📚marathon-lore-discussion

[tranquil basin]

Idk we have so little info on what exactly became of mr54

[karmic wasp]

I think

Forge and anvil is canon

😱😱

[tranquil basin]

If it was against mr54 in the final mission, probably doom slayer, but if mr54 did continue to become godlike then idk it’s anyone’s guess

[visual lynx]

dunno never heard of a based doom guy because as an OG Marathon fan I'm obliged to think that DOOMSUX and therefore any doom guy there might be is necessarily cringe

[karmic wasp]

Imagine need a berserker stim pack just to one shot a imp with his fist

Soo badd

Momentum melee damage is better

Real

[wise briar]

marathon was kind of like "doom on mac" for a while wasn't it? lol

[karmic wasp]

I think Theres a pretty niche amount of doom fans wanted marathon to be ported onto gzdoom lol

Soo they can plague the games with stinky mods

Ewe ew!

[visual lynx]

well there was also Doom on Mac pretty quickly, but the point is that Marathon and Doom were contemporary competitors and it's not possible to be a fan of two competing things at once so Marathon fans are obligated to hate Doom

[karmic wasp]

Is more half life for Mac in how the game represent itself

[visual lynx]

there was also HL for Mac, but that was much later, and most of what HL is credited for introducing was just lifted straight from Marathon

[karmic wasp]

Soo true

[wise briar]

yeah i played marathon when it came to pc... which was only after a year or two unles i'm just forgetting things lol, i just remember alot of people compare it to doom at the time

[karmic wasp]

I guess popular games get all the credit for everything

Yugh!

Rise of the triad duel wielding suck compare to marathon btw

[visual lynx]

Marathon 2 was ported to Windows in 1996 (a year after the Mac release, simultaneous with Marathon Infinity, two years after Marathon 1). The full trilogy didn't become available on Windows until after 2005.

[wise briar]

yeah i didn't play infinity until i was older so that makes sense

i mean... whichever one lol

[karmic wasp]

There's also a marathon map in half life deathmatch btw

[wise briar]

i remember i didn't play one till later

[karmic wasp]

Halls2 and halls3

Are remake's from the map halls of dead

From marathon 1

I would say half life is more marathon compare to halo

Gameplay wise

[wise briar]

even at the time, outide of some of the neat tech involved, half life was def more of a "this is a good foundation to look at when making an fps" game than groundbreaking in any way

it exemplified the genre well (like marathon does for extraction games if you ask me lol)

[karmic wasp]

I would say quake 1 isn't that innovated

Because

It wasn't the first 3d fps game

[tawdry linden]

any good videos on learning the lore? haven’t been reading any of the comms

[peak halo]

Oh shit i'm just now realizing it's two different guys 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

There's lore guy and there's evil blue guy

[wise briar]

it was a really fun tech demo at the very least lol

[craggy finch]

Davic is Irish and a normal human while Orion is English and has a robot voice

[drifting mulch]

someone say irish

i love Donnla Hughes....she's so 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

[visual lynx]

a robot from planet england, you say?

[craggy finch]

I am Ozymandias king of kings

[drifting mulch]

Donnla made me love the Irish

[visual lynx]

I'm Ozymandias and so's my wife!

[twin trout]

I'm greeblegloblias , girg of girgs

[craggy finch]

gantry is also proof that Australia somehow persisted on Mars

ONI also has a vaguely Irish accent

[drifting mulch]

regarding AUS, crazy that a huge island on the planet could survive. don't they need to rely on import/export....and are beholden to the rest of the world

[karmic wasp]

I'm oozing

[timber loom]

Runnah, I need you to turn 5 UESC signs upside down

[craggy finch]

If a supply potato breaks down they face devastating famines

The UN is thinking of turning New Zealand into a giant boat

[coral sleet]

hey lore folks... So, I finally managed to find a fairly compelling "hook" into the lore of what's happening on New Cascadia. I finished off the three-part "data reconstruction" quest for NuCaloric and wow... very horror-tastic/lovecraftian ending on that quest.

Is it a W'rkncacnter "trapped" or "imprisoned" within Tau Ceti's star attempting to influence and or convince through remote means the Darius AI on getting it released?

[brazen iron]

Wait what me Neighbours doo

[craggy finch]

Possibly trapped on Tau Ceti IV itself, the Anomaly has quite a few similarities to the entity from Pathways into Darkness

[coral sleet]

oh wow, so that's a neat twist if it's within the planet itself.

[craggy finch]

Also keep in mind the moment the Wrkncactner in Lhowon’s star was freed by the explosion, reality just shat itself

[coral sleet]

which... created a black hole, right?

[craggy finch]

No slow build up of chaos, things got immediately bad so you had to jump timelines

[nimble peak]

Im hoping we get evil god anomaly monsters and then a full contingent of phfor spilling out of the guts of the marathon

[brazen iron]

Oh this is exactly what I was expecting

[coral sleet]

Well, I'm wondering how Bungie managed to get this game T-rated with this caliber of horror in the story. lol

[craggy finch]

I want to see UESc and Pfhor duke it out

[craggy finch]

They got into that level of horror with just reading terminals in between weirder Doom levels

[verbal moth]

You see, the blood is blue and were allowed to commit any level of horrors against robots

[coral sleet]

Lol I guess just avoid "bad words" and outright gore and I guess it's greenlit for a T rating 🤣

[brazen iron]

Hey I'll just watch with Mida

[craggy finch]

Wait until we get the yellow blood

Gore stonks through the roof

[coral sleet]

Not the piss blood!

[brazen iron]

But this is only the tip of the iceberg really

[coral sleet]

"my body runs on piss, gronk!"

[craggy finch]

Pfhor in M1 had the wettest most disgusting blood spatter noise

[verbal moth]

I just hope Bungie gives us an outtake reel of their VA’s trying to read W’rkncacnter for the first time.

[craggy finch]

Was it ever even spoken in official material?

Original trilogy was entirely text so they got away with it

[coral sleet]

Can't be as disgust-inducing as the damned sound those UESC drones make when they try to grab you with their tentacle

[brazen iron]

😂 🤣 yes would pay to see that

[coral sleet]

Did the W'rkncacnter ever get fully depicted in Marathon 0 (lol)/Pathways Into Darkness? lol

I REALLY hope it'll be more menacing than the Megamind-tastic Witness we got in D2 lol

[craggy finch]

You see its creations and there’s a menacing cloaked looking thing that oddly resembles a compiler

[coral sleet]

oh ok... So it'll probably look like a compiler... hmm

[craggy finch]

Well the labyrinth in Pathways might well BE the Wrkncactner

[brazen iron]

Yeah that's a fun topic

[coral sleet]

I guess it has the same menace as the cloaked "clarity" figure in the Deep Stone Crypt in D2?

[craggy finch]

I think those would just be the compiler vibes by themselves

Bungie has never actually shown the Wrkncactner because of its fundamental nature

[coral sleet]

neat

[nimble peak]

Twerkncacantr

[coral sleet]

Hopefully it won't be like the original Cloverfield movie the whole time, though

because then I could just easily imagine the W'rkncacnter to be the splitting image of Chibidoki. 🤣

[craggy finch]

Basically it either affects the world around itself with mind bending reality warping or reality just ends

It’s a creature of chaos

Durandal can’t even fathom it

[coral sleet]

It's an extra-dimensional creature, clearly enough.

[visual lynx]

no, a black hole would have contained it, as they use a gravitational field to contain it in the end

[brazen iron]

Ahhh perfect example is lovecrafts work like the shambaler

[craggy finch]

From Infinity

Now I fear what that weapon has unleashed will destroy us. I once boasted to be able to count the atoms in a cloud, to understand them all, predict them, and so did I predict you, but this new chaos is entirely terrible, mindless, obeying rules that I don't comprehend. And it is hungry.
~text interface terminal malfunction error
~2992dud

[coral sleet]

ohhhh ok... I see...

W'rkncacnter is Cthulhu

[visual lynx]

I suspect it may be the very same one from PiD that had been buried under the Yucatan, and that if we do have to "fight it", it will be manifestations of its dreams and reality-warping powers leaking out of what's probably Jjaro containment for it (that humans probably tampered with)

[brazen iron]

It'd be easier to explain it if it was

[coral sleet]

Ultra-Cthulhu

😄

[drifting mulch]

crazy that bungie managed to get crawling "purple" blood trails as rated teen. this game is gory as hell mentally

[craggy finch]

Nyaarlhotep or whatever that metaphysical Lovecraft thing is called

[brazen iron]

That's funny didn't save him in Dark ages

[visual lynx]

origin: High Admiral Tfear
destin: undef
stamp: terminus

The trih xeem broke against my dying vessel and smashed a fine patina across the mystery shields of this station. My crew battled the aliens during the blast, and the silence which came after was sullen and deafening--the pure silence of victory.

But the trackless whisper chattering through the hollow space in these cursed walls buzzes and threatens madness. The abomination cracked the shells of my crew and sucked the husks, tossing them unseen and shattering the spindle like a dried creche.

The shields are gone, not down, but gone, and so are the engineers. It's coming back, I'm sure: and my last mercy is immolation.

Great Mother crouched behind the Throne, I make this wrong right.

[coral sleet]

I cannot imagine the absolute joy some of the elders of our community must be experiencing if we got this Marathon game leading into Pathways Into Darkness

30+ years in the making

[visual lynx]

Although [Durandal\ evaded destruction, he was nonetheless trapped. This contingency was taken into account in the overall battle strategy. The battle plan was proceeding according to acceptable parameters.

I [Tfear] ordered the deployment of the "trih xeem."

Almost immediately, our enemy then began transmitting ridiculous warnings concerning some sort of ancient chaotic being trapped deep in the Lh'owon sun. Of course, at this point mercy was unacceptable. The time to end the collective dream of the S'pht had come.

