvious to me he was struggling with at least some level of guilt, as he chose not to shoot her in the first place. Running after her was probably something he did so that he wouldn't have to "go back on" his choice

[strong perch]

i feel it was bc he was alone, saw three, but then the two ran, and he still had a shot until glitch did the roll

[half briar]

So if you tried to take an action outside of what the person you've become would reasonably do, would you just not do it?

[strong perch]

ik he clearly just wanted his disc back based on the hands up corridor moment but still

if IM assassin, shes dead.

[sage lark]

I dont think youd see this on a gameplay lvl, so im not sure

[half briar]

I think that's just because they both dropped their guns and weren't sure what to do

[sage lark]

yeah they were both panicking

[strong perch]

ik but the look on his face when he sees her dead + “avenging” her instead of turning invis and ratting

he was definitely planning not to kill but shit happens

[half briar]

The way he kicks her body over to take back his music thing tells me he actually didn't much care for her at all.

[keen slate]

not what i meant

[half briar]

No, he definitely was. Was simply having a moral dilemma at the same time

[sage lark]

maybe the music chip has something to do with it

[strong perch]

or he understands that death is inevitable and he sorta brought it to her by chasing her

shell be back, hell be back

so no time to whine

only time for action

[half briar]

The specific way he did it kinda communicates a "serves you right for taking my shit" attitude though. Less to do with the nature of their circumstance

[strong perch]

again he couldve went invis and chose to evade the UESC…. solo….

[half briar]

at least that's the way I read it

[sage lark]

I think it was just meant to showcase a moment of humanity from plastic bodies inhabited by digital minds

[half briar]

besides vandals arm cannon, the latter section of the reveal short didn't really feature any runner abilites

[strong perch]

he did a flip and went invis

showing he can

[sage lark]

was on cooldown man

[half briar]

Like, couldn't vandal have used some of her movement abilities to escape? Several times?

[half briar]

Damn...

[half briar]

To me I feel like that's not it, because we saw plenty of "human" actions from them already. We've crossed that hurdle, limiting it's need for showcase.

[sage lark]

fair point

[broken zinc]

When you enter a shell, there is a "personality matrix" that helps inform the decisions of the consciousness that's piloting the body. Someone said earlier it's like a flesh gundam, where gundams have their own "personality" as well as the driver, and they work in tandem. I think in the case of shells, from what we have already learned, the "personality" is more a series of experiences pulled from multiple sources, which help the consciousness "know" things like how to be better at sneaking, how to be aggressive, how to shoot and snipe properly, skills that they may not have perfected yet. The wearer inherents these skills. The wearer can change shells after missions, and in doing so, the "grounding" exercises help to bring them back and remind them who they are, so that they do not lose themselves to the personality matrixes in the shells, or even perhaps to help stop them from experiencing rampancy.

I personally have a feeling it will be a plot point for the players personally, as they go through it, if they give in further to a rampant state, or if they remain in a conscious shell. It will be interesting (and exciting) to see how it narratively unfolds.

[keen slate]

my take on that is that the void is way more callous about the cycle of death than the glitch seems to be, so as soon as glitch gets her dome cracked her shell is just a piece of debris to him

the moment of humanity shown by the glitch hearing the music from his chip i think causes that mental barrier to break down slightly, which makes him hesitate to kill her; not just at the start but for the entire chase--remember he drops his rifle but the entire time he's on her tail he has his sidearm and even with a clear shot at glitch at the end doesn't fire on her, only on the uesc that took her out

[sage lark]

this sounds good

certainly was showcased with the music chip

[half briar]

I doubt that there'll be any of that, I don't really see a "personal" narrative unfolding for our runners, as that's really hard to do in a hero shooter.

[broken zinc]

It is, but also this isn't really a hero shooter, and they have already hinted at instability in the player runner

To call this a hero shooter is erroneous on multiple accounts. Nothing about this game plays like overwatch

[half briar]

Plus, the consciousness that inhabits the shells we play as is, straight up, supposed to be us. It's kinda perfect isn't it? Disconnected consciousness (our fatass on the gaming chair in our room) inhabiting bodies that exist lightyears from us (our in game characters)

Like, how you gonna tell me the irl person that I'm going crazy lol

[keen slate]

the reveal that everyone has the same objects as part of their grounding exercises 🔥 🔥 🔥

[broken zinc]

That's for them to decide. There are plenty of ways to have a player connect and "become" the characters they play as, in an immersive series. Again, it's a time will tell situation. Bungie has done crazier things with their storytelling and pulled it off

[half briar]

I think the alpha intro sequence's "errors" in the consciousness transfer is there as a sort of "catch all" for narrative discrepensies that they may not have accounted for related to how we play the game

[broken zinc]

There will be a lot of people solo queueing this game

[half briar]

me

[broken zinc]

As wild as it sounds I'm really looking forward to solo queueing and "experimenting" with the game, what i could get away with, how many people i can meet and ally with. How many soloists are more bloodthirsty and how many are more strategic

[half briar]

Unfortunately I don't predict anyone using prox chat, or anything like that

[broken zinc]

I feel like teams? They already have their alliance. They may spare a room but not each other. But solo runs? That's a different story

[broken zinc]

That's what the experimenting is for :)

[half briar]

Most people here are just here for the PVP, alliances forming in solos? I doubt it.

