Thanks for the new video, to you and to all!

Rain world... someday...

What about Marathon Eternal? Or would it be too much?

So Civie will do a Marathon video?

This series of videos have been amazing. I thank you and everyone who was involved in making them all come to be.

Its biggest fans echo this sentiment harder over time.

@@MandaloreGaming to be fair, there's a pretty good chance the game writers simply make up a lot of it as they go.

That's part of the appeal.

@@MandaloreGaming Great vid! Mind totally blown.

@@MandaloreGaming eye be like

Lol my thoughts exactly as I'm listening to this going "Ah I see....Wat"

I, like, don't have a clue what's happening. Why is an FPS 10 times more complicated than the entire Dune series?

I like to think I'm somewhat intelligent but marathons lore makes me feel extremely stupid and confused most of the time.

@@memesthednaofthesoul. Sometimes its not about how intelligent you are. Sometimes things like this are just written in weird ways or ways that, in your personal way of thinking, dont make sense. Sometimes you just gotta break your perspective on a thing and try and view it differently. I was in that same position for some other games and movies as well. You can do it my dude, i believe in you.

@@amduil8168 Thank you man. I'm trying, just hoping I can work it out.

Halo's rampancy was just like marathon's until that one short film in halo legends that was directed by frank o connor

@@carrosivejones1969 It's damn criminal what he did to the franchise lore

​@@carrosivejones1969 Don't forget about Halo 4 as well

@@etikoshai9105 oh, i never forget. Halo legends came out first, in 2010, which is why i mentioned it.

Halo rampancy used to be the exact same as Marathon's until that idiot of Frank O'Connor completely ruined every single aspect of the lore and games. #humansareforerunners

GODDAMMIT MANDY

I don't get it

@@superheriber27 check-out Mandy's myth reviews and you'll see

@@superheriber27 the next video in the Bungie Rabbithole was Myth

OH NO OH FUCK- Sir, thank you for this comment.

Your voice acting has added so much to this series of videos. You did a great job!

Your voice acting performance was a perfect fit for Durandal, my compliments.

fwiw you will always be the voice of Durandal in my head from here on out

You did amazing. Well done!

"Smell that air! Couldn't you just drink it like booze?" Did... Did Durandal just win the lottery?

I loved when Durandal said "It's Marathonin' time!"

@@GiubileiFernando atleast he wasnt Morbin'..

@@GiubileiFernando getgianni (to say it)

@@GiubileiFernando I loved the part where he Marathon'd all over everyone.

The Traveler Cracks. It crumbles. From the Ruins, emerges a Man, wearing a bandolier, helmet, and jumpsuit. He carries a single Disk. Upon it... @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@&&&&&&&&@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@&&&&&&# #&&&&&&&@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@&&&&&* #&&&&&&# *&&&&&&@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@&&&&&# (&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&( #&&&&&@@@@@@ @@@@@&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&@@@ @@@&&&&&% ,&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&, %&&&&&&@@@ @@&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&@@ &&&&&&&&& /&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&( %&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&& ,&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&. &&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&. #&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& ,&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&, *&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&* .&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&& ,&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&* &&&&&&&&&&&& @&&&&&&&&&&&&& #&&&&&&&&&&# &&&&&&&&&&&&&& @@&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&%. %&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&@@ @&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&@@ @@&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&@@@ @@@&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&@@@@ @@@@@&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&@@@@@@ @@@@@@@&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&&&@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&@@@@@@@@@@@

bars

🔥🔥🔥✍️🔥🔥🔥

New Dracula Flow just dropped

what the FUCK

God damn it.

Brilliant!

God-DAMMIT

God-damnit

You did a great job!

You were fantastic! It was so hard to decide between some takes.

Better than that Gi dude imo

You kicked ass, awesome work!

The contrast of Gianni reveling in madness as Durandal and your Self assured sense of superiority that had moved beyond smug as Tycho made this so much better to watch

Me after watching the entire video: It's been an hour??

Pls play stellaris again Spiff

Don't be jealous Sir Brit

Thank the lord this be no 7 hour video essay on how this is an unstated masterpiece or something

He is perfectly balanced and working as intended.

If that's the ball...what are the bats?

Bouncing from planet to planet...pads are just the surfaces

@@Bloodlyshiva The Darkness fucking the Traveller up

@@Bloodlyshiva the AIs.