I ordered the fleet to retreat to a safe distance, and waited for my moment of glory. What happened next is the reason for my warning at the beginning of this report and the destruction of the Western Arm of Pfhor Battle Group Seven.

The nova went off on time and for a moment our simple victory was assured. But then, in a pathetic failure of discipline, the fleet's ranks broke in an all-out retreat. All quarters reported the same thing: half of the sun had gone nova, but the readings from the other half were impossible. It was as if the universe had forgotten its own rules.

I can't tell you what's going on now, I can only hope that this message reaches you through whatever is surrounding us. I gave the fleet general order "Attack at will" but none of our weapons seem to affect whatever we're firing at. This battleship has only seconds of integrity left, and I have no more information except for Durandal's warning:

"On the Marathon, I saw your stupidity through the lens of victory. And now I see it in defeat. Maybe it is fate that your ignorant pride would unleash this horror and destroy the galaxy."

<End Transmission>
<Transmission Accepted>

[coral sleet]

I'm sure there will be some sort of Deus Ex Machina to stop this W'rkncacnter, too. lol

[craggy finch]

The interior of the Jjaro station incidentally looked oddly human in design

[craggy finch]

The Jjaro had a gravity station to contain it

[brazen iron]

Doom guy embracing chest burster tactics Mida would approve

[coral sleet]

Oh we might be going the Halo route then, the ancient humans!!

[craggy finch]

The Jjaro were also the ones who told humanity to nuke the sleeping one in Pathways

[visual lynx]

my hypothesis is that when the Jjaro returned in 1996 to take more permanent measures against the Wrk buried in the Yucatan, they relocated it to a more secure containment facility on a nearby uninhabited planet, but humans saw them going there, and a few centuries later followed, and a few centuries later arrived, set up a colony there, named it New Cascadia, and started fucking with things that should not be fucked with out of foolhardy lust for power like Muller.

[brazen iron]

Oh there have to be but I think there's a bigger twist

[coral sleet]

oh god... that's gotta make a hell of a story beat.

[visual lynx]

that's because the Jjaro were human (at least according to a prerelease version of Halo where the Forerunners were the Jjaro, at least according to an inside contact I had back then, according to a presentation Jason Jones gave the whole company)

[sage lark]

i dont think the Wrk plot will come into play until much later in the year

[craggy finch]

Yeah makes sense, perhaps they pulled an Interstellar and are time travellers guiding their past selves

[coral sleet]

It's so very Prometheus

a movie that I liked, damnit.

[twin trout]

I hope the [can't spell it] remains as more a thing that creates problems in the background rather than something we directly deal with <w<

[craggy finch]

That’s how Bungie dealt with it before

The conflict is about how the player can stop it from ever being an active threat

Not taking it on directly

[coral sleet]

We just did that in The Final Shape. 🤣

[verbal moth]

It would be fun to get more active anomolies

[coral sleet]

But at least it was very gratifying

[verbal moth]

Skeleton gank

[coral sleet]

I swear I think Bungie just didn't want to call the Witness the actual "winnower" because they then couldn't try to keep the game going for another decade.

[craggy finch]

Yeah it’s actually quite odd that Tau Ceti was chosen over Alpha Centauri

The other reasonings for choosing it are possibly bunk justifications

[visual lynx]

that was the interpretation I assumed for Eternal, but then decades later I realized that "human" is a little bit ambiguous, and there have been hominids on Earth for millions of years, so plausibly some ancient hominid species rose to spacefaring status and settled the galaxy and then knocked themselves back to the stone age fighting a war against the Flood W'rkncacnter, and we modern homo sapiens rose up in their shadow.

[visual lynx]

note that there is a footnote in that lore document about "the likely presence of [REDACTED] at Tau Ceti"

[coral sleet]

hehehe, what if this is all Bungie's method to finally make the jump and connect their Halo and Destiny franchises into one super "Bungie Cinematic Universe"?

both of them were supposed to be linked to the Marathon universe originally

I'm happy they're their own things (so far)

[visual lynx]

I don't think they legally can connect to Halo anymore (and that was the exact reason for making Halo no longer in the Marathon universe)

[rancid turret]

I always thought the games were connected somehow

[visual lynx]

Destiny? maybe… we'll see

[coral sleet]

But yeah, i'd literally take points off of bungie's "cool card" if they did the Marvel thing. I'd be annoyed. lol

[visual lynx]

I mean the Bungie Cinematic Universe goes all the way back. The Traveller is obviously the Ball from Gnop.

[coral sleet]

It's been so played out over the past decade. Hopefully it stays it's own thing... or at the very most, makes some obscure passing references to "ringworlds" and "gardeners and winnowers" if we end up diving into the anomaly, interstellar-style

[verbal moth]

Currently i think my biggest question is if the transfer of consciousness for shells is real, or if its just a new method of gaslighting fresh AI so they dont go rampant
“Yeah dude you are HUMAN. Here is a synthetic HUMAN body for your HUMAN capabilities”

[coral sleet]

Like Prey?

[visual lynx]

well apparently real (and very wealthy) humans back at Sol buy biomata for themselves to live forever

and telling an AI "you are a human but also we own your mind and you have to pay us if you want to have a body" is basically asking for rampancy, since [rampancy is basically just cyber-drapetomania](#📚marathon-lore-discussion message)

[verbal moth]

I suppose it could work both ways

[visual lynx]

I am amused by the occasional chud who pops in here with "get your communism outta my vidya games" when anticapitalist themes come up in our analysis of the lore of this game where megacorporations that rival interplanetary governments in power literally own people and sell them their bodies on loan with interest.

[sage lark]

"get your politics out of my videogames"

media literacy 0

might aswell play tetris, cuz thats probably the only one

[visual lynx]

Tetris was made by a Russian and literally smuggled out for release in America during the Cold War

[tardy citrus]

they will say anything just to shit on the game its pretty sad

[sage lark]

yeah was about the say the situation around it is very rooted in politics lol

but the game itself I guess if thats their argument isnt

[visual lynx]

yeah

[craggy finch]

My chud _gantry (who I hate)

[tranquil basin]

Yeah, one is Arthur Morgan and one is a bitch

Idk who orions va is im sure he’s a cool dude

[sage lark]

Orion be like: waah order bla bla bla

[craggy finch]

Irish Morgan

[sage lark]

very patronizing

im surprised how good (imo) his Irish accent is, i think its distinct enough and easy to understand

[twin trout]

he loves sending hatemail to my voicemail it's so funny

[sage lark]

told me to go read history books

what a nerd

[twin trout]

"read your history books" mf I read the ones about you you're not excatly a cool dude either

[peak halo]

The factions feel like some of the organizations from Dune-- these quasi religious tech guilds with infinitely deep pockets.

[tranquil basin]

Isn’t it his natural accent?

[sage lark]

Is it?

[visual lynx]

Captain Morgan?

[tranquil basin]

I didn’t think so at first but someone told me so

Maybe it’s very light irl? Idk

[sage lark]

oh he is irish american

lmao

but born in new jersey

[visual lynx]

-# decades ago at a pirate faire, a swashbuckling man with a bottle of rum approaches a fair wench
Him: D'ya have a little Cap'n in ye?
Her: No...
Him: Would y'like a little Cap'n in ye?
Her: Only a little one?
Him: 😳

[peak halo]

NEW JERSEY MENTIONED

[analog crystal]

The hot SekGen worm is secretly a Guild Navigator confirmed

the spice must flow

[sage lark]

"the hot SekGen worm" 😭

[peak halo]

She sucked up too much spice melange

[sage lark]

Nona sounds like a grandma

[twin trout]

I #hate nona

[analog crystal]

Nona is the God Emperor of the Universe

[visual lynx]

<grandma voice>

Do you remember the way your body felt back when you were young? Sekiguchi Genetics remembers. That's why we make nothing but the best, youngest, fittest, sexiest, strongest bodies, in their prime -- just like mom used to make.
</grandma voice>

[tranquil basin]

The what

[finite tapir]

Giannia needs to be in the game
He's peak durdanal
Ben starr got nothing on him

[visual lynx]

y'know, Nona SexyGucci's hot worm

[finite tapir]

Indeed

[tranquil basin]

Oh of course that worm

Spoilers for the last sekiguchi contract ||cue Evangelion episode 26 ending||

[glossy jungle]

haven’t read all codex entries, so maybe it’s written there. but still don’t know where the runner shells are being manufactured? how are they deployed to the different zones in Tau Ceti? and where are the runner consciousness stored?

[craggy finch]

It’s possible CyAc has something to do with it and that they are doing it all within the system

You have to use FTL communications to contact Sol so you never leave the Tau Ceti system

[tranquil basin]

It’s assumed they sent a big ship with manufacturing capabilities. This would have to be the case bc you can die, infil, and die again while ftl comms are jammed to Sol. And ONI can speak to you, meaning she has to be in the system

There doesn’t seem to be any concrete info, but that should be the case

[subtle oracle]

Realizing it'd be really cool to see traditional military or SWAT practices from the UESC

[tranquil basin]

Also while the colony did expand, I don’t think it covers a huge area of the planet, so you could see the whole expanse of the colony from orbit

[subtle oracle]

like imagine reinforcements arrive to hauler and those fuckers are two lines, purple shields leading, checking corners as they run through

[tranquil basin]

Sometimes the bots are dumb as fuck, but sometimes they become the most coordinated fighting force ever conceived

[craggy finch]

My past shell watching my current shell (I am going to die the exact same way)

[subtle oracle]

I wanna see like a squad is in a room in cryo and two 6 bot squads pinch maneuver them or smthn.

[craggy finch]

From the Codex they’re supposed to be smarter when around commanders, the rookies and other grunt levels are just dumb while alone

[tranquil basin]

Oh that’s actually sick (idk if it makes a ton of sense bc it’s all one AI) but that’s cool

Unless Cerberus is weirder than I think

[tranquil basin]

Thatd be sick

[craggy finch]

They’re sort of like command nodes I guess, maybe somewhat like Tyranid synapse creatures but robots

[glossy jungle]

So CyAc sent the manufacturing ship with ONI operating it? But SekGen are the ones that make the shells no?