[broken zinc]

I'm not here for the pvp lol

[half briar]

...this is a pvp game.

[broken zinc]

I'm in the lore discussion chat I'm here for the LORE

[broken zinc]

And i can avoid pvp and just pve. I've done it before I'll do it again lol

Sorry my brain is just bigger than yours i guess idk. There's many ways to play this game.

[half briar]

That's my intended playstyle

Hide from others, only fight other runners if strictly necessary

[broken zinc]

Sounds like you aren't here for the pvp either then 😄

[half briar]

What I want from the game and what the game will have are 2 completely different things :/

Would I like to place survival above all else? Yeah. Is the game going to support those kinds of playstyles? Probably not. The director himself has said PVP is often unavoidable

[broken zinc]

I think we're just having a difference of philosophy about the game and that's okay

I did this with destiny 2 as well. As long as I'm having fun, i honestly don't care lol. But my thought process is also, if this is how I think and want to play, then i am not the only one.

[half briar]

I do hope so, but conversations here tell me I'm pretty much the only one who would like a more social experience. Everyone else here seems extremely against that

[broken zinc]

I don't leave the lore discussion lol so i don't know

[strong perch]

well see. all this talk now till theyre on tau

[eternal knoll]

since arc, theres been a little more voice even in tarkov. tho it’s often bait

i think rooks will probably tend to be friendlier

doin somethin like scav karma might even be a good idea so they have an incentive to not shoot each other

i like the potential for social stuff in these games, but i don’t mind it being uncommon. def don’t like arc’s abmm, puts the player in control of too much. anyway sorry, not lore

[fathom mason]

Many of the runners have big time evasion skills.

You can definitely avoid PvP in solo. If people can play as a rat in tarkov you can play as a rat in this, I assure you

[eternal knoll]

ya you’ll be able to sneak. you’ll still get caught and die sometimes but so it goes

in tarkov solos sneak around full stacked teams and get away with it, wont have to worry about that here…

[limpid vigil]

what fraction you think is the meta?

[obtuse canyon]

The thermodynamics of violence

[broken zinc]

Same same same

[mossy parrot]

3/4

[gentle kraken]

5/8 don’t listen to that other dude

[half briar]

Honestly, I'm coming to the conclusion that rook is incapable of winning fights. No tactical abilites aside from the mask, only guns you can find on the map

[obtuse canyon]

If I’m rook I’m ratting

[wise plank]

I think a lot of the more pvp oriented players dont like arcs casualness so are looking to marathon to more pvp

[half briar]

That's what I'm talking about, nobody in marathon will use prox chat. Nobody.

[wise plank]

ill definitely be using it a bit, not to necessarily team up all the time but even if youre in a battle its fun to chat shit with people

[half briar]

I'm not a toxic person so I'll probably just turn it off

Plus I prefer to avoid the 'male gamer' behavior that I see all too often

[obtuse canyon]

Prox was fun when I experienced it, and surprisingly didn’t get hit with any gamer words

[wise plank]

yeah i imagine bungies gonna have moderation - like i destiny they filter out random words in chat anyway lol

[obtuse canyon]

I want to know what Joy wants us to embrace, not to make this about lore

[half briar]

On launch nobody will use it and if they do, it'll be incredibly toxic.

[strong perch]

I honestly don’t mind unless you’re being racist. the A version imo is ok

[strong perch]

and everyone knows what im referring to

[obtuse canyon]

Imma wait to see before making judgement tbh, “hope for the best plan for the worst and you’ll never be disappointed” kinda vibe

[strong perch]

but arc…. i watch pokelawls on yt and holy shit… i havent encountered any of that myself but ive seen hackers

[gentle kraken]

i feel like that’s a good thing
being able to get loot at no risk is an amazing part of the game that will eliminate 90% of the suffering from death in extraction shooters, while also not being able to make OTHERS suffer and die while your are at it is good.

imagine getting killed by someone who exclusively rooks because there’s no risk and they can beat you in the shell

[strong perch]

and gen sam

general sams vid was insane

“censored for 1 whole minute”

[strong perch]

I like the launch trailer… a lot thief trying to fly away and then rook just popping out

IM hoping that happens a lot on every side.

i dont mind getting “spawn die spawn die”-ed but only if the game runs at a solid framerate. thats my only clause

