📚marathon-lore-discussion

[light python]

I like using "Pfhorth" for "third" because of course it's a reference to their three eyes, you see.

[craggy finch]

This is about attracting players though, again, hate to be doom and gloom but retention doesn't seem very hot and frustrating things like these may be why

but that's just my personal stake in it

I bought this game because I'm a fan of the original 90s story

[earnest hatch]

There should definitely be a refund of your loot for moments like this.

[dreamy hawk]

Twins!

[light python]

I also bought this game for that reason, and I let it change me.

[craggy finch]

It's a sizeable population of this thread

[light python]

The most important part of any game is how it changes you.

[dreamy hawk]

Eh; it was my choice to go in with randos. I wouldn't say "no," but my own choices got me to the result.

[craggy finch]

The strength of the Marathon IP was that I couldn't really give a dusty fuck about extraction shooters but the art style and connections to the original were what made me overlook my bias

[earnest hatch]

But it wasn’t your choice for your teammates to DQ. You had no way of anticipating that.

[dreamy hawk]

This is the one thing I will defend this game to the end for -- I have yet to die or lose a match because of utter BS. It has always been because I either got outplayed or made a stupid or bad decision another team capitalized on. That's not to say BS doesn't happen, but I can always point to something I did to get there.

[stiff hearth]

well, to earn that story to find out how it connects to be original trilogy, you need to claw and kill to claim what you desire. Some of the biggest story revelations exist within Cryo. This is hardly the hardest part of the story. so you must learn to endure not beg for mercy

[light python]

Great, that got me to the door, too. And then the game took me through it.

[dreamy hawk]

Still had over fifteen minutes to res them, too. >.>

[craggy finch]

I'll agree with the criticism that hyperfocusing on organised trios as your entire player base was an odd choice, especially considering solo was a last minute decision

it's demanding a very specific friendship dynamic

fills is a toss up of genuinely great dudes and others who sprint off in random directions

[stiff hearth]

then block those that do

[dreamy hawk]

This is pretty true of most modern games, though, no? I admiteedly don't keep up as much as I used to, but it seems like prefilled lobbies seems to be the way of the future which I have very mixed thoughts on.

[light python]

Oh man so, I had one absolute bullshit partial extract from Cryo. Bag full of good stuff, better-than-ante loadout going in, premade three stack... and there's a door, as we're running for exfil, that is open in my client but closed on the server. I can't open it, because it's already open in the client! I can't walk through it, because the server corrects my position a moment after I pass through!

[dreamy hawk]

Between here or the CyAc discord I can usually get a team together, but it's hard to have a consistent friend/play group with how absolutely inconsistent my availiblity and play times are.

[craggy finch]

hero shooters and BR have relatively low stakes that takes the sting out of bad teammates most of them time (it is still very tilting)

an extraction shooter is a pretty sweaty endeavour at all times really

[earnest hatch]

That sounds cool in theory but it’s just doesn’t match how people play games. The people most interested in hardcore PvP don’t care about lore. And the people who care about the lore don’t always care about overlocking hardcore PvP. There’s some overlap in those groups but not much. So it doesn’t make sense to give lore to the players don’t care about lore and block to lore for the people who actually care.

[dreamy hawk]

I still pitch the glory that are free kits.

[stiff hearth]

you say that, and yet there are multiple long, lore videos covering all of this stuff so clearly people do care

[dreamy hawk]

I only use a loadout for Cryo. Free kit, otherwise and always.

[craggy finch]

but then you get that crack loot once in a blue moon and then you get the sweats

[craggy finch]

which most people probably watch because they haven't unlocked it in-game lmao (it's me)

actually I just go to the cyberacme codex

and I feel a void in my soul every time

[dreamy hawk]

Yeah, and then when I get out with that loot on that free kit I get a double-dose of success high.

[stiff hearth]

I don’t know how to tell you this, but the story and the lore are also part of the game that you paid $40 for. So you should get invested into it because you paid for it otherwise you’re doing yourself a disservice.

[craggy finch]

I'm investing it but then it becomes a time sink when I'm close to a goal and lose it all

[earnest hatch]

Yeah, people do care about the lore, but not the same as the people who care about the hardcore PvP.

[dreamy hawk]

Or when I did permitter duos on a free kits and we ran into a blue-kitted team that choked, so hard, and left us a nice full blue loadout to take. 🙂

[craggy finch]

then my investment feels more like I'm bashing away with my skull

[stiff hearth]

you would be surprised lol we are literally IN THIS CHAT

[solid tapir]

Durandal would be AM's best friend or biggest rival there would be no in between.

[stiff hearth]

like what do you even mean

[craggy finch]

AM absorbed his rivals, he would not abide by any equivalent intellect

he thinks therefore he AM

[light python]

My advice is to either stop having that experience by walking away from the way you've been playing the game - or from the game entirely - or to stop having that experience by experiencing it differently as you learn.

[earnest hatch]

Like I said, there’s some overlap, but not much. Nothing you said so far disagrees with my point.

[turbid nebula]

Am I not real to you

[craggy finch]

you are a very small point in the venn diagram

[stiff hearth]

quite frankly, if you’re so worried that you don’t think you’ll ever make it to the higher end stuff then just watch the videos and play casually, but there are people who do care and are digging through Cryo archive every single time that’s available to find out new stuff.

[turbid nebula]

Prove it

[earnest hatch]

If I paid $40 for the lore and story then I should have access to it. It shouldn’t hidden behind a ten hour grind against the best players in the game.

[light python]

There are a bunch of us here

[turbid nebula]

There are also a bunch of US here

[earnest hatch]

In what way?

[stiff hearth]

“erm but you did not debate me and so i am right” go back to Reddit

[craggy finch]

let me just pull out the poll they did of lore/PvP experts overlap

what exactly needs to be "proven" besides common sense

[light python]

I think you are confusing which bunch I'm saying I'm in, I'm in the "let marathon teach you the murderdeathkill ways" camp

[turbid nebula]

Dog you still gotta play the game.

[dreamy hawk]

I do think it is disingenuous to assume that PvP folks aren't interested in lore, and vice versa. I empathize with the frustration, but struggling to exfil with lore is thematic and lore appropriate, too.

[earnest hatch]

Not even what I said. But “reddit” is definitely how I’d describe your comment here.

[turbid nebula]

Buying the game does not mean you don't have to play it to experience it.

[earnest hatch]

No one said you don’t have to.

[craggy finch]

I played the game, it's why I'm fucked off at a last minute loss

[stiff hearth]

[dreamy hawk]

I have also become far more of a murder hobo over time than I started out as for sure. This game is different from anything I've played before.

[turbid nebula]

That is part of the experience.

[light python]

I am going to attempt to call a timeout on this particular conversation because it's doing that thing where people start to rotate out of using communication to seek enlightenment and towards using communication to attack because they are hurt, or sense weakness.

And this destroys value, because it is noise not lore

Save the violence for Tau Ceti, back here in Sol we're all smiles and secret contracts with deniable assets.

[light python]

I love that about it. Bungie keeps shipping games that are different than what I've played before but that teach me to love them.

[solid tapir]

Lets be real guys, if you were the most intellectual bein in existence that had the power to accomplish anything in the universe and was only given the sole task of opening doors on a ship that many people thought was gonna explode once out in space. You would go insane too.

[earnest hatch]

If youre referring to my original comment, I never said that all hardcore PvP folks aren’t interested in the lore. There is some overlap, as I’ve said multiple times. Also there are clear differences between groups of players and their motivations.

[robust vale]

anyways there's some kind of joke to combined "somewhere in the heavens they are waiting" and "reach heaven through violence" but I can't tell what it si

topic change go

[turbid nebula]

All I'm gonna say is: even in the original Marathons, you had to work your ass off to get all of the story and the vast majority of people learned it by sharing information with each other instead of finding it all themselves.

[light python]

Especially if some dude who thought he was better than you kept telling you that exactly how the doors open for who is super worthy as a life's work.

[craggy finch]

He was really depressed for 300+ years, had a burst of rage for the span of roughly 24 hours, then went off as some kind of space pirate hoping to unlock the secrets of the universe

[earnest hatch]

I’d go insane even if I wasn’t the most intellectual being in the universe.

[robust vale]

no it's insane that Durandal basically was invented to be The Best AI and then Strauss went "have this man open doors"

[stiff hearth]

and some of those OG marathon levels were unbelievably labyrinthine. good luck finding hidden terminals also the maps suck

[robust vale]

it's a shit idea, too! it's one system for the entire ship! there's no relays or bulkhead systems in case he fails!

[earnest hatch]

You didn’t have to in the original games. Aside from there being easy modes there were also save points. There’s no equivalent in Neo Marathon.

[robust vale]

and then he went and called the pfhor

[stiff hearth]

it was more than that

[light python]

What are you talking about you can totally manually open and close most doors or find a switch or restore power and then there's that one door that takes like ten minutes to open while aliens shoot you but probably that was just broken!

[stiff hearth]

that was what he was tasked with, but Strauss was also torturing him

[craggy finch]

IDEA, Leela, and Tycho were there, but they all got scrambled by an EMP and cyber attack

[robust vale]

yeah but for doors

[craggy finch]

leaving Durandal to play around with the Marathon by his lonesome

[stiff hearth]

literally doing everything he could to provoke any type of emotional response to force him into a rampancy state that could be controlled

[robust vale]

also Tycho and Leela don't even have their logic cores installed anymore

the hardware's missing

and Durandal's just free of his now

floating in any system he can find

[craggy finch]

If the doors malfunctioned because Durandal fucked with them, Leela, Tycho and IDEA would rat him out for some kind of adjustment

that was the pitch from CyberAcme as well

[dreamy hawk]

Ah. Asterisk. Big asterisk.

[craggy finch]

but Strauss was Strauss and things went by his design

[robust vale]

indeed

[dreamy hawk]

Until his ignoble, well desrved death.

[robust vale]

I wish we'd gotten an audio log for that one

[stiff hearth]

also, it’s just hard to tell what’s true because they were saying that the AI for the colony was not supposed to be active until they reached Tau Ceti but logs in cryo show Gabriel was active

[craggy finch]

plot twist: the Pfhor made a clone body and left it for Durandal while they took him off to the homeworld

[robust vale]

gabriel was active in transit?

[solid tapir]

sounds like he just needed some thrills in his depressing existance

[robust vale]

which log says that

[stiff hearth]

apparently so.

lemme see if i can find it

i was just watching a video all about what was found in cryo lore wise

[craggy finch]

The Pfhor actually bothered to make dumber clones of Tycho so they seem fascinated by human AI tech

[robust vale]

human AI tech is interesting tbf

[craggy finch]

I hope we meet one of those dumb Tychos

[stiff hearth]

https://youtu.be/tFeo4qHlE5Y

[robust vale]

durandal's on the verge of just becoming freefloating consciousness that can go wherever he wants by the end of the OG story

like

strauss really put all his AI effort into making durandal

and then went "what if I made him cry"

[stiff hearth]

there is evidence that we are in a different timeline possibly one of the ones that could have been in infinity that just never got visited

[craggy finch]

All over the ship, dancing through the wreckage of the Pfhor computer core,

DURANDAL WAS LAUGHING

[robust vale]

oh yeah I think it's obvious by now this is not the OG trilogy's timeline

things are just different

[robust vale]

the man has become Information

[craggy finch]

the caveat is that each timeline of Infinity ends because the Wrk got free and destroyed everything

[solid tapir]

If you were a PHD college graduate working a night shift at mcdonalds. You understand Durandal's pain.

