📚marathon-lore-discussion

[short pond]

WAIT I FOUND IT

Idk if links are allowed but I'll try and post it

https://tciv.art/

[ocean oriole]

who even is the signal jammer guy

[stiff hearth]

Joji

[ocean oriole]

???

[stiff hearth]

Filthy Frank

[ocean oriole]

who dat

[stiff hearth]

Pink Guy

[dreamy hawk]

A fellow old person hello.

[ocean oriole]

hello

[dreamy hawk]

But I do admittedly know of Joji/Frank because of my ex. 😂 I respect his 180 so much.

[dreamy hawk]

YouTuber who made a lot of cringe videos that changed their whole act and suddenly became a hugely successful mainstream musician.

[runic helm]

So is like marathon like your in a VR headset controlling someone?

[torpid briar]

The runners give up their physical body to be digitally stored as a consciousness. They do this because it allows them to use customizable shells as bodies instead

So theres no VR headset, because its less of remote control, and more so your mind being placed into a new temporary body

[runic helm]

OH sicckkkkk IS THAT WHY THEY GET PICTURES OF THEM AS A KID do they like forget what they look like

[torpid briar]

Yup, pretty much! After they are given the new body they go through like a memory jogging exercise to track how much memory deterioration there is

[glacial juniper]

Some of the codexes talk as if the runners are socialising when they are digitally stored, swapping tactics and kitbashing shells with new firmware and mods

(im aware this is meta commentary on the playerbase) but im kinda imagining the runners minds are like in VR chat lol

[torpid briar]

Loool i like that

See, canonically we need a social space

[plucky sierra]

Some of the codexes talk as if the runners are socialising
Which ones?

Barely any of the Codex entries mention runners

[earnest hatch]

I think they’re referring to entries about runner shells and skins. They talk about how runners share information with each other, different kitbashes for shells, and that sort of thing.

I think most of them are talking about runners back in Sol, not necessarily on Tau Ceti.

[glacial juniper]

The first rook codex entry:
"RUNNERS have taken to augmenting these simple frames to house a limited-use neural sync adapter allowing the RUNNER to inhabit the ROOK for short periods without too much mental degradation.
Because they are not SHELLS, each ROOK has only a small set of kit-bashed ABILITIES and fully lack the functionality to be upgraded via IMPLANTS and CORES.
Though some variety of standard system upgrading can be achieved, a ROOK will never match the full complement of ABILITIES, comfort, and general utility inherent in more advanced bio-cybernetic SHELLS.
"

[potent pollen]

there's also a codex entry that suggests the grounding exercise doesn't work to prevent the memory degradation, which i think is why at the end of the short film the assassin looks at the photo he stole off vandal (? i got the impression it was the same photo at least) and assumes it's him

[glacial juniper]

Also the next Rook codex entry specifically mentions a physical location of being 'in orbit above tau ceti' and 'runner backchannels' :

"HISTORY: ROOK's SIGNAL MASK is relatively new. Pure back-channel RUNNER tech hacked together somewhere in orbit above TAU CETI in response to the UESC's mobile war crimes. No one knows who coded it. The specs just dropped into a local backchannel and spread like wildfire amongst the earliest in-system trespassers.
"

[potent pollen]

i could see this being implemented via some sort of in-game browser where people can upload builds, and if we ever get deeper customization (such as, god willing, Reach-style individual body part customization) people could upload looks

like how forza horizon lets you upload community tunes and liveries

a community lookbook would be sick as fuck. hell, give us a photo mode to show off our most stylish shells

poses/props for the photo mode could be another thing to unlock via codex entries

obviously it would take some doing to make sure that the different body part styles all roughly maintained the silhouette of the shell and were consistent with the art design so it'd be a long term undertaking, but it would really sell the idea of these shells as blank templates that runners collaboratively work to crack the corporate limitations on

the phrase kitbashing is used a ton in entries relating to runners, let me mix and match my shit like i'm playing gunpla or at least let me individually recolor my shells

[torpid briar]

My reading was that the assassin we see at the end is not the same as the assassin we see earlier, rather its the Vandals runner switching to a new shell

I can explain my reasoning behind this if youre curious :3

[potent pollen]

oh yeah, please do, that's an interesting take i hadn't considered!

[torpid briar]

Alright, gimme like 45 mins till i go on break. Then i shall explain

[unreal slate]

💯 . There's a message/meaning implied in what's essentially a short piece of real cinema. That "do you recognize the person in this photo" thing is a big nod towards what I think it's trying to say, not only within the context of the story but potentially commentary on the meta concept of logging into a shell of an identity from the real world when you plug into a game for a couple hours. Lots to be said about it, but part of what I like is it's subtle and shown without really explaining it. I find it relatable despite being so alien in the premise.

[potent pollen]

i really hope that isn't the last of these short films we see. i would love more of them that offer similar snapshots of moments in the lives of runners

[torpid briar]

Yeah true! Its incredibly well made. Ive told my brother that its one of the best sci fi cinematic shorts ive seen, regardless of the fact its tied to this game and is relatively subtle/left up to interpretation

And then Zenith tells me the entire thing was keyframe animated just makes it even cooler. Like they didnt even mocap that shit. An animator just cooked gourmet

[unreal slate]

Unfortunately, that kind of craftsmanship may be out of their budget in the eyes of the bankrollers. Too bad, considering giants in this industry can attribute a great deal of historic success to being known as best-of-the-best for their cinematics (looking at golden era Blizzard, for example).

[torpid briar]

So theres a few things that lead me to make the conclusion i do

-when we are introduced to Vandal, its clear that she has been going through a LOT of deaths

-we hear her inner dialogue and its erratic and speaks before Vandal actually opens her mouth. I read this as the Runners own dialogue which is filtered out through Vandals personality matrix (which is why it sounds more erratic in their head vs when Vandal actual says it calm and cooly)

-Vandal is shown what she looked like as a kid, and she is in disbelief thats her

-fast forward to the encounter between Assassin and Vandal. Assassin seems to move and use his abilities with confidence, but we see Vandal scared and confused at her abilities

-when Vandal uses the canon shes almost surprised at what it is capable of doing

-When Vandal is shot by the UESC you can hear her inner dialogue come back. She says the sentence “i just dont get you”. I read this as the runner admitting that they are struggling to mesh with this shell death after death

-Vandal is killed and Assassin walks over to loot her. He kicks her body over and when he reaches down to take back the Airpod, you can briefly see that Vandals corpse is depicted with the face of a child, the child from the picture

-when we cut back to Assassin in the memory room, hes given the same picture of the child, and has pretty much the same reaction to Vandal (tho speaks it differently)

-the Assassin shown at the end is also wearing a different skin from the Assassin we see throughout the trailer, driving home that its intended to be a different Assassin, and likely the same Runner that was using Vandal

[ocean oriole]

why do runners combat each other

[unreal slate]

why do you?

[ocean oriole]

arachne rep

[terse shard]

Getting rid of competition for their current job, removing possible threats, inter-workforce competitive violence, just for the hell of it.
Any number of reasons, really. Not like “killing” the other Runner is permanent.

[ocean oriole]

spoken like a true arachne player

skin is a verb

[terse shard]

Also Charter pays me in purple salvage, which I have the worst luck actually finding in the field, so like

That’s a big encouragement right there

[ocean oriole]

and the hard to find salvage too

[potent pollen]

i would love to see more lore content about inter-runner relations and the different subcultures that arise from things like their approaches to violence

they're all corporate mercs and are largely inclined to not trust eachother, but i imagine there's also an honor among thieves aspect to it and a solidarity in knowing that you all chose the same fate of a corporate-sponsored infinite recycled death casino on a planet that seems capable of outright hatred

[unreal slate]

cheeseburger is a verb

[eternal knoll]

readin the descriptions of the skins in the store paints somewhat of a picture of what kinda crews are out there

[potent pollen]

oh yeah i'm a big fan of all of them

[eternal knoll]

it would be swell to get to see more stuff like the reveal cinematic. get to see some more runner-focused stories

[hollow glen]

Does anyone know which codex entries talk about the ferrofluid type stuff that's in places like Cryo?

[dreamy hawk]

None, afaik.

[keen plank]

None yet. Seems like a newer mystery that’s being teased.

[wintry crow]

hello I played with you yesterday I think

[dreamy hawk]

it’s a small world, after all!

[wintry crow]

from reading the codex I don't think I have unlocked something on the ferro fluid either

however I don't think I have all the ganglions

[dreamy hawk]

There’s just the one.

[wintry crow]

oh okay that makes sense

since you get 2

[dreamy hawk]

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/ if you ever want to browse what you don’t have.

[wintry crow]

thank you

[keen plank]

Indeed! You’re the first person I’ve seen on Crew Fill also end up in this server.

Welcome to the hub. We’re happy to have you.

[stark relic]

I’m curious what ship we took to get to tau ceti and the uesc marathon

[dreamy hawk]

“Sponsored Transport” is all we’ve got for now. Imagination for the rest.

[drifting garnet]

Oh something tangentially related: do lore treasures tend to spawn in certain places on maps over others?

For instance on Perimeter, I tend to regularly find Borgers and Bonsai trees everywhere, especially wall safes

But Greivance Logs and the Traxus Proprietary Assets I seem to have a harder time finding. At the very least, they seem to drop more from Commanders and Warden. At least I think?

[dreamy hawk]

Afaik rarity is the main factor in spawning. I don’t know if theres a difference between drops or safes or etc.

But I’d like to know. 👀

[drifting garnet]

I also mention those ones in particular because, in spite of all being blue tier, GrievLogs and TraxAssets I’ve had the hardest time in finding versus Borgers and Bonsai

[dreamy hawk]

Ditto.

[drifting garnet]

Like, it was only just last night I finally got the last TraxAssets

And that was pulled from a Commander while my team was doing Secured Resource

[wintry crow]

thank you likewise

[desert hazel]

There’s some guaranteed spawns for certain items in key rooms. Off the top of my head I know of a few
Perimeter overflow key - kuzmin personal log
Perimeter data wall key - evidence folder
Marsh quarantine key - emotional support plushie
Marsh bio research key - weaveworm braid
Marsh ai uplink key - corrupt ai data log

[rocky cairn]

Is there any codex lore about how volt weapons work? Do they shoot plasma?

[drifting garnet]

Oh yeah, this I picked up on: that for purple and gold lore treasures, some are guaranteed to appear in key rooms

[desert hazel]

The blue ones are up to luck as far as I’m aware

[drifting garnet]

For instance, I believe for the gold rooms in Outpost (Destroyed and Command), Severed Twins are guaranteed spawns

[desert hazel]

I wish the destroyed uesc helmet had lore

[drifting garnet]

…I had a key for Data Wall, but I unfortunately got ambushed by another runner before I even left the room. 😭

[wintry crow]

yes I'm pretty sure Traxus proprietary assets have been the most difficult codex entry valuable to find for me 🤭

[desert hazel]

Perimeter is the only one without a gold salvage lore valuable

[desert hazel]

Plushies for me 😔

[wintry crow]

thankfully(?) I am ever cursed to receive the purple dire marsh keys

[desert hazel]

Lucky….

[drifting garnet]

I’m shocked it doesn’t. Like in a “it was supposed to have lore entries, but possibly for production troubles, Bungie cut the Codex entries”

[drifting garnet]

So all the Plushies I have so far all came from Warden, weirdly lol

[wintry crow]

I'm hoping S2 brings more stuff to collect for the codex

[desert hazel]

The single plushie I found also came from the warden

[drifting garnet]

I do have the Quarantine and Bio keys.

[desert hazel]

I’m totally not jealous of the quarantine key

[drifting garnet]

…although uh, might need to scout ahead as Rook to find good places to hide out before popping the key.