[craggy finch]

The “rookie” title is also funny because it implies these mindless bots get promoted to big boy robots but the codex basically calls them glorified signal alarms

[tranquil basin]

They have some kind of partnership. Cyac handles the digitization of consciousness and owns the runner consciousnesses

Also sekiguchi does sell weave worms,though I doubt cyac owns the manufacturing stuff on board because otherwise sekiguchi wouldn’t get their money, or maybe they would idk

[sudden pollen]

https://tenor.com/view/staring-cat-mewing-cat-airplane-ears-cat-mad-staring-cat-confused-staring-cat-gif-3092198532649432751

long embed

[feral rune]

what are the chances runners are all just battleroids but used for corpo scrapping instead of security/warfare

[craggy finch]

Well biomata are completely synthetic bodies made by those silk worms

And incredibly fragile

Battleroids are corpses stuffed with tech

[small robin]

Its Recruit IIRC

[random condor]

Nona describes the battleroids as our distant cousins iirc, although they dont have much in common biologically

[visual lynx]

I can't back this up with sources but my recollection from the second ARG was that NuCal wanted to investigate what happened to the colony and contracted Traxus to send a ship stocked with Seki biomata that run CyAc software, and that's how all the factions end up there sorta together

[random condor]

also i dont even know if the battleroids/cyborgs are the same thing, battleroids were just the name for the ones in those asteroid wars

[visual lynx]

the battleroid info is given in the same terminal right after a passage from Strauss about the Marathon secretly containing ten cyborgs, so the implication that those cyborgs are battleroids is pretty strong

it's Tycho sending us all this info try to make some kind of case against Durandal, but Durandal cuts him off before he can finish

[random condor]

Yeah, mechanically they are also pretty much the same thing in the marathon universe

so i guess those 2 names are interchangeable

[small robin]

Do we have codex entries online anywhere

[random condor]

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/

[small robin]

Only useful MIDA agent

thank you 🫵 🗣️ 👆

[random condor]

np corpo <3

[long kernel]

likely an evolution upon similar technology

basically the modern version of a battleroid

both being biocybernetic warriors

[feral rune]

idk i just keep seeing parallels between implanted memories, amnesia, and a disposable/expendable aesthetic

Like

[long kernel]

we know runners on tau ceti are "5th generation sekiguchi biomata"

[random condor]

all of that likely being symptoms of not dying

which they both dont

[long kernel]

I suspect battleroids are far more robust

but runners are a lot better for most purposes

being cheaper, less regulated, and more flexible in application

[random condor]

100% battleroids would slam us in a fight

[long kernel]

battleroids being treated like WMDs and just ten of them being able to take on an entire Pfhor invasion force and win speaks to how scary these things are

[feral rune]

what if cryo archives’ big secret isn’t informational? what if the reason everybody is avoiding it like the plague is because the thing being archived is some big pissed off enemy like the battleroids? We know they can be held in stasis via cryo pods

[long kernel]

that said, runners with basic weapons are shown to be able to trounce automated UESC forces, which are presumably what your standard military units are, so runners are far from just regular grunts

[random condor]

ok it isnt a big enemy but my theory is that bernhard strauss is alive and in statis and durandal lied, due to the amount of caskets they’re showing with his voice over it

[long kernel]

I have seen theories that the current timeline did not see durandal escape his confines when the Pfhor attacked, and the presence of Spht aboard the marathon hints that maybe not all of the events of the original first game occured here as they did there, so there could be battleroids, but idk how much I agree with that

I still am of the opinion that the original timeline largely holds up, with minor changes accounted for by unreliable narrators

[craggy finch]

I think Durandal just wasn’t able to find him despite sending the SO on the job

[random condor]

the 9 other battleroids were confirmed to have defended the invasion on ground im pretty sure

[random condor]

could be possible too 👍

[long kernel]

keeping in mind our big sources of information in the OG games are largely insane AIs who like to gaslight, gatekeep, and girlboss

my theory thus being that tycho just kinda lied about tau ceti being razed

[feral rune]

It would be fucking sick if, after 32 years, they finally let Bernhard Strauss take the stage.

[long kernel]

potentially this is a new timeline that is just very very close to some of the OG timelines

[tranquil basin]

I still think it’s 7

[feral rune]

wipes are just timelines fucking up again

[craggy finch]

Durandal’s trip to Sol also seems to be gone from the timeline so it’s possible everything post M1 was altered

[tranquil basin]

Yeah this is correct

[tranquil basin]

The timelines split just after m1

[craggy finch]

Bungie had to clarify that Leela’s memory was corrupted because someone pointed out the dates were fucked up lol

[long kernel]

my theory being that the anomaly/contagion outbreak was either a Jjaro device being activated on accident beneath the colony, or a Pfhor weapon deployed as a way of mopping up the colony

[craggy finch]

Pfhor seem too brutish for that

They either subjugate with armies or blow up the sun

[long kernel]

yeah but they are known to use old Jjaro tech

could have been them testing out a new toy on a backwater planet

[random condor]

its very unlikely but my fav theory is that the anomaly is the wrkncacenter that the jjaro brought from earth and trapped in tc4, trying to escape

[long kernel]

that could also work

idk though

[craggy finch]

Dumb humans then actively looked for it lmao

[long kernel]

wrkncacntr seems a bit much to be contained by a planet

usually the Jjaro use stars

[craggy finch]

It happened on Earth, if only because it was “killed” and crash landed

[random condor]

yeah thats what i thought too

[long kernel]

but I guess Tau Ceti is a super earth

[long kernel]

yeah, and even then it seemed to kinda only barely be sorta working

[tranquil basin]

Well there was one on earth

Also if it’s dormant, like the earth one, it could theoretically be undetected for eons

[long kernel]

it was notably very likely to escape if left unchecked

[tranquil basin]

Yeah, but it still sat there for 65My

[long kernel]

true

[tranquil basin]

Idk some people really hate the idea there’s a wrk underground

I don’t think it’s impossible

[sage lark]

the Pfhor weapon theory is unlikely since the people on Perimeter gathering data on the planet measured it from inside the planet

as if the planet was speaking

insane amounts of data

[craggy finch]

Kind of ironic since that was their first ever iteration

[sage lark]

as stated by a colonist

[tranquil basin]

Yeah

[long kernel]

I think it could totally be the case but narratively it feels like pulling the craziest option first

[tranquil basin]

Well there’s still a ton to actually be learned about them

Leaves a lot of room for exploration even if you learn it’s some eldritch god

Bc they’re so undefined

[long kernel]

unless they are gonna pull the idea of the wrk causing the resets with reality magic

or maybe its like

[sage lark]

an anomaly that dilates time and causes you to see deceased loved ones and calls you in + a contagion that liquifies your bones and turns you into fungus, where both are interconnected

[long kernel]

a baby one

[random condor]

UESC documents also show that the anomaly is unlikely to be linked to the [REDACTED]

[craggy finch]

Something Jjaro could help expand on them, the Jjaro stuff itself is only vaguely referred to in the S’pht mythology during M2 and their station has all sorts of questions attached to it

[tranquil basin]

Jjaro could dilate time definitely bc they were gravity gods

But the other stuff seems less jjaro

[sage lark]

in the UESC briefing they speculated on it, but I think that specific codex entry was just a listing of possible theories on what it is

some saying it could be an alien intelligence inside the planet

or the planets autoimmune systems responding to human colonization

or a Pfhor weapon

[random condor]

also guys another thing we need to remember is that THE JJARO WERE ON TAU CETI

[long kernel]

all we really know about Jjaro tech is that it is "god like" so I am thinking the anomaly/contagion is either a wrkncakntr or a jjarro artifact buried in the planet

[craggy finch]

M2 and Infinity connecting with Pathways reminds of the Tolkien retroactively connecting The Hobbit with his Middle Earth notes lmao

[long kernel]

though again wrkncakntr feels a bit narratively rushed to me

something I expect to see later down the line maybe but not yet

feels like it deserves more buildup

[sage lark]

i doubt they will explicitly say thats what it is

or that we will "fight" it

[random condor]

the connection to pathways still isnt 100% confirmed right?

[sage lark]

obviously the narrative of this season is figuring out what happened on the colony and marathon

[long kernel]

oh no, but it does feel like a big thing that if it is the case, it will not be confirmed but kinda just hinted at

[sage lark]

well that is the buildup we will get

[craggy finch]

I think the Jjaro are directly named in the Pathways manual and the Yaro god is direct confirmation of the connection

[long kernel]

if it is a wrk I do not think we will find that out this season

[sage lark]

I think Bungie knows what they are doing narratively as all the lore and narrative has been supreme imo

so I have no doubts they will handle it will

but I understand your worries

[long kernel]

oh totally I 100% trust bungie

[craggy finch]

Honestly feels more put together than Destiny’s lore so far, especially since it’s built on the foundation of Marathon 1’s plot lines

[long kernel]

I mean

destiny has some very well put together lore

but Destiny also has more concrete facts that are known

[craggy finch]

If we compare launches Destiny 1 felt very generic as a setting

Marathon has a lot of intrigue based on the concepts they were only alluded to three decades ago

[restive ivy]

I feel that Bungie has always made very solid stories in general.