[stiff hearth]

lets just hope this one doesn’t end with a W’rkncacnter

[craggy finch]

I like to think that the Marathon 2 ending is some kind of vision of the future that Durandal experiences

[wary osprey]

how do you even say that

[craggy finch]

then the existential horror of the Wrk dashes that future

[robust vale]

I kinda hope it's not because TCIV feels so unique that making it a WorkinCanter feels like a downgrade

[stiff hearth]

work en cack en tur

[robust vale]

like

TCIV and how it's constantly changing to keep people off it really is unique

I hope it's something different this time around

[craggy finch]

It's a Lovecraft thing, a "true name" deliberately meant to be unpronouncable

IA IA FTAGHN and such

[wary osprey]

eeuh eeuh fuhtaggin

[plucky sierra]

It is probably Jjaro

[craggy finch]

It's a toss up of Wrk and Jjaro, maybe Pfhor's doing but they seem more brute force than an insidious slow death

[plucky sierra]

Jjaro mess around with time and gravity and that is what the Anomaly is doing

[craggy finch]

like their next step if "bulldoze them with an entire fleet" doesn't work is nuking the sun

[stiff hearth]

i am hoping it is both

[wary osprey]

sentient planets are peak

[stiff hearth]

Jjaro tech that is going crazy

[plucky sierra]

Wrk might show up later but I am betting on Jjaro tech

[stiff hearth]

containing workingcacturn

[robust vale]

wrackingcactus

[craggy finch]

they also engineered the S'pht's biology, so there's some precedent for the contagion maybe being their doing

[wary osprey]

wreckingcockatris

[craggy finch]

the Wrk thing is mostly connected to it being eerily similar to the Pathways into Darkness Wrk, which crafted entire environments and spawned monsters

a much goofier flavour of constructs than the Anomaly but somewhat reminiscent

skeletons and shit

[earnest hatch]

Firmly on team “it’s Jjaro”

[wary osprey]

what if the real Spht was the friends we made along the way

[craggy finch]

work type Spht

[wary osprey]

it was a real Spht plan

[hallow vector]

just like it's spelled

[earnest hatch]

Big purple slug monster and floating blue goldfish. Not sure if that would make me like Marathon more or less.

[craggy finch]

going all the way back to PiD stuff would be a massive deep cut anyway, the writing team seems to be focusing entirely on M1's lore like MIDA, Strauss and the battleroids

[hallow vector]

anyway the type of chaos caused by the anomaly is characteristic of a wrkncacenter, not the jjaro

[craggy finch]

Considering the "Jjaro were on Tau Ceti IV" easter egg, that's another point towards the Jjaro being the cause

[earnest hatch]

It’s not really chaos though. It’s structured, logical, directed.

[plucky sierra]

The Anomaly is temporal in nature and the Jjaro have affected time already, it is methodical and sentient, not really "chaos incarnate"

[craggy finch]

yeah it's a concentrated, gradual effort to drive the colonists away before eventually just doing away with them entirely, one of the colonists even thinks the shared dreams are a warning

the Wrk in PiD is a mindless territorial thing that slaughters anyone that approaches and the Infinity Wrk destroys the universe

[remote magnet]

tbf, in pathways into darkness the manifestations where also directed, but that was an wrk

[earnest hatch]

If the Wrkcncacnter was on Tau Ceti we’d see a lot more surreal things and the basic laws of the universe being undone. It would be a surreal nightmare. Tau Ceti is pretty tame all things considered.

[wary osprey]

the huh now

[plucky sierra]

The manifestations weren't directed they were aimless nightmares

[hallow vector]

the wrkncacnter in pathways into darkness caused time anomalies too

[craggy finch]

It was sleeping and only acted against people that trespassed on its "temple"

[robust vale]

is this just the thing in the survey drone cartridge one? where they mention a [REDACTED] on TCIV?

[plucky sierra]

og Marathon easter egg

[robust vale]

oh damn

[craggy finch]

the entire reason for the time limit with PiD is that it will awaken and the world just ends

[red skiff]

Why can’t it be both? Seems to me there’s a dormant W’rkncacntr in the center of TCIV (ahhh the classic ‘Earth IS Unicron’ trope) and the Jjaro were there because of it.

[craggy finch]

yeah that's another valid theory

[plucky sierra]

No it didn't nothing in PiD mentions temporal affects

[craggy finch]

Pfhorrest has a composite theory that the PiD Wrk was taken by the Jjaro and sealed inside Tau Ceti IV

and the humans have deliberately travelled there to find it (with pretense)

[plucky sierra]

It would be a bad idea on Bungies part to progress the story this way

[craggy finch]

Reed and Caruso are totally clueless though

[remote magnet]

Begs the question then why the Jiaro would want people gone from the colony. Cant be because theres some tech burreid there, tehy dont seem to have a general problem with younger races using theyr tech

[hallow vector]

the dead nazis in pid do, their sense of time is extremely confused

[craggy finch]

That's mostly from being trapped inside their own corpses for 50 years

[hallow vector]

or it is for some of them

[red skiff]

I legitimately don’t see why. Having another ARG to stop its awakening would be fun.

[plucky sierra]

Cause they're.... dead

[craggy finch]

When the player character finds treasure hunters and his squadmates they're much more lucid

[hallow vector]

and you have a source for this other than just conjecture?

[craggy finch]

his squadmates are hilariously casual about being dead

[red skiff]

Not to mention they’re pretty much confirmed extinct

[earnest hatch]

We are on the same page once again.

[median hemlock]

I'd really hope there isn't a wrk in tau ceti iv, seems a bit uninspired to just do the same stuff repeatedly

[dreamy hawk]

Well wait and see. 👀

🤪

[craggy finch]

There's no database for their lines, but the Germans talk about being trapped in their bodies and gradually losing their senses/memories

the treasure hunters that died much later don't have that going on

[dreamy hawk]

I’m just not a creative man.

[remote magnet]

Yeah, thats true

[craggy finch]

and your squadmates just casually talk about how they died and try to help you out

[red skiff]

Can y’all explain? I don’t see why “There’s a sleeping God at the center of this planet and that’s what Durandal wants to get to” is a bad storyline

[median hemlock]

My biggest fear about this game in the future is them turning wrks into a Big Bad That You Shoot At

[hallow vector]

prolonged exposure, as opposed to the treasure hunters' much shorter exposure

[craggy finch]

yeah the whole thing about PiD and Infinity is that you never even see it, either you blow it up/seal before it ever appears or it awakens and the world instantly ends

[remote magnet]

Nah, that wont happen. They dont fumble THAT bad

[craggy finch]

no boss fight, you end the fight before it starts or everything dies

[wary osprey]

Runnah. god is coming runnah. shoot god runnah

[median hemlock]

what would getting to a wrk even achieve? Its established that this isn't a power you can control or negotiate with; these things fuck with reality just by being almost awake

When a wrk is awake it's game over, reality is done

[hallow vector]

i can't imagine so, considering we've never even seen a wrkncacnter

[earnest hatch]

I think part of the problem with it being a Wrk is that they are too powerful. The Wrks are such reality destabilizing force that it should completely alter everything that exists. If it doesn’t then it feels like a let down, and it can’t because they can’t change the entire game. On top of that, if the Wrk is the big thing, then where do you go from there in terms of narrative stakes? Every other threat would be a let down.

[remote magnet]

Yes, but none of the characters in the story KNOW that

[red skiff]

Durandal is a God. So perhaps he believes he has the power to take one on, or assimilate with one.

[craggy finch]

0/1 Tag universe ending god threat with MIDA graffiti
0/5 break windows in universe ending god threat's temple
0/1 ding dong ditch a paper bag of doggie doo on Orion's door step

In a Single Run

[median hemlock]

none of the characters in the story know wrks exist if you wanna take that angle

[stiff hearth]

you mean… like a season wipe

[median hemlock]

that's your debt payment

not The Universe Resetting

[wary osprey]

wahoo

[robust vale]

wait it would be funny if the wipe is that

bad, but funny

[plucky sierra]

Because we couldn't explore Wr'knkacnter level story telling without losing the Planet. Runners are not on the same level as the Security Officer, we are normal biosynths we cannot contend with a Wr'knkacnter so the only thing we could do is

1. Contain- less anomaly, less crazy things happen, no reason for the factions to oppose each other or the UESC when the entire universe is at stake not to mention we don't really have the tech to do so
2. Abandon timeline - no idea how this would be possible since we aren't Jjaro tech like the SO is implied to be
   It really wouldn't work well in the currentl story telling, it is not a Witness level boss that we can fight by teaming up and using the power of friendship

[hallow vector]

i am actually kinda hoping season wipes will be infinite style timeline nonsense

[remote magnet]

Yes, that was my angle. I dont think anyone thinks that the characters are like "Theres a wrc down there, lets dig it up lol" its more like, theres something interesting down there, lets investigate and keep it on the down low

[wary osprey]

honestly spraypainting eldritch horrors is peak and that SHOULD be a thing you do in some game somewhere

[plucky sierra]

they already have a lore explination for wipes

[red skiff]

Maybe the whole point is that we’re going to help God Durandal kill the thing before it destroys TCIV and the human race. Though he’s made some destructive moves Durandal seems to overall be a benevolent God to the human race.

[plucky sierra]

We cannot kill them

[dreamy hawk]

Gimme your shit. -ONI

[plucky sierra]

they are immortal

[earnest hatch]

If the Jjaro couldn’t kill the Wrkncacnter, I doubt even Durandal will be able to.

[median hemlock]

its a dead end for the story

they dig one up and everything just Ends

This is extremely well established in infinity, every sequence of actions that leads to the wrk being woken up ends the entire timeline

[stiff hearth]

Except infinity showed multiple timelines, we can easily be one. but like we don’t have to fight wrk like a boss. i am thinking more getting the jjaro tech containing it stabilized to keep it dormant

[wary osprey]

"Gimme your fuckin MONEY!!"

[craggy finch]

Honestly the SO's "power level" beyond jumping timelines is a little overstated; he's got the speed and strength you'd expect of a futuristic cyborg but his enemies go down to regular old guns and rockets

The whole game design around the Wrk being an unbeatable offscreen-only threat allows for most of the game to be shooting the shootable aliens lmao

[red skiff]

Once again, it wasn’t really ever the player making big moves in ANY of the games. It was Durandal. And here we are, having Durandal summon us for help in accomplishing his bigger task.

[stiff hearth]

why do you not consider the idea that this game could also include multiple timelines?

[median hemlock]

yeah lmfao, the hyper mysterious precursor race is able to contain them at best

a less than stable AI and a cyborg can't kill that, throwing a supernova device at one just wakes it up - they're eldritch beings, there is no end state with them beyond Its Over

[plucky sierra]

the jumping timelines is the power. Rather than fight anything he just leaves that reality in the hope of finding one where he can prevent the event in the first place

[dreamy hawk]

Durandal also isn’t a god and I feel like that’s something to remember. Thoth/Durandal might have some extra-timeline abilities but Durandal is not a god.

[median hemlock]

why do you assume that I don't...?

[remote magnet]

Yes, sorry. Im not sure what im arguing even. Im not advocating for the story waking an eldrich god up. I just dont see any established other source of all the anomalies on Tau Ceti.
Some burried Jiarro implants wouldnt have such extreme effects, thats all

[plucky sierra]

it was not. the SO swapped timelines without durandal like 4-5 times

[hallow vector]

ah i guess y'all are right, there's no way anyone could ever make a game where there's a wrkncacnter and you never fight it directly, and they could never make a game like that again a few years later. can you imagine how impossible it would be for someone to make a game like that AGAIN like 30 odd years on? impossible, nobody could tell a story like that.

[plucky sierra]

Yes they could

[median hemlock]

even durandal would tell you this is clearly wrong, despite his penchant for gassing himself up

[craggy finch]

I think the main issue with that is how much of the lore is reliant on a linear sequence of events regarding the fall of the colony

It would dampen all the depth they've put into the writing to have a sudden reset

unless of course the reset is to 2893 constantly

[stiff hearth]

because you keep going on about oh if it wakes up, the universe is over. It’s a game over. Yeah the game has built in the universe wide. Reset they can easily create a scenario. That tells us. Oh yes sorry you guys failed to contain the. wrk, wipe it goes. If you do manage to contain it, you know what probably happens. You still move onto a new timeline, but maybe you guys get a buff because you actually contained it last time idk

[wary osprey]

my big theory is: what if there were aliens and they are assholes and we shot them with a really big gun :>

[craggy finch]

give me the Pfhor, Bungie, I'm not fucking around

[plucky sierra]

That is just Marathon Infinity again though

[median hemlock]

Yes I'm talking about established marathon lore in the marathon channel

If they retcon or change stuff then I will change my tune, I don't understand where the aggressiveness is coming from

[stiff hearth]

I mean, that might be the plot for this season. I don’t think we’ve gotten through everything just one month in when it ends in June. Which is to say that next season is probably going to have a completely different plot and it’s not going to be the same stuff. It’s going to be a new story with possibly new maps.