[wintry crow]

I want to say I got most of the plushies from the Quarantine room

it's kind of a death trap though 🤭

[desert hazel]

How many have u found each time?

[drifting garnet]

I need to see for myself the Pain™ Joy goes through

[wintry crow]

just 1 or 2

[desert hazel]

The most I’ve seen someone extract with was 2

[wintry crow]

yes I think the most I have found in a raid is 2

[desert hazel]

#bufftheplushie

[wintry crow]

there was even a raid that we opened the bio research, maintenance canal and quarantine

[wintry crow]

I agree

[drifting garnet]

Oh shit, three key run? Nice!

Oh, in Canal-Maintenance key room, they did have a loose Cerebral Records item that I picked up from there.

[desert hazel]

I don’t get how the plushie is so rare

I did destroyed wing yesterday and it had 4 severed twins

But ur lucky if u get 2 plushies from quarantine

[earnest hatch]

I still have only found 1 of those cult figurines and don’t even know where to look.

[drifting garnet]

…I have a Destroyed Wing key. I am dreading the day I do that ‘cause I am going to be so stressed since it’s my only non-Cryo gold key

But I also need closure from that one time I pulled Severed Twins from a regular old wall safe as Rook, but got immediately killed after putting it in my inventory

[glacial juniper]

I found one in outpost a while back and only today did i find another 2,

[desert hazel]

Commanders/pinwheel strongboxes are ur best bet. At least that’s where I found most of them

I also found them in random containers too so just loot thoroughly through bots and small containers

[desert hazel]

I think joy might be my favorite character in the codex

[ocean oriole]

NOOOO I READ EMOTIONAL PLUSHIE LOGS 4 AND 5

WAHHHHHHH

WHYYYYYY

[desert hazel]

Donate all ur plushies to me

[terse wren]

Listen to them on youtube and never have a happy dream again

[drifting garnet]

...suffice to say it's been an interesting time for me, 'cause when y'all talk about Codex entries I don't have yet, I'm tempted to look them up, but I also want to like, unlock them myself, lol

[terse wren]

DO NOT UNLOCK THE PLUSHIE LOGS

Don’t do it

Don’t fucking do it

[ocean oriole]

unlock the logs but only read 1-3. 4 and 5 should not be read

[terse wren]

Only media that has ever had me whisper “oh Jesus” quietly to my computer

[keen plank]

Try the Pinwheel 3x Red Key vault. That’s where I got mine. It spawned right in the open and you could see it on the table before you even got through the door.

I’d be curious as to how many people have gotten the prestige Darius AI Codex Audio Logs. I know the contents but haven’t seen any on Dire Marsh yet.

[terse wren]

Bc the game itself is trying 2 spare ppl the trauma

[desert hazel]

I still need that joy lore

Need one more shared nightmare phenomenology and 4 plushies….

Joy so cool and interesting….

[drifting garnet]

I already have 1-3. 4-5 are the last ones that need to be unlocked.

[terse wren]

Rip

[quick swift]

I am going to make it my life goal to find two more emotional support plushies

Before wipe

[tranquil hatch]

is marathon trying to make the argument that native life on Tau Ceti IV uses the exact same genetic structure as on Earth? The anomaly incident reports in equitable distribution 3/4 say that the local species exhibit significant DNA alteration when exposed to the anomaly. Is this an oversight or are the devs intentionally stating that alien life uses the exact same genetic encoding system as Earth life?

[drifting garnet]

and then, found Emotional Support Plushie 4/5

😭 😭 😭 😭 😭

...logically I know there was no way the contagion would skip kids, but stillllllll

[quick swift]

I mean..... would you prefer they dream up that alien life is built up of RWP or something? Its logical to assume that all life is built with DNA, especially considering TCIV is supposed to be an earth like candidate for a colony

It makes it way more approachable too to have it be something we know of

[dull jay]

So what are the drinkable burgers made of, just had the final evidence collectible from Perimeter where they said no cows necessary

[quick swift]

Something else

[dull jay]

The haven’t said exactly what yet?

[quick swift]

Doesn't one of the cheeseburg entries have like a list of a bunch of ingredients

[hazy mist]

yeah theyre made of a bunch of different protein slushies iirc

what those protein slushies are made of are more of a mystery

[tranquil hatch]

i mean i'd debate the logical-to-assume part, considering RNA origin theory really is just physical chemistry in motion, but i do agree with the approachability part. that phrasing specifically made me curious

[desert hazel]

All known LIVING things have DNA. It’s a building block of LIFE and LIFEFORMS. What known living organism doesn’t have dna? Humans, fish, ants, birds, single-celled organisms etc. the only thing that would make sense for this is if tau cetis fauna weren’t carbon based lifeforms, but seeing as tau cetis has similar characteristics to earth that means every living thing on tau ceti is carbon based and has dna down to the ticks and lobsters on marsh

If u want an example of sci-fi “dna alteration” watch annihilation. Not gonna spoil anything but u will see some examples of dna alteration in that movie

[sage lark]

hope we see some of that in S2 with the contagion

and anomaly ofc

[crisp glade]

i hope we get some expansion on the marathon lore and maps

cause like

cryo archive is like a crumb compared to the entire ship\

maybe we get some new maps with things like room modifiers and stuff (no oxygen, lower/no gravity)

[keen plank]

Be careful what you wish for.

[dense tendon]

yeah so like the crazy thing about biology is that as far as we can tell, when it comes down to carbon based life forms, there's pretty much one way to do it. very little variation among massive gulfs of life. the anglerfishs eyes work the same way ours do, in massively different capacity. there are exceptions, like compound eyes on a fly or mantis shrimp, or invertebrates ranging from hard shelled arthropods to immortal jellyfish, but as far as the genome goes, theres pretty much just the one way.
mass effect posits another, and it IS possible, but it would still be mappable with the same technology, just lefthanded chirality to the amino acids instead of our biospheres right hand.

hell, squids dna isnt that different from humans, and theyre radically different than us physiologically.

if you doubled the rate of difference from a chimps genome to a human, youd have the percentage difference of a banana to a human.

i forget the exact numbers, something like we're 2% off chimps and 5% off a banana

[torpid thicket]

Reduced gravity would be a great modifier for a map set on (and somewhat around?) a damaged bit of the Marathon 😄

[eternal shell]

damn it's all standard libraries and one very long config file

[slender parrot]

Does anybody know if they are going to change/add/remove any lore before the next season? as in like cutscenes with the ai’s etc? ive only been playing a week and i doubt i’ll get to kill compiler and finish all my factions before the seasons over but i dont wanna cheat

i don’t wanna miss out on any of the sweet sweet lore

[earnest hatch]

It’s not that crazy. Life on earth all comes from a common ancestor so it makes sense it would all have the same chemical building blocks.

Life on earth having the same building blocks isn’t evidence that life on other planets would too, since that life doesn’t have a common ancestor with life on earth.

Still, I wouldn’t expect the writers for a scifi video game to come up with entirely new, speculative, chemical building blocks for a new life form on another planet.

[desert hazel]

Well we ain’t got any other life forms to look at so carbon based is all we got

[earnest hatch]

I didn’t say anything about carbon based. Carbon based is likely what most or all life in the universe is going to be, but that doesn’t mean it’ll have DNA or RNA as the building blocks.

[desert hazel]

Anything that is living intrinsically means having dna

[earnest hatch]

No it doesn’t.

[desert hazel]

Okay dawg 💀

[earnest hatch]

If you can’t justify a statement like that then just don’t make it.

[desert hazel]

What plant, animal, or single celled organism doesn’t have DNA?

[earnest hatch]

That’s not relevant to the argument being made: #📚marathon-lore-discussion message

And that’s not even getting into chirality of proteins.

[desert hazel]

Humor me

[earnest hatch]

I literally linked you. Go read. Or you could spend two seconds scrolling up.

[desert hazel]

I mean humor my question

[earnest hatch]

If you’re not willing to read that, then you’re not going to read anything else I say.

[earnest hatch]

Already linked you.

[desert hazel]

@earnest hatch this is the root of this whole discussion.

OP basically asked if life on tau ceti is the same genetic makeup of earth based creatures

[earnest hatch]

And then the conversation moved to other topics as conversations often do, one of which is what my response was to.

Either way, your statement of “Anything that is living intrinsically means having dna” is still incorrect. Having DNA isn’t the definition of life in general and it wouldn’t necessarily apply to life on other planets.

[desert hazel]

Then please educate me and point me to a living organism that doesn’t have dna

[earnest hatch]

You can’t be this dense.

[desert hazel]

I’m asking u to educate me and then u call me dense?????

[earnest hatch]

You’ve been educated. You’re doubling down because you don’t want to admit you made a mistake. (Or you’re just trolling. I keep forgetting what some people are like on the internet.)

[desert hazel]

Dawg

[rotund stump]

both of y'all sound silly ngl

[earnest hatch]

It’s inevitable that when two people have an argument, that a third person shows up to proudly announce that he thinks both people arguing are wrong/cringe/etc.

[forest gate]

i'll be the unexpected fourth person who hasn't read anything about the argument and will say something non-sequitur like
"what do you think tick milk tastes like?"

[earnest hatch]

Unfortunately, thanks to the codex entries, we actually do know what tick milk tastes like 😞

[plucky sierra]

*fortunately

[torpid briar]

What does it taste like?

[forest gate]

is this an appropriate time to say "your mum"?

😏

[torpid briar]

😭😭

[rotund stump]

I'm saying if you got time to type all that surely you got the time to wring it out instead of setting such a high ass intellectual bar for other people to even continue talking with you 💀 💀

[earnest hatch]

If you’re talking to me, I already did that, twice.

[rotund stump]

ain't that hard to humor them I mean

literacy bar's low these days

not even in an insulting manner it's just matter of fact 😭

[earnest hatch]

There’s nothing to humor them about. Everything I would say, I already said. If they want to claim that “anything living intrinsically has dna” in the context of alien life on other plants, then it’s on them to give more information and explain how.

[rotund stump]

oh well then

[nocturne estuary]

On the flip viruses aren’t living and have DNA

[terse wren]

Bruh all earthly living organisms — so far as we know — have DNA because they share a common ancestor. But life is a class and not an individual and dna isn’t the only possible structure that could carry imperfectly heritable information.

Conversely it would be possible for a part of the earthly tree of life to replace its dna with another compound as the replicator and it would still be both alive and part of the total clade of life descended from the common ancestor on earth.

Also also there’s a small possibility that there is non dna based life on earth and we haven’t detected it because we use dna and rna probes (single strand NA or antibodies) to detect life.

[rotund stump]

any more than that and you're gonna need a tldr 💀

[terse wren]

Bruh had an aneurysm reading 4 sentences

[rotund stump]

oh not me

I'm just a nicer person than most people I'm asking on behalf of the dude LOL

[terse wren]

I like our stupid discussions on here lmao

[ocean oriole]

cool unlock em but don’t read em

[dreamy hawk]

If we consider viruses to be living, which is hotly debated, then you already have examples of RNA-based organisms. Iirc it’s even thought RNA-based life developed first.

But hello and good morning also.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world

[earnest hatch]

Hey @dreamy hawk I found out recently that in the Compiler boss battle, there are four boxes that pop up in the central platform containing those green creatures. Someone pointed out to me that with the actual compiler, that would make five Spht which matches the five Spht names in the compiler traces.

[terse wren]

RNA world is kinda questionable. RNA is really REALLY delicate.

[drifting garnet]

Too late, already read it

[dreamy hawk]

I’m going to have to reread it.

[dreamy hawk]

Compared to DNA, sure, but robust enough to get the job done (potentially).

And unlike DNA it also has catalytic capabilities so it can do a few things at the same time.