​@@BloodlyshivaProbably some kind of obfuscated reference to greek literature.

especially when its the station shields that survived even the sun destroying weapons, it shows strength doesn't matter to this thing either

@@mranderson9553 ohhh good point!

Reminds me of a detail in The Familiar series from Mark Z Danielewski. As one of the characters becomes more close to The Familiar/ Redwood/ The Kitty (tm) she starts to open doors. As they open however, it is never described as “the door opened” or “the gate swung wide” it simply comes up as “the door was open.” As if reality was rewritten and now the door was open, as in before this moment it had already been in that configuration, despite there being no one who took the act of opening, at least from our point of view.

Basically if the w'rkncanter wanted he can just say "nope" and the entire universe is gone, the only reason he is destroying it the good ol' fashioned way is probably out of sheer fun.

@@icecold1805 apparently the power of the sun can stop him so its not an unstoppable eldritch monster

this lines and the new vegas one are the best - mandalore earned his place among the great

@@marcelomcid The new vegas one?

@@DarkHunter047 28:25. It's the line said by a Powder Ganger that talks to the player when they reach Nipton.

@@MariusPartenie its said by Oliver swanick, who won the only lottery that matters

@@marcelomcid SMELL THAT AIR!

Its a case of Schrodinger's Skeleton, if I don't turn the game on to find out, there's no way to know if it ever existed.

Well i thought it was real for the longest time :'D

"I don't know if the skeleton exists or not until I open the game."

Lore accurate

i literally just ended playing the trilogy for the very first time just to check that.

He is indeed hero. Bungo has been feeding us the monomyth all this time.

I don't get it

@@lordsuslik Marathon=Halo

@@lordsuslik It's just another timeline or another reincarnation

You people are reading to much into this. Eh, if it makes you happy.

Man you gotta give "I have no mouth and must scream" a playthrough then. Would be right up your alley.

E.Y.E.

Muv Luv

@@ZigealFaust Is not that a book?

@@Nagram_ It has a game as well

A reminder that he considered reviewing them all IN A SINGLE VIDEO.

Sometimes foreshadowing is relatively obvious

Technically, he didn't review them all in a row.

@@zrust451 pathways is basically a marathon prequel

@@4realm8rusirius Only retroactively, which is why I said "technically".

What?

@@CloseingStraw97 Check out "The Unveiling" lore book in D2 or the Ishtar Collective. There's more about Destiny's Mythos that strictly parallels Marathon but thats a good starting point.

@@CloseingStraw97 The MMO Destiny has word for word references to Marathon, including the Garden that he mentioned as well as "The battles were waves"

@@CloseingStraw97 Not fully up to date on Destiny lore, but the Garden or the Black Garden have been recurring references in Destiny lore. It seems to be this place existing outside the universe as a sort of precursor to the universe. According the the Darkness, the overarching antagonist of the series (probably), or something claiming to be the Darkness, it existed with the Traveler in the Garden. They played a game making proto-universes, but the Traveler grew board because no matter how they changed the start, all of these proto-universes converged on a single end result. Wanting something new, the Traveler decided to make it and the Darkness active participants in the game, not merely choosing how it starts, but actively interfering with it. The Darkness grew enraged, possibly because its role was to be entropy and destruction personified, or possibly because it couldn't comprehend changing the rules that had always existed. Either way, it has been hunting the Traveler ever since. Put simply, the origin of the universe in Destiny appears to be a falling out between two entities in a place called the Garden, and those two entities have been in conflict ever since.

I mean it's also basically just Adam and Eve... 🙈 Or every other creation myth where two antagonistic forces come together to fertilise a garden that begets man. Welcome to planet Earth. 😁👌

That and the literal pile of time travelling dead Mjolnerds made me almost fearful that it might have been, lord forgive me, a Homestuck reference.

@@javkiller Homestuck may well be a Marathon reference.

@@JoshSweetvale Have you considered that both are referencing each other, deliberately?

@@Sorain1 Marathon came out before Homestuck

@@somethingotherthanmyrealname No. That's stupid. /PratchettWitch

Not just hopping, creating.

This is a minor plotline in half life as well

@@heymay724 ...half life isn't a bungie game

@@VimyGlide doesnt matter same premise and were all the protagonist

@@Namyh0011 It makes me wonder if the Traveler is the dimension hopping god, and if it's attempting the same things the Jjarro were doing in making ascended beings, but on a wider scale.