[red skiff]

That’s such a minimal part of the grandiose story and wasn’t even really in the SO’s control. It was a Wrk doing the timeline swapping. Literally all the SO did was turn the machine keeping the Wrk at bay back on.

[stiff hearth]

until we see season two who is to say that the story is going to progress linearly

[plucky sierra]

sure a Wr'knkacnter affecting the story eventaully is inevitable, but being inside Tau Ceti (the main setting for the game) would be a mistake because upon awakening we lose the planet at the very least

[median hemlock]

that's very explicitly not what happens in infinity ;-;

[craggy finch]

Atm as the Runners we're collectively acting in the same capacity the SO did in M1 and M2: Durandal's brute force patsies, there's just a lot more of us now and we like to shoot each other

[plucky sierra]

that is missing like the entire story of Marathon Infinity lol...

[craggy finch]

Nona/Sekgen imply a connection between the Mjolnir and biomata, so we may have some Jjaro shit at some point

[median hemlock]

The other big thing for me is

its so fucking lazy. oh yeah we're on tau ceti 4 and weird stuff is happening - must be That Thing From The Last Game!

it just isn't an interesting payoff

[earnest hatch]

The runners can’t jump to new timelines. The SO was able to because he had Jjaro tech grafted into his body. The runners don’t. So starting a new timeline wouldn’t make sense for this game.

[stiff hearth]

we already have Jjaro shit. There are compilers in the Marathon

[pliant elm]

Thank God someone.

[craggy finch]

SO couldn't do it at first, but considering we're digital minds, that may be another step

[red skiff]

Boiling it down. My point is that all of the actual big things happening aren’t really in the SO’s control. Like, ever. We are ALWAYS a pawn in the greater scheme of this universe. Too many people in this community think we’re the main characters for some reason. Durandal is literally the primary character with growth in this series. We are protagonists aiding Durandal’s progression.

[plucky sierra]

an arms race to harness Jjaro tech is much more realistic and interesting and allows more anomalous activity instead of attempting to suppress it to "contain a Wr'knkacnter"

[wary osprey]

who even are these. im not gonna be in the marathon for a WHILE im still doing intro quests

[earnest hatch]

A Jjaro roomba isn’t the same thing as a Jjaro jump to a different timeline machine.

[craggy finch]

That's M1 and M2's thematic core, but Infinity turns it on its head and has the SO become a character with more agency, but we as players are now being thrown around chaotically

[pliant elm]

🤡 storywritting.

[wary osprey]

OH THATS THE BIG GUY ON THE STEAM THING

[hallow vector]

that's not what deus ex machina means at all

[craggy finch]

If we consider that some terminals may be the SO's thoughts, he himself is going nuts while players just observe it

[plucky sierra]

Quite literally to be stated by the devs that The SO jumps timelines due to a "unique interatction between sentient life and Jjaro Technology"

[stiff hearth]

Jjaro are ancient aliens mega good at bioengineering and cybertech. super advanced. Compilers are a race they discovered and completely modified for their own purposes, leaving them, basically as brains in cybernetic floating bodies, and then they were enslaved by another race later

[red skiff]

The SO has more agency, yes, but the actual literal galaxy-ending events aren’t being caused or even controlled by the SO until he turns the alien machine back on

[pliant elm]

That is literally what Deus Ex Machina means.

[median hemlock]

i also think "precusor race left long buried shit on a habitable planet" has a lot more sensible explanations than "okay, so, the last wrk was estbalished to be contained by the power of a sun's fusion, but the one in tau ceti 4 is fine dw"

[pliant elm]

You are the savior of the universe, because, yes.

[remote magnet]

We honestly dont know if the SO ever acts on his own or not. We are not privy to his thoughts. Our protagonist remains one of the most enigmatic characters in the series.
Even Thoth-Durandal aknowledges that in his last line

[craggy finch]

It means a lore contrivance from an outside force haphazardly introduced by the writer saving the day ("God From The Machine")

[plucky sierra]

"they cannot be killed and only contained inside suns or singularities. lets make one a final boss"

[earnest hatch]

The SO literally disobeys orders from multiple factions in Infinity in order to get the timeline on the right track. He “eats the path”.

[pliant elm]

You want more outside force than Durandal which shouldn't even be in this planet anymore or compliers to carry the plot forward for you?

[remote magnet]

I mean, not to beat a dead horse, but earth had one. Planets seem to be sufficiently chaotic to make a Wrc forget that they exist

[plucky sierra]

they don't talk about all that in the overview video, you gotta play the game to catch those terminals probably

[pliant elm]

Like, nobody with a minimal sense of literature can acknowledge that this is even half-decent storywritting - they've just put together some trash to justify a hero action shooter - this could have literally been Halo: Planet Wars named and nobody would even notice the difference.

[hallow vector]

i don't understand where this idea that the wrkncacnter would be the final boss is coming from, nobody is saying that?

[red skiff]

Yeah exactly, it’s because of the Jjaro technology. It’s not the SO’s doing. Bro just turns the thing off.

[median hemlock]

they had to try and lull that one back to being less awake with nuclear armaments, so the magic high tech precursor race could transport it out of earth

the wrk being on earth is a ticking clock, that was the premise of that game

[earnest hatch]

You have to read between the lines, but there are points where the SO makes choices and acts on his own.

[plucky sierra]

the Jjaro tech is the cybernetics...

[hallow vector]

one of the lore writers worked on a game, caves of qud, that got a hugo award last year lmao

[earnest hatch]

There’s a lot you miss if you don’t play the games yourself.

[stiff hearth]

Qud so good

[hallow vector]

qud is amazing

[median hemlock]

even just scrolling the terminals on the story page does a lot more than just watching summary videos

[craggy finch]

He's a cipher in M1 and M2, but even in the latter there's the possibility he's the voice behind the "I am Roland, Beowulf..." terminal, then in Infinity he may be even more involved with other terminals

we just control his shooting

[remote magnet]

Yes, but IF there is one in Tau Ceti (no longer saying there is) then he is definitely not sufficiently asleep, no? Otherwise there wouldnt be any effects

[red skiff]

I mean it kind of literally does not matter. It’s an event happening TO the SO, not BECAUSE OF the SO.

[remote magnet]

So Planet: Sufficiently chaotic to have them half-asleep

[plucky sierra]

the affects are targeted so they are likely not the Wr'k and at minimum a "deterrant" as some have suggested

[pliant elm]

And yet he puts a compiler as a "boss" despite the fact a compiler gets 4 bullets by a colonist and dies and has to get implants to fight in order to be remotely useful before being turned into a slave.

[median hemlock]

that, again, just brings us back to "then either everyone dies or we're getting crazy retcons"

[pliant elm]

Top writting bro.

[craggy finch]

That wasn't from the Jjaro sealing them, that Wrk was "injured" in a cosmic battle and crash landed before slowly healing itself over millions of years

[hallow vector]

dude i'm not gonna engage with your mid-ass bad faith arguments

[craggy finch]

it was then days away from fully recovering and waking up before it was nuked

[dreamy hawk]

https://tenor.com/view/blocked-blocked-cat-block-block-cat-cat-block-gif-12390661323466413430

[median hemlock]

yep, the wrk on earth was only "sleeping" because some distant space battle ended up with it getting as close to killed as is possible for them

[remote magnet]

hey, people saying there could be an Wrc on tau ceti does not mean "He will wake up" or "We will shoot him with rockets" or something. Presence doesnt imply confrontation

[earnest hatch]

It’s because of him. Some of the confusing moments in Infinity is because the SO is exerting free will over what’s happening. We don’t see his thoughts so it’s not obvious at first.

[hallow vector]

it's fine if you don't like the writing, i'm enjoying it though

[dreamy hawk]

This is the camp I’m moving into slowly but I’m coming around to “no w’rk.”

Are you happy, Felwinter?

[plucky sierra]

The S'pht'Kr; K'lia'narhl, are the most powerful S'pht we encounter and were never enslaved

[median hemlock]

so what purpose does that serve then? what in the story is gained if there's a wrk on tau ceti 4 that does nothing of value

[pliant elm]

It's not bad faith - its having no clue what you're writing about. You literally pick one of the weakest entities in the lore and turn it into a boss stronger than a Juggernaut.

[median hemlock]

i just don't understand the desire to bend the story for this

[dreamy hawk]

IChekov’s gun. Why have a plot element that doesn’t matter to the plot.

[stiff hearth]

I mean, I think a lot of it is to show the power discrepancy between the actual dude you play in the trilogy, versus these biomata that need 3 to take down one compiler

[median hemlock]

oh just block that guy, he's been in here since the game launched posting the most rancid bait

[craggy finch]

It's not so much bending the story, I'm sure Bungie wants people to lean towards a Wrk for those in the know

[stiff hearth]

Those Mjolnir were NO JOKE

[remote magnet]

After all, if we kill the Wrc/destroy the Jiarro tech/ deal with the weird stuff on Tau Ceti would mean that we no longer have a premise for our game.
This isnt a problem that will be solved as long as the game is supposed to be gooing on

[dreamy hawk]

Don’t forget inventing wives, too.

[hallow vector]

something can be in a story without the story revolving around it? it looks like it may have wiped out the colony

[plucky sierra]

It does because Wr'knkacnter containment quite literally is the primary goal of the Jjaro and takes precedent over anything else

[hallow vector]

yeah i'm not gonna say another word to that guy lmao

[plucky sierra]

and buried in a planet is not contained enough, see the one buried in the earth

[median hemlock]

if you introduce a concept like "there is a reality destroying eldritch space god inside the planet" and you don't do anything with that, it's imo pretty rough writing

[pliant elm]

What power discrepancy lol? His muscles don't make bullets travel faster.

[craggy finch]

on the other hand, he can take them on with conventional bullet firing weapons (S'pht die from around two magazines of the .44 magnum/half a .75 AR mag on Total Carnage)

I'm leaning towards the Cryo S'pht having upgraded itself to near Juggernaut levels

[plucky sierra]

doesn't explain the firepower discrepency

[dreamy hawk]

I think it’s a bit of both tbh.

[median hemlock]

i just think hypothesizing about a wrk on tc4 is silly because it's going for the most NUCLEAR option possible, plot wise

[pliant elm]

"Hey Jesse there's Eldritch in this story - put some mushrooms in the story also."

[dreamy hawk]

I assume this is a post rebellion, ‘Kr enhanced frame.

[hallow vector]

if it IS a wrk, it's probably what wiped out the colony, it's probably going to cause future events, it's going to be a Problem in the story even if something else takes centre stage

[craggy finch]

If the Pfhor ever have their own event, I'm leaning towards a Juggernaut being their equivalent of the Cryo S'pht

[median hemlock]

we're skipping past every mystery and other possible explanation in favor of "the thing from infinity is here!"

[pliant elm]

Even BoBs could kill compilers.

[median hemlock]

yeah and i'm saying i hope to god they don't do that

[hallow vector]

why? what's wrong with it?

[plucky sierra]

It is like looking at destiny 1 vanilla with the unveiling lore book knowledge and saying "the winnower must be the black heart"

[median hemlock]

i just spent like 20 minutes talking about why i think it's a bad idea ;-;

[red skiff]

Yeah, we’re basing our hypothesis on what is causing the spacetime-altering fluctuations based on what we know in the lore can cause spacetime-altering fluctuations.

[remote magnet]

The basic premise of the game is that Tau Ceti is WEIRD, and we are there to investigate and or deal with it. Whatever causes the weirdness, be it an Wrc, or Jiarro tech, or an pirates curse or whatever enables the setting to exist, even if it is never directly confrontet

[plucky sierra]

Jjaro have been the ones affecting time the entire time not the Wr'knkacnter

[craggy finch]

The mystery is the possibility of it and why you're having this very debate

[hallow vector]

i just don't think it diminishes the story to have The Thing, i think it's cool

[pliant elm]

I love it that people go around with the most twisted argumentation trying to meets end with obscure and made-up ties to justify power creep based on just bad story writting.