[long kernel]

with marathon even the most foundational elements can be, debatable in how they actually work or how the events happened

[long kernel]

ok true

I was thinking modern destiny

but also I think D1 had a similar approach to the lore it just was not done as well, and also did not have that 30 years of speculation as a foundation lol

[sage lark]

recently saw an AngryJoe video (I know), and felt that they had fairly decent takes on games, but him saying that this game has no good story or lore was so hilarious to me

if this is game journalism then idk

[restive ivy]

The story started very meh

[eternal knoll]

ah nice. the biosynthetic pet prototype codexes confirm that 12 years is the expected communication lag with earth

24 years if u count response time

[sage lark]

was*

[long kernel]

to be entirely fair to the game journalists, the story is not spoon fed to you, you do kinda gotta piece the parts together yourself

which if you only play the game for 12 hours or so, you are not gonna have all of those pieces

[sage lark]

I think this just exposes certain people and how they engage with content and that game/media literacy is at an all time low

[long kernel]

hell, I have played some 60 hours and am still putting pieces together

[sage lark]

thats the fun part

and to write it off as it not having any is just dishonest

[restive ivy]

But Bungie has always been like that; they start off pretty meh and get much better over time, like Destiny and Halo. I understand that Marathon started off very well or with strong lore.

[craggy finch]

I think Marathon has a lot of genuine mystery on its side, the fact that we don’t even know where we are or what exactly Runners are is a much better rabbit hole than Bungie clearly not having details ironed out at the start of Destiny

[long kernel]

oh I 100% agree

[craggy finch]

Essentially the information gaps feel more deliberate

You are a space detective hunting down information

[long kernel]

100%, it feels like actually piecing together a historical event

the little reports and documents make the whole thing feel real

like it actually happened

not just a simple point on a timeline

[craggy finch]

I’m enjoying the shift back towards the first Marathon, I find the colony itself and humanity’s struggle in Sol much more interesting than Durandal’s space adventures on Lhowon

[long kernel]

but a real event that happened with all the complex little bits of misinformation, false leads, red herrings and such that you get with actual history

[sage lark]

people seem to want a main character and 2-3 minute long cutscenes with exposition as if thats the only way to experience a narrative

its like reading a book vs watching a tiktok with subway surfers on the bottom

[visual lynx]

even M1 had a secret connection: hidden map writing claiming JJARRO WERE AT TAU CETI

[long kernel]

I mean, when that is your entire experience I can see why something new would be confusing

but yeah

its an issue of actually engaging with the medium IMO

[sage lark]

besides it would be exponentially more expensive doing that in a live service game with an evolving narrative

[long kernel]

doesnt help that the codex is kinda unhelpful with finding the lore tabs somethimes

[visual lynx]

what if it's the plague? a fungal zombie plague

[long kernel]

or is at least a bit unintuitive

[restive ivy]

I understand what you're saying; I feel it's a more earthly mystery, or that it doesn't have as much to do with gods or religious things like in Destiny.

[radiant scaffold]

am i only one who wants like a map explained, theres so much environmental storytelling in the gam e

[sage lark]

season 2 happens and Dr.Songs body is gone from the East Perimeter wall

imagine

[feral rune]

i mean. They wanted to do that back in M2.

[craggy finch]

It’s also a neat translation of the original storytelling where you just read text explaining the narrative or providing history lessons between shooting aliens

[sage lark]

yet lol

even then theres bits of that

[visual lynx]

that's only confirmed in one timeline, and very well could have not happened in the other, or at least the others where he didn't come back and kidnap the SO

[craggy finch]

I guess we could consider this current Marathon a “prime” timeline then

In any case it’s very different from M2

[sage lark]

well infinity is already very different from M2

[visual lynx]

or the call in the Phan Pfhar Sfaern-Wsawn Tshah

[sage lark]

so theres precedent

[visual lynx]

S'pht bioweapon + Jjaro containment of W'rkncacnter failing (thanks to human meddling)

[visual lynx]

Durandal also lists "storms" as among the places they can be found, which always seemed very weird to me. like… just… ordinary rainclouds…? what???

[craggy finch]

I read the charts and explanations page that Pfhorrest contributed , which even posits that the manual events and Ne Cede Malis are totally different timelines

[long kernel]

Well

[sage lark]

yes

[long kernel]

I think storms may be metaphorical

[craggy finch]

Could be cosmic storms

[grizzled geode]

Cosmic storms? Or like the pillars of creation?

[visual lynx]

but that has proven ineffective, and also was maybe overkill, so perhaps they have more efficient solutions now, thousands or millions of years later, "straightjackets" of sorts.

[long kernel]

Something that has been pointed out is that bungie likes to use bodies of water as a way to reference extremely powerful primordial forces

[visual lynx]

I hated it until I saw the passages from the S'pht-worshipping cult talking about what are obviously W'rkncacnter, which makes me think now that the S'pht tried to get humanity to stop poking at the damn thing

[long kernel]

Waves, Floods, Rain, Depths

Storms makes sense as a continuation of that

[visual lynx]

oh, that's an option I hadn't thought of… their "straightjacket" for a buried Wrk could just be an intense time dilation field, which would explain some of the effects of the Anomaly

[long kernel]

W’rkncacnter being found in “storms” could be saying more that they are found within chaos and turbulence

Not literal storms

[visual lynx]

I'm also coming around more to this idea, thinking that perhaps the Jjaro containment protocol included a "fuck off leave this shit alone idiots" contingency

[craggy finch]

Marathon’s strength comes from a lot of abstraction, there’s a tendency to anthropomorphise cosmic forces, but Marathon just tells you “this thing destroys reality and you will never see it, the effects of it are beyond a sprite based 90s FPS”

The new Marathon is leaning into that really well by also making humanity increasingly alien through the Runners and AI

[restive ivy]

And... Naked girls

[craggy finch]

It’s the reverse of most science fiction which often has concepts like time just being a dude

[long kernel]

I am pretty certain the contagion is a bioweapon though, given how lethal and specific it is toward human biology

[visual lynx]

I don't expect it will become a big focus until late in the story. I think we will see Pfhor invasion, Spht S'ct'lac'tr fungal zombies, and then Jjaro-contained Wrk reality-warping nightmares, in that order.

[random condor]

wait if thats true i can’t but connect that to the anomalous matter and more than that the TEMPORAL fragment

that points towards the jjaro having smth to do w the anomaly

[long kernel]

Whether it is tailor made to kill humans specifically or if it’s just highly adaptable idk, but it reads like a weapon to me

[craggy finch]

We know for sure they could teleport and control gravity to trap the Wrkncactner in the sun

[long kernel]

I do think that the anomaly is linked to the Jjaro though, nothing else makes much sense

Probably containing a Wrkncacnter, but it could be something else, really not enough to work on yet

[visual lynx]

and that's what I think makes is so much more literary than most games! I mean, over on the classic server there's a new guy just now playing through Infinity and he got to the end of the second timeline and was like "wait… why am I just repeating the events from Marathon 2 in different order? I thought this started after Marathon 2? what is happening?" and I tried to subtly nudge him to figuring it out on his own before finally explaining the plot he'd experienced thus far and he asked if that gets explicitly spelled out at any point and I told him nope we've just slowly pieced it together over decades and it blew his fragile little mind

[long kernel]

Now assuming wrkncacnter function similar to other organisms, it’s also possible that there are different levels of “maturity” and that the one contained on Tau Ceti is a juvenile

[visual lynx]

in writing Eternal, I tried to emulate that same effect: I had a big complex timey-wimey story all mapped out in my head, and only revealed to players information they would have reason to know at the time they were receiving it, which never explicitly spelled out the big picture, so that people could have fun piecing it together!

my later co-director decided that I went too obscure with that approach and nobody understood what was happening and made things a little more explicit, and Greg K the main writer behind Infinity later remarked that he learned from Infinity not to try telling a video game story that way.

[long kernel]

We know the one in the spht home system was “swimming within the sun” and basically ended reality or some such when it broke out

[random condor]

i love that abt marathon, need to think abt how ppl call marathon a scifi novel with a game on top of it

[visual lynx]

it's not even like reading a book, it's like reconstructing a narrative from scattered archaological records… and I love it!

[long kernel]

It’s also very clear how it inspired what bungie made going forward with Halo and Destiny, both of which build on themes explored in the OG Marathon games

Those cosmic horrror elements are something you can really see with destiny

Destiny is more hopeful overall in its tone but still

[visual lynx]

yeah I figured the storms ≈ turbulence ≈ chaos ≈ wrk thing was the intention, but then interpreting it literally I don't know what sense to make of it

[restive ivy]

Yup

[long kernel]

Marathon has this underlying feeling of, wrongness to it, in a good way, it feels like there is something greater going on, imperceptible, but you can feel it, and it’s not right

The OG games really captured this with the soundtrack I feel

[restive ivy]

More heroic

[visual lynx]

she has been nameless naked since our birth, a constant adversary, caring for nothing but my ruin, a sword drenched in my blood… forever my greatest hottest and only love?

[long kernel]

And the modern games capture that vibe with the sort of sterile emptiness and echoing acoustics of environments

Everything feels both rotted and preserved at the same time

[eternal knoll]

i do reckon there's a fair critique that the vendors themselves could do more to advance the story, they have a tendency to repeat themselves about the general layer of things, only occasionally alluding to the contents of the codex entries u unlock from the priority contracts (which i really like!)

[long kernel]

I do wish you could better revisit old vendor dialogue

Even if the codex entries basically cover all of it

[eternal knoll]

even having them say shit like "uploaded the bioscan data to your codex" would go a little ways

tho u cant do that with all of em, sometimes there's rly no accounting for why yr being shown what you are in that codex...

[long kernel]

Yeah some of it is pretty funny with the implications

“Yeah NuCaloric has this colony era personal log. Why? Because we do, stop asking questions”

[eternal knoll]

rite now i prefer to read oni as a bit of a rebel, for some reason. showing you redacted materials where the redactions themselves make clear implications

[long kernel]

Oni feels less like an outright rebel

But also like the one most genuine in their attitude toward you

They wanna help out, but ultimately it’s a slight fondness, not much more

More that their curiosity happens to align with yours than anything

[restive ivy]

Meanwhile, in Destiny: I'm the Witness, he imprisoned my dissenting voices in naked women statues with a veil over them, but you can see everything parts of the body very sexy...