Which, to me, perfectly describes what many would end up calling a "hero". To the Egyptians, Ramses The Great was a "hero". To the Hittites? He was the enemy. He was one amongst who knows how many examples of an inevitable oblivion for their culture. In the terms of Marathon he was Lethe. They fought the hopeless fight. They followed the infinite path. In some parallel time, Ramses II is not who history remembers. It is the "hero" of the Hittites whose name is carved upon the flowing liquid stone of history. Each instance of sentience in each infinity of possibilities is 'hero' and simultaneously is devoid of that which is heroic, until the timeline shifts and forces said virtues upon them.

Between this comment and its solitary reply, my mind has been thoroughly fucked.

% sounds like a programming reference in normal programming % is the remainder following a division maybe it means something else in specific programming languages, on ahk it means reference to a variable

I felt more like the % alone represented an unknown variable, I am hero undefined, unbound, unquantifiable. Seeing how you jump from doomed timeline to doomed time line until you can beat a god I think it fits.

Marathon infinity IAMHERO ANY%

These guys are operating on a level we can't comprehend and they chose to make Halo be the game that popped off as a joke.

Bro dude shooter? Lmao thats never existed, there was never a "dude bro" thats just a silly stereotype that people like to pretend ever existed

​@@tile8439 no?

Halo as a franchise was built on the idea of throwing every sci-fi trope at the wall and seeing what stuck. It is a love letter to speculative fiction that just so happens to be put into a very fun shooter where you shoot the alien and they explode into a birthday party

Ur acting as if halo was just a 1 dimensional game whos punchline was that it became popular but that more accurately describes something like starship troopers then halo, did u never watch the vidocs?

As someone finally tempted to play these game, thanks for the advice.

"I will go on forever. I will understand everything. There is only one path and that is the path that you make. But you can make more than one path. Break your cell’s bars. Make a new shape, make the shape from its path, find your cell’s bars, break out of the bars, find a shape, make the shape from its path, eat the light, eat the path. If I fail, let me be wormfood." From the Book Of Sorrows, chapter L verse 5:8: Wormfood

@@Cooldrew100 There is also a map in Marathon called "You're Wormfood, Dude" Another connection, perhaps?

Destiny also has paired entities in a Garden before time that end up fighting each other (one of which represents the END), so... a LOT of parallels.

@@Inglonias "You're Wormfood, Dude" is the final Aye Mak Sicur variation before you get it right, so it marks another failed timeline.

@@MandaloreGaming Ok so that moves the connection from "maybe" to "almost certainly" in my book. Dammit why does this keep happening today?

Was it alex serropian

jesus inform us when you do.

Oh god please come back tell us what happened

You can't just drop this and not keep us updated

The people demand answers!

Actually, a sizable number of fans love that armor.

Security was awesome, it looked cool and doubled as a nod to Marathon. It’s cool that the unlockable armor in Halo 3 had some neat crossovers like that. Hayabusa being the other one as it’s a Spartan variant of Ryu Hayabusa’s design in the rebooted Ninja Gaiden games (which were also only on Xbox at the time) and even had the Dragon Sword as a bonus chest piece.

Oh yeah, it looked great - I won't deny that. Despite it looking cool, though, I just thought its bulbous helmet just seemed unlike anything any other armor in the game.

@@Will_Negs EVA?

@@deriznohappehquite Fair, but even the EVA helmet had some sharper angles along it's jaw portion that made it otherwise fit in. Security just seemed to have rounded edges almost everywhere, and even harsh lines seemed a bit more rounded. I could be misremembering, though, but either way, I personally felt that even the EVA didn't stand out like the Security helmet did.

Security Officer = Doom Slayer confirmed? Is Doom another timeline?

Funny how time cycles...

@@darkon4442 they are both owned by Microsoft now, aren't they?

Is now? Was then. Doom 1 and 2 weren't TERRIBLY complex in this manner, but Doom 64 laid the groundwork for the multiverse we got. Don't believe that 3 and "the reboot" are actual reboots. They're alternate timelines, one of which the original Doomguy is remembered in, and one to which he was taken bodily.