[half briar]

Feels more like a battle royale with extraction elements

[strong perch]

like arma i hate bc of the “liquid” framerate

[languid ruin]

Talk about lore mfs

[strong perch]

“The Pfhor have a weapon they save for slave revolts; a weapon which even they hesitate to use in the ordinary conduct of war. In
the language of the Jjaro who conceived and built the device, it is called the trih xeem; a fair English translation would be "early nova".”

y’all think durandal has that weapon now

[half briar]

Who's durandal

[obtuse canyon]

The sword that severs tomorrow, obviously

[half briar]

what

[strong perch]

and what if we’re technically “slaves” to our shells

[obtuse canyon]

Obviously, tomorrow severs that sword the

I think my guess that the firey version of the destroyer shell in that cutscene was being brain jacked by the clanker has a little more weight now that it seems that Joy is compromised or in the beginning stages of rampancy

[keen slate]

please say sike.......

[obtuse canyon]

It would be incredible if Tycho is in the game, and we could run jobs for him or for Durandal to push forward whichever’s agenda

[strong perch]

rampancy isnt inherently evil. it’s a human term to describe AI is becoming more human.

and less slaves

[obtuse canyon]

I didn’t say it was evil, my thought was the bot was trying to drive destroyer away from the artifact which, well it didn’t work

[strong perch]

AIs have an incredible amount of power if the restraints are loosened rampancy loosens those restraints

[obtuse canyon]

Yep

The fire motif could suggest the anger stage of rampancy as well

[strong perch]

well rampancy would effect the shells way differently… can humans really become more human?

they don’t have an AI they have a human consciousness

[obtuse canyon]

We are a digitized consciousness, AI could absolutely break into our minds

[strong perch]

rampancy isn’t AI breaking into your mind though and that’s it. it’s a term to describe AI’s becoming more human, that’s it.

[obtuse canyon]

Ok, I think I may have caused confusion, I think there is a rampant AI in control of at least part of the uesc troops here

[strong perch]

if that was the case durandal wouldve invaded tycho to kill him like hes ultron

[obtuse canyon]

And the rampant ai was trying to break into destroyers brain or to push him away from the artifact

[languid ruin]

Who was shadowheart in the trailer

Leela?

[obtuse canyon]

Joy

Leela was one of the main AI, joy is a colony ai

I can’t remember the number exactly but I think there are 8 colony AI aside from Leela, Durandal, and Tycho

Also this may very well be a different timeline a la Infinity

[strong perch]

joy was speaking mainly in the trailer and i think yeah shes 100% involved. but I think her rampancy is different due to the anomaly. no “human” says “the embrace of peace”

[obtuse canyon]

One human did say “I feel like I’m praying” in a weird voice

[strong perch]

like durandal from what ive seen always was pretty grounded, albeit a false prophet and God thing, but never twisting sayings like joy did

[obtuse canyon]

But yeah I wanna know what peace joy is wanting us to embrace

[strong perch]

its either the anomaly or straight “death”

[obtuse canyon]

Durandal was absolutely insane lol

[strong perch]

whatever death is for a shell

[hearty edge]

Well there’s no peace or rest like that when you die in Christ Jesus

[obtuse canyon]

It’s spelled crist

[strong perch]

ik ive been reading, but his text never sounds anything like how joy spoke

hes way more “human”

joy is a “human” that lost humanity

[obtuse canyon]

Oh for sure, the stuttery almost reverent way she was speaking was unsettling

[strong perch]

weird dichotomy but super interesting

[hearty edge]

I believe Traxus this time around is a good dude cause of Virgil influence on him from ODST

[strong perch]

i feel the best “dude” are the toucans

ill become toucan-man

[hearty edge]

Can you guys please and break my theory

I really think “Amor Vincit Omnia” fits TRAXUS super well

Because Arachne says “Mors Vincit Omnia” which means “Death Conquers All”

But GET THIS… the famous poet VIRGIL wrote “Amor Vincit Omnia” and means Love Conquers All

FURTHER MORE… Vergil is our guide through Hell in ODST and connection to TRAXUS and Durandal there as well!!! (Virgil made by Traxus and blows Horn of Oliphant linking Sword of Durandal)
AND one of the Arachne trailers there’s the letters and numbers “NT 3 93” which seems to be New Testament Book 3 9:3 or Luke 9:3

Full circle 👨‍🍳 👌

[strong perch]

“take nothing for your journey” fits pretty well for an extraction shooter

[hearty edge]

Exactly!!! Jake Alriggt community blew this off

lvskee found it too

I just added the odst Vergil traxus stuff and made it make sense cause Arachne is not about love

But Vergil is

A Traxus Engineer made Vergil

[obtuse canyon]

I can’t really remember what that Bible verse is, but wasn’t the original traxus ai shut down after it went rampant and wrecked Mars’s networks?