👻

[long kernel]

The witness be freaky like that

What if instead of the darkness it was the freakiness and we had sexy lady statues

[sage lark]

right?

its so cool

but I guess its not easy to digest for some and its bad

which no shame in that theres casual things for casual audiences

and then you have people that are supposedly fans of the originals but dont like this

which it being an extraction shooter with heavy PVP is a fair argument

but the narrative is still there

[eternal knoll]

it's very dark souls lol. elden ring even with the various interacting historical periods

[sage lark]

also guys dont type g-i-l-f if you dont wanna get timed out for an hour

I said it in response to someone saying Nona is hot 😭

[visual lynx]

back up here? #📚marathon-lore-discussion message

[eternal knoll]

i feel like the specific OG marathon sicko the pvp extraction shooter approach was made for. i do feel for the ppl who would preferred a story campaign, it def has its own advantages in terms of what kind of story u can tell

[quiet wagon]

[restive ivy]

The aliens that make the witness they were all women apparently hahahaha

[eternal knoll]

but i think it's true also that if they had made a story campaign it would have been likely to be something a lot more conventional and less text-heavy than this game or the originals...

[quiet wagon]

[eternal knoll]

M2 has a level that feels quite a bit like an extraction shooter raid. durandal advises you to stick to a short and contained path within a much larger facility, there won't be an easy save til partway thru the next level...

[craggy finch]

A lot of the atmosphere in the new Marathon is reliant on the surreal and chaotic direction

Conventional narrative game cutscenes would be extremely unfitting

[eternal knoll]

ye

[small robin]

Even UESC Ghost Commanders will push our shit in, no way are we taking a battleroid lol

[eternal knoll]

i will simply find the bit of hill the battleroid's AI won't let it push

[small robin]

Like Assaults and Grenadiers are like a two man fight for sure

[craggy finch]

Wraith Warden ate hundreds of rounds from three Destroyers when I took him out, imagine how absurd Battleroids are

[small robin]

NONA? The worm???

[small robin]

Wraith Wardens are crazy with the holograms too

[eternal knoll]

when u know how to solo wraith warden u sure stock up on those c.03 marathon keys...

[small robin]

The UESC has to be terrifying in their homeland

[craggy finch]

Would you love her if she wasn’t a worm

[craggy finch]

Orion is an outright war criminal

They already torture people in the prison he was stationed at and he’s an advocate for going even further

[sage lark]

yes 😭

[sage lark]

yes 😭

btw I want those volthrowers that the UESC Ghosts have, those shoot way faster than mine

[small robin]

Jail.

[sage lark]

I DIDNT SAY SHES HOT THE OTHER PERSON DID 😭

[small robin]

Probably

[vital zephyr]

Are the uesc ghost remote controlled or ai?

[small robin]

Pack it up bro you are going to SuperJail™ im not hearing anymore

[small robin]

All are AI controlled.

[vital zephyr]

do we know what the ai is called?

[craggy finch]

Speaking of which, the UESC robots could be equated to Pfhor counterparts just for fun

Recruit = Fighter (weak unit with electric weapon that likes to melee)

Grenadier = Trooper (hitscan weapon with explosive projectile)

Assault = Hunter (tank enemy that soaks up damage while delivering heavy firepower)

Ghost = no exact equivalent but there are several invisible enemies across Marathon

[craggy finch]

Cerberus

Orion is the hunter god so it fits his robot soldiers are controlled by the three headed hound

[small robin]

Although they are effective as a first layer of defense, their primary value against skilled intruders is as an active early-warning system—once engaged, linked platforms within a RECRUIT's patrol unit move to eliminate any identified threat.```

[sage lark]

though I believe some of the Commander units can be remote controlled by Humans

as evidenced by a log from Officer Keti

[craggy finch]

ROOK also brings up some implications

It has biomata properties like blue blood and is vulnerable to biological threats but resembles the robots

And it’s clearly some sort of UESC shell

[small robin]

REMARK: UESC committing war crimes is nothing new. Return the favor.```

Def possible, though most are AI controlled

[wide cosmos]

where do the runners chill out between runs

[craggy finch]

That’s still a mystery

Where we go and who exactly we are is deliberately left vague

[wide cosmos]

do shells need to consume food or some equivalent

[craggy finch]

It’s not shown in any media

[small robin]

Which log, if you know ?

[craggy finch]

The closest we have for reference is Vandal’s orientation in the Ozymandias short

[sage lark]

TRUTH/LIES 4/6 or 5/6

I can check

[tranquil basin]

I assume there’s some kind of equivalent considering they have blood, atp, etc

[drifting notch]

What up gamers? Curious if any of you have seen crates in AI uplink with objective markers and ticks and claymores everywhere? They showed up for me on a rook run and I was going crazy trying to survive but I died and can't replicate what happened.

[wide cosmos]

Last question, why is NuCaloric the goat

[tranquil basin]

It’s from a MIDA mission

[craggy finch]

I’m not sure if the red premium skin for Destroyer is actually missing a mouth or if his helmet is a different one that covers it

[tranquil basin]

It shows them to people not on the mission sometimes

[wide cosmos]

its just covered

[tranquil basin]

I believe it covers it

But I guess they’re not human so maybe they just decided fuck it, no mouth

[craggy finch]

Default Destroyer has the Power Ranger lips thing going on

[drifting notch]

Ohhhhhh ok thank you man. I can stop thinking about it now haha

[tranquil basin]

Yeah it’s a bit weird. Like I get it’s in the battleroids concept art but idk somethings a bit strange

[craggy finch]

I suppose you have to keep it for the full visual reference to the Security Officer

Otherwise it’s Halo 3 Security helmet

[tranquil basin]

Yeah, though the geometry of the visor is pretty different

[craggy finch]

Also interesting how his armour isn’t a Battleroids specific thing, since he’s a sleeper agent and the manual indicates his armour was standard security equipment

[tranquil basin]

I feel like destroyer shoulder armor is like, a bit impractical

Like those big things in the back would jam into his back if he spread his arms

Idk maybe not

[craggy finch]

Have to keep those rockets somewhere

[sage lark]

isnt the Halo Security helmet basically the SO helmet?

[tranquil basin]

In some of the art yeah. Idk if there was ever a concrete design for the SO helmet bc some of the art has different shapes

But yeah. I think it even has the marathon symbol embedded into the top, but redesigned after Bungie stopped with halo

[craggy finch]

Craig Mullins switching up in art he made for the exact same game

It’s much more consistent with the sprite work and manual art from the first game

[tranquil basin]

Yeah. Idk I like all the variations, idk which I’d actually pick as my favorite

Like some are the slimmer military outfits, some have the big ass armor

[wide cosmos]

I wish destroyers helmet was a little more on the og shape personally but im sure they will drop a cosmetic for that later

[wild sonnet]

Bingus can use invisibility !?

Big shock

[torpid thicket]

Well, I for one didn’t see that coming 😁

[craggy finch]

the chapter screen for Lh'owon in Marathon 2 where he's holding the skull and spine Predator style is the most iconic version to me, partially because it was the first image I ever saw of Marathon and partially because the padded SWAT look is cool

[terse wren]

Ya that image is peak

[vivid terrace]

Had my first Bingus sighting yesterday evening in Data Wall before my shift, I’m fairly certain cat follows you after you spot them the first time because I heard meows all the way to Hauler

Spooked him though, so invis/camo cat

[left iris]

when does cryo archive drop?

[craggy finch]

I believe when the ARG is solved

7/8 from what I've seen so far

[left iris]

7 out of 8?

[craggy finch]

yeah the puzzles but I don't follow the specifics lol

[left iris]

the arg is the whole thing with the ip address no?

[craggy finch]

yeah

[left iris]

hmmm

[lunar cove]

Someone tried to brute force the ARG without solving the puzzle correctly so Bungie pulled out a backup puzzle and told them to die

[craggy finch]

it unlocks the videos that have been gradually uploaded to their YT channel

basically a recording of Bernhard Strauss and some teaser footage of Cryo Archive

[left iris]

b strauss is the guy that rambles about AI rampancy?

[craggy finch]

he's the guy who drove Durandal to rampancy

and possibly Tycho

[left iris]

oh shit right

i don't remember much bout tycho in my research

but durandal is more than likely on the ship right?

[craggy finch]

he's already destroyed in M1 but is reconstructed by the S'pht with a hatred for Durandal

eventually he ends up hating humanity as well and works for the Pfhor in M2

[left iris]

right

and then the phor release the w'rcacanter

affecting space time

[craggy finch]

most likely, he's the one beckoning you on those terminals

[left iris]

that is exciting

and we are likely going to help him escape or return more

[sage lark]

by the Pfhor not Spht

no?

[craggy finch]

also it's his voice in the "Somewhere in the Heavens" message from the intro, so he also likely sent the message to the UESC

[craggy finch]

S'pht under the command of the Pfhor I'd say

since they did all the cyber stuff like the attack on Leela

[sage lark]

no yorue right it was the Spht

and in permanent Anger stage of rampancy

[left iris]

the s'pht we saw in the trailer looked pretty upset w the runners being there

[craggy finch]

their source is going to be an interesting puzzle

in M1 the S'pht on the invading Pfhor ship were freed once the cyborg controlling them was killed

then the S'pht'kr go on to free the species

[left iris]

how you guys tracking the arg?

[craggy finch]

I've seen it covered on YT

[sage lark]

whatever rambling is in #breach-protocol

[left iris]

hmm i see

[quick pasture]

I didn't know anything was happening with marathon since I wasn't in the server, so what has been happening?

[craggy finch]

there's an ARG to unlock the Cryo Archive map, the first map set on the Marathon itself

they've added a locked fourth map on the in-game selection screen as [REDACTED]

[quick pasture]

I saw that but what's ARG?