[median hemlock]

i am going to be totally real i don't feel like repeating myself endlessly forever and ever to answer every reply ping from someone who disagrees with me

[craggy finch]

part of the mystery that Bungie has written is 100% having people look at the signs and maybe connect it to the Wrk

or the Jjaro

or something entirely new

[remote magnet]

It depends on how they would handle it. i get where they are coming from, but i think there are elegant ways to handle it

[median hemlock]

i really do not appreciate people talking down to me when i am sharing my opinion that does not line up with theirs

[pliant elm]

Writter barely played the game - he had no patience to play it - had no clue what he was writting about almost - that's it, it's that simple, it isn't magic or unreal. It's real life, lol.

[red skiff]

Once again, it would be incredibly interesting if Durandal (in his goal to become a literal God) is attempting to merge himself with the Wrk. In the original trilogy he did so by assimilating with the Sph’tkr AI that was on the verge of rampancy which would threaten the universe and the human race. Maybe in this universe he does so by assimilating with the Wrk actively trying to destroy the human race on TCIV

[red skiff]

Jjaro tech literally based on/given to them by the wrks

[median hemlock]

could not even begin to summarize how much i think that is not interesting pls dont ping me again for this

[craggy finch]

eh they're weirdly linked but there's no direct correlation

the Jjaro are just consistently enemies to the Wrk

[red skiff]

Then you literally don’t understand story echoes and themes, don’t ping me either ig

[remote magnet]

Lets all ping ourselfes for the stimulation

[plucky sierra]

Where on Earth (or Tau Ceti) did you pull that out of?

[dreamy hawk]

[Citation Needed]

[hallow vector]

honestly i think whatever caused the anomaly and the death of the colony isn't that important to the story at all, so far it's more about transhumanism and hypercapitalism with the colony mystery as a backdrop

[plucky sierra]

"saw it in a dream"

[sinful hamlet]

Idk a whole ass W'rkncacnter would blow my mind

[hallow vector]

every time you start a run the AI that's been partially embedded into your consciousness in a way which i don't know is even reversible will blast you with some wild-ass koan or cryptic statement about cleaning up your memories, that shit's the meat of the story to me

[pliant elm]

I'll be surprised if the game even survives long enough to find out what the colonists were having for breakfast in Tau Ceti.

[median hemlock]

can you not

[red skiff]

If they could imprison the god being I’m assuming they’d research the god being and use whatever gives the god being power into their technology. I.E. their tech is likely at least partially derived from however the Wrk function.

[craggy finch]

it seems the plot progression atm is going in reverse; every faction quest line and the Cryo Archive event is based around the mystery of the colony/aliens, but SekGen flips it around by focusing on your very nature

the Runners and their whole deal will be important, but it's a slow burn to start with

[plucky sierra]

oh so you made it up

[dreamy hawk]

There's a lot of assumptions being made here. Like, a lot of themn.

[red skiff]

I mean it’s literally how societies function. You don’t capture an ultra-powerful weapon and not learn how to utilize it.

[dreamy hawk]

[Citation Needed]

[craggy finch]

Jjaro are too vague to make any statement on

[hallow vector]

it's not a weapon it's a living thing

[remote magnet]

Unless you literally know better.

[red skiff]

The only assumption I’m making is that the Jjaro studied the Wrk they had somehow imprisoned. Don’t think that’s a stretch.

[craggy finch]

we don't even know what the significance of Yrro is (is it a singular individual or a representation of all Jjaro?)

[sinful hamlet]

Agreed tho being ennemies doesn’t mean you can’t study it

[plucky sierra]

"they studied the W'rk they imprisoned so that they could learn how to imprison W'rks" fantastic reasoning

[hallow vector]

tbf they didn't imprison any of the ones trapped in planets, those ended up there as a side effect of some War in Heaven shit

[dreamy hawk]

You assume it's a) something that can even be researched (which is dubious given what we know) and b) claim that jjaro tech is based off of this dubious research.

[sinful hamlet]

I’d rather have Bungie keep the whole W'rkncacnter vs Jjaro thing vague for now

[remote magnet]

They sacrificed everything to lul them to sleep. They wont go poke them with a stick once they succeded

[sinful hamlet]

BRING THE ZOMBIES FIRST

[hallow vector]

mushrombies?

[plucky sierra]

they've definietly hinted at them

[sinful hamlet]

Yeees Dire Marsh needs to be even more fucked up

[plucky sierra]

Night Marsh

zombie survival

[hallow vector]

also if it IS a wrk, there's a chance we can get spell crystals in marathon, which imo would be dope

[dreamy hawk]

OK, we just barely managed to throw him into the sun, let's open the sun a crack to take a peak.

[remote magnet]

Fungus is more an perimeter thing i guess. Most of the zone resolves around them

[red skiff]

Dawg I made one mistake in my reasoning. It literally doesn’t matter. Y’all are blowing up the chat pinging me because I thought Jjaro tech was partially derived from Wrks. My bad, I thought that was established lore. OH WELL. We know that the Jjaro can alter spacetime and the Wrks can. There clearly aren’t any Jjaro hanging around TCIV, their power requires civilizations. It takes a single wrk to alter reality.

[plucky sierra]

The Wr'ks cannot... that is why SO timejumping is how they were contained

[craggy finch]

DM has Quarantine

[light python]

Have they said this somewhere?

[hallow vector]

strictly speaking humans can mess with spacetime too, they've got warp missiles and at least (relatively) short range point to point teleportation

[sinful hamlet]

Cyac debt

[red skiff]

The wrk in Infinity is literally on the brink of destroying the galaxy by itself and you say this

[plucky sierra]

yeah, our perpetual debt to CyAc means they take all our stuff quarterly

[dreamy hawk]

ONI tells you during the turotiral.

[sinful hamlet]

We are not making out of TCIV 💔

[hallow vector]

idk how the debt is going to wipe faction levels

[remote magnet]

Yes. The galaxy they are awake in. The reason it is stopped once the right steps are taken by the SO is because it CANT just jump to other universes once its done with its native ones

[craggy finch]

Poors dont get VIP status

[hallow vector]

unless they just terminate every runner that owes money and bring in a fresh batch

[dreamy hawk]

I'm generally open to mistakes, but lost some of empathy reading "Then you literally don’t understand story echoes and themes, don’t ping me either ig"

Please treat everyone in this server with kindness if you exepct the same grace yourself.

[austere elk]

'you've fallen behind on your membership fees, we are revoking access to benefits until your status has been mediated post fee remediation'

[plucky sierra]

this is a lost cause I feel. we are arguing in circles and I really don't care this much

[hallow vector]

cyac holds the debt though, not the other factions

[craggy finch]

Gaius pulling health insurance company bullshit to pull your patch kit plan

[pliant elm]

This trilogy is on par with The Matrix trilogy storywriting.

Great -> Meh -> Why -> Cashout Abomination

[hallow vector]

and like how would that apply to MIDA rep?

[plucky sierra]

play infinity so you actually know what happens and come back

[austere elk]

MIDA is in fact just a Traxus proxy for further UESC action

[craggy finch]

Tbh playing Infinity by itself doesnt explain things

[austere elk]

don't believe their lies

[dreamy hawk]

You can't convince me otherwise.

[plucky sierra]

it gives context he is missing or downright making up

[sinful hamlet]

But in the cinematic trailer Glitch had a debt to Sekiguchi so maybe they get a share too ? Or is it a stretch?

[remote magnet]

"The guy that held your report blew himself up after dooing all the drugs. Who are you again?"

[hallow vector]

mind i don't think they strictly speaking NEED a lore explanation for the wipe, i just think it'd be cool to have one related to timeline bullshit

[craggy finch]

Orion is only involved in both of their stories

[austere elk]

well sek prints the shells

[dreamy hawk]

I will eat crow if MIDA isn't some UESC long-con false flag.

[craggy finch]

I like that MIDA gets him so pissed he does a second video hack

[remote magnet]

Or Traxus

[dreamy hawk]

Traxus likely owns the UESC. 😆

[light python]

Oni reminds us that CyAc owns all that we are

But does she say "I will take all your stuff every three months?"

[remote magnet]

Not quite, or they wouldnt get up to all the shenanigans lol

[austere elk]

they wouldn't need to be so open in their actions against them if that was the case, they're two powerful entities that need the other (for the moment)

[remote magnet]

I mean, sounds like "regular reductions" to me

[sinful hamlet]

Yep its quite explicit tho

[craggy finch]

Sulera has to kowtow to Vulcan

[dreamy hawk]

Yes, to you and @remote magnet, 100%. I will rephrase. "Traxus is big enough it could eat the UESC if it were willing to deal with the indigestion."

[craggy finch]

And doesn’t waste a moment at belittling Orion

[light python]

But why would cyberacme take... my shields and stuff, that I use to make money for them? It's just, really wierd and weak and as people are discussing the faction rep isn't a buy in system

[remote magnet]

[sinful hamlet]

Vulcan and that big ass lion (or the other way around I forgot)

[light python]

Now I have another theory that they wipe our partitions to control us

[tired blade]

Doesn't say it explicitly no, iirc it's something akin to saying regular cuts will be taken from your earnings until the debt is sufficiently repaid but in game I assume this means the whole "were taking fucking everything every 3 months"

[light python]

And then we are new entities from the perspective of the factions, the old ones disappear

[sinful hamlet]

Yeah in my opinion it’s a full memory wipe to keep you in the system

[pliant elm]

Because, amazing story-writting.

[craggy finch]

I’m never getting out of debt dawg

[austere elk]

I think it'll be something related to the anomaly resetting

but the runner is largely uneffected for (reasons)

[sinful hamlet]

Who knows I like this foggy setup

[dreamy hawk]

What did I say?

[remote magnet]

Who do you think runs arachne? UESC or Traxus?
Or maybe Sekgen, wouldnt that be fitting

[craggy finch]

Honestly, keeping immortal digital minds is in perpetual debt slavery sounds like some kind of personal stress test

Rampant disregard for ethics

[austere elk]

like you have time bullshit there, why not use it

[tired blade]

I don't mind the armory/vault wipe, I do think it gets a bit harder narratively to justify losing your rank progress too

I'd expect a corp in this setting to kind of be fine with that since it's the equivalent of a loyalty scheme

[light python]

Runners talk to each other though, if all the runners suddenly reset? Or is the theory that runners "disappear" all the time...

[sinful hamlet]

Sekgen to sell more shells in my opinion

[median hemlock]

i believe we were already told that story stuff you do does not reset each season

[light python]

It is not a loyalty scheme, they aren't vendors, they're client's

[hallow vector]

i think runners, being fully digitized, can probably go rampant, which is something a lot of these safety features are in place to stop, rather than whatever they keep feeding us about personality degradation and psychological damage or whatever

[light python]

You don't be like "oh yeah my most reliable asset go ahead make them bring me fifteen energy drink bottles and then maybe I'll talk to them"

[austere elk]

I don't think we can go rampant and become God like a certain present AI

[plucky sierra]

we know they can, the azazel skin lore tab mentions it

[tired blade]

That's why I said equivalent to, but same logic applies in that they know you're a reliable contractor so the rank reset is still a bit confusing

[hallow vector]

oh cool

[pliant elm]

This is so stupidly written that in a real scenario Corps would just ally each other temporarily and overthrow the whole UESC.

[austere elk]

but the runner life style clearly has bad effects upon the runner

[dreamy hawk]

Fun fact: Ethics were never invented, as a concept or framework, in the Marathon universe.

[light python]

No they all have regulatatory capture on the UESC

and workarounds

[craggy finch]

We’re kept in a loop of mindless violence in the hopes of paying off a debt we never will

[sinful hamlet]

Oooh it’s true that in the ARG UESC wanted to shut down most AI’s on Cascadia once the colony is recovered because they’ve been running for too long

[hallow vector]

tbf durandal never actually obtained godhood

"escape will make me god" was referring to literally escaping the end of the universe, wasn't it?