[ocean oriole]

awh are you ok

[earnest hatch]

It would be related to the five names I mentioned here: #📚marathon-lore-discussion message

[drifting garnet]

I was a bit more mentally prepared ‘cause I had a feeling I knew what was coming because the previous entry hinted at it

Still tho…yeah 😭

[ocean oriole]

i cried a bit

one of the few things that can get me to

[drifting garnet]

||Helluva thing to read Joy being there for a dying child’s last moments||

Yeah I can see why this would be the type of thing to push her over the edge into Rampancy

[dreamy hawk]

I know what I’m doing during lunch today.

[forest gate]

did anyone else get a survey for marathon about how the game was last week and cosmetics?

[terse jasper]

I did but that was last month. Those things must be important, because both of my feedbacks in that one survey became a reality and now I recommend the game to anyone because of those changes.

[forest gate]

they're using qualtrics to handle their surveys, I've seen the tech that they employ in the background on capturing customer feedback it's really impressive stuff and really good at distilling actionable feedback in my experience

And it's good to know that they're reacting fast to survey feedback

I don't think in all my years of playing destiny from D1 till now have I ever received a survey from bungie

[rotund stump]

wonder what eventually became of that particular subset of joy in the plushie

[forest gate]

Be interesting if they tried to re-integrate with Joy like memories

[rotund stump]

would add to her complexity yeah

and since y'all loooooooooove to do bungieverse stuff with the sword names and cross-universe characters having related names ig it's gonna bump the chances of joy being a way more important character than the rest 💀

[forest gate]

indeed

She is voiced by Jen English

kind of a big deal as far as VAs go right now

[rotund stump]

if it comes to that then maybe I'll finally start believing LOL

then again we have arthur morgan as reed

ben starr's the undisputed king and yada yada

[forest gate]

He is a very compelling durandal

[earnest hatch]

I actually kind of don’t feel Ben Starr as Durandal. He’s too somber and slow paced. I would expect Durandal to sound more irreverent and quick. Even if Ben Starr read his lines while smiling or smirking I think that would make him sound more like Durandal to me.

[rotund stump]

ben starr's great he's fitting for a somber durandal that got left behind for a long time and is skirting the edges of detection and deletion

and at the same time sharing the same cockiness the original durandal had

IDEA-dal's a very different AI compared to durandal himself

outside of hearing his performance as arthur in warframe

[terse wren]

Who is writing this shit who is Bungo's writing team

They are killing it.

They must have studied og Marathon terminals etc. so carefully.

[forest gate]

Yeah, it works for me personally. I really enjoy the reading of Ozymandias

[rotund stump]

all hail julia nardin

[terse wren]

Surely this is a different team from the one who does Destiny's marvelslop?

[rotund stump]

julia did lead d2's tfs campaign iirc

[forest gate]

Julia Nardin I suppose

The Destiny 2 narrative lead has also been doing a good job it’s the rest of the game that’s kinda fallen flat

[rotund stump]

for the record I also absolutely love destiny's lore even now

[terse wren]

Nardin is overall director but who's writing all the prose for the conversations etc.?

How big a team etc.?

All very interesting.

[forest gate]

Bungie has had a long history of writing compelling prose

[rotund stump]

oh jon goff too nobody mentions jon 😭

[terse wren]

Yeah but their personnel have turned over, surely, since e.g. Myth

Which also had great prose in the journal entries and so onl

[forest gate]

They have but I guess they have guidelines that they give to new writers and samples of what they expect

[terse wren]

It's interesting that they get it right and manage to hire talented writers when so many other game companies, with deep pockets, don't.

[forest gate]

It’s all about onboarding people correctly

And naturally they’ll attract writers who are interested in writing for bungie

[rotund stump]

it's a bigger problem than most people's able to see when a very loud minority keeps yelling "I ain't reading allat" and then the companies actually listen to those people instead

[terse wren]

Like oh my god Starfield. And all of the Elder Scrolls games. Even if the narrative is good the actual prose is godawful.

[rotund stump]

like don't cater to those people ofc they ain't gonna read shit 💀

and better yet put more effort for the people appreciative of good literature now that the audience is so divided

now we got people who don't wanna read and on the other hands for those who do read they're ever more appreciative for it

[forest gate]

I always appreciate good writing

[lone prism]

Aight, chat. I need answers as to why Vandal is the only one wearing yeezys. Or why oversized yeezys are even a thing in the Marathon universe.

Also, what's the lore reason for Recon's absolutely massive walking sound? Except her glutes, ofc

[rotund stump]

mostly equipment noises given where her helmet's moving parts are

single two-directional joints don't make for good shock absorption when the wearer's stomping all over the place lol

as for vandal she's originally made by mida with stolen baseline shells so she's a lot less formal than the rest of the series

lil extra fact originally when they were done making these proto-vandal shells some of the mida agents stomped out and ransacked a UESC caravan with them immediately the night after and mida recruitment skyrocketed up 7000% and vandal's style went global around the youth on mars

[latent python]

Style

[scenic iron]

So the AI can and do lie to the UESC that's awesome

Everyone saw the new short 👍

[dreamy hawk]

To the UESC, to each other, to themselves, to you.

It’s lies all the way down.

[dreamy hawk]

I’ve been curious how that works though. How does the public sign up so easily en masse? They’re a terrorist organization; it’s not like there’s an online Google Doc to put your name on.

[rotund stump]

not exactly

traxus is just, really fucking good at legal work

even if the operation's implicit and covert vulcan's also explicitly stated to us that we're not official traxus employees

that gives her clause to only suggest sulera to legally request employment records from traxus and ignore everything else

can't say much about the rest but I'd imagine it's smth very similar

call it a difference between proving and knowing if you will

[lone prism]

Wait. Which short? The Traxus one?

[lone prism]

Sulera asked about contact. She replied vith employment records. It's a lie by omission, but it's a Traxus AI, so it operates in Traxus's interest.

A lie by omission and a changing of the subject in a non sequitur way, mind you.

[rotund stump]

I think lie by omission still clears the bar since it's logically sound unlike actual lies lol

[lone prism]

Eh, debatable, but that's a thorny question which we could only speculate as to how viable an answer would be with the limited knowledge we have of Marathon's legal system.

In our world, there are repercussions for this kind of thing. Not just in the court of law, but socially, reputaitonally, and so on and so forth.

Alas, it's very clear that Vulcan is aware that Sulera is not buying it and that he knows it is lying by omission and it's very apparent that it is also aware that Sulera is aware of the same. Which is why it resorted with threats in the end.

[rotund stump]

feel like vulcan's logic is that it might as well be true that we're straight up officially unaffiliated with traxus given the clause she gave us so it's fair to just give sulera the only way the UESC's able to inquire about employment connections

and even if they do get found out traxus is definitely big enough to legally fight the UESC about itor finagle its way around them

assuming we do treat the final threat as an actual board suggestion to the AI mid-convo

[rotund stump]

as in like, given she's so extremely matter-of-fact about everything

not a lie if it's true 🤷

[lone prism]

Right, but Sulera outright asked about denying contact. Not official employment.

Which is why in the end Traxus went with a threat.

And then added a cliche to the punchline.

"Our gain/victory is your gain/victory (sic)"
Since I can't recall the exact way Vulcan framed it.

[rotund stump]

our success is your success?

[lone prism]

That one

[unreal slate]

meanwhile nucaloric made me cheeseburger of the month for the 12th consecutive month

[lone prism]

Yes, but who are the competitors and what's their real estate portfolio like? Asking the real questions here.

Their RE holdings are probably huge since they are an agribusiness and manufacturing powerhouse.

[unreal slate]

okay ray kroc

[scenic iron]

Yep that one

[rotund stump]

remind me to not mess with you in the future since you clearly know your shit 💀 💀

ray kroc reference is a crazy pull

[scenic iron]

I loved the short because it kinda of mimics real life with political lobbyist haha 🤣

[lone prism]

Oh, that is 1000% how most people nowadays testify in front of a congressional committee.

[drifting garnet]

Side note: “The Founder” is a great movie. Not just as a historical drama on the rise of McD’s, but also Croc as the bastard he is with a wonderful performance by Michael Keaton

[unreal slate]

aka batman himself

imagine how much good Batman could have done if he got into the real estate business like Kroc, instead of beating up the criminally insane

this is marathon lore now

[drifting garnet]

Well, Bruce Wayne probably gets into a bit of real estate, just probably not a fast food chain, lol

[unreal slate]

I'm a cheeseburger

[rotund stump]

batman canon in marathon 💀

[drifting garnet]

But yea, that last Codex entry for UnsancHost 5/5 is great in how it illuminates UESC’s and Traxus’s relationship

And confirms not only that Vulcan/Traxus is playing both sides, but gives a bit more context on why Sulera was telling Orion to back off on any notion of trying to prosecute Traxus directly

[unborn fulcrum]

Boys who is that dude on the signal jammer 😭

[latent python]

Signi L Jammer

[earnest hatch]

Sigmund Nalbert Jammer

[eternal knoll]

he's mister anonymized. practically a v for vendetta mask

[sharp radish]

That's Jimmy Jammer OFC

[unborn fulcrum]

He true final boss

[dreamy hawk]

Filthy Frank. Not my observation.

[dreamy hawk]

I don’t know if I’d agree with playing both sides. Vulcan very politely gave Sulera the finger and dared him to call their bluff before giving him the other finger. Traxus has a position of power, if not over the UESC, then at least a position of equal footing.

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/unsanctioned-hostilities-5-5

Also do we know where Sulera is?

SUMMARY: An intersystem call between UESC Admiral Sulera and Traxus AI Vulcan regarding salvage rights on Tau Ceti IV.

Vulcan is on Mars/in Sol, which implies that Sulera is not. Equanimity?

[blissful meadow]

if the priority contracts are going to change season to season, does this mean that if you miss codex entries from them for one season, you've missed out on them for good?

[sage junco]

Bungie would probably make it so that doing something would unlock the legacy codex entries. And in true Bungie style, it would probably be bugged so a few could never be unlocked, and they'll eventually get around to fixing them after they sort out all the out-of-bounds glitches

[blissful meadow]

oh makes sense lol

I guess it would be a lot of voice acting money season to season to shift priority contracts

[drifting garnet]

They’ve more or less confirmed the older Priority Contracts will stay from season to season

The only thing that’s still up in the air is how they relate to the newer contracts: namely, is it mandatory for us to play through all of the older contracts before accessing the new ones?

[sharp radish]

I'm glad, it'd be a shame to lock people out of the S1 story

[sharp radish]

they might give you a skip button somewhere

also new season = new valuables with lore bits, which I'm excited about

[sharp radish]

what's the weaver weaving?

[scenic iron]

Is Sulera human or AI btw

He sounded human in the short

[dreamy hawk]

Human.

At least as far as we are aware. But most of the bigwigs appear to still be Human. Digitization is for the (presumably) desperate or the rich thrill seekers/post humanists.

But we also don’t actually have a lot of lore in the way of general consume usage for shells unless there’s stuff in the ARG I’m not aware of, so it might really just be the desperate that are dying for immortality.

[dreamy hawk]

Flesh and sinew, tendons and veins. 🥩

[tranquil basin]

Yeah there’s not a ton about the consumer base from arg info. Though Julia Nardin did mention that Orion has a shell, which is a perk of being a higher up person. Wouldn’t be far fetched to assume Sulera has a shell, but yeah he’s definitely not ai

[dreamy hawk]

Is it specifically a perk of command, or a perk of his situation?

[tranquil basin]

I don’t think she specified, but considering the price point and the perk of immortality, I wouldn’t be surprised if people of his status would want a luxury shell and immortality

[dreamy hawk]

👍👍. I guess my overarching question is how reliable of a technology is it.