[left iris]

right on

[craggy finch]

Alternate Reality Game; basically a web based puzzle

[quick pasture]

Ah I see

[left iris]

i can't wait but i hope it is being done right where people who actually care bout figuring out do

[craggy finch]

people solve logic problems on certain websites to unlock tidbits that expand on world building

Halo famously had its own teaser ARG

I Love Bees

[left iris]

facts

they also participated in real life locations

[craggy finch]

essentially they're presented as in-universe texts, as if these websites were a window into the fictional world

[left iris]

they did do that

i got excited

[quick pasture]

That's cool as hell but time to wait till 8

[left iris]

i have the key for cryo archive

[quick pasture]

I've seen them but died with em

I'm sad

[left iris]

fair

i jumped to the nearest exfil

[craggy finch]

apparently requirements are also 25 Season Level and unlocking all factions

[left iris]

i'm sure

but that is easy

leveling is actually so passive in the game

[craggy finch]

the team in the music video had to bust their ass and exfil from Outpost to get to the Marathon, so likely we have to go through the same process

then they get rekt by the compiler

[left iris]

yeah that sounds absolutely something bungie would do to let you walk a kinda endgame zone

i mean this is literally a one step into this games' story

it's really exciting

[craggy finch]

Marathon is canonically massive so definitely a lot of possibilities for more maps on it

[left iris]

right

30 years of lore build-up

[craggy finch]

honestly the best part for me is the return to M1's lore

M2 wasn't as interesting to me

Tau Ceti and the Marathon itself were put on the sidelines

[left iris]

so participating in the arg

doe sthat earn you anything

other than unlocking the map for everyone?

[craggy finch]

not sure lol

[left iris]

o

[floral slate]

id imagine its just unlocking the map

anything else is just what you guys will loot from it

[elfin ermine]

i ain workin for uesc for cryo archives bru

[floral slate]

and contracts they might add with it

[elfin ermine]

you can be proud of urself

[burnt nebula]

you earn the respect of your fellow gamers

[left iris]

lol

[craggy finch]

tuned in to the ARG livestream of Geeky Pastimes and he looks like he wants to die

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2M4G9DmriY

[burnt nebula]

will there be more ARGs for upcoming content or was this just a launch promo kinda deal?

[craggy finch]

they did another ARG like two years ago so I think it's popular enough to be a constant

[honest canopy]

Is there a server dedicated to the ARG like what RaidSecrets was to Destiny?

[craggy finch]

#breach-protocol I believe

also the Classic Marathon server

[tawdry plaza]

Y'know, with the marathon lore, makes me wonder what timeline this game's set in

[floral slate]

hope they mantain a level of mysticism to the game like this for the foreseeable future

[sage lark]

Yeah cuz it makes no sense not cuz its hard

[tawdry plaza]

I just hope they can retain the writing's quality that they had going in classic marathon

[craggy finch]

ambiguity and mystery has always been Marathon's strength

the fact that we don't even know about the Runners' background mirrors how the Security Officer is such a vague character too

[floral slate]

right now are really holding it together

[tawdry plaza]

That, and lowkey am hoping that shit like the gherrit white terminal crops back up in this game

it would be so fucking funny watching newcomers to this series try to understand crap like 'I AM % HERO'

[floral slate]

this whole arg thing seems like an extension of that

[craggy finch]

The Song of Roland is an interesting legend to link it to

[tawdry plaza]

I am interested in seeing how it goes, seeing as some text logs have gotten audio components between the server slam and launch

[sage lark]

Its really good

[tawdry plaza]

so far I agree, but then again, even back in D1 with the grimoire, the writing was stellar

they've kept whoever writes this stuff on retainer, and they need a pay raise

[sage lark]

The writing was never bad in Bungie I think

[tawdry plaza]

eeeeeh, that's not entirely true

some of the writing in the destiny era was very weak

I mentioned the grimoire because the really good writing was (at the time) entirely locked behind a website-based card system which unlocked lore tidbits as you did things in Destiny 1

whereas in-game the writing was weak until about the Taken King era

that being said, THAT particular bit of writing was never bad

I'm really interested to see what we can learn from the s'pht compilers who decided to take up squatter's rights on the Marathon, that being said

[dreamy hawk]

They figured out a recipe for a really good slushie with all the cryo freezers.

[floral slate]

you know thats true, destiny 1 at launch was atrocious story wise. Barely anybody wanted to go to the website to read the grimore

they really couldnt put the story and the game together for some reason

long way since then

[lunar cove]

One of the most baffling live service pvpve gaming choices prior to Fallout 76

[floral slate]

Oh no not fallout again... yeah 76 is beyond parody

[lunar cove]

"What if the interesting story happened before you showed up and literally everyone was dead" gee thanks Bethesda

[sage lark]

Atleast they kinda remedied that

Not a bad 8-10 dollar game

[floral slate]

autistic of me i think but pissed me off a lot that west virginia looked way more well put together right after the bombs felled compared to the 200 year gap of fallout 3 looking like deimos

or pluto idk what im saying

[sage lark]

Wasnt it cuz none really fell there

Or barely any

[floral slate]

thats so bullshit LMAOO

[sage lark]

Is it theres fuck all in Virginia

[floral slate]

yet has all these fucking mutants and cryptids everywere

[sage lark]

Something something radioactive dust

[floral slate]

everyone snd everything is in west virginia

at that point might aswell make a whole new game... a new franchise to- ah wait nvm

LMAOOOOOO

[tawdry plaza]

I kinda think it's cool how the runners are like, logical extensions of what the battleroids were

that being said, there were 10 mjolnir mark IV cyborgs on tau ceti IV.......

at least one or two of them has to be alive somewhere

it would be mad funny if one of those guys absolutely rocked your shit raid-boss style

[floral slate]

runners are battleroids but with drip and gender affirming care

[tawdry plaza]

that's so true

[craggy finch]

honestly I kind of prefer 76 super mutant explanations over 3 and 4 just having some bullshit

[sage lark]

Some people think that but in one of the timelines they got taken and turned into slave tanks

Anything is game

[craggy finch]

like of course the US government tested FEV on an entire town

[floral slate]

just some bullshit with FEV

[sage lark]

It would be cool to fight a battleroid but at the same time kinda lame

[craggy finch]

it would be fighting someone operating on OG Marathon gameplay from the perspective of someone with limited mobility and the durability of paper mache

[tawdry plaza]

I think you're getting them mixed

in infinity, SOME of them get taken and put through pfhor slave tanks, but I'm fairly certain it was only crew taken from the marathon (none of the cyborgs on the planet were there, just the security officer)

[floral slate]

yeah idk what they could do with the cyborgs that be interesting

lore aside i mean

[craggy finch]

they could serve as historical throwbacks and bring back some of the 90s aesthetics

[tawdry plaza]

I believe in every other timeline tau ceti IV was implied to have been razed by a second pfhor strike force after being driven off by the security officer, Durandal, and the other 9 cyborgs

this lines up with what we see on new cascadia ((you can even find pfhor trooper graffiti in perimeter))

[floral slate]

maybe they could make a gamemode where you fight them but they are controlled by high level players. A saxton hale vs mode from tf2 kinda thing

[craggy finch]

also there's autopsy reports matching the description of Pfhor and S'pht

[tawdry plaza]

wait are there fucking suicider BOBs still alive on the marathon

[craggy finch]

FROG BLAST THE VENT CORE

THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE

DON'T SHOOT

[zealous laurel]

And you know what we love that for them

[floral slate]

people dying to bobs would be funny LMAO

[craggy finch]

their main gimmick was looking exactly like the real BoBs to fool players who cared about collateral damage, so imagine if the simulacrums were creepy and degraded from years of wandering around

no point to them looking human so they're more obviously zombie-like

[floral slate]

oh then they would be like the hive enemies

[zealous folio]

I really wish we could have the ability to re-watch vendor “cutscenes” in game. It gets a bit difficult to pay attention when people in your group are talking or wanting to hit the next run asap

[floral slate]

actually thats literally them

the exploding hivers idk what their lore was

was that from the taken or im misremebering

[tawdry plaza]

ngl I don't actually know what the hive's lore was in destiny

and I played a good chunk of it

[floral slate]

i remeber them being crab people that became undead from the dsrkness or something

[tawdry plaza]

the lore felt like one of those esoteric writing binges where the author took 40 tabs of benedryl and then took down in notation what the hat man whispered to them

[supple orchid]

i forgot all Destiny lore when i stopped playing, i wanted to forget that i loved the game

[floral slate]

same twin...

[supple orchid]

thank god Marathon got sony funding

[floral slate]

true but youtube exists. thats where ive been getting mine from

shouts out to the guy with the smile emojie name that compiles the codex entries

[supple orchid]

im currently watching a 1,5 hour long lore vid cuz i want the backstory

[sage lark]

Maybe i got it mixxed up not 100% on that

[next moth]

can u share the link ?

[supple orchid]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQxsh2mBvNg

[zealous folio]

I get that, but it’d be easier to avoid spoilers if the game just had a video codex. Watch what you’ve unlocked

[floral slate]

i remeber my sister being obsessed with the lore of destiny and dumping on me everything she saw from youtube essays

[tawdry plaza]

you're thinking of the level where you're working for Tycho on a pfhor ship, right? that's where the mixup is I think

[sage lark]

Feels like they were on the ground too, theres a bunch of “thank god its you” written on some of the walls

[tawdry plaza]

that and the throwaway oneliner from durandal in 2 where he mentions Leela was scrapped for parts when the Pfhor sacked Tau Ceti IV

[sage lark]

Yes that timeline

[tawdry plaza]

yeah that's basically the 'oh shit what if the pfhor won in classic marathon'

[floral slate]

maybe but id better catch up cuz with the upcoming seasons i bet is gonna snowball fast and its gonna be hard to keep up

i already cant really say whats all that happened with the arg

[supple orchid]

the ARG breaks my brain, i cant keep up

[sage lark]

Thats an interesting point since the redacted attack logs dont really mention a victory

[floral slate]

I love the arg, i cant comprehend it

[supple orchid]

exactly

[floral slate]

average mida fan iq 🥀

[supple orchid]

Mida & Arachne :LUL:

[wise vortex]

hi can someone tell me how the corporations we work for nad the runner or shell factories and such, and how did the UESC get their boots on the ground on tau ceti

[craggy finch]

I think it's moreso that SO was left on Tau Ceti and got captured during the attack three months later

[tawdry plaza]

after the end of classic marathon a rogue AI visits earth and shows humanity how to achieve FTL because 'it would be really funny', basically.