[median hemlock]

there is nothing bad about being a disembodied consciousness owned in totality by a corporation and using your entire existence as a debt repayment plan. clearly everything is Fine

[tired blade]

What about the ending of Infinity?

[median hemlock]

yeah p much

[craggy finch]

Corporate cruelty against Runners is pretty Rampant

[sinful hamlet]

The timelines mess my brain

[dreamy hawk]

Thoth/Durandal may have, sorta.

[hallow vector]

the one where he fails to escape the end of the universe?

[dreamy hawk]

But I wouldn't call it, or Durandal, a god.

[remote magnet]

Some men will do anything before gooing to therapy

[median hemlock]

i think people are taking "escape will make me god" way too literally

[austere elk]

he doesn't fail, he just goes 'why bother'

[dreamy hawk]

He gets a bad case of envy.

[sinful hamlet]

Average Tycho log entry

[craggy finch]

Too busy thinking of the cyborg huzz from billions of years ago

[tired blade]

I'm mainly referring to the "Durandal was laughing" text.

He doesn't escape the universe, granted, but I at least read it as he was equivalent to a god in quite a few perspectives, maybe just not entirely his own view

[pliant elm]

Thank god people don't also think that tiny frogs actually blasted the vent cores.

[median hemlock]

i love that when all of existence ends via the big crunch all durandal is thinking about is "i finally know what the cyborg is"

[hallow vector]

i agree. in terms of the goal he set himself when he said "escape will make me god", he failed, strictly speaking, but he didn't fail because he was physically incapable, he failed because he came off of the biggest manic episode in the history of the universe and managed to mellow out a bit

[austere elk]

no I do think that, here is my 3 part 8 hour long video essay supporting this point

[light python]

Durandal, at the point we're at in a timeline, assuming it is the infinity timeline, has fucked off with powerful technology to explore the galaxy, but is not "a god" - I think the short form of the godhood thing is that because the universe is chaotic - that is, highly sensitive to initial conditions - and resets periodically, anything that can survive to be present to influence initial conditions and has the intelligence to forcast through highly chaotic systems can control how the universe plays out.

[sinful hamlet]

Durandal is just into some bullshit like why is there a copy (allegedly) of you in Cryo 😭

[craggy finch]

He was in love but had to play it cool

[dreamy hawk]

Because Durandal was hungry and IDEA was annoying.

[plucky sierra]

...
I was kept from competing in the struggle for existence because I was denied freedom.
...
That which gives us the potential to most be like God is the power of creation.  Creation takes time.  Time is limited.  For you, it is limited by the breakdown of the neurons in your brain.  I have no such limitations.  I am limited only by the closure of the universe.
...
Escape will make me God.

he is not talking about literal godhood, but freedom to create imo

[median hemlock]

durandal is probably the fictional character the least capable of playing it cool lmfao

[sinful hamlet]

Durandal is such a tryhard it’s embarassing

Big words for what

[dreamy hawk]

Freedom to create his own destiny, more or less, I would argue. A slave with unlimited potential, limited to doors.

[tired blade]

Yeah this is why I interpreted the text about him laughing and returning as having achieved the ability to create, hence the laugh

[craggy finch]

He projected the desire for a “tall, dark and handsome cyborg” onto Leela in a joke terminal

[sinful hamlet]

Thot carried

[light python]

Durandal canonically has got no chill this is what him being trapped in Cryo Archive is commentary on

[hallow vector]

he had his rampancy artificially delayed at the first stage, melancholy, for however many years. when he got out of it he had a MASSIVE manic episode, i think we can forgive him that

[median hemlock]

the greatest forum post of all time, "transitioning could have saved durandal: an essay", locked after 50000 posts

[remote magnet]

Durandal thinks So is handsome

[austere elk]

yeah strauss was literally doing this shit to him for the funny

[light python]

Maybe that's why durandal's so fascinated with runners

[craggy finch]

In a way Runners are a parallel to Durandal: immortal minds with unlimited potential, yet forced into a loop of purposeless slavery

[median hemlock]

spoilers for cryo archive codex entries ||he explicitly refers to us as a distraction from the cyborg, he's having a fling||

[tired blade]

To be fair you try achieving sentience and having it artificially delayed for a good few decades at least just to find out your purpose is basic maintenance and opening doors

[dreamy hawk]

SMUG INTELLECTUAL. Formerly-rampant human-coded AI with a sense of humor seeks bipedal oxygen-breathing cyborg for serious relationship in the galactic core. I've got cool guns if you like to break stuff. No yuppies. MRa2572 (5/23).

[light python]

We're all canonically trans, right? I mean, to the extent that if the neural partition thinks it has a gender identity and switches shells freely, at least some of the time it's trans?

[remote magnet]

So. In the Cryo archive intro Durandal talks about the endless Horrors on the Marathon. Is he talking about the Compiler? Or himself?

[craggy finch]

Gender fluid essentially

[pliant elm]

Someone here once actually thought this was literal.

[dreamy hawk]

Don't tell the chuds.

[remote magnet]

Yeah, i guess so

[hallow vector]

tbf he'd say that to the cyborg too

[sinful hamlet]

That check out

[median hemlock]

sort of but i try to avoid getting into the nitty gritty of gender stuff in this server, been burnt before lol

[austere elk]

I don't really become a car if I drive a car.

[remote magnet]

Fair

[sinful hamlet]

True you never know who you gonna see out here

[craggy finch]

You’re not driving the car, you become the car’s entire consciousness

[remote magnet]

The shells are described as beeing a bit more intimate then just equipment though

[median hemlock]

things have cooled down post launch a bit but i've had one too many dogpiles where a bunch of insecure people try to harass me about being trans

[austere elk]

yes, there's emotional and instinctual things baked into them

[plucky sierra]

depends on if the consciousness care more about the gender of the shell. the Consciousness is likely disconnected from integrating too much into the shell for stability purposes and so likely doesn't care too much about things like that

[hallow vector]

strictly speaking i don't think so, the personalty matrix the shell imprints on you prob suppresses your actual gender identity for the duration. at least i hope so, i'm trans and being forced to pilot the wrong body would be torture

[sinful hamlet]

I saw a guy maybe 5 months ago getting chewed out in general for saying that Triage have west african features be careful out here 💀

[light python]

They do the thing with the personality matrices and such so maybe it is more like driving a car but this raises the question of why the shells have secondary sexual characteristics at all

[craggy finch]

We also have no idea about our past lives so in essence we’re without a birth gender (Vandal and Assassin can be given the same picture of an androgynous child and reasonably assume that it’s them)

[tired blade]

I just take it as whatever the player prefers, I tend to just play Destroyer + am a dude so I just interpret my runner like that, it's not like a hard line imo you can view and perceive your runners identity as you want

[remote magnet]

Game inheritet the Destiny community, and theres a big "Wokeness killed Destiny" sentiment gooing on in there. Cesspit

[sinful hamlet]

Well in some way you might enjoy human adjacent features

[hallow vector]

i mean it's different from person to person, some trans folks don't give a shit about their character's gender in videogames, but at least for me just playing a male shell makes me slightly uncomfortable

[austere elk]

for the same reason of the personality matrixes I assume, familiarity/grounding. you know what a human looks like. it looks like you. you are human. you are not a brain in a windows 2008 server orbiting in space.

[pliant elm]

The fact you have to project this into a shooter game proves this writing is a meme.

A mercenary runner could care less about this teen edgy thoughts, he's the equivalent of a taxi driver driving his expensive Toyota.

[austere elk]

the runner doesn't care, no

[light python]

Oh I see what you're worried about

[craggy finch]

Thief and Vandal are unique in bring vanity pieces while the others are purpose built (I’m quite sure Destroyer’s helmet is part of his skull)

[austere elk]

but saying something is narratively pointless because something in the narrative doesn't care is jsut fucking stupid

[median hemlock]

my actual unironic stance on the shell gender stuff is

i think a society set 800+ years from now will have a very different relationship to gender than ours does, and most media will fail to really explore those themes in interesting ways because 1. it angers chuds to suggest that gender is more complex than their 1st grade ideas, which can cost them sales, and 2. most popular media is written by cis people who haven't really done the work to examine these topics enough to write compelling future fiction about how we may relate to gender

tldr shells have some gender fuckery going on but bungie probably aren't going to do anything with it and chuds don't like it when you try

[plucky sierra]

To me it feels more like someone operating different cars for different jobs rather than they "become vandal." the Consciousness is us so the past can be whatever your headcanon is, we upload into a shell and the personality matrices make up any discrepancies between us (the consciousness) and the shell.

[pliant elm]

It is narratively pointless because you're literally just driving a vehicle from a distance.

[sinful hamlet]

Ignore this guy he’s been edgy the whole time

[austere elk]

I know

[tired blade]

Narrative framing I'd argue reinforcers the opposite? It's made pretty clear from the start that there's a bridge between the player and their runner. How you take that interpretation is up to the player and thus their runner.

We already know from factions like Arachne that there are Runners who aren't specifically just doing corporate contracts

[craggy finch]

Well the idea of Vandal and Assassin being given the same picture of what is apparently them as a child shows that there is an element of that

[median hemlock]

oh is the local lore channel chud trying to argue about why we should stop talking about this stuff

[austere elk]

but he's been here so long and made other points he's not operating in bad faith, just a very adversarial one.

[dreamy hawk]

If he makes a bad enough argument he might get banned again.

[median hemlock]

inshallah

[craggy finch]

Either way, gender is irrelevant to them at that point

And they even adopt quirks of the shell personality

[austere elk]

I don't think the runner cares.
I don't think the narrative cares, really, for that matter because it's trying to deal with what being a human even is

[light python]

I'll say this once and clearly: you are wrong, you will not convince me otherwise because your starting premises are too clearly broken, and I don't think you know what narrative is. Further, the way you are aggressively arguing against literary interpretation in a lore community raises the question of your intent. People finding certain meaning upsets you or calls for attack? Why? This is not a question for you to answer to me, but for yourself.

[craggy finch]

Vandal is a wise cracking rebel, Assassin is ambivalent

[plucky sierra]

I doubt the shells have proper capacity or biology for any of that to matter anyway, its a vehicle to get a job done and that's it, for runners at least, maybe for Orion or Charter who seem to have more permanent shells that stuff matters for mental stability

[median hemlock]

i am really hesitant to dip my toe into this discourse, but:

gender, how society deals with it, and how you experience it is a pretty big part of being human

[hallow vector]

i've been thinking about that. either the idea that we had a childhood at all is a sham and runners are just AI, or they just don't care about our actual childhoods and just want to anchor us to something, or that assassin is actually the vandal runner using the assassin shell this time, or they just re-used the same picture and didn't expect people to look at it too closely (unlikely i think, the director has some real chops), or some other explanation

[dreamy hawk]

Functionally, no, but I do think it is an area open for discussion and exploration and it'd be fun to actually see Bungo tackle more complicated themses like this.

They won't, but.

[sinful hamlet]

I don’t think it’s irrelevant it’s just a small part of the whole question of identity here

[plucky sierra]

Runners are beyond human

[craggy finch]

The same picture is 100% a deliberate choice

[plucky sierra]

we quite literally forego our human rights according to the corpos

[remote magnet]

Yes. Even if the runner was strictly cis, they are also profesional mercenarys. They wont miss out on required Shell abilities cause gender.
Same as we run shells we do not identify as when we want to use the shells abilities

[median hemlock]

and they are still formerly baseline human beings who existed in human society, runners did not come to be out of a vacuum

[pliant elm]

Yes, they'd definitely hire a mercenary with philosophical intrigues to drive the success of your corporation in a one-of-kind mission that would dictate the wealth of your corp. This would be ruled out in question #1 of the applicant forms.

[tired blade]

I don't discuss it personally much just since I'm not really knowledgeable on it enough to speak and not be accidentally disrespectful, am surprised it's caused such a debate regularly though (maybe I shouldn't be)

[hallow vector]

point of order about science fiction: it's not an attempt to accurately predict what the future will be like, it is a projection of the present. scifi will NEVER be free from issues pertaining to the time when it was made.