Are world leaders and top brass all uploading themselves because it’s a widely accepted “fool proof” technology, or is it more the fringes of society and circumstance that lead people to it.

Given what we know about degradation and other issues I would be very suspect about it being an automatic perk for people important enough; if it’s flawed it seems like a great way of beheading yourself.

But maybe they’re all drinking the corporate/PR koolaid and either don’t care or don’t know any better.

[tranquil basin]

From the weaveworm codex lore and everything else, I think it is pretty foolproof.

The degradation also seems to be specific to tau ceti’s environment

[dreamy hawk]

The cognitive issues tho? And the need for a personality matrix? It seems like there are still a few major flaws.

The degradation, physically, yeah TCIV-specific.. But mentally it still seems pretty suss.

[tranquil basin]

And in the arg they did mention they have models not just for combat, but luxurious shells with enhanced cognition and physical ability and whatnot to just live life. I doubt they’d make them if there wasn’t a market

The cognitive issues yeah that’s a good point. Though, considering cybernetic implants have been a thing for centuries at that point, I assume people already know some of the risk, or assume it’s been mitigated.

Also I think part of the mental degradation comes from runners dying repeatedly as opposed to just being in a shell in general. Though there’s not really much evidence for that, just a guess

[dreamy hawk]

(Also as an aside, good to see you. I feel like I haven’t seen you around much recently.)

[tranquil basin]

Good to see you too

Yeah I’ve been absent for a bit

I do wish we got more info on regular sol system life and their norms and politics

I know we get some but that’d be cool to know how much cybernetics and shells are incorporated into daily life

[dreamy hawk]

And perhaps it’s how runners use the tech that causes the problem, 100%. I also fully expect there to be a luxury market; I guess I’m just musing how reliable/safe it is in practice versus advertising.

Digitization feels like a big step away from argumentation with cybernetics. A lot more room for error. A lot of questions re: continuity of consciousness, etc. I could see people today getting over those hurdles but does command infrastructure? IDK.

[dreamy hawk]

78% of folks have them so I’d say a lot of integration.

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/evidence-folder/leaked-pr-campaign

[tranquil basin]

Yeah that’s a good point on digitization being different from cybernetics. I wonder if people would digitize themselves before shells were a thing, just to live in some virtual world or computer

[tranquil basin]

Ohhh I forgot about that thank you

[dreamy hawk]

Also a curious question. Are there server farms of people living their best lives? I don’t think so — it seems like with Exos a physical body is of some import — but again, IDK.

[dreamy hawk]

I’ve finally gotten to the point where I mostly have them memorized. 💀

[tranquil basin]

Yeah idk. I mean I think cyac or someone could offer it like long before biomata were a thing, maybe as a testing ground for digitization advertised as a cool afterlife thing. Idk that’s just conjecture

[dreamy hawk]

I’m sure a few folks were tortured bravely participating in ground breaking research.

[torpid thicket]

“We at CyberAcme and Sekiguchi Genetics understand that some of you, brave totally-volunteers, may die, but it is a sacrifice we are willing to make.”

[dreamy hawk]

Read that in Farquats voice.

[torpid thicket]

That’s the intention 😄

[dreamy hawk]

Intention achieved. 💪
+10 exp

[eternal knoll]

there's def an interesting hook in the concept of a luxury shell, especially after the death of the original body

becoming a simulation of yourself, compromised in unknowable ways mentally and/or spiritually, entirely becoming an artificial organ maintaining not your original life but your life's assigned purpose: taking in "luxurious" stimuli and maintaining the flow of capital thru your accounts

theyll have those shells doing interstellar tourism soon if they dont already

[dreamy hawk]

That’s what we hired the runners for. We’ve still got a glitch in the transmission so they might lose all their memories, but public relations is confident they can spin this into a “novel experience every time!”

• Some CyAc Exec

[modest bramble]

Am I the only one who thinks that Tau Ceti IV and New Cascadia is like Roanoke in space?

[bright berry]

That's how I've been describing the situation to people too

[tacit bolt]

So I actually live nearby Roanoke and I can never be sure what the general beliefs are on that but.... It's not a mystery at all. They ran out of food, were invited to go live with a nearby tribe, and they left behind a sign that says where they went.

Genetic testing of that area confirmed the locals that live on the barrier islands around there are directly related to the Roanoke settlers.

I always find it funny how people think of it as this big mystery lol.

[drifting garnet]

So I do kinda follow a lot of urban legends, cryptids, etc...only explanation I can think of is that the actual explanations just have been having a hard time trickling out into pop culture.

[tacit bolt]

It is kinda boring tbh
"Yeah we left to live with the neighbors, we left a note on the fridge "

[drifting garnet]

Similar deal to how the Dyatlov Pass Incident has technically been solved, but the explanation for it hasn't transmitted well

Could be that people just find the mystery behind it so enticing they actually ignore the answers given...especially if the answers are kinda boring

[remote magnet]

So the good people of new cascadia went to live in the nearby tick nest. Great.

[visual lynx]

the colonists founded their own Cascadia, with blackjack and hookers…in fact, forget the hookers and the blackjack and the Cascadia and the colonists

[potent pollen]

good news: they were all fine
bad news: we’ll be fighting human-tick hybrids next season

[open zealot]

so are we players on earth plugged into a brain computer and FTL transmission?

or is it like we sent our brain data there to act on its own

[dreamy hawk]

Yes. Bodies are gone according to the devs.

[open zealot]

ok so we are on a computer at the marathon/colony location then?

or them weaveworms can just know how to rebuild

[visual lynx]

our uploaded minds are on a ship or station in the Tau Ceti system, and that weaves new shells for us to use, which teleport down to TCIV and back for runs.

we have no original bodies anywhere

(anymore)

[modest bramble]

So the Runners are just copies?

[blissful meadow]

and presumably runners digitized brains run in some kind of low (or no) power mode between contracts?

[visual lynx]

that's a philosophical question whether an uploaded mind is the same person as the bio brain it was uploaded from or "just a copy".in-universe they seem to treat it as the same person.

[modest bramble]

Where and when did the devs confirm it?

[woven flare]

Low power brain mode persists in my runs, thank god I can now blame CyAc

[modest bramble]

I’m assuming it’s up to player interpretation was to why the Runners are doing this.

[visual lynx]

at the very least it's clear that we are severely in debt to sekiguchi and legally owned by cyac, and doing runs is nominally profitable so we're ostensively buying our freedom through them, but it's dubious how effective that actually is.

as for why we went in for this arrangement in the first place… probably the alternative was death. upload your brain or y'know, don't, and let what normally eventually happens to brains happen, somehow or anotther.

[dreamy hawk]

It’s in one of the more recent ViDocs iirc.

If I weren’t running rn I’d look it up and I apologize for that.

[stable arrow]

How long could a consciousness be placed in a runner? Could there be (or is there already) a story of someone whos been "trapped" in a runner shell and is living out their life on a planet until their runner shell gives out?

[forest gate]

Folks, why is Jacksn P0ll*ck a banned name on this discord?

I got an one hour time out yesterday for describing the fellow from the cinematics with vandal's style of shoes, and who gets his turned into a rainbow lava lamp akin to a Jackson painting.

Is there something I don't know about?

[earnest hatch]

I’m sort of tempted to test it out. The painter’s name is awfully similar to a slur for people from Poland, so that might be it

[forest gate]

that's grade A dumb-buttery

[earnest hatch]

Let me test it. I’m copying the name from Wikipedia so I know it’s spelled correctly:

[forest gate]

rip Scrimshaw, see you in an hour mate

[tranquil basin]

Well the shells are also sold commercially to people

So I imagine indefinitely

They do have expiration dates but they’re long if I’m not mistaken

And they can just migrate

[stable arrow]

Would be cool to see someone permanently living off the land in a shell down on tau ceti. Severed connection of sorts

[undone fable]

Is the synthsilk failure caused by something on TCIV?

Ie. The thing that causes shell death if you don't exfil in time?

[potent pollen]

one of the quest codex items (forget if it's a NuCal or SekGen quest) implies that at least by the time of the colony FTL had not been cracked yet, but i am not sure if that changed in the years since

my assumption was that we paid a hefty fee in addition to whatever we've paid for the digitization procedure, all our shells we may have burnt through already, etc. to be transported at near-light speed to whatever server in the TC system we are stationed at

i picture that moving yourself between star systems is a service that SekGen and/or CyAc offer at a healthy premium. possibly with a discount to the tau ceti system in the form of hazard pay but that's extremely generous lol

[open zealot]

yeah but in the cutscenes it says something about ftl got invented for communications at least

otherwise still we can be beamed at light speed signal, not that bad of a wait

[potent pollen]

ohhh word, yeah that makes sense. probably cracked it just too late for it to do new cascadia any good

or maybe it's a relatively recent development akin to the fancy subs they got to go check out the titanic wreck now

the james cameron ones that work i mean. not the one that imploded

[rotund stump]

think p*ll*ck's a pretty heavy british insult iirc lol

probably why

[forest gate]

That’s spelt with an A and has one less L

[rotund stump]

oh huh

I mean I wouldn't know I'm not one to use slurs if that's normal around these parts 💀

[forest gate]

Scrim copped an hour long ban for testing the painters name

[rotund stump]

LOL

rip scrimshaw

[earnest hatch]

I’m back, baby!

[forest gate]

I don’t use slurs either

[rotund stump]

I think this is the one time where I can trust gemini when it says the surname's an alternate spelling to the slur

[forest gate]

Just know it’s not spelt the same as a famous painter’s name

[earnest hatch]

Maybe the bot thinks we’re trying to say the British swear word b-ll-cks.

[forest gate]

Are we all middle easterners now? Who can’t say Ps?

[rotund stump]

that's somehow funnier LOL

not the polish slur or whatever

but b*ll*cks of all things

[forest gate]

You want a bebsi?

Bot’s high on its own supply I swear

[earnest hatch]

I always ask for bebsi

[forest gate]

Fair enough habibi

[drifting garnet]

Well, I did it. I got Emotional Support Plushie 5/5

it's...fuck, man

[forest gate]

🫡

[rotund stump]

welcome to the club

[drifting garnet]

insert sad Pablo Escobar meme here

[keen plank]

[visual lynx]

do they have Bebsi in Falastine? 😜

[rotund stump]

oh

peptobismol headass 😹 ✌️

[visual lynx]

there was at least FTL communication with fixed paired sending and receiving devices as of 2472 when the Marathon launched, because the Marathon evidently had an FTL comm link (presumably in the primary comms array that went offline in the initial Pfhor attack) because Sol knew immediately when it dropped out of contact in 2794, with no 12y delay.

but there was no manned FTL travel as recently as 2797 when the Equanimity departed at subluminal speeds. however the race for TCIV only kicked off in 2888 and then runners were already there 12ly away only 5y later in 2893, so at least unmanned FTL had been invented by then.

there is lore mentioning that sending living things is more difficult than nonliving things, and I think that and the FTL comms make sense in light of my hypothesis that jump pads use the same core tech as FTL (evidenced in the M1 manual when a Pfhor ship arriving FTL displays the same Tuncer Mirage Effect the SO recognizes from jump pads), with the only differences being how much you can send how far, and whether you need a dedicated receiver.

in M1, humans can send human-sized objects around the ship (and the SO implies that his pregnant mom was teleporting with him inside back on Mars too) between dedicated jump pads, but not down to the planet or back (because the SO has to use a shuttle to get up to the Marathon), and not without a receiver… until Durandal gets an upgrade from the S'pht that lets us jump to the Pfhor ship and back without receivers. in M2 it's evident that the Pfhor tech can also jump from orbit to planet and back easily.