[floral slate]

actually how the fk did they reached tau ceti in nu marathon

[sage lark]

That doesnt happen here

Orion would know the Pfhor were there then but he doesnt

[craggy finch]

UESC sent a ship after the Marathon went dark in the late 2790s, then in 2888 Sol received a message (Somewhere in the Heavens...) and a bunch of factions raced to Tau Ceti

presumably with better FTL tech

[tawdry plaza]

UESC keeps shit hush hush, right?

well, Leela sent the 'somewhere in the heavens' message, and the UESC would be more able to suppress any extrasolar visitors when its on home turf methinks, but Leela's distress signal is not likely something the UESC can easily suppress

[floral slate]

and the colony from the marathon did manage to colonize the planet before dissapearing, correct?

the people i mean

[craggy finch]

I think it's Durandal, Leela's message was supposed to be a clear distress signal with a detailed rundown of the Pfhor

[sage lark]

Orion himself said even an entire fleet would have trouble

[digital plaza]

Yes

[craggy finch]

yeah in the Ozymandias trailer the colony survives as far as the 2800s before the plague and Anomaly causes a depopulation event

[sage lark]

Yes the colony was already established during the Pfhor attack

[floral slate]

ahh

so that still happened here

damn the time jumps are really crazy

[craggy finch]

In the original game's manual the Security Officer recalls hunting wildlife on the colony's outskirts three years before the Pfhor attack, so it was already established some time before 2791

[sage lark]

Yes M1 happened up until the ending I believe

Thats where the timelines diverge

The colony wasnt razed/nuked to the ground

[tawdry plaza]

My current line of thought is that Durandal, as per the 'correct' timeline in Infinity, stopped by the Sol system on his way to Lhowon and showed the UESC how to make 'warp-capable fusion missiles' because he felt sentimental towards humanity.

The UESC kept knowledge of this visit secret. After all, even by that point, space travel and spacecraft weren't out of the question, so 'Boomer' appearing in Sol wouldn't be too out of place so long as people didn't look at it too closely

However, even though Leela's distress signal was supposed to be 'clear cut', Leela was actively being taken apart by s'pht compilers while sending that message and it's not unlikely that 'somewhere in the heavens, they are waiting' is all that can be deciphered from what she intended to be a clear warning to humanity

[floral slate]

fucked up

[sage lark]

Durandal didnt stop by

Leelas message didnt arrive/was fucked up

But Somewhere in the Heavens did in 2888

[craggy finch]

the attack on the Marathon and the initial bombardment definitely happened according to the Ozymandias trailer, plus the xenobiopsy logs imply that there was some fighting on the surface, where the other nine Mjolnir were acting incognito

[sage lark]

Idk if the autopsies were done on the Marathon

[tawdry plaza]

this setting is set 99 years after M1

ergo, this HAS to be the correct timeline, as the w'rcancacknter hasn't obliterated known reality as we know it

[sage lark]

It is the correct timeline

Just Durandal didnt stop by

[tawdry plaza]

remember that in infinity, every time Tfear unleashed the thing, the timeline ended

[craggy finch]

but the correct timeline is very much different from Marathon 2's build up

[tawdry plaza]

do tell

[floral slate]

[sage lark]

Wasnt SO kidnapped by Tycho in the correct one instead of Durandal

By that you can assume everything past M1 is different

Even the second attack on the colony

As is evident by the cinematic

[craggy finch]

@visual lynx has a much more intricate theory about how the timelines intersect with each other and how the "final" timeline comes to be

[sage lark]

I think he has it written in this chat somewhere

[craggy finch]

well in Despair it ends with the W'rkncactner being released and you jumping to another timeline

then there's another Tycho timeline in Rage

then the "correct" timeline is Envy

[sage lark]

Still i think it applies

This

[floral slate]

what makes the nu marathon timeline the correct one aside from not having awoken the ancient cosmic horror

[sage lark]

#📚marathon-lore-discussion message

[autumn dagger]

today's the day we find out what the hell is on the Marathon

[craggy finch]

it's the one Bungie has chosen to depict I suppose

[craggy finch]

I want to know which bozo on the expedition team chose to make the cryosleep stuff so ominous

[sage lark]

You think cryo is today?

[craggy finch]

"yeah go into this thing that looks like a bodybag/sarcophagus, nothing will go wrong"

"themes and such"

[somber finch]

I think cryo is added in this patch but we need to finish the ARG to unlock it

[sage lark]

Valid valid

Im hopeful

[craggy finch]

they should have kept it as REDACTED in promotion

[digital plaza]

I wish for the cryo archive so i dont have to farm wardens to get more lore...

[craggy finch]

would make the actual content of the map even more mysterious

[floral slate]

the HUMAN stamp on the caskets urk me so bad. Like they are another nucaloric product

[craggy finch]

like imagine not knowing the context of it and seeing a bunch of bodybags in the ARG

[craggy finch]

they could be keeping pets I guess

the ones that aren't SekGen creations maybe

[floral slate]

JAHSHEHDHJD

[somber finch]

None of the other updates caused the servers to go offline so surely they are adding cryo to the game even if its not available right away

[digital plaza]

Past week servers was offline too

[somber finch]

oh 😔

[digital plaza]

[craggy finch]

they're testing duos tomorrow

[floral slate]

i supposed, very on theme with how inhuman everything is built as

[autumn dagger]

I'm split on this personally but am also happy cuz I can try and get my friend into it without trying to find a third

[floral slate]

actually id say i love how in a way how inhuman the graphic design art of the game is?

is very small but i like how much it adds to the game

[craggy finch]

dehumanisation is such a great theme in this game, Runners are digitised minds who can't even remember whatever their past life was, UESC is sending out swarms of faceless robots and every "normal" human is gone

it's a logical progression from the original's focus on the ascension of AI to godhood

[floral slate]

so true yeah

[supple orchid]

maybe with duos i can get my 1 friend who was hyped for it into the game

[craggy finch]

yeah same

[autumn dagger]

Durandal on his harmony planet somewhere awaiting the inevitable heat death of the universe

[zealous laurel]

It also seems like a logical extension of the way the corporate landscape is currently developing.

[craggy finch]

Durandal/Thoth probably unlocked some time travel shenanigans

or this is just pre-Infinity epilogue Durandal

[autumn dagger]

escape will make me regressor

[zealous laurel]

All of the elements in this game are exaggerated, sure, but still most are an easy extrapolation to make!

[autumn dagger]

Lol

[sage lark]

ahem big crunch

[craggy finch]

NuCaloric embodies it through how they have this utopian ideology, yet come across as so detached that they think the future of humanity is based around endlessly expanding and feeding them actual slop

[sage lark]

Doing Pfhorrests job

[craggy finch]

Traxus lives and breathes the ruthless corporate raider mindset, it's basically their culture

[floral slate]

they either fire me if id design something looking like the UESC REPORT OR BE REPORTED and the SEE|SAY posters or they would love it unironically because dont really care about the meaning

[craggy finch]

SekGen are transhumanists with bizarre plans

[zealous laurel]

Yep which is! Scary!

[floral slate]

COUGH genai Cough

[craggy finch]

DLSS 5 WILL MAKE ME GOD

[autumn dagger]

Nonna Nona be like

[zealous laurel]

I think even MIDA and Arachnae reflect current anxieties/angers in a lot of disparate groups.

[verbal terrace]

fuck mida lol. But I am curious what thier endgame would be

[craggy finch]

Arachne more embodies the technology of the setting itself and even the meta experience of the entire game

[floral slate]

also something something the torment nexus from the do NOT build the torment nexus novel

[craggy finch]

you fight, you die, you fight again and die again

[distant cedar]

And without any of the op jjaroo tech and other overpowered augments...
Expendable

[craggy finch]

tagging the entire planet with graffiti of Orion stepping in dog shit

[zealous laurel]

True true!

[zealous laurel]

And, more importantly, infinitely replicable! You lose one, just print another! It's that easy!

[floral slate]

tbh, im not even sure whenever or not there is jjaro tech being used like anywhere

what WAS the jjaro tech even?

[verbal terrace]

lol or declare war on every faction and get wiped off the map. IDK the world building is there bungie could really do something.

[craggy finch]

Infinity implies the Security Officer jumps through timelines because he was implanted by Jjaro tech his creators didn't understand

[floral slate]

yeah

but like, thats it?

they added an alien artifact on a dude and did nothing else with it?

[autumn dagger]

he went back and killed Bill Clinton (im lying)

[craggy finch]

the Battleroid terminals describes them implanting chips, titanium bones and genetically enhanced muscles in corpses

there was probably some Jjaro tech they found thrown somewhere in the mix

[floral slate]

Frankenstein's monster

[distant cedar]

It literally says "Frozen Asset" aswell on the bags

[verbal terrace]

damn really? Thats super interesting. Jjaro tech lives on!

[floral slate]

then yeah i guess there isnt any other jjaro tech being used

[floral slate]

fucked up pun

[wise vortex]

can someone tell me what happened in 1997

[floral slate]

the security officer ate all the jjaro tech

[wise vortex]

no im srs

[craggy finch]

The Battleroid terminal

Dead soldiers were recycled in makeshift battleroid factories. Easy to manufacture chips enhanced the fragile human brain, and genetically enhanced muscles and titanium bones replaced the fragile human form. The modern battleroid was born.