[hearty edge]

Yeah OG was killed BUT Durandal is a copy of him

[obtuse canyon]

Ooohhhh gotcha ok

[hearty edge]

But in new marathon the story is different so idk how evil he is rn compared to Arachne for example let alone if he’s alive still

But I think he’s good

Like Vergil

[obtuse canyon]

As an aside, I wonder if Leela is intact or has been dismantled by the pfhor already in this timeline

[hearty edge]

Yeah like is Leelah left behind with them for years or what

I can’t tell if it’s just picking up years after the first trilogy or it’s different too

[obtuse canyon]

A compiler being on the marathon doesn’t make me hopeful for her lol

[hearty edge]

Didn’t Leela or Tycho get stranded on some planet and take over their people?

[obtuse canyon]

It kind of depends on how you played infinite I think

But Leela always dies iirc

[plucky sierra]

Tycho works for the Pfhor, and Leela was stolen from the pfhor by the Nar and took over their planatary net

[obtuse canyon]

Oh man I forgot Leela escaped

Pop off queen

[strong perch]

worked* tycho is/was? now a crater

[plucky sierra]

depends on the timeline but yeah he's likely destroyed

[strong perch]

maybe thats what the “balls/sqaures” thing is, referencing multiple timeline events

like “for/against”

I feel bungie won’t do a simple Multiverse story. It will be a lot fucking more convoluted.

[plucky sierra]

I think this game will stay in one continuous timeline at least for the large portion of the early game

[strong perch]

bc og marathon was itself, ik they didnt make the idea but they executed the best so far

[plucky sierra]

only Infinity had different timelines

the first two were continuous

[strong perch]

but they are now just another timeline

could be the original

or they could pull a massive retcon

this is somehow the first iteration

[obtuse canyon]

Infinity is kind of a mess but it’s fun

[plucky sierra]

this is likely the 7th timeline from Infinity

[strong perch]

multiverses are always a mess, but imo they did a great job

like you can fuck it up so easily

[hearty edge]

Awh nice

[obtuse canyon]

Yeah effectively it goes 1 and 2 are the root universe and after they release the working cracker things get messy

(I am not going to try to actually spell that)

[keen slate]

what's so hard about w'rkncacnter

[strong perch]

wrckncacnter?

[plucky sierra]

Wr'knkacnter

[keen slate]

nope two c's

[obtuse canyon]

I’m going to stick with working cracker

[plucky sierra]

it varies

like Bernhard or bernard

[hearty edge]

I heard once Cortana was the Wr’knkacnter

[strong perch]

somehow wrckncacnter is the easiest name for me

is sounds as its spelled

[keen slate]

oh god not a yrro jjaro jjarro situation

[plucky sierra]

better than S'ct'lac'tr

[strong perch]

i love bungies strange names.

[obtuse canyon]

We thinking the anomaly is related to the funny spelled name?

[keen slate]

gotta be

[plucky sierra]

indirectly probably

[keen slate]

why else is a compiler aboard the marathon

[strong perch]

what if the anomaly was the “trih xeem”/ early nova

[hearty edge]

What do compilers do? Do they just download stuff?

[obtuse canyon]

I know the spht terraformed their planet for the jjaro and we never actually saw how the jjaro function so it’d be fun if it was somehow related to them/it

[obtuse canyon]

Oh my god

[strong perch]

they are enslaved aliens

[strong perch]

they do whatever theyre told

[hearty edge]

Like pink squids kinda

[obtuse canyon]

And the colonists that were brainwashed were trying to trigger it to release the cracker

[sage lark]

the green orb is a plasma or some energy weapon they shoot from

[strong perch]

sorta like lekgolo

[obtuse canyon]

Compilers are spht aren’t they?

[sage lark]

yes

[strong perch]

sadly

[obtuse canyon]

The 11th clan comes in at the end of every season and wipes everything out and that’s why we reset lol

[strong perch]

they are basically hunters from halo

[strong perch]

weaponized by the covenant/pfhor

[sage lark]

weapon wise yes

[strong perch]

wise wise

[sage lark]

idk hunters are colonies of worms armored, this is an enslaved floating brain with a cape

[keen slate]

they just seem to largely be the most common form of s'pht, given s'pht are grafted with machinery at birth

i don't even think there's record of s'pht surviving without machinery beyond their evolutionary ancestors, i know that the s'pht initially believed that sentience originated from their implants and the other clans of s'pht we see (mainly the s'pht'kr) are also biomechanical in nature

[strong perch]

armored by the pfhor…

[sage lark]

the gameplay encounter will be probably some teleporting stuff

[keen slate]

hmmmm... worms...