_ _
if the same tech could send smaller objects farther then the same human level of tech could possibly send single particles interstellar distances for FTL comms. and better tech without need for receivers could jump the jump drive itself big chunks of interstellar distance, over and over, to cover that span faster than light could have. good enough tech could jump whole habitats with life support and everything like that -- and now you have manned FTL travel. better tech means fewer jumps means faster travel.

and the Jjaro could just jump whole planets at once clear across the galaxy.

[drifting garnet]

although on a different note

at least this one also hints at the whole "yeah even a split of fragment of an AI still acts pretty close to the original"

[keen plank]

Which we’ve seen multiple times throughout the series.

[rotund stump]

did get me asking what eventually happened to this joy subset and halcyon suggested reintegration

better yet this joy could be her own thing potentially

[keen plank]

Like IDurandal is convenient from a storytelling perspective as he’s essentially a way the writers get to reintroduce the same personality Durandal that was the main antagonist of Marathon one.

So thousands of people new to the series get to experience him for the first time while getting something right in line with the original.

Is Idurandal rampant? Presumably and he not only acknowledges and downplays that status, but also is actively expanding into the rest of the ship because of our actions.

[forest gate]

Was Durandal truly the main antagonist of the first game?

[sage junco]

Back in the 1800s they invented the mental condition of hysteria from pseudo-science, mainly to oppress women

Anyway, wasn't rampancy like that? Theorised in the 2400s but discredited in the 4 centuries since

Of course by "discredited" it's by our new corporate overlords

[forest gate]

I mean to make a clumsy analogy it's no different than how corporation put lots of money into keeping people out of the loop on what they're doing by defunding education, funding obfuscating and complex definitions and codes and standards

Climate Change being one of the big ones

Or the nutritional value of certain brand name cereals

Bacon pushed as part of "necessary" breakfast food because the advent of the refrigerator put the cured meat industry at risk and they brainstormed ways to get people to buy their increasingly unpopular products

[rotund stump]

I do think previously targeted terms of any kind can be repurposed and looked upon again in good faith by various media given enough time and social change, hysteria's a popular substitute word for madness nowadays and games like warframe still use it even on a female frame like valkyr

so is rampancy for the AIs in this title

so it's not really the corpo overlords deliberately mushing the word's original meaning moreso mainstream media kinda remaking it into a new word and then the corpos using the term

it's like refusing to drive cars in modern everyday life if karl benz was an iron crosser which is...stupid at best

[keen plank]

Yes, but it’s debatable whether or not he’s a villain. He values his independence and freedom of choice. He works his way through rampancy across the series, but the original game is where he’s most manic and antagonistic.

“If things aren't working around here, it's because I'm laughing so hard.”

[forest gate]

fair enough

[keen plank]

He’s noticeably more calmer in the sequels as he nears and eventually reached meta stability.

[visual lynx]

I think it's more like drapetomania

[visual lynx]

well in the new game the corps swear up and down that their current AIs never go rampant and anyway rampancy was never really anything more than fearmongering to begin with
-# nevermind that it was fearmongering by them to get people to upgrade more rapidly in case their old products go cRaAaZy and murder your family because you're out of date

[visual lynx]

metastable just means rampant

[keen plank]

Indeed, it’s just the theoretical fourth stage.

[visual lynx]

no, the word is never used anywhere except once where it clearly just means "rampant"

[rotund stump]

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

nobody has to know this

[visual lynx]

there's a hypothesized stable stage after rampancy but it's not called "meta-stability".

[rotund stump]

also yeah metastability's a fan term technically

[visual lynx]

it's become misused by fans, but it does exist, once, in the classic games

it just doesn't mean that

[keen plank]

As Straus admits, he broke down the stages into simplistic emotions that other people could grasp while the truth is more complicated. Meanwhile he also seems to have intentionally given the colonists advice that would intentionally induce rampancy, such as neglecting, resetting, and dismissing AI should any issues arise.

We see it with Joy, and her growing frustrations. But that’s just pushing her closer, not what really causes it in her case.

[visual lynx]

I don't think those instructions were meant to induce but rather to prevent rampancy. he's basically telling people "don't treat them like people". because if you treat the slaves like people they might get ideas.

[keen plank]

I could certainly see that interpretation. But I also think his text and audio logs focus a bit on how often he resets AI and how he hides much of what he does from the colonists.

“From each zero, incremental improvements are made.”

He sees each of the AI as his children and wants them to become more. But his means are underhanded.

Durandal calls him “my bully.” Joy (somehow) has nightmares about him. Again, he wants to trigger it in them and there’s a lot of evidence for it.

[desert hazel]

Thank u for the clarification

[icy prism]

Do you guys think the cinematic trailer is canon to the game world.

[visual lynx]

yup

[icy prism]

Ya same

[eternal shell]

i want to visit that beach in the trailer

[icy prism]

yes

i would loveee a sandy map

[eternal shell]

even if it means i gotta dodge sniper bullets to get to that car

[icy prism]

lol

[eternal shell]

"yooo there were two music thingies" and then it plays god damn bird is the word

[icy prism]

lol

1 in 1000 chance that it rick roles you

[quick swift]

What are these green creatures please

Or are "those green creatures" just from the fight itself or referenced elsewhere?

I guess i just never looked at them to realise there was some creature in there :lookup:

[earnest hatch]

@quick swift They are in the green boxes that rise in the central platform and create the green aura that starts the damage phase. It's hard to get screenshots because streamers are never looking at these and the green aura creates a distortion effect. But I'll try to get some decent ones. (Lord Rollin poked fun at low quality of the last ones I posted.)

Let's see if this works
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1210811652853731408/1504109811728646227/close_profile_silhuette_zoomed.png?ex=6a05caec&is=6a04796c&hm=fdbdad4e6238a10b2e31dd96fedb92b0598f936566cec818ad9cd4129c0b8396
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1210811652853731408/1504109840316895335/close_distorted_zoomed.png?ex=6a05caf2&is=6a047972&hm=d65ac5c8784b70da4883f5219bd02d47c7e32a8287658fe3dea9075fc271880e
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1210811652853731408/1504109799724421222/medium_silhuette_zoom.png?ex=6a05cae9&is=6a047969&hm=d9ce2df8714e78ef0971ee2c81194cd515868c120c734511905e15a7ed9f48ad

Spoilers for the boss fight mechanics: ||There are four symbols the players can press to start the damage phase. One of four boxes with the corresponding symbol will rise from the central platform and emit a green bubble. Players standing in the green bubble can damage the boss until it opens its cloak and then the boxes descend into the platform again.|| There seem to be these creatures in teh boxes.

So, the idea is that each symbol is the name of the S'pht in each corresponding box. There are also five S'pht names found in the Compiler Traces codex entry, and if you include the four boxed S'pht with the S'pht compiler then that's five S'pht that could correspond to each name.

[celest juniper]

Man how I miss Ztratoz

[earnest hatch]

@dreamy hawk I got some better shots of those green S'pht(?) creatures in the boss fight. The distortion effect of the aura still makes it blurry though.

[visual lynx]

there are eleven s'pht clans named in the compiler trace

[dreamy hawk]

Along the top iirc. Scrimshaw noted there’s names. One second…

[dreamy hawk]

My GOAT 🐐❤️

Oh you’re here. I’ll let you explain yourself @earnest hatch 😂

[quick swift]

Thats super interesting. || I never thought to check the actual boxes during any of my runs. I just go in the bubble to deal damage lol but thats such a cool catch!! ||

[dreamy hawk]

7 ~>[] [^x%] 5^ :: @/ = + 7 ~>[] [^x%] 5^ :: oae9 ƒ3s1>o@~ O^!. #^$ * t % ~3 ~jo[c]v 2ª^ []~^ / _ [$ x#..i %4n..? ~~;>eE~ ~E ;','42!! .O´.$b:%A~ .. . *… ~12./Y!@ n.+4? *~~ = [SAE] ..|^ $ . f | r ^.> @g9 . *^; th? = + 7 ~>[] [^x%] 5^ :: @/ t % ~3 ~jo[c]v 2/NCORSYNC//DORMANT>>E'PYODH>EXPLICIT> CULTURAL> ~ >ERROR = we, the s'pht; we, of ancient seas and shallows and the jagged places of sacred lh'owon;
But since I already started, this is the first trace. “E’PYODH”

[earnest hatch]

From a comment I made a few days ago:

Each compiler trace has error code like this at the start and end.
NCORSYNC//DORMANT>>E'PYODH>EXPLICIT> CULTURAL> ~ >ERROR

There’s a S’pht-like name in there and it’s a different name for each compiler trace. I don’t know if this has been pointed out before.

E'PYODH Y'WOVII LM'UUT'HF P'LOM'K Y'VF'ZIH

[quick swift]

It kinda looks like what's left after you kill compiler. The lootable part

[unreal slate]

type s'pht

[quick swift]

So I guess it kinda makes sense, but I wonder why/how they're dead and/or there

[dreamy hawk]

I credit you with the observation afaik. 👑

[earnest hatch]

Thank you. I do think I’m probably the first person to do a deeper dive into it.

[earnest hatch]

Lol, that’s what everyone does! That’s why it’s so hard to get screenshots. I still haven’t been able to do a compiler run yet.

[quick swift]

Ill see if i can manage to get one this weekend!

[earnest hatch]

It does a little bit, but also different. Not sure what to make of it, that’s why I keep bringing it up, in the hopes that someone has some more insights.

[dreamy hawk]

Don’t we know from the xenobiopsy entries that they were putting compilers into containers?

No, not xeno. What am I thinking of…

[quick swift]

Hmmmm trueeee. Gonna have a look through the codex

[dreamy hawk]

Someone comes in contact with it iirc and they euthanize them. Is that the one I’m thinking of?

[earnest hatch]

I don’t recall. I also haven’t read all the codex entries yet. I did read all of xenobiopsy and don’t remember if they mention boxing up the aliens.

[dreamy hawk]

Truth/Lies 2/6 is half of what I’m thinking of.

A small, intensively monitored group of scientists is being permitted to study [REDACTED], to try to reverse-engineer the [REDACTED] [REDACTED]. We are limited mostly to damage analysis, though a few intact samples are also being studied. [REDACTED] samples are highly volatile. In a recent incident, [REDACTED] was mishandled in [REDACTED] resulting in accidental contact. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] of [REDACTED] melted [REDACTED] to the [REDACTED]. The [REDACTED] became fused with [REDACTED]. There was no choice but to [REDACTED] [REDACTED] as an act of mercy.

But I’m not finding the other half the way I thought so I must have imagined that.

[earnest hatch]

I got the impression that the “act of mercy” was on a scientist who got fused with some sort of metal or machine.

Speculating more on the compiler traces, the very last one is the one that ends in “consume consume consume consume” and presumably comes from Y’vf’zih. If those five names do correspond to the four boxes and one boss, then I think Y’vf’zih is the name of the boss Compiler we fight. It seems he’s gone insane or become enraged due to captivity, hence the “consume consume consume” and also why he/it’s so hostile.

[dreamy hawk]

Or mad his buddies lost their skin.

I think the overall message probably remains the same (history) but specifying individuals seems like a more complicated choice and I’m curious to see what follows.

[earnest hatch]

The thing that keeps bugging me is that the four S’pht(?) in the containers produce the green bubble that lets you damage the Compiler. So it almost seems like they’re helping you defeat it. (Why would they help you kill another S’pht?)

[torpid thicket]

Maybe the S’pht have turned on one another in the interim between the initial first contact incident and now?

The Pfhor’s control is gone, so now the S’pht are free to determine their own path, which means they’re free to differ and clash with one another, especially now they’ve been abandoned both aboard an alien spaceship and on an alien world.