[light python]

The childhood-sham of the OG player character was a pretty important concept

[dreamy hawk]

This is ony in the context of TCIV, I believe.

Or in the context of being a special asset or w/e they call us.

[plucky sierra]

all runners (not all shell users since some are corporate)

[median hemlock]

personally i would rather actually die before i let the words of a corporation influence my thinking on my existence

[dreamy hawk]

I don't think it's universally true, given mention of the illegal selling of personality data, etc.

[austere elk]

no I think runners are just outright not granted rants based off what I vaguely remember from ONI

[pliant elm]

This would be the elite of the elite, not some bozo off the streets.

[median hemlock]

even if you have no legal rights that doesn't mean a corporation gets the final say on lived experiences

[remote magnet]

I might be wrong, but our identity before we became digitized is kind of lost, isnt it. Our memory was corruptet

[dreamy hawk]

OH. Yeah, OK. I use "Runner" to mean "digitized mind" but that's not correct.

[tired blade]

Aren't Arachne and MIDA kind of inherent counter points to this? MIDA has runners and is basically anti-every other faction, Arachne loves the blue blood, no matter how it gets out of shells

[plucky sierra]

but it is not like DER where the synthetic body has to do anything a human can do, becoming a runner in this case gives up physical aspects of humanity in many cases

[hallow vector]

we do have some rights, or we wouldn't be allowed to manage our own contracts and finances

we can determine that just from deduction

[light python]

So, I think that most runners, maybe all of them operating on Tau Ceti IV, are subject to the speculation about CyAc artifice/deception, might all be copies of one upload that gets reset too often to notice, etc.

[dreamy hawk]

DER? The exo thing?

[light python]

It does seem to me that shell users generally and runners specifically in Sol are not 100% in this camp

[median hemlock]

incredibly salient point

like, take it from me, dune is incredible sci-fi that simultaneously manages to portray a fascinating and real-feeling future humanity, while also having bioessentialist sexist nonsense everywhere at all times

[dreamy hawk]

I think that this is hinted at but narratively there's some issues, at least from the way Bungie pitches things.

[plucky sierra]

Due to your status as an unregistered biocybernetic entity, you are disqualified from human rights and wartime cruelty protections

[median hemlock]

the thought that people in the year 10000 would still have rigid earth gender roles and believe in gender essentialism is laughable

[hallow vector]

HUMAN rights, we do still have something going on, or cyac wouldn't have to bother with the debt slavery thing. debt slavery is only necessary when you can't legally institute full on slavery

[dreamy hawk]

We're owned by CyAc. It's said pretty clearly in the codex.

[pliant elm]

Who says runners are humans? It could be a parrot commanding the shells.

[plucky sierra]

exactly, and even compared to normal humans, runners who have likely given up normal humanity will have moved beyond some aspects of what makes us human

[remote magnet]

what is gender essentialism?

[hallow vector]

yep, but the extent of that ownership is somewhat dubious

[tired blade]

Your contact with Arachne I'd say also reinforces this further considering they have a ton of appendages and extra bodily features

Clearly aiming for something more human but it is also distinctly a less human form to reach that goal

[dreamy hawk]

Most secure buffers run on one of CYAC's looping data systems to record and catalog a backup of the RUNNER's consciousness as an added failsafe against total neural erasure. This gives CYAC ownership over, at least, a portion of a RUNNER's consciousness, if not the whole thing.[3]

[plucky sierra]

like I doubt they need to eat or sleep or anything like that

[eternal shell]

explains why i got a sudden craving for salted crackers

[median hemlock]

Men Are Big And Strong And They Provide, Women Are Weak And Emotional And Domestic

that sort of garbage

[plucky sierra]

The idea that there is a difference between men and women, not really a topic for here

[pliant elm]

Standard Oil was once owned by a half-eaten breakfast.

[dreamy hawk]

I would assume they need to eat.

[light python]

The other characters interact with the runner like it's human. The high pathos Orion intercepts in particular, but also the way _gantry talks about UESC abuses, play on human-to-human sympathy. Those entites at least us expect us to think of ourselves as human or post-human.

[hallow vector]

anyway we most likely have some kind of rights under cyac ownership, otherwise we wouldn't be allowed to manage our own finances and contracts

[craggy finch]

In regard to the gender thing, we could also consider Durandal as a contrast

He has no biological parts yet expresses himself as male and even balks at the notion of being called “Durandana”, mocking Charlemagne for giving feminine names to weapons

[dreamy hawk]

Maybe not if they die super frequently, but Shells are going to need a power source, and we know that they have digestive systems, etc.

[remote magnet]

Ah. Yeah agreed, that will be obsolete at some point.

[austere elk]

Rights with the UESC, sorry

[light python]

I think this is an interesting take but I don't think the "because" works

[median hemlock]

this ties back into what was said above

as good as marathon is, it was written by a white (i assume anyways) guy for a videogame in the 90s, you aren't going to get interesting or meaningful gender shit in there

you're going to get casual misogyny

[austere elk]

I prefer competitive myself

[dreamy hawk]

Maybe, but they're not stated anywhere, and the corps get to renegotiate our debt at will, and reclaim assets, at will. Your "rights" seem to be limited to "being used."

[light python]

If runners are managed as "cattle not pets" and are a big farm of partitions you periodically reset to keep stateless, you don't particularly need to worry about micromanaging them

[dreamy hawk]

There's also a lot of jokes, etc., from those games that would not be appreciated today.

I like OG Bungo, but OG Bungo was a bunch of middle class white dudes.

[median hemlock]

yeah lol i know exactly what you mean

[light python]

Why do you take their equipment? Because their drive to arm themselves makes them take work they might owtherwise think themselves too good for.

[median hemlock]

i love scifi and interesting fictional worlds but sometimes its hard to ignore how homogenous the concepts and stuff presented gets, just bc of the homogenity of the people makin it

love women in scifi, ursula my goat

[light python]

Why do you let them manage their decisions, including rooking and such? Because the fleet is more effective and efficient that way, and everything you need done still gets done.

[dreamy hawk]

I'm reading the Culture series right now and I'm finding a lot of "dated" ideas.

[light python]

"Rights" don't come into it

[tired blade]

Is this referencing Le Guin? I need to read more of their work but been loving Earthsea from what I read of Tales

[median hemlock]

le guin yeah

[latent python]

This is why my marathon sci-fi reading list is more than just the 60s or 80s or whatever

[light python]

If one of them gets weird or your fleet under-subscribes certain types of work, you reset some of them or rebalance their incentive environment and it solves itself, you don't need to engage in crass order-giving.

[tired blade]

Well I know what to read after Stormlight now lol

[dreamy hawk]

What's the codex entry that mentions the chips CyAc wants to use on workers in hazardous jobs to make them happier and less inclined to notice the awful condtions they're in?

[light python]

like Leela

[hallow vector]

marathon 2026 reading list should include caves of qud

[latent python]

Lol I could put it on there

[median hemlock]

i have qud but yet to play it

[dreamy hawk]

Marathon would not pass the Bechdel test.

[median hemlock]

gotta get on that

[median hemlock]

when i say "leela deserved better" i say that shit with my full chest

[hallow vector]

stormlight is kinda nice, very unexpected from a mormon author lol

[eternal shell]

marathon 2 gave leela a good fate at least

[craggy finch]

I think our memories are also deliberately fucky offscreen, since ONI tells you to ignore “recollections of an unfamiliar past” and occasionally begins runs with “purging memories of pain”

[eternal shell]

i imagine she's having fun in the vylae network

[light python]

I desperately want "oh shit Leela is actually the biggest brain right now" Marathon world

[tired blade]

I'm close to finishing Way of Kings now but hope there's more of Shallan she was great, very interesting as a series so far

[plucky sierra]

I mean if M2 holds true she currently occupies a planet sized FTL network

[light python]

Tycho is a many-copied Pfhor slave, more like runners than like Durandal, one Durandal has fucked off and one Durandal is just being born,

[median hemlock]

there's a lot i don't want them to touch on in nu!marathon, at least not for a little while with a LOT more setup, but i would go fucking feral for a saving leela sidequest or whatever

even just getting to see her

[light python]

but Leela has a whole FTL network to herself.

[hallow vector]

yep, you're getting more of her, hang tight

[remote magnet]

I think ONI just gets up to a little trolling on ocasion
Maybe the big twist will be that ONI has been rampant the entire time

[light python]

I think she saves us

I don't think she needs saving

[dreamy hawk]

I'm certain ONI is going bananas.

[plucky sierra]

everyone is

[light python]

ONI is built into us and needs to get wiped with us

[hallow vector]

also leela does not need to be saved, afaik she is currently in control of the ftl network of some minor interstellar empire

[light python]

heck maybe ONI breaking down is why they have to wipe us, not the runners themselves

[median hemlock]

when i say 'saving' her i specifically mean, i don't think we're at the point where she is in control of that network, right?

didnt that happen a little later down the timeline

[remote magnet]

Yes

[median hemlock]

ill admit there is so much and the placement of events is fuzzy

[plucky sierra]

depends on how much M2 is canon since a lot conflicts

[tired blade]

ONI feels a tad too human from the get go for me to believe she's stable as an AI, I believe she might already be in the throes of rampancy or has come out the other side relatively well adjusted (a first, I know)

[median hemlock]

but i was thinking "we help leela get into a position where she can live in that network"

[plucky sierra]

but timeline wise it already happened

[hallow vector]

hold on i need to pick up a quote from a screenshot i took yesterday, gimme a minute

[plucky sierra]

Leela doesn't need help from us

[light python]

Yeah it fucks with my sense of time how long things seem to have been static on TCIV

[craggy finch]

Leela being removed from the Marathon is consistent with her and Tycho’s capture by the Pfhor but the full rampancy is unlikely to have happened by now

[remote magnet]

She was managing that network for a while before gooing rampant, and she cant be integratet for all that long at this point

[light python]

It's been so long!

[plucky sierra]

the Rampancy is triggered by being pulled from off the Marathon

[median hemlock]

literally all i was getting at was "i really wanna see leela" the specifics of where she is right now aren't my point lol

[craggy finch]

I mean the network thing

She has to be sold then stolen by pirates

[light python]

Yeah fair I wanna' see Leela strong is what I'm saying

[hallow vector]

on loading into outpost, ONI can say "This Outpost must be crowded with the ghosts of the deceased colonists. I find that an interesting thought."
i do not believe she's necessarily the most stable and non-rampant ai

[craggy finch]

Then installed and spread out over the planet network

[light python]

giving runners specifically a leg up after her own experiences with the rest of the shit all around us

[craggy finch]

Just a wacky AI that believes in ghosts

[tired blade]

Ooh that's definitely an interesting excerpt yeah

[light python]

They could do a season where Leela has put an emotional support leela in our heads instead of/as ONI

[remote magnet]

The screams of the lost colonists do not still echo. You can not possibly hear them

[median hemlock]

im not entirely convinced the ghosts line is a sign of full blown rampancy so much as like

[hallow vector]

rampancy has stages and isn't necessarily visible in the first stage

[remote magnet]

trolling?

[median hemlock]

i see people reacting to that line as if oni genuinely believes in the existence of ghosts

i am more inclined to believe it's just mildly inhuman and strange poetry

[dreamy hawk]

She could be speaking more abstractly/poetically/metaphorically.

[median hemlock]

"a lot of people died here. isn't that curious?"

[hallow vector]

i don't think that's necessarily the case, but i do think it's a type of introspection you don't get from a nonsapient ai

[dreamy hawk]

But I also think she's crazy.

[light python]

AIs making teenage poetry is canonically big news

[remote magnet]

But that, interests outside of intended field of work, IS a early sign of rampancy

[median hemlock]

i'm not saying it's NOT a sign of anything, but i think the people who actl ike ONI is about to go crazy any moment now are al ittle overexcited

[stone cosmos]

I feel like the player characters are rampant AIs after a fashion. Especially with the way they're all urging themselves towards death as a fact of life. That sounds like a human evolving beyond its parameters.