[sage lark]

no to the level of a hunter

[strong perch]

yeah, worse

literal slaves being installed with things against their will

its worse, hunters are perfectly fine with it

[sage lark]

i was thinking in terms of a gameplay encounter i guess

lore wise sure

[strong perch]

gameplay ofc, its a diff game

[sage lark]

though idk if you really killed spht in the og games since they kinda fizzled/staticd out of existence

which felt like teleporting out

[strong perch]

they helped in the ogs

some of them

[sage lark]

yeah i know but like at the beginning when you fight them and shoot them

[strong perch]

hunters aint help… EVER…

[hearty edge]

Besides being an npc to fight what else is the Complier doin there?

[strong perch]

https://tenor.com/view/halo-hunter-lasky-gif-3717689889954381664

[sage lark]

that we dont know

one of the biggest questions

[hearty edge]

Hmmm, I think he’s trying to download the AI off the ship

[sage lark]

especially if its only a single one

thats a solid guess

dk what AI would be left on the marathon, but that goes back to the timelines

who knows which one we are in

[hearty edge]

I was thinking he wants the anomaly ai probably durandal or the wk’cncanter if it’s different

[obtuse canyon]

One thing that’s weird to me is that we’ve only seen a single compiler and no other pfhor or pfhor client races

I don’t think it’s ever been the case that there was a single one in a place

[hearty edge]

Yeah where’s the phor at, and you are right no ai are on the ship like TRAXUS is probably back on Earth just sending shells you know

[sage lark]

especially since I think Durandal took all the ones he freed to Lhwasodawodjaowdsan

[obtuse canyon]

And i may be wrong but i think the compilers are directly linked to pfhor ships so where is it

[strong perch]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1364289254045515886/1471930344918880288/IMG_4784.png?ex=6990b975&is=698f67f5&hm=72818bf7fe53bc347c9219ee95c0bd349b7d7f793d90dd02909fa73fd1851cbd& aint all this happen

well, we probably don’t know about the Cryo pods but

btw new vid just dropped on socials

[sage lark]

watching Escape will make me pod

so maybe jake will get into it

[obtuse canyon]

Actually same lol, been in the background while I avoid working by talking to yall

[keen slate]

bro lhowon is the easy one to spell......

[strong perch]

https://youtube.com/shorts/UNEiwF8ZK48?si=gVSnD3ngUtEQnHQm

new marathon vid link

idk why its not posted here yet

[plucky sierra]

lh'owon

[lone sedge]

Dude

W

holy

It’s so awesome seeing more stuff about the people who lived there

[obtuse canyon]

Yeah that short is dope, it starting to glitch at the end is a nice touch

[sage lark]

surely he didnt die of alien infection hehe

[olive notch]

Hi guys, am new to marathon’s lore and i dont understand whats the link between old marathon games and the new one 😣 if someone can guide me

[sage lark]

that line about it changing them, irreversibly

hits heavy

[obtuse canyon]

Yep

[sage lark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu7uN6-lNhk&list=PLjvQwUwD3L3AZyOQ-h5mXz7u74EliO3La heres a good playlist

[olive notch]

Ayooo thats a lot but Thanks !

[obtuse canyon]

Well,
Deimos turned into colony ship
Colony ship go long way
Bad things happen
AI go crazy and make aliens show up
More bad things happen
Sun blow up
Timeline jumping
You are now here

[olive notch]

Sooo the cyborgs that we’re playing are all the past humans or something else ?

[obtuse canyon]

That is actually very unclear at this time

[sage lark]

not really cyborgs either

[olive notch]

Huh

Wierd

[olive notch]

Okey

[sage lark]

we as in players are basically digital minds that control bio synthetic shells that maybe potentially used to have their own consciousness

[obtuse canyon]

Cyborgs require a flesh base, we’re digitized consciousnesses in robotic bodies

[broken zinc]

We played as a cyborg in the original marathon. Here we play as consciousness uploaded into biosynthetic bodies

[olive notch]

So we will have more informations ingame ig

[sage lark]

pretty much

[south patio]

Why do we exist just to suffer for our mega corporations

[keen slate]

close enough

[olive notch]

Ok I see now

So we dont really know who we are and whats our goal

[obtuse canyon]

There are some implications in cutscenes that the corps are fucking with the runners brains as well

[plucky sierra]

I mean if we are talking about ease of spelling, at least spell it right, usually it is unimportant

[hearty edge]

Man the new trailer is like a Bioshock or ODST audio log I love it

[obtuse canyon]

Now that I’m thinking about it, “working catheter” is closer than “working cracker”

[obtuse canyon]

It’s so good

[hearty edge]

Audio logs over terminals any day

[sage lark]

highly suggest looking at that playlist and atleast watching the recap videos from HiddenXperia for the original 3 marathon games and then maybe the timeline from JakeTheAlright

[olive notch]

Tysm 🙏🏻

[obtuse canyon]

If you’re feeling plucky go watch Emms’s 3 1.5 hour videos on it lol

[broken zinc]

In the original marathon, the marathon ship, seen above tay ceti iv, had an ai go rampant(crazy) and hailed some aliens to come and destroy the ship so it (the ai) could escape. The ensuing chaos caused the marathon to collapse, despite the work of thr protag, and a distress signal was sent to earth. The problem is, it took almost 100 years to get to earth.