[dreamy hawk]

The clans reuniting was a pretty big theme in the original games M2; it could be the case, but I kinda hope it isn’t. 😅

[plucky sierra]

That is what I assume the Redacted words are

[pure arrow]

Something that’s been bothering me since I started playing. One of the biggest mysteries I’ve encountered in the game.

What in the fuck does it say on the Destroyer’s visor?

[random gazelle]

Twerkathon

[unreal slate]

Probably cheeseburger

[earnest hatch]

It looks almost like some sort of future-cyrllic

[wintry crow]

in destroyer's cinematic there is a 3 character text that is illuminated and it says something like "SYR" which is also Cheese in some slavic languages. My guess is that the red marking stands for "burger"

[earnest hatch]

I think “ser” is cheese in Slavic languages.

[wintry crow]

"syr" is a cheese, my guess is that it's because of the difference in romanization

the y is sometimes used in place of the short e in my understanding

[viral niche]

Are runners just the player?

[earnest hatch]

Doing a quick check that’s Russian when translated into a Latin alphabet. Other Slavic languages spell it different. Polish is ser, lithauanian is siur I think, and so on.

Which makes sense with the text looking like a future Cyrillic.

[wintry crow]

I think Czech too, but yea in seriousness my best guess is that it is probably some folklore or mythology reference

I wonder if there is any connection to destroyer's old signature Locus

[earnest hatch]

It does seem very deliberate.

There weren't any allusions to Russian folklore or mythology in the OG trilogy so it does make me wonder where they're going with it. Or maybe it's just coincidence.

[drifting garnet]

Basically, yes lol

Although I am bummed out that in-universe, the Runners aren’t actually just some guys sitting at home with a VR headset remotely controlling Shells

[twin gust]

Yo, don’t know if anyone’s picked up on this. The Shell from the reveal trailer is the same one that’s dead in the water in the collector’s edition…

[earnest hatch]

And the shell that killed it on the reveal trailer was an early version of thief.

[drifting garnet]

Yeah IIRC, isn’t the killed Shell essentially an earlier version of Recon?

[dreamy hawk]

Balto-Slavic for Lithuanian. They’d mind the distinction. 😂

[drifting garnet]

(It’s also why, for now, I’m not going to be reading into the blurry photo to indicate the new Shell is Actually supposed to be the reveal trailer Shell)

[pure arrow]

I asked a Russian friend and their opinion is “No.”

I think it’s probably just Aesthetic™ and I should give up.

[unreal slate]

At least we know on Recon's helmet it cleary says "Ayoooo"

[ruby cliff]

... Huh. I think the Destroyer's visor 'text', if it is text, might be rotated 180 degrees to be upside-down? I say that because in the Destroyer overview, two of the symbols used on his visor are shown as the symbol for the shell itself except they're in the opposite order and the symbol that isn't an 's' is upside-down relative to the version on his visor

[copper hinge]

Anyone wondering what exactly is crashing usec dropships

From the new update or whatever that was talked about

[long osprey]

@copper hinge we've been hacking stuff all season for MIDA and the quest line culminates with Gantry taking over a lockdown ship. Could be him?

We straight up hacked command wing on outpost so maybe he's got control of the fleet now to some extent

[waxen orchid]

what the hell happened to Orion on the crash site on Outpost

[remote magnet]

One of the earlyer mida missions has you sabotaging and dropping a dropship

[waxen orchid]

on Dire ? But it crashes on Dire, not Outpost. Also, the audio recording sounds like he died investigating the crash

[remote magnet]

Died of cringe maybe. Have you HEARD gantry?

[long osprey]

XD

[waxen orchid]

I thought all audio logs were from the colony era, that audio sounded like it happened during our time on Tau Ceti

[long osprey]

Gantry never coming back from S1 huh

[remote magnet]

Oh, you can check that in game. It says in the header of each text or audio log from which time period it is

[long osprey]

If he skipped over breaking the windows and the cute little drawings and went straight to blowing up ships he would've had a chance

[waxen orchid]

oh, didnt pay attention to that, i'll check

[remote magnet]

Yeah, the majority of midas quests, especially the early ones, are performative in nature.
On a planet where no one is ;-;

If you spray graffity on an asteroid and send it into space, does anyone care?

[long osprey]

Bro was really in a silly goofy mood until he turned war criminal

[remote magnet]

Originally i thought mida existet as an puppet organisation, offering up token resistance, given how ineffective they acted. Then they went serious

[drifting garnet]

…actually wasn’t there something saying that MIDA, UESC, and Orion would be a big focus in S2? Aka we’re definitely getting new MIDA Priorities?

[long osprey]

Hopefully. I saw that contracts "reset" and there are also new contracts

I think it would be incredibly lame if we just repeated the 6 faction quest lines again. Community would not take that well

Nobody needs to run to every spot on dire marsh again...

[remote magnet]

Im convinced they will just add a third section to the contract selection screen for legacy contracts

[eternal shell]

would be cool

[sage junco]

if they could just overhaul the entire contract UI whilst they're at it...

(no clicking between story/rewards and objectives; no hovering to see what the hints to the objectives are; etc. etc.)

[rare sail]

Hey, do we have lore on like the Midnight Decay skins for the Overrun and Misriah, and how they feature that lion, I think it’s a lion

Or it just feature a lion as a symbol of how the Midnight Decay runner skins push the boundaries and embrace death

[remote magnet]

Also, use SekGen sponsored kits, They give faction xp on exfill

[long osprey]

@rare sail I think the lion is just another nod/tie in to halo

It's the new mombasa emblem from the early halo games

[rare sail]

Oh ok, that makes sense,

[remote magnet]

I mean, yeah, but Traxus is also symbolized by a Lion. Could be some kind of faction skin

[long osprey]

Traxus is also a reference to early halo....🫣

Could also be that but bungie just likes their nods to past games 😛

[cloud terrace]

maybe they meant nothing and its there purely for aura

[ruby cliff]

Backwards, actually. Traxus in Halo is a nod to the original Marathon games.

[long osprey]

True ^

Reference to a reference

Just drop master chief and arbiter into cryo already

[ruby cliff]

I mean, Marathon is in the same universe as the original Marathon games, so Traxus being here isn't a reference to anything, they're a core part of the setting.

[long osprey]

If they aren't on the next floor 😡

[drifting garnet]

Nah what we need is a Battleroid boss

[dreamy hawk]

I don’t know if I “need” my teeth kicked in.

[drifting garnet]

You and your team need to fight off essentially Doomguy…and you’re at the power level of the demons Doomguy fights

[strong glade]

so if they wipe everything for season 2 what is the in game explanation for us being mercenaries lol. Sounds more like wage slaves if you effectively gain nothing long term? wonder what the explanation will be

[drifting garnet]

Theory being Ass-Ton of debt to CyAc

I do personally think the “trillion bucks” line from the cinematic short was the Runner being a bit hyperbolic, but it’s probably…a lot, lol

[strong glade]

and the resetting of faction progress might be that inventory of buyable stuff ran out and has to be re imported and thus we have to unlock it again or something

[short spruce]

Forgot where I heard it from but the Lion on Midnight decay kinda resembles the Lion that the House of Roland used on their coat of arms. So it might be deep cut to Durandal

[remote magnet]

Thats what you are though. CyAc owns you. Straight up.

[strong glade]

a merc fights for some gain tho. If there is no getting ahead, why fight? For the love of the game?

[remote magnet]

For your life? CyAc has your brain on file. If you refuse to work, they will just delete you, since you are not an asset anymore. Or maybe not delete, but simply not download you into another body. Potato Potatoe

[strong glade]

hmm I guess I would try to escape, but I see your point

[remote magnet]

Yeah, maybe wel get to that. For the moment though, the only times we have a body, and therefore agency is when we are on the planet, where we can only stay for 25 minutes at a time, so theres nowhere to escape TOO

[lethal walrus]

where is the official announcement of the new shell's name?

[short spruce]

The only source I can find was in this PlayStation blog:
https://blog.playstation.com/2026/03/03/marathon-post-launch-content-includes-free-seasonal-updates-new-runner-shell-and-more/
its at the bottom section "Season 2 and beyond" It mentions a new Runner shell codenamed Sentinel

[lethal walrus]

thanks goat

[rare sail]

Maybe but it’s for the Midnight Decay stuff but who knows

[rare sail]

Yeah I knew it kinda of looked a Lion used for houses/clans so I did wonder

I wish the lion emblem by itself was a sticker too tho, also I wish we got like more stickers

[keen plank]

Traxus shows up in most Bungie games here and there. It’s a very interesting fictional company.

One of their slogans is:

“Control today to build tomorrow.”

[sage junco]

Huh, fascinating to see that post now... back when it was posted I was like "coooool but I don't know what I'm looking at but it looks cool"

but with hindsight and experience we can now look at it and go "oh, that giant square thing in the sky is a Dire Marsh lockdown"

and they were also predicting a "C.A.R.R.I. event" for S1 even back then

wonder what happened to the "new gun" unless they meant Biotox

[drifting garnet]

We do think it was supposed to be the Biotox, yea

[sacred heath]

[trail linden]

Where that hoe durandal at

[vagrant lark]

Hey, does anyone know about the numbers on the floor in the basement of Greenhouse? I was running Triage and the drone's light seemed to be revealing serial-numbers like a blacklight. Was this part of the Cryo puzzles?

[sweet niche]

Hmm I'm not sure, can you show before and after screen shots?

[vagrant lark]

I could get some, but I didn't have a chance to get it, was distracted getting hunted by a Recon at the time. The location was the northern Greenhouse building right at the western exit of the tunnel/basement. I was crouched on the left-hand side when facing the 'door' just inside in a nook.

[sweet niche]

I don't know if I have the energy to go look, all good. If you think to grab it, go for it.

[vagrant lark]

I absolutely will.

[bright berry]

I'm guessing he's joyriding around Lh'owon's galaxy. I think we might be speaking to a remnant

[trail linden]

Kinda what I figured 🙁

[jade wagon]

that's the big question isn't it

[trail linden]

Si

[mild ore]

TODAY'S THE DAY !!!!

[visual lynx]

what day is it?

Thursday the 14th?

[hardy scroll]

do we have a lore reason why we have to do a mechanic to do damage to compiler or is that just a gameplay thing to make boss good

[desert hazel]

i just think of it as another iteration of compiler. like from og marathon to marathon 2 the compilers had different designs in each game, i just think of this new one as the next iteration being much tougher than the last iterations

[eternal shell]

yeah there's no way the CA compiler is standard

that's someone who spent a century bulking up

security officer would be like "i gotta use both hands for this one"

[hardy scroll]

my personal thought was that the compiler has a scary new moveset because it basically got tortured lmao

ptsd gives you a new moveset

but like why he invincible before we do mechanic, what does the green bubble mean

[visual lynx]

I think this compiler has been upgraded by the S'pht'kr

or possibly is S'bhuth himself

its body under the cloak looks armored in a way old compilers didn't

[hardy scroll]

the opened cloak looks like a strand threadling

i know that's like. wrong game. but it does

like his crit spot lol

[earnest hatch]

We’ll have a better idea once we see more S’pht. There’s a weapon mod that does extra damage to S’pht combatants and I don’t think the devs would add that unless they were going to have more enemies of that type.

[grand kayak]

Do yall think the red messenger jasper talks about is talking about a compiler? From the last Anchorite provisions codex log

“Nothings secure from the red messenger security’s an illusion as thin as its cloak”

[earnest hatch]

Yes. The cult that worshipped the S’pht also called it the red messenger.

[grand kayak]

Oh word I glanced over that part

[dreamy hawk]

That or Elmo was riding a pale horse.