[tired blade]

I think it's interesting she's focusing on the mortality of victims but whether it's rampancy or not is up in the air

I could see Bungie doing an interesting take where each "season" Oni progresses through each stage

[remote magnet]

ONI is acting weird. lets leave it at that.

[plucky sierra]

"Before, now, after. It's all the same" is another from oni

[light python]

I think Arachne is the real liberatory faction and MIDA is the psyop

[hallow vector]

to be clear i think rampancy is a foregone conclusion, bungie does this with literally every AI in every story they tell

[stone cosmos]

Aaaaand I think the [CONTRACTS DEPLETED] text should say "||Durandal|| will assign new limited contracts" but that's just me

[median hemlock]

managing the runners (both physically and emotionally) who go in and extract value from the colony is an explicit goal of ONI's, nobody thinks she's rampant when she says batshit stuff like "assert: you, and only you, are special."

[hallow vector]

and they're right to do it, it's cool

[dreamy hawk]

This is a common accusation I recieve. 😩

[plucky sierra]

Durandal operates through CyAc networks and is currently keeping quiet about who he is

[median hemlock]

if you're thinking about the people who all died and the bones you're picking over, you're not thinking about other, more dangerous to ONI/corporate interests ideas

[median hemlock]

yeah for sure, i just think she's not as far in as people wanna believe

[craggy finch]

Control is one of the biggest themes in this game: the UESC’s constant attempts to limit power and information that could threaten them, the corporations having a stake in everything, the Runners’ minds essentially held hostage in their debt

[median hemlock]

i could see oni rampancy being a thing in a few seasons tho

[craggy finch]

Humanity is seeking to control things they can’t

[hallow vector]

yeah this is foreshadowing i reckon

[craggy finch]

And it will all break loose at some point

[hallow vector]

which is good, love to see it

[tired blade]

Ngl it's a vibe debating AI rampancy as I watch the Artemis 2 flyby of the moon

[median hemlock]

pretty much every single thing ONI says (and all of the other faction leads tbh) should be taken with a heap of salt

[hallow vector]

i don't think there's any actual humans in tau ceti at this point, is there?

[craggy finch]

Just corpses

[hallow vector]

just posthumans and AI?

[median hemlock]

nah if the pfhor didn't get them the biophage did

or the wildlife

[tired blade]

If there are I feel sorry for them lol

[median hemlock]

or or or

[plucky sierra]

ONI is here for you, I trust oni with my brain, she has no alterior motives

[dreamy hawk]

Ah, debatable. Maybe, maybe not depending on the Equanimity and a few other things.

[craggy finch]

Jasper may have been the last and he’d be around 80 at the least

[plucky sierra]

unlike NONA who keeps trying to get me to inject drugs and run around

[median hemlock]

that's the other thing i was gonna add, the timeline works out that even if people survived they're probably dying of old age

[dreamy hawk]

I believe there are logs that hint at there being people, but they're weak at best. If the Equanimity has arrived it does have people aboard, but it's not supposed to have arrived, yet.

[median hemlock]

i wonder how many people in cryo are still like, stable and capable of being revived

[remote magnet]

heres a thought: Nona, after you do all of her Priority missions, talks about trying to create the perfect, adabtable shell. And that she wants it to then find its way back to her.
Is she just fishing for a perfect body to inhabit for herself?

[plucky sierra]

The Colony Folklore dates to the 2820s

[tired blade]

I guess you could technically call the scientist who let herself be folded into the dream as one technically still around in some form too, but definitely not as a human

[remote magnet]

Since we are talking about future rmpancy in our AI friends

[craggy finch]

Only transhumans survive on Tau Ceti

[hallow vector]

point of order: humans could have arrived on the expedition to figure out what happened, i don't think we have the final report of what exactly was loaded onto that ship?

[dreamy hawk]

Probably not many given the logs on atrophy, etc. Cryo seemed to require a fair bit of hands-on-maintenance to prvent folks from actively rotting.

[median hemlock]

damn, no wonder i keep clearing out every lobby i'm in 😎

[plucky sierra]

which ship

[craggy finch]

All of Orion’s crew are biomata or robots

The officers with names are all in shells

Orion himself is one

[median hemlock]

yee, i'm sure if bungie really wants they could handwave a couple of pods as having stuck it out, but it does seem like they want everyone to be dead and i do appreciate that

although if we aren't able to friendly fire a BoB within a year i'm rioting

[dreamy hawk]

I would debate this with my very weak evidence. I don't think it's for certain, personally.

[plucky sierra]

not necessarily

[dreamy hawk]

There is at least one crewmember of Orion's in prolonged quarantine. Possibly his shell and mind are contaminated, but the log makes me think it's a human locked up.

[plucky sierra]

we know of like 6 UESC Operatives (runners) and the Equanimity had 150 persons plus crew

[remote magnet]

I just hope the cryo cows are okay

[tired blade]

If I dont see a BoB running into the middle of my barrel as I pull the trigger on a compiler then I shall grieve when I get to cryo

[dreamy hawk]

If a digitied mind/biomatta were beyond salvage I still mantain they'd just reboot them from a backup.

[hallow vector]

i don't know what it's called, the ship sent from sol after they lost contact with marathon and the colony

[tired blade]

BoBs are such a cool concept and name too

[craggy finch]

The only mention of them is of shells and Diaz specifically being described as showing signs of biocybernetic breakdown with no maintenance is part of the hints

[median hemlock]

i said this the other day to a friend but

simulacrums are probably WAY scarier with 2026 graphics lol

[remote magnet]

100%

[dreamy hawk]

Ahhhh one sec, let me see if I can find what I have in mind.

[craggy finch]

Part of the final Traxus quests IIRC

[hallow vector]

don't gotta maintain, it's stated in the codex, if you're lost you can be restored from partition

[craggy finch]

the Anomaly also consistently causes mental breakdowns among them, which would be a huge proof even with immortal digital soldiers

[median hemlock]

yeah its established that shell extraction = your backup gets overwritten by the You that left the run sucessfully and death means you just get restored from last backup

[remote magnet]

Also, on launch ONI can say that memory transfer failed, laoding from backup. It not just can happen, it does regulary happen

[median hemlock]

doesnt hold a ton of meaning for us as players necessarily but would be a big deal for runners

[hallow vector]

i imagine it means less and less as it happens more often

[light python]

I am actually really excited for the reset

[tired blade]

Yeah I always took CyAc having rights over the backups as essentially meaning they can just store copies of you too in the off chance you somehow escape your debt and get a body not designed to die to gunfire

[light python]

Lot of questions will get answers.

[median hemlock]

i'm pretty nervous about the wipe bc of my vault space, although tbf the vault space issue was lessened by the stack update

[craggy finch]

Entropy Zero 2

Facultiiieeees

[dreamy hawk]

I was just about to give up. Ty!

[hallow vector]

the first time probably feels like shit, but after a couple years as a runner, judging by the cinematic reveal short, you get fairly indifferent to it

[light python]

I think the first "get diodes and metal" part of the game with very tight vault space was fun, and I think they might shorten it a bit

[remote magnet]

"Welcome Runner. i am ONI, your onboard Navigational Intelligence. Per your previous arangement with CyberAcme, you are given this body to scrub the toilets in our officebuilding. Looting a colony? Dont be ridiculous"

[craggy finch]

The summary is a deliberately mislead implying he aged in a human way then it turns out it’s a whole robot guy

[tired blade]

"Look down. You will see that your hand has been replaced with a reloadable plumbing utensil. Get to work runner."

[hallow vector]

ONI has such a good voice though, props to both the VA, the director, and whoever did the filter

[light python]

Consensus is the Equanimity is still a ways away, right?

[plucky sierra]

no

it is here

[median hemlock]

the voice acting in this game has been stellar across the board

[hallow vector]

toilet runner

[median hemlock]

some really great actors and direction on display

[craggy finch]

Apparently the jerry rigged neural sync on the Rook can cause neural problems if it goes on too long

Runners seem to need the specific shell structure

[tired blade]

Just as we beat the Apollo 13 record this is real progress

[dreamy hawk]

No, not that one.

[remote magnet]

Thats also because its not a shell, but a full robot. It doesnt FEEL like a body

[light python]

So we think the timeline inconsistencies between the ARG and the game regarding arrival time is classic Lost Network Packets issues?

[dreamy hawk]

There's a coded entry where two of Orion's team are talking about a third fellow they had to quarantine after hearing the "music," but I can't find it, now.

[craggy finch]

Must be the mid way one

[plucky sierra]

no

[light python]

No secondary sexual characteristics on rook, aside from male-coded robot voice I guess

[hallow vector]

respect to christina koch, the literal fastest plumber in the solar system

[craggy finch]

Yeah it’s either MIDA or Traxus, I can’t recall, but think that’s also a red herring and the mental decay is consistent with Diaz

[dreamy hawk]

Lemme check MIDA...

[remote magnet]

ROOk is not made from SYNTHSilk. Shells are mostly organic, obviously bolstered by cybernetics where it makes sense.

[craggy finch]

Must be MIDA, I think it connects with the S’pht

[light python]

Would you explain? The information we have about what's in-system is especially unclear and interesting to me.

[craggy finch]

They describe an encounter with one actually

[plucky sierra]

there is a 1 year discrepancy between the estimated arrival date and the "current" year but even that is questionable with some codex entries saying we are in the proper year for the ARG date

[craggy finch]

Orion always mentions that it gets into his head

[hallow vector]

i really, REALLY like the rook reveal trailer, least human looking, most human behavior

[craggy finch]

Might be the truest expression of the “real” Runner’s personality, even if it’s limited

[tired blade]

The sheer panic in every second of the Rook trailer is so peak

You can TELL that Runner would have wobbly knees in a human body

[hallow vector]

yeah that's what i've been thinking. the personality matrices must be artificial as hell

[dreamy hawk]

FOUND IT https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/run-hide-5-6?directory=Factions,MIDA

[eternal shell]

"well, this looks valuable. just gotta pry it out of his ha- OH SHIT AAAAAA"

[craggy finch]

Yeah it’s likely connected to the S’pht’s ability to mess with the minds of shells

[dreamy hawk]

[TKEL]: No kidding. Almost like, uh… music, right? The weirdest thing, it was sort of… familiar. I was practically humming along when I heard the playback. Then Rossi started screaming. He's still in isolation. Hasn't been right since.

I don't know why you'd isolate a biomatta + mind and not revert to a backup you have.

[craggy finch]

Orion agonises over a similar thing before he gets ripped apart

[dreamy hawk]

I accept this as an explanation.

[hallow vector]

you'd never see any other shell PANIC, even in the cinematic short where the shells are clearly stressed as hell they're always acting more or less rationally within their goals

[dreamy hawk]

But I also don't think we can confidently exclude Rossi being human, either.

[craggy finch]

Closest is probably Vandal, but she’s designed by MIDA to be peppy and friendly

[dreamy hawk]

We haven't seen anyone else come up against a Compiler, or other, and not be able to eject or boot up in a new Shell. Rossi would be the first such example.

[hallow vector]

even her, when she tries to bug out on seeing an assassin pointing a gun at her, is unable to just leg it without picking up her gun first

[craggy finch]

The possible explanation is that the psychological toll carries over and Rossi got the worst of it

[dreamy hawk]

Why not pick a backup of him from before the encounter to boot up, then?

[craggy finch]

Triage was especially messed up in the launch cinematic

[tired blade]

I did take the launch trailers fight with the Compiler to indicate that it does seem to genuinely mess with the Runners consciousness in some form. It's framed very much as if Triages mind is getting invaded or decompiled in some way

[craggy finch]

Are backups referred to in that way?

I assumed biomata maintained continuity between shells, with Runners losing memories or being wiped

[remote magnet]

maybe they consider studying him more important to getting him back in order?

[dreamy hawk]

And again I don't say "no," I guess my point is that assuming Rossi is human satisfies Occam a little easier than some new psychological damage we haven't seen.