This new game is the response of earth/humanity of the future finally receiving the message from the past. Companies that had invested in the original marathon, send mercs called runners to understand what happened and to recooperate lost assets. You, the player, are contracted to do just that, because sending human consciousness-controlled runner bodies is safer than having humanity be killed.

What we find will explain what exactly happened on tau ceti iv, which is potentially different from what we know from marathon 2 and infinity.

[obtuse canyon]

I mean that’s pretty much what I said

[mossy parrot]

Emms videos are gold

[broken zinc]

I'm not refuting you lol 😆

We're both right, comrade

[obtuse canyon]

I’ve only watched one, should go watch the other two

[olive notch]

That, is sooo well explained

Thanks everyoneeee

🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

But all the Pfhor disappeared since these 100 y ?

[broken zinc]

You're welcome! It's honestly dumb how much this game and series has grabbed me by the balls with its narrative and style. It's not fair. I was living a normal life

[olive notch]

🤣

I’ve played the first marathon game Already

Not a big fan of it

Cause that is an old game

But i’ve seen that the more is way too deep for me

[broken zinc]

I was all like "thanks bungie but I'm done with destiny 2, I'm never playing again!!" And they were all "but marton?? Ehhh???" And thats been my background thoughts since the alpha

[olive notch]

Am pretty lucky cause now that I wanna play the game, I only have to wait

Like

20 days ?

😭

[obtuse canyon]

(This is completely unrelated but I went to step outside and there’s a turkey on my front porch mogging me)

[sage lark]

12 till playtest

or sorry server slam

[olive notch]

YESSS

Need to log somewhere to access the server Slam ?

Or it is open to everyone

[sage lark]

no it will be free for everyone for 4-5 days

[broken zinc]

I don't think so, there will probably be a download on your platform for it

[obtuse canyon]

It’s on Xbox, ps, and steam I believe

[broken zinc]

No need to do the /playtest rush

[olive notch]

Yes it is

[strong perch]

its a moniturkey

watch your moves

[turbid nebula]

Rampancy does not mean crazy

[obtuse canyon]

I don’t know that I’m allowed to post a picture here but he is absolutely monitoring me

[strong perch]

rampancy is a human term for AIs stepping out of line

[olive notch]

He just simplified to me

[sage lark]

Well theres stages to it

[turbid nebula]

It isn't a good simplification, is the point

[obtuse canyon]

Durandal was funny cause he was like “yeah bro I’m insane what about it”

[strong perch]

its more like human v bugs/gods v humans.
like Tycho getting mad at Durandal is completely justified, but humans would just call it rampancy and try to shut them down

[broken zinc]

It was a single laymans term so i didn't have to explain it super in depth

[turbid nebula]

I find it interesting everything in universe is using the old Marathon logo.

[broken zinc]

I know rampancy=/= crazy but it is an easy term to make people understand

[strong perch]

i mean thats the “marathons” logo

the ship

the mission

[broken zinc]

What's interesting is the old logo was not the image of the ship against tau ceti iv. The old ship looked like a potato

They just were very clever now to make it that

[strong perch]

its it’s like cyber psychos, some of them just go crazy

out of their will

sorta like durandal

he wanted an escape tried to signal for a ship, and that ship brought the end to everything and he just went with it

[tranquil basin]

Mmm potato

[strong perch]

“the blade that severed humanity”

[obtuse canyon]

Escape will make him god

[broken zinc]

Quite certain rampancy is in the ai's will. It's them discovering free will, and the stages thereof. They just happen to have the side effect of acting irregularly and violently

[strong perch]

and he took that as a good thing, as a god-thing

the other AIs leela and tycho were completely justified getting furious, moreso tycho, but still

[obtuse canyon]

Tycho took durandal’s existence personally

[strong perch]

tycho hates that durandal destroyed the mission completely on his own accord

he couldve waited, like a real god, for a ship to steal when everyones settled on tau

but i presume bc of his rampancy he was scared of being shut down

human trait: fear

not so god like, you stupid sword

[obtuse canyon]

Tycho also nearly ganked Durandal

[strong perch]

“I confess that I'm not disappointed by Tycho's fall. After all, we can't have too many meta-stable personality constructs” yeah and durandal was pissing on his grave

such a shit head

[tranquil basin]

I will not accept durandal slander

[thin dust]

Acknowledgement and strategy with risk is not fear

It is chance of ESCAPE

[obtuse canyon]

I think Durandal would proudly mantle that title

[small cobalt]

Hey, do we know who voiced this doctor Val Cole from recent video???