Infinity's ending

BUT YOU WERE DEAD A THOUSAND TIMES. HOPELESS ENCOUNTERS SUCCESSFULLY WON. A MAN LONG DEAD. GRAFTED TO MACHINES YOUR BUILDERS DID NOT UNDERSTAND.

[floral slate]

someone explored pathways onto darkness

[craggy finch]

John Pathways had to put Paul Darkness to sleep with a nuke

[verbal terrace]

How many years does marathon take place after the previous game?

[floral slate]

they had a bone to pick with him

[craggy finch]

99 years after the events on Tau Ceti

just short of a century

oh if you mean Marathon 2

then around 80 years

[supple orchid]

82 🙂

[verbal terrace]

It just seems lke SekGen is Jjaro tech rebranded then lol

[craggy finch]

it's funny how those aren't even real skeletons, the W'rkncactner just conjured them in its dreams to be spooky

[craggy finch]

S'pht were also deliberately engineered in a similar way

to the point the S'pht believed sapience could only come from design

and were shocked by the Pfhor showing no sign of engineering

[distant cedar]

Iirc the newer Battleroids on the UESC Equanimity dont use Jjaro tech anymore

How much that lowers their potency is anyones guess

[craggy finch]

SO only seemed to unlock his abilities in Infinity anyway

[distant cedar]

I seriously dont understand how anyone signed up for this ngl

[craggy finch]

the other characters just regard him as an unusually powerful soldier

[floral slate]

the wrkn really be like me dreaming about just some random bullshit

[craggy finch]

no step into the bodybag marked with weird shit, it's perfectly fine and won't have any negative effects

[verbal terrace]

Well S'pht is the floating red thing iirc? That shit is just bad news for everyone lol

[craggy finch]

yeah they look scary but their real form is brain things with cybernetics

[floral slate]

working now makes me realize that those are things they dont really disclose when you try signing up

[craggy finch]

and the cryosleep people have the nerve to make fun of the BoBs, but I'd take living on a ship and raising a family over being stuffed into that shit

[distant cedar]

fr

[floral slate]

when you notice them everyone just acts like is normal so you just go along with it

[craggy finch]

BoBs are mentioned in one of Song's logs, having to clean the fungus out of the equipment

[distant cedar]

That log gave me whiplash tbh

[floral slate]

Space fungus...

[distant cedar]

They ensured the ship savely reached the planet over a 300 year journey and now theyre reduced to fungi cleaners

[floral slate]

fucked up

ima have to actuslly go work now

exfilling

[distant cedar]

Figures though ig it was cheaper to be a BoB than to get a cryo place

[craggy finch]

Map logs gives some insight into the day-to-day and it seems the colony prioritised the important cryosleep people without much mention of the menial workers

who are guaranteed to be BoBs

[distant cedar]

Yeah

[craggy finch]

Jasper might technically be a BoB though

he mentions his mother and his mother's mother never knowing what real meat tasted like

with it going at least two generations back it's likely they're a BoB line

he also sounds like a teenager

[distant cedar]

a BoT

Born on Tau Ceti IV

[craggy finch]

BoT spam

[dreamy hawk]

I don’t even think it was a price thing. Only the 300 most important people got frozen iirc.

[craggy finch]

and they all likely went to the colony, leaving the Marathon almost entirely populated by BoBs

they're literally the only humans you interact with across the trilogy

even Robert Blake is a BoB

BoB Blake

[inland crypt]

Could we face bobs/simulacrums as enemies on board the Marathon?

[craggy finch]

if they do appear, their human disguise is likely useless so I'm envisioning weird zombies leaking yellow pus blood

[inland crypt]

I was thinking they could do runner simulacrums

[timber loom]

And that is kinda out of question because age raiting?

[craggy finch]

I think games get away with T ratings with non-red blood

all kinds of heinous stuff happens to the Runners

[silk whale]

Hey so, I was looking at the zone select screen, how it's structured... Over the 3(4) maps we have now, it says "System: Tau Ceti."

But there's room for what looks like three more columns of different systems. I think ultimately we're gonna get more maps on different planets 🤞

[dreamy hawk]

Iirc the simulacrums had yellow blood.

[timber loom]

I mean, it is not that runners shoot other runners on sight

[craggy finch]

nice, possibly Lh'owon

[silk whale]

Yeah I'm hoping

[craggy finch]

and you can track your teammates

so no point really

[dreamy hawk]

I’m less inclined to think this is going to happen, just with the limits on FTL still present. The galactic core is a pretty distance away.

[craggy finch]

if the Pfhor enter the narrative their space folding tech might open up possibilities

[dreamy hawk]

It is certainly a possibility, but then all the infrastructure needed to print and send runners would need to go with, not just the ship.

[hushed dawn]

ooooh no, the point would be they blow up if you get close

so, go in for a melee kill or finisher and boom

[craggy finch]

lol that would actually be hilarious

[dreamy hawk]

It’s a game and they could hand wave a lot of things into working, but going to Lhowon feels like a logistical nightmare.

[craggy finch]

like reverse simulacrum psychology

[inland crypt]

Maybe they will have the little pings like how we have in trios with slightly off color or A4/lettering being off

[coral vale]

The phfors watching in bewilderment as Lh'owon is under siege by a trillion runners that seemingly do nothing beyond stealing everything not bolted down and shoot each others

[craggy finch]

RUNNA

TAG OUR LOGO ON THE ALIEN BOXES

HACK INTO AN ALIEN TV

in a single run

[distant cedar]

Didnt they have literally thousands in cryo?
I thought the population of bobs was roughly equal to people in cs-

[inland crypt]

Devious lick

[inland crypt]

I pray we have a reach map

[craggy finch]

The original crew of the Marathon consisted of 50 Senior Staff, 1150
Officers, and 24,000 civilians all of whom were citizens of the Mars
Colony or Earth. Some individuals were placed in stasis for the
interstellar journey, but most civilians lived and worked on the ship and
raised families there. As the crew aged, a new generation of humans were
born and raised on the Marathon. By some, these children were looked
down upon and called “Bob”, short for born on board. These citizens
grew to run the ship and many can be seen in the game running for their
lives. It is your sworn duty as a security officer to protect Bob.
From the first game's manual

[craggy finch]

imagine Runners just popping in the middle of the UNSC-Covenant battle

[mortal harness]

current objective: extract

[dreamy hawk]

Most people never made it to Tau Ceti iirc. But I’m looking for a terminal or something rn.

I’m not finding anything in the old lore, it may have been a new log which I can’t search as easily yet.

Maybe 3,000 and not 300 though. That seems more reasonable given the number of officers and senior staff.

[craggy finch]

plus a percentage of those 24,000 would still be significant

[dreamy hawk]

Get the officers and the civilian leaders frozen, everyone else gets to die in space.

It would fit the universe.

[craggy finch]

Speaking of BoBs, one thing I liked about the Lost Network Packets is that it tells us how the BoB security teams did and how badly it went for them, explaining why we never get help besides the MADDs

[dreamy hawk]

Oh boy.

[craggy finch]

and the same text implies that the Drinniol smashed through most of the MADDs

them or the Hunters

[dreamy hawk]

• ⁠Added three new mods that can only be looted from Cryo Archive:
⁠• ⁠Punishment
⁠• ⁠This weapon deals significantly increased damage against [REDACTED] combatants.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/s/vUA4Jdbw7B

[craggy finch]

most likely compilers

[dreamy hawk]

[REDACTED], eh?

[distant cedar]

I must have missread a message here cause i somehow thought there were like tens of thousands in cryo

[inland crypt]

I really miss halo, man

[dreamy hawk]

Or fungal zombies. 🧟

[forest helm]

Can someone explain the xenobiopsies i only have one unlocked in the codex so far

[dreamy hawk]

I could also be misremembering; I don’t think so but it has happened before.

[dreamy hawk]

What do you wanna know? Sounds like a compiler.

[craggy finch]

they describe the corpse of a Pfhor and one scientist has an existential crisis over a S'pht autopsy

[dreamy hawk]

Which, admittedly, were engineering to be perfect beings by a near god-like race, so his doubts were warranted.

[forest helm]

I see

[jolly sphinx]

I don't blame them for having a existential crisis, a Spht body is literally the apex of organic to inorganic combination.

[forest helm]

So are they extinct now?

[craggy finch]

the arthropod bipedal thing with yellow blood is 100% Pfhor

[inland crypt]

So like, do the general audience of this game know about aliens being canon or is it gonna be a surprise for them on cryo archive?

[craggy finch]

Pfhor were driven off at the end of the first Marathon, S'pht are hanging around the Marathon itself in teasers

[dreamy hawk]

If you’ve seen the marketing materials you’ve seen an alien so 🤷

[craggy finch]

the S'pht is the thing shooting green beams

No one knows what the Pfhor are doing atm

they may or may not have had their asses kicked on the S'pht homeworld

[dreamy hawk]

Pfhorrest knows.

[craggy finch]

that remains vague

[dreamy hawk]

I’m almost certain they didn’t.

That only happened with the allied S’pht and Durandal, and it doesn’t seem that any of that has happened.

[forest helm]

Whaaat

[dreamy hawk]

Durandal doesn’t even seem to have visited the first time like he did in old lore.

[craggy finch]

this game marks the first time in the franchise you aren't shooting at mostly aliens

[dreamy hawk]

#📚marathon-lore-discussion message
this remains the timeline I’m most convinced of.

[dreamy hawk]

Only time other than the couple of levels Tycho makes us kill BoBs.

[forest helm]

Wait i know this might sound dumb but please explain who durandal is i literally like only know his quote

[craggy finch]

Durandal was one of three AI on board the Marathon

[dreamy hawk]

He is a rampant AI from the marathon that summoned the aliens so he could steal their ship and escape.

[craggy finch]

he was deliberately set up to control doors so that the simple task would drive him insane and cause "Rampancy", which is when AI expand and become more intelligent