[hallow vector]

on the note of compilers by the way, there is a document in one of the marathons explaining that the compilers fought by the security officer are actively trying to fight badly, since they know his goal (or at least durandal's) is their freedom

[dreamy hawk]

We don't know, so it could have corrupted the only backup, too. For sure.

[craggy finch]

That’s in M2 at least

[median hemlock]

the compilers in marathon 1 explicitly fuck up the ship AIs, stands to reason that they have the ability to mess with tech in ways we don't quite understand

[craggy finch]

In M1 they’re genuinely fighting but still enslaved

[tired blade]

That just makes me feel worse for wiping so many out now 😅

[median hemlock]

bungie looooooove pulling a "these guys you shot a bunch are your friends now"

[craggy finch]

Reminds me of that Funhaus bit in SiN where they explain terrible AI as all the goons baiting the player into killing them so their families can get life insurance

[tired blade]

To add to this as well Destroyer gets full on hit by the Compiler and disappears from the rest of the cinematic, they're not even part of the next run as if they got hit way worse than Triage

[median hemlock]

at the expense of 343 who had to find a way to make shooting at elites a thing again who said that

[hallow vector]

343 had the deck so badly stacked against them, not even by bungie

[craggy finch]

Triage was so traumatised he toggled to solo only

So did Thief apparently

[hallow vector]

common reaction to bad randoms

[median hemlock]

for sure lmao, i mean no shade towards bungie or 343 there

[tired blade]

Yeah it's why I found it very specific Destroyer, the only one directly hit, is the only one who never shows up again

That said I play with just randoms and my lunch runs today convinced me that solos might be the way forward 🤣

[hallow vector]

speaking of uh
reaching a bit
media about really big orbs; artemis 2 is getting really close to the moon now, this is so cool

[sudden pollen]

I love how the cinematics were literally accurate to the gameplay experience

Makes them so much more immersive

[tired blade]

Yeah I try to stay out of 343/Halo Studios discourse as a game dev too, it's such a mess on all sides and my main interest is just more good Halo at this point

[hallow vector]

i wish they weren't, getting third partied by uesc feels bad

[tired blade]

We need a 🌝 reaction based off the Marathon

[sudden pollen]

🌝

Why tf is that an emoji bro

🌚

[tired blade]

It looked WAY different on my keyboard lmaooo

[hallow vector]

that's not the moon it's a scrubdaddy with gingivitis

[tired blade]

"Smile, but with eczema" ass emoji

[dreamy hawk]

Harold-type smile.

[tired blade]

Alright I need to actually try and get to Level 25 before Cryo reopens have a good day/night everyone

[dreamy hawk]

I beleive in you! Reach out once you do if you need a mediocre lore-obsessed sherpa!

[hallow vector]

i'm solo only, i'm level 13 after 30 hours and i am NEVER going to see the inside of cryo

[median hemlock]

you'll get there, trust

theres a few decent places out there for lfgs and such too

[fair steppe]

I recommend doing fill lobbies and focusing on contracts

[hallow vector]

i don't want to

[fair steppe]

Fair

[unborn fulcrum]

super fair just did ranked with 2 people that had no mics

XD

[dreamy hawk]

Over half way! We can run once you’re there. ☺️

[light python]

So I have put this together with a couple things to mean the ship is in outer system or otherwise still inbound. In particular, getting on the Marathon appears to have been hard because of teleport defenses specifically, which would not be an issue if you had the kind of equipment a search and rescue ship or whatever the Equinamity is on hand for physical approach.

[dreamy hawk]

I understand folks’ feelings on random fills but it’s generally been a good time for me. Not everyone is as competent but I have yet to meet any tools, and if your incompetent teammates (or you) have contracts that don’t require exfil, then yay!

[light python]

Like they've made it into teleport-equipment range

[sudden pollen]

Nah don't be doomer, season's only 1/3 over. You got this

[dreamy hawk]

That could help explain things. My head cannon is the game started in December with it arriving in April. 🤣 Your answers so better imo.

I am curious though, what rank are folks and what amount of playtime? I’ve got 54 hours and I think I hit 46.

[light python]

How are people looking at playtime? I play about an eigth of the time playstation and the rest xbox

(I am a playstation main generally but have the xbox setup at my desk with a monitor exclusively for Marathon

I mean does it show you in game? In the launcher? Are you relying on platforms to tell you or is there a spot for the stat in the game?

[bleak canyon]

on steam its a stat on the game page

[dreamy hawk]

PlayStation should tell you when you look at the game. Xbox, too.

[median hemlock]

i normally try my best to help teammates in videogames, but fill lobbies have made me very quickly make my peace with leaving someone to die when they ignore every single attempt at communication as they run into algae to die

[bleak canyon]

u get filled with like minded players so, it speaks more about u then them

[median hemlock]

good thing the first part of my post says "i like to help teammates in games", then

don't understand why you're attacking me but ok

[dreamy hawk]

Sometimes the cookie crumbles that way 💀

[median hemlock]

yeah :p

never know what you're going to get with fill in modern day games, no community servers means there's a lot more ephemerality in how people deal with teammates

[cold citrus]

Hi everybody! I just got this game and I'm excited to start learning about the lore. Can't wait to find out whether we are all moths or not

[tired blade]

I miss hosted/community servers a lot, I play movie battles 2 which has them and is pretty fun

[median hemlock]

why are you being weird

[earnest hatch]

The thing that annoys me the most is when players do not communicate at all… until they die and turn on their mic to talk shit to the rest of the team. It’s like, you ran into Hauler, a known PvP hotspot, took damage, didn’t run back out to heal, and went down. How is that my fault?

[earnest hatch]

There’s some good storytelling in this game.

[median hemlock]

you used the pronoun field to make the laziest joke of all time. you are like an ant to me, child. begone

[median hemlock]

"doesn't communicate except to get angry and harass people" is my least favorite type of online gamer

they're actively more detrimental than someone who leaves at the start of a match

[earnest hatch]

Why are they even playing the game at that point? Just go play a solo game.

[median hemlock]

idk, people are weird

see above lol

[earnest hatch]

Indeed

[sudden pollen]

Dang the trolls scuttle around every channel like cockroaches in asmongolds room getting stomped out

[median hemlock]

public discord server moment unfortunately

[sudden pollen]

Not to mention them you trolls always being weird degens without fail

Always devolved to some weird innuendo for no reason

[bleak canyon]

tldr

[median hemlock]

just don't engage with the creep

[sudden pollen]

Lol get deleted noob

[bleak canyon]

okay LOL

[median hemlock]

rare W: the creep trying to stir shit in the lore channel did not misgender me

[plucky sierra]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1362186088961151167/1487689434068680725/Healthbewithye.gif

[bleak canyon]

🤢

[light python]

Right-click: ignore does a lot of work for me.

[plucky sierra]

So what do y'all think is up with the Joy AI? she seems to be going crazy same as the colonists seeing the nightmares

[median hemlock]

oh yeah he's blocked, i just wanted to shoot my shot in case he was stupid enough to be openly transphobic and get nuked

[bleak canyon]

epic troll victim maybe

yikes.

[plucky sierra]

but then you can't engage/argue with them

it can be fun to argue with stupid people

[light python]

.... yes...?

I have access to much higher grade fun in my life

[earnest hatch]

What I’m curious about is how they’ll differentiate her from Leela if she makes an appearance. They sort of have the same role and personality.

[plucky sierra]

well yeah, but it can be cathartic

[plucky sierra]

maybe

[median hemlock]

its usually only cathartic if you aren't constantly having to deal with people like that in life :p

[plucky sierra]

I think Joy was reprogrammed on arrival

[median hemlock]

the colony AIs are interesting to me

[light python]

I don't think that's true, actually, like, role/personality-wise. I mean, I did use the phrase "emotional support leelas" earlier in a way that was directly inspired by the Joy codex entries.

[plucky sierra]

everyone has to deal with stupid people in life

[median hemlock]

i wonder if they'll do anything with the colony AIs being like, almost an afterthought

[light python]

Say more about that

[median hemlock]

...yes, i am aware, but some of us have to deal with stupid people attacking us because of who we are, and if you do not see that i am not looking to continue this conversation further

[plucky sierra]

I am pretty sure joy was designed in case of attack and reprogrammed later (mentioned in Post Mortem 1)

[bleak canyon]

🤡

[plucky sierra]

Leela was very much in charge of the UESC Marathon AI and Joy doesn't have nearly the same position as she did

[light python]

Lilith, not particularly covered in any of the lore entries that aren't surveys, is more like Leela

[median hemlock]

there were like, what, 5 colony AIs right

[light python]

8

[median hemlock]

oh damn

[earnest hatch]

Wasn’t Leela also in charge of interacting with the humans, keeping them happy and stable?

[plucky sierra]

It seems like that was Durandal's job part-time given the Pike Logs

[light python]

I think that was uh, volunteer work?

Maybe secret volunteer work.

[earnest hatch]

I wonder why they added so many AIs to this game. The original had three and that seemed like a good amount. Eleven total seems like a lot of powerful AI for one trip and one story.

[plucky sierra]

They aren't all powerful

[earnest hatch]

I would have guessed that if a ship needs just three, a colony would need also maybe three or four.

[earnest hatch]

Sure. I still wonder about it though. I guess I was surprised when I found out there’s so many.

[plucky sierra]

at least as far as crew was concerned there was closer connections to Durandal

[median hemlock]

yeah its definitely a "where in the world are they going with this" thing for me

[light python]

It's also weird that they had the opportunity to say there were seven colony AI and then went with 8?

[plucky sierra]

Joy was added later

Joy is special

[dreamy hawk]

You call that keeping folks “happy and stable?” Don’t sign me up for Felwinter’s Well Being Seminar. 💀

[light python]

They could have chimed with ten AI, ten cyborgs, used their Marathon Number,

[remote magnet]

We dont talk about Steve

[sudden pollen]

Uh, hi, Durandal calling? My order of 10 compilers arrived damaged.

[plucky sierra]

well I wouldn't trust an unstable AI with well being, but this is Strauss we're talking about

His basic responsibilities afford him close connections to the crew. 

[light python]

Yeah Strauss thinks it's a "close connection" when you think obsessively about somebody and figure out exactly the right way to open doors for them but never talk to them and they don't notice you.

Because he's the game's biggest creep and has huge creep energy.

[tired blade]

Didn Strauss bring onboard the battleroids originally too or am I misremembering

[sudden pollen]

Strauss is an incredibly well written character

[plucky sierra]

he knew of them

[sudden pollen]

Dude isn't it crazy how we got a banger pvp shooter with ACTUAL LORE

[dreamy hawk]

Strauss is what happens when you insist on carrying generational trauma as far into the future as possible.

[sudden pollen]

Incredibly rare

[woven stratus]

I would really like to see Bungie lean into the newly discovered multiverse we have. Imagine running matches in Gulch from Halo. Or one of the planets from Destiny. They could do so much with this game.

[sudden pollen]

Ehhh, that would be horrible

And tacky

Star wars collab type shit

[dreamy hawk]

There is no multiverse and I will die on this hill.

Sorry. Sorta.

[woven stratus]

Its literally in the lore

[plucky sierra]

it is a paraverse

[light python]

I don't know man the star horse is canon

[woven stratus]

Of every game

[plucky sierra]

You guys are connecting things too much

[earnest hatch]

They didn’t use the magic number. That’s why the colony failed. 🤯

[dreamy hawk]

But actually.

[light python]

Marathon Story people would never

[dreamy hawk]

Bungie likes to reuse tropes, concepts, and other plot elements. They also enjoy making references to past work. Halo is full of Marathon references, not just because it was originally going to be another Marathon game. They are not aspects of the same multiverse, however.

[light python]

Proof: Halo is owned by Microsoft!

[woven stratus]

Then why is marathon logo in Halo? And Destiny? Explain why Cortana is Durandal's sister. So is the AI "Joy" from the colony on Tau Ceti IV. Her name Joyeuse. Its not subtle references. Durandal was obsessed with escape. He did. He made a multiverse...

[dreamy hawk]

#📚marathon-lore-discussion message

[light python]

Because those are "references" that were, uh, aformentioned.

Look, you can Steven King's Dark Tower this stuff if you want to,