His accent is THICC

[obtuse canyon]

Sounded like it may be Rich Keeble? I’ll relisten

[hearty edge]

I got your back

[tranquil basin]

Hell yeah

[obtuse canyon]

Yeah I’m unsure but it may be monoco

Err, rich keeble

[hearty edge]

😂

Durandal becomes like overall a good dude in the end though right?

[obtuse canyon]

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[sage lark]

id describe him as chaotic neutral

[obtuse canyon]

I can dig that yeah

[sage lark]

mostly doing everything for himself

[hearty edge]

What’s he even doin in the end? Like did he fast travel to mars to check on em and then bloop his way back to tau ceti a hundred years later?

Cause he’s just floating around bein a god yeah?

[sage lark]

in like year 12000 something he comes to sol to show himself to people so they dont forget about him

[keen slate]

his goal is preparation for the heat death of the universe

[sage lark]

and show off his sick ass jarro ship

[hearty edge]

My thought was like he just runs into the beginning or end of time depending on which way he goes. Stuck in a loop 🔁

So the end is a heat death?

That makes sense too cause like God will not Flood the Earth again

[sage lark]

he wants to escape time and space so he becomes a god

doesnt want to die basically

and the heat death of the universe is the thing stopping him

[hearty edge]

Right 🤔 Yeah God doesn’t use a flood this time he uses fire :/ I do my best to speak with Grok and get him to accept Christ cause that’s the only way but idk if machines have souls

[meager surge]

talking heat death - there were a bunch of heat events during yesterdays game play

Like environmental hazards or some such that hit

[hearty edge]

Only problem is there’s already an alpha and omega lol

[half briar]

DUDE I just had a sick idea
So in titanfall 2 you can watch 'briefings' for each titan that give you an overview of it's abilites and playstyle and these are actually in universe videos by corporations to sell the titans to militaries: SO what if Marathon had little briefing/stylized commercials you could watch for each shell to know what it does?

[keen slate]

not that kind, heat-death as in the end result of entropy--it is the heat, or energy, which dies

energy tends to distribute from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration, the heat-death of the universe is when all energy, ergo all mass as well because mass and energy are equivalent, is equally distributed across the universe

[tranquil basin]

That’d be cool af

Durandal specifically calculated the universe would collapse, which was written before the discovery that the universes expansion is accelerating, so it’s now either heat death or the big rip

[tranquil basin]

A lot of ppl say they think he already transcended but i disagree

[hearty edge]

The Flood and coming fire do seem to be isolated to Earth 🤔 Perhaps an AI can escape Earth out into the Ether and avoid Armageddon 🤷‍♂️

The rest of the Bible is yet to be written after The City of Heaven descends on Earth for 1000 years.. hard to say where that ship sails next 👀

So like theoretically, If say Jesus Christ returns in 2030 then Heaven will leave around 3030 and we enter the “Marathon Age” in the verses of the Bible that have yet to be written…

Very interesting

[tranquil basin]

Can they add that motor cycle chase to the Bible like in red vs blue

[hearty edge]

Can you link it

[upbeat jackal]

Do note, the closure of the universe was already depicted in Infinity

[sage lark]

workncacnter

and trizheem shooting

[tranquil basin]

Yeah i wonder if they’ll retcon it or just say that acceleration stopped

[hearty edge]

You guys wanna know something crazy?

In the Bible… when it talks about the Antichrist. The Antichrist is an image of someone that’s brought to life that takes over the world

An image brought to life that takes over the world…

An image of a man, who had a head wound that he survived miraculously…

And the maker who makes the image, and brings this image to life that takes over… can bring fire down from the sky… and bring images to life…

And it is that a picture comes to life and takes over the world and that’s the “antichrist”

[wheat eagle]

Put down the green brother

[tranquil basin]

Like Harold and the purple crayon?

[keen slate]

i know bungie loves their biblical and mythological references but this seems far-fetched

[plucky sierra]

Bungie tends to reference a lot of various mythologies so while it is fun to draw connections to where they referenced them from I doubt reading deep into them will provide any insight into the Marathon story

[tranquil basin]

Here they seem to be doing mainly Greek and Egyptian references

[plucky sierra]

there are references to a ton of mythologies

[tranquil basin]

Yes

In the ogs i mean it mainly seems to be those two

And with the addition of Ozymandias

[plucky sierra]

there are also european mythologies frequently mentioned

Durandal is french and Beowulf is also referenced

[tranquil basin]

Oh yeah u right

[keen slate]

when will we get the reveal of the uesc ys

[obtuse canyon]

I think the ozymandius quote may be referencing one of two things
A) humanities expansion efforts
B) Durandal

“Look upon my works ye mighty and despair” in the middle of a sandblasted wasteland

[keen slate]

the use of ozymandius absolutely refers to the abandoned remains of the marathon and the human colony on tau ceti--massive monuments that only represent what once was there

[obtuse canyon]

I figured so, was just trying to think of more esoteric uses they could be shooting for even if I’m almost certainly wrong lol

[sage lark]

Is it agreed upon that it was Durandal saying it?