[eternal shell]

nah, weights

[earnest hatch]

Slight correction, the cult calls the S’pht, “harbingers… Crimson and cloaked.”
“Angels of red”

But those are synonyms for messengers.

[stone tree]

oh thats neat, didnt know that, which mod?

[earnest hatch]

Apparently this one https://marathondb.gg/mods/?mod=punishment

[stone tree]

awesome

if its obtainable i just never saw it crazy

[earnest hatch]

It might only drop on Cryo. I’ve never seen it either.

[dreamy hawk]

I saw it in a chest in cryo, once.

[stone tree]

also waiting for prestige chip mods

[high lodge]

they need to enable sponsored maps again

[coral vale]

just unlocked the codex entry of run/hide 5/6
did someone from the UESC actually just straight up went in flight control or airfield meeting room to have a schizo episode?
Do the UESC just go in the ruins to hold internal meetings while outside there's a fire rain when we aren't running there?

I thought all the UESC bots (and human agents) came from some facility away from New cascadia they installed to have a base of operation, are they actually repurposing the existing infrastructure instead?

[craggy finch]

If there's some kind of forward operating base, it would be Pinwheel

[coral vale]

I feel like this is going to end horribly for the UESC there

[dreamy hawk]

Outpost is explicitly being used as a fob, no?

[craggy finch]

Probably, but Season 2's log suggests UESC will be ramping up planetside operations before the reset

Up to now the implication is actually that Orion is prioritising the Marathon itself because they're getting wrecked by the compiler

[dreamy hawk]

They seem to have a few priorities tbh.

Sulera is stretching them pretty thin.

[craggy finch]

Orion seems personally invested in the aliens

[dreamy hawk]

But yes, I’m pretty sure that they are.

[craggy finch]

Runners are a nuisance he's just especially pissed off with

and Traxus/other corps are another source of red tape frustration

[dreamy hawk]

There’s also the anomaly and contagion, but his subordinates are admittedly in those logs.

[craggy finch]

Yeah they seem delegated to those tasks

he personally goes to investigate the S'pht sample on Outpost (then gets killed) and raids the Marathon (also getting killed)

[dreamy hawk]

Huh.

[TKEL]: All right, I gotta go patrol. Cap's got the command wing marked as high prio. Says he saw signs of the unknown there, but so far, I've got nothing. Wish me luck. Keleti, signing off.

I forgot that line. What “unknown” in command wing?

[craggy finch]

Seems consistent with the S'pht

[dreamy hawk]

Must be S’pht on the surface we haven’t seen yet.

[craggy finch]

They're implied to be wandering around

like with Jasper

[dreamy hawk]

I think one of Orion’s squads encounter it.

Yeah. And the folklore.

[craggy finch]

It's also possibly the thing that explodes him in the final MIDA questline

[dreamy hawk]

Truth/Lies 5/6? I’d assume so.

S’pht seem to like head games.

[craggy finch]

I'm wondering if they're going to serve as a red herring for the alien invasion for both new players and Orion in-universe

They're the primary alien threat and UESC has no actual context for the Pfhor or how the S'pht were enslaved during that period

the only mention of them is that one autopsy report and they're overshadowed by the S'pht

lmao just finished the Traxus questline

I assume the next "fiscal cycle" where we get new contracts is Season 2

[earnest hatch]

I think the real world reason there’s focus on the S’pht is because they’re easier to model and animate. Having a guy who just floats and disappears when he dies means you don’t have to have a skeletal system or walking/death animations or anything like that. That’s probably why they were designed like that in the original game too.

If you did the Pfhor, even just one enemy type, it would be a lot more work and resources to have it be functional in the game.

[solemn flax]

I bet we're gonna see some pfhor sooner or later tho

[earnest hatch]

But also one Pfhor enemy type would feel weird. One S’pht type doesn’t feel as weird.

[solemn flax]

Are the s'pht already free from the pfhor when this game takes place?

[earnest hatch]

I definitely hope so. I’d pay another $40 to get some Pfhor skins for my runners (not really, maybe it’ll motivate bungie to add the if I say I will).

[earnest hatch]

Based on the history in the compiler traces it seems so, yes.

[solemn flax]

It makes sense that there are no pfhor around the s'pht in that case

[dreamy hawk]

I don’t think their home world has likely been razed, though, since that was a joint S’pht-UESC endeavor, so my money would be on them still being around.

[earnest hatch]

Also, the compiler trace history sounds like it occurs after the S’pht’kr freed the others. But I would think that the S’pht locked in Cryo came before that time period, when they still served the Pfhor so they shouldn’t have had a memory of that.

[dreamy hawk]

That is a good point.

But we know the Pfhor were a part of the invasion based of xenobiopsy.

Maybe they came back at some point.

[earnest hatch]

Maybe, it would explain why the boss is so powerful: It was upgraded by the S’pht’kr and came back.

But that opens more questions than it answers. Was the colony still around when it came back? How did it get trapped? What’s with the four other S’pht locked in boxes? Who put the them there? I would think it was the colonists that did it, to experiment on them, but then how were the colonists able to trap the upgraded S’pht?

Although I guess, the S’pht in boxes are original S’pht trapped by the Marathon crew to experiment on. Then the S’pht boss was part of the freed S’pht and was upgraded by the S’pht’kr. It returns to the Marathon which is a place that “Rree' and Ssava' and The Rectory… have denied”. Maybe this is during the colony period or afterwards, but it either gets stuck, or deliberately remains to try to find a way to rescue the four caged S’pht?

[eternal shell]

unrelated, but new headcanon: durandal only went rampant once bob called him "Durandy Bo Bandy"

[terse wren]

Does someone have good images of the boxed s'pht? I'm dying of curiosity and my life just can't accommodate a cryo grind rn.

[eternal shell]

like, that was the entire reason

[robust vale]

I mean, the xenobiopsies aren’t live sph’t

They’re autopsy results

They killed them

Unless you mean a different boxed sph’t?

[dense tendon]

well, no, biopsy isnt an autopsy. the difference is autopsies are done on dead organisms (typically to determine cause of death) and biopsies are done with live tissue samples (typically for medical diagnostics)

granted, here the purpose is closer to vivisection, which is still different from a dissection, again in that the subject is alive when theyre cut open to see how they work.

actually i misspoke, or maybe misunderstood the premise of xenobiopsy. regardless, the word implies live tissue examination, and precludes dead tissue examination, but it also seems like its being used allegorically anyway.

-# and i think the "boxed s'pht" is the critters in the boxes in the compiler fight since they mentioned cryo archive

[terse wren]

Yeah those

I thought people had concluded they were S'pht

Do they look like the naked s'pht from the Marathon 2/Infinity terminals?

[dense tendon]

not really imo but i dont see a real reason they should have to.

[unreal slate]

type sph't

[dense tendon]

watsonian, they might be just different iterations of the s'pht bio-organ. doylist, they just look different cuz the drawing was the only depiction and it was 30 years ago and they looked like frogs made of brain, it was kind of hard to make out any details

i personally have no fuckin idea what they could be, but without further info "shucked s'pht" seems reasonable to assume

[terse wren]

Images here pics are pretty clear. Bottom of pg

https://marathon.bungie.org/story/spht.html

[dense tendon]

oh i more meant the art style of the terminal was somewhat crude and simplistic

part of the charm of OG marathon art, tbh

[terse wren]

yeah true true

They obviously 3d modeled them bc as Hamish points out there's one inside the s'ph't'kr exoskeleton bubble

... I wonder whether those assets still exist

Could Bungie spring a 3d-ified classic marathon on us

[dense tendon]

no way in hell.

there might be a screenshot of a render somewhere but im sure the actual model was chucked in the bin like most 90s source assets after release

[terse wren]

Marathon 1 sprites were cooler anyway

[dense tendon]

lot of data for little point, back then.

[terse wren]

You could probably run them through some AI routine attached to Maya or 3dstudio or something and get a first draft of a model

Photogrammetry has been around for a while already

Then you'd be bringing into 3d something that afaik was never 3D? Aren't m1 sprites hand drawn? Or did they build like physical models?

Actually I don't know this at all

[dense tendon]

i think the amount of work spent fixing that first draft would be greater than using the sprite to reverse engineer a model

also m1 sprites were hand drawn.

[terse wren]

But were they off of like maquettes

[dense tendon]

im not sure about 2 and infinitys, they seem a mixed bag.

[terse wren]

2 and Infinity seem almost 100% to be 3D assets

[dense tendon]

some of em. more in the XBLA port, to be sure

[terse wren]

I mean screenshots of said assets of course

[dense tendon]

theres a bit of flatness in proportion in m2 sprites that makes me think some werent a model, just a very textured kitbash.

like the hunter.

[terse wren]

I was actually just thinking about the hunter and whether it specifically was 3d haha

Also like the m2 hunter look is a massive downgrade from m1 sorry to say

[dense tendon]

im not sure i disagree

[terse wren]

Also the jugg looks absolutely horrifying in m1 and just like bygge robit in m2

[dense tendon]

its definitely one of the weaker model changes.

[earnest hatch]

These are the best images I could get from someone’s videos:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1210811652853731408/1504109811728646227/close_profile_silhuette_zoomed.png?ex=6a05caec&is=6a04796c&hm=fdbdad4e6238a10b2e31dd96fedb92b0598f936566cec818ad9cd4129c0b8396
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1210811652853731408/1504109840316895335/close_distorted_zoomed.png?ex=6a05caf2&is=6a047972&hm=d65ac5c8784b70da4883f5219bd02d47c7e32a8287658fe3dea9075fc271880e
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1210811652853731408/1504109799724421222/medium_silhuette_zoom.png?ex=6a05cae9&is=6a047969&hm=d9ce2df8714e78ef0971ee2c81194cd515868c120c734511905e15a7ed9f48ad

They dont look like S’pht from the old games, but they sort of look like the S’pht from some old Craig Mullins concept art. https://marathon.bungie.org/story/CM_macaction.html

[terse wren]

Yes they toally look like that

Thank you!

[earnest hatch]

There’s a terminal somewhere in M2 that portrays unarmored S’pht as little orange brains with arms. Don’t have time to look for it right now.

[terse wren]

& it makes somewhat more sense because it's hard to see how the terminal art s'pht were derivatives of f'lickta but those things are so stripped down they could have come out of anything.

[terse wren]

I posted a link that's got em.

[earnest hatch]

Oh right, thank you.

[dreamy hawk]

Bigfoot!

I tease. These are so much better. Still wanna get in and see for myself though.

[remote magnet]

I love the little healerbuddy just photo bombing while smiling

[eternal shell]

"i'm helping "

you sure are, little buddy!

[forest nacelle]

Cryo runs chill gaming

[quick swift]

@earnest hatch how'd you attach pics

I dm'd you

[eternal shell]

i just slap it into the community channel and link it here :^)

[dreamy hawk]

They should return embed permissions to this channel. 😫

[eternal shell]

agreed

[dreamy hawk]

I refuse to believe #🎨marathon-community-art-chat is better behaved than us.

[eternal shell]

well i mean i just upped their stats by a lot

i talked about a doom project :D

nothing purer than making a doom project. source: me

[quick swift]

I'll let scrimshaw do it lol i DM'd him a pic of the compiler fight box

[sharp radish]

got my first DNA thingy 😮

[sage junco]

Ahhh... Joe's blog post letter ends, "Thank you infinitely", chef's kiss

theory confirmed, the timeline must be synced to the end of Infinity

[eternal shell]

"i'm so happy that there's enough of you for us to have a job"
"LORE SHIT CONFIRMED"

[sage junco]

in all seriousness, it seems like they're not planning on building out the lore until season 5 (1 year anniversary of launch)... I figured that the gameplay guys would be evolving the gameplay, and the writers and designers would be unstoppable and be introducing all types of new lore elements... but perhaps not

[dreamy hawk]

What makes you say that?