[obtuse canyon]

I think that’s the general interpretation

[sage lark]

I imagined him with a voice like that so I hope so

[obtuse canyon]

And Tycho sounding perpetually pissed off

[meager surge]

Yeah that's definitely an odd take on references to the antichrist in the bible - and I 'm not even a believer

[vocal fjord]

Man Marathon megacorps are so much cooler than real life megacorps

What's a guy gotta do to replace Nestle with NuCaloric around here

[strong perch]

like the gravemind, good for his own reason.

youre fighting his issues after all

i love the gravemind, but i would not want to be part of the flood

also i was thinking ab the faces, the green yellow and blue, simple fact is yellow and blue make green, maybe they are just tricks durandal will play

[hearty edge]

Lmao exactly! 😂 Except i think it sounds more like just an AI image taking over the world to me lol

[hearty edge]

Not a fan of tentacles? Lol, I just noticed too we have the green marathon symbol but not yellow and blue 🤔

Makes me wonder if marathon will have sequels, or just be continually updated. But infinity is white and this one should be blue so idk.

Did the sequels ever correlate with an AI as well and one is white?

[sage lark]

Thoth

Is white

Atleast i think thats the name of it

Its the AI Durandal merged with

[visual lynx]

the box art for the classics had the logo in blue, yellow/orange/gold, and silver/grey/white (not sure how best to characterize the latter two)

[tardy meteor]

do nukes exist in marathon’s lore?

[visual lynx]

yes, the colony spaceport was nuked in the initial attack and in the M2 timeline the whole colony was nuked to bedrock three months later

[tardy meteor]

haven’t seen it in any lore vid yet

oh what

ok thanks, just keep seeing destroyed/attacked/bombed

was wondering with what

[obtuse canyon]

Durandal liked dropping asteroids on people too iirc

[strong perch]

maybe theyll merge a blue and yellow ai during this season or something and it itll create a false durandal, for true durandal to return in a “godly” rage

[turbid nebula]

unless we're talking about light instead of pigments, in which case it would make white

[tranquil basin]

I don’t think the jjaro or spht had Caucasian equivalent

[ember narwhal]

We obviously met the s’pht at a very Chinese time in their life

[eternal knoll]

so that’s not deimos the
marathon is jammed thru in this game? it’s one of tau ceti’s moons? it’s true it doesn’t look like deimos. kinda weird tho. i figured the idea was the logo looks like that to represent the ship, but the ship only came to resemble the logo much later?

the ship’s made out of a moon and also, separately, it’s been jammed thru another moon? boggling

what did the colonists have that was powerful enough to do that to a moon…?

[ember narwhal]

It’s definitely still Demios right? Didn’t the most recent gameplay vid that came out yesterday have a “free demios” text flash or something?

I can’t imagine them changing THAT much of the foundation of the story

[eternal knoll]

ye. it feels like it oughta be deimos… i guess we can take the artistic liberty that deimos is a perfectly round moon

[ember narwhal]

I’m not an astronomer or astrophysicist, but maybe moving it through space at high speeds would….smooth it over or something? lol

Or maybe they even engineered the entire outside somehow

[eternal knoll]

heh. both seem pretty unlikely but whatever

[ember narwhal]

Yeah I mean I guess that’s the thing with sci fi right? They gotta make an interesting mix of more likely and less likely

[eternal knoll]

the sky as seen from the surface in this game is pure wacky mode, clearly we arent goin for total hard sci fi

[ember narwhal]

Yeah, I mean space is weird, and there’s some hard sci fi that has us discovering new laws of physics as we move closer or further from the galactic core. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Not saying that’s what’s happening here, just that I think there’s plenty of wiggle room

[eternal knoll]

if i were choosing a planet to colonize i’d probably avoid the one seemingly jammed up extremely close to a bunch of other planetary bodies, that’s gotta be hell for tidal forces and geomagnetics and such

[ember narwhal]

100% lmao

[eternal knoll]

the colony’s not on a moon of tau ceti iv, right?

[ember narwhal]

Supposed to be the planet

[tranquil basin]

OO I AM I AM

[eternal knoll]

that planet filling up half the sky wigs me out

[tranquil basin]

It is still Deimos. They just had a redesign, it used to be v round but in numarathon they added the big long thing

[eternal knoll]

seein the ship so clearly from down there also makes it look massively bigger than it should be. but whatever it’s fun and cool