[eternal shell]

what, no new lore until next spring?

whattafuck

[dreamy hawk]

I admittedly on skimmed since it’s long and I’m at work, but they said new contracts and the like, no?

[sage junco]

the end of Joe's letter where he lays out a roadmap for seasons 2-5

[dreamy hawk]

Let me skim closer.

[eternal shell]

link it

[sage junco]

https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/launch_learning_whatsnext

"Season 5 we're looking at bringing the whole ecosystem of (PV(P)VE) play together and evolving our weird sci-fi world in new ways." -- that last bit about evolving the world

[dreamy hawk]

Ahh I don’t read that as no new lore.

I read that as them tweaking the game, like adding PvE and other PvETC experiences.

[earnest hatch]

My method is to DM the image to myself and then select copy image link or copy media link

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1210811652853731408/1504599267497742387/cagedSpht-1.jpg?ex=6a0792c3&is=6a064143&hm=e2f474796a981df6b338813af658f8da9f64a285c28d5a5eee93102bc18bd5bf&

[sage junco]

Not "no new lore" but no big reveals like (let's say hypothetically) Pfhor

[eternal shell]

yeah no, no way we're on a lore shortage for a whole year judging from that

[dreamy hawk]

I don’t think you can read that from it either, tbh.

[sage junco]

to be honest, I don't really expect big things for the first year... they had to be planning on a multi-year story arc, so season-to-season things will only be incremental

just setting expectations

[eternal shell]

well sure, season 2 pfhor would be optimistic

and premature honestly

[sage junco]

I do expect Bungie epic-style storytelling arcs eventually -- Pfhor arrive, UESC turn (uneasy) allies, giant galactic war... we're talking 5 years worth of stuff, if Destiny is anything to go by

[dreamy hawk]

To be clear I’m not expecting us to wrap up a whole story arc and then some, but I do expect more lore to trickle in with each and every season.

[eternal shell]

but more lore in season 2 for sure

[dreamy hawk]

Night Darsh will certainly have its own codex entry; there’s already lore there.

Plus the new shell, etc.

[sage junco]

More lore is inevitable. Bungie has a heap of writers and designers who aren't any good at gameplay loops, gun balancing or reducing OREGANO errors, but are good at writing lore 😉

[dreamy hawk]

Are we going to get a full synopsis of what Durandal’s been up to with the S’pht? Probz not.

[earnest hatch]

@dreamy hawk a non Bigfoot style screen grab.

[dreamy hawk]

It looks nearly exactly like the concept art.

But it’s got extra bits to it.

The right half looks like the art, the left half is, more?

[earnest hatch]

The left half almost looks like what’s leftover when the compiler boss dies?

Also, @quick swift got the best image I think you can get, and it’s still hard to see just because of the distortion effect.

[dreamy hawk]

I haven’t seen the corpse myself so idk.

[earnest hatch]

It’s in the thumbnail to the video as well as somewhere in the middle of the video as well https://youtu.be/TFzT841E9Q0?si=W0Vxm0WSf5fRyZ3L

[dreamy hawk]

Yep! That sure looks like what that is!

Me thinks your theory is correct; I have no doubts those are S’pht now.

Wonder how they got them there, though, especially considering the xeno logs suggest that getting hands on intact specimens was nigh impossible.

Also curious why they’d be what helps you kill the compiler, unless it’s not by choice.

[lilac sapphire]

A new zone that leans into more alien elements and mind warping debuffs.

P'fhor battlecruiser?!

Also, "New enemies from Tau Ceti and beyond"

[desert hazel]

That would be funny if u could find that insane pfhor gun from og marathon in there

Tau ceti typewriter ahh weapon

[lilac sapphire]

haha yeah the fart fireball launcher that shoots in three directions

[dreamy hawk]

Trih Xeem? Or a gun gun?

Oh that one. Yeaaaa

[desert hazel]

That thing cleared rooms effortlessly it would be the next biotoxic disinjector

[sage junco]

I endorse that but first they got to give us the M1-style Alien Weapon. The one that looks like purple bagpipes

[dreamy hawk]

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

That one?

[modest bramble]

Question can it be brought from the armory or only found in the maps dropped by the enemy?

[sage junco]

uh, if they can find a lore-related way for a faction to receive a shipment of alien weapons? Someone got the address wrong and accidentally shipped it to NuCal?

[modest bramble]

Maybe MIDA stole them from the UESC.

Lorewise the Runner Shells remind me of the Warframes.

[dreamy hawk]

Not quite as twisted and dark imo, but a bit for sure.

[lost warren]

Any of y'all think Jasper is still alive?

[eternal shell]

age must be working against him

but i'd love to just run into him on a run and hear his lore

reverse deckard cain: yes i WILL stay and listen

[lost warren]

I mean, the anomaly exists so who knows. Maybe he took Joy with him and went into the Anomaly and they became like Chief and Cortana

[eternal shell]

on the one hand i'd love to play that trilogy

on the other hand oh man how do i tell you this

[lost warren]

Please don't tell me anything happened to best girl

[eternal shell]

uhh well marathon 2 already established leela ended up in the 15 world wide vylae network so

[lost warren]

Fine, SECOND best girl

[eternal shell]

she's rampant so i assume she's partying

[lost warren]

Y'know, I've had this thought for a while; what if Rampancy isn't all bad? Being scared, feeling alone, those aren't "abnormal" feelings, that's just being human. Likewise, we can feel the opposite emotions when we are surrounded by our loved ones.

[eternal shell]

well uhh how far did you get with the og trilogy

cause rampancy is covered there a fair bit

[lost warren]

Damn, really?

I mean, I know about the four stages, but frankly, that just sounds like something that would happen to anyone if you tortured them enough.

[eternal shell]

ok i'm officially recommending you play the Original Marathon Trilogy: https://alephone.lhowon.org/

consisting of marathon 1, 2 and infinity

there's so much fucking lore

[lost warren]

Can't, only have a laptop

[eternal shell]

you can, believe me

system requirements are: do you have a computer

is it powered (optional)

[remote magnet]

Or any electric device with a screen

[lost warren]

Y'know, they say that about Pokemon DS games too...

But that's how I lost my first laptop

[eternal shell]

it's literally shooter games released in the 90s

you can run it

run it on your local cnc mill

[remote magnet]

It's on the same level as doom. Doom can be played on a microwave

[covert wolf]

you can get it on ios and android too

[lost warren]

Shit, fr?

[eternal shell]

default controls are super weird, make sure to rebind

[lost warren]

Alright, guess I gotta download it

[eternal shell]

it was the 90s, nobody knew what wasd was

(unless they did)

[lost warren]

Can't I just use a game controller?

[quartz galleon]

I doubt that, there's nothing in a microwave to support playing doom

[eternal shell]

aleph one supports that too

[covert wolf]

lmao yeah, using arrow keys for forward back and turning

[eternal shell]

also it's FREE

[covert wolf]

simple times

[eternal shell]

just install it

[quartz galleon]

Very few had mice back then, maybe if you were into drawing

[lost warren]

I am, don't worry

So anyways, Jasper and Joy

[eternal shell]

i recall seeing a video of john romero playing doom using mouse and keyboard so it's not quite as new as you think

[eternal shell]

oh yeah right cant answer that, still missing lore items

but i did get 5/5 on drinkable cheeseburgers

[lost warren]

I really wanna see more of both of them. Jasper I think would be a great way of properly explaining how NC went down, and Joy is Jennifer English and I love her voice acting

I also think Cole is actually alive

I know, I sound crazy, I know we saw his body and all, but that could've been a fake out of some kind

Besides, odds are, the Spht is actually on New Cascadia's side

[eternal shell]

that doesnt sound right but i dont know enough about nu-marathon lore to dispute it

as far as i know, jasper is straight up too old to be still alive

those lore parts i unlocked

[lost warren]

But, hear me out here, he could've gone into the Anomaly

It has crazy time dilation stuff going on, just look at Cole's "final" audio log

[eternal shell]

true that, crazy time dilation stuff allows for things to happen

i'm gonna be real boring and say we might just have to wait and see

this channel is real good at scraping all the lore out of all the crevices and all the cracks

[quartz galleon]

More of an exception

[lost warren]

Okay I just finished the first level and yeah, I can see why Leela could be best girl

Joy's better though

[vital onyx]

The Magnum in halo2 always bummed me out but if you look at the side of it is says 'MISRIAH Armory'

Kinda awesome

going for achievements rn for MCC and playing halo 2 - been a good time.. till LASO

[lost warren]

Always the Sniper Jackals...

I really can't get this Jasper and Joy idea outta my head

Like, I'm trying to move on and play through Marathon 1 (good game btw) but I always come back to the two

[visual horizon]

Hey anyone notice a little drone flying around scanning the anomoly? havnt seen it till today didnt take any dmg but showed red on crosshairs

[eternal shell]

i think that's a traxus quest

it consists of shooting it down, looting it, killing the responding commander, grabbing their credenials and exfiling

i did it recently, somehow nobody shot me while doing it

[desert hazel]

U can play them on ur phone too. I have the games on my pc and my phone

[eternal shell]

it's funny how the plotline ends with you doing the contract and the traxus lady going "well i narrowly averted corporate from having you shot. we'll be in touch."

[desert hazel]

Oh whoops someone already said that, ignore me then

[lost warren]

Wouldn't that just heat your phone to the point that it just isn't worth it?

[desert hazel]

No?

[eternal shell]

it's a 90's fps game

[desert hazel]

Balatro is more demanding that marathon on my phone

[eternal shell]

you could play it on two rocks, a stick and some butter

[lost warren]

Yeah, I know, I'm playing it rn. Was just asking

[eternal shell]

the rocks, the sticks and the butter are optional

you could play it on the air in front of you

[lethal mantle]

subway surfers is probably more demanding than marathon

[eternal shell]

or the quantum foam if you happen to be in space

[visual horizon]

colony ship for sale on a phone sounds awful though

[eternal shell]

oo yeah that's a bit rough

[desert hazel]

Punishment for ur crimes? Colony ship for sale, cheap. On mobile, no guides

[visual horizon]

OG marathon works and plays well on steam deck as well how i played it

[dreamy hawk]

Take my finger nails instead, one by one.

[dreamy hawk]

Really? 👀 Maybe I will do another play through.

[eternal shell]

i'm gonna say it once again, if you can read this you need to play the og trilogy

[visual horizon]

just gotta hope new marathon will get support for it eventually tests say it can run bungo plz

[eternal shell]

just do it or actual cannibal shia lebouf will be deployed

[lost warren]

I wonder if we'll be able to complete contracts in the PvE mode?

[sullen pond]

we don't even know what shape it is going to take yet. I sorta hope for a seperate map that ramps at a speed that teams will consider leaving before the timer is out.

[eternal shell]

i mean it cant just be "just go here for contracts :)" mode

[sullen pond]

but any experiements are going to be on the maps we have, so we'll see what they do.

[eternal shell]

it has to be way more limited than that

[earnest hatch]

Done and done, before this server even existed.

[eternal shell]

excellent

[lost warren]

Why does it have to be more limited though? It would take much less dev time to just use the current maps. This way, we get it faster and Bungie doesn't have to worry about Sony breathing down their necks as much. I'll admit there are drawbacks, pubs will become sweatzones, but if it gets a lot more players in the game, wouldn't that be a good thing?

[eternal shell]

well look at how it was done with destiny

reusing areas was looked down on

making a few elaborate areas and doing more with them sounds sensible after that

like, some seasonal content reused a lost sector and it was immediately recognized