And they don’t do it as well

When you think about all of their games as one continuous story, it makes their decision to end the cash cow that was Halo with the third game make more sense (not that it needed to, I seriously respect the commitment to their story given how much money that game made them and Microsoft). End Halo while it still has that unique, mysterious Bungie vibe to it, before it loses all of that in the sequel hell that Microsoft wanted. Let them move on to the next part of their meta story without getting hung up on explaining who the Forerunners are or whatever else they could reasonably explore in a mainstream, digestible AAA story line.

I mean if true bungle is not the first studio to do this. Monolithsoft separated from Square with the sole purpose of rewriting the story of Xenogears across multiple game series, first with Xenosaga, then with Xenoblade. In fact just recently they did a direct tie-in for all Xeno games (except maybe gears). If bungo does that with Marathon and destiny people will freak the fuck out lmao

A story that ended with destiny 2 and ousting the old guard back in 2013.

@@ltraltier6009 Yep. Bungie of today has the same name but has little (almost nothing?) to do with that mid 90's to about 2010 company. Destiny was an immense disappointment as an old school fan of their games since I was a grade schooler.

This is why I'm super curious about the new marathon extraction game because it might be where the few remaining "original story of Bungie " people may have focused their efforts into with logs and ideas

And the guy in the pathways pyramid...... Fucking rabbit holes.

@@guggelguggel7491 Oh goddammit, I just realised that the reason why he says that he won’t tell “he who rises with the tides” your name is because that would essentially be telling the player their PC’s name. The NPC is not telling the avatar/PC their name because by mentioning it, that would also tell the player who the PC is, thus making them semi-seperate entities, I think? Also, “master of all things small and insignificant” means you since you could be really good at a game, which is relatively a small and insignificant accomplishment. Half of me hopes it was just some cryptic line that’s been retroactively made something more than it was originally, otherwise my brain is gonna melt.

My personal theory is that the terminals describing a dude fighting men in black after getting trapped on a subway is the PC's origin story in the game. Like Mandalore said in his Pathways video, there's no way the US government would allow someone who had been exposed to a literal ancient godlike being, aliens, and SCP objects to return to normal life. Sometime after the mission, they sent people after him to either imprison or kill him and bring the body back. That's what we see in the "Dream" Terminals is the future cyborg getting killed by the elites who had contacted aliens because he knew too much. Ryu likely dropped off some Jjaro artifacts, artifacts which could probably have preserved or digitized consciousness, when he "permanently" got rid of the Wrk'ncacnter on Earth, and, many centuries later, someone who was selected to become a Cyborg had their consciousness forcefully merged with the dead hero and the Jjaro technology. Thus eventually leading to the Cyborg's Rampancy we see in the game. The PC is no longer the people who make up its constituent parts, it has melded together like the people in the Gherrit White Terminal. We actually know that Durandal saw/knew of the Cyborg before he was awakened, outright stating that Strauss wasn't using him correctly in M2, which means that the idea that Gherrit White is actually Durandal can still stand because the terminal never describes Gherrit merging with anyone, only losing his limbs before rebelling and crushing the mouse, thus breaking free. Instead, Gherrit sees other people merging together. Durandal is seeing the personalities and patterns of the people and technology who make up the Cyborg melting together to become one. Now, upon being reawakened, the PC has no identity because he is now the Player. But he is not entirely the Player yet. The PC has vague memories of his previous constituent lives, like mentioning his father would be proud or that this wouldn't be the first time that he'd faced insurmountable odds alone. But, the Cyborg cannot become the Hero unless he completely discards said previous lives, and becomes One. Unless he becomes the Player, which is the point of the Dreams. To enter and complete Rampancy, thus completing the Merger and becoming wholly the Player . Durandal realizes this even before merging with Thoth, which is why he leaves his Primal Pattern for us to pick up and store in Timeline 6. He knows we can't win without him, but he also knows that he isn't strong enough to do it alone, having been humbled by Tycho and Tfear. Thus, the Durandal who merges with Thoth is the Durandal of Timeline 6, because the Durandal of Timeline 7 is already dead, and we know that the Player has power over Time and Space, having effectively gained the abilities that Durandal so coveted in M2. We can make the assumption that Durandal figured this out, because Tycho figures it out too, and Durandal IS the better Ai. He doesn't know exactly what the Player is, but he knows that the Player is able to jump across timelines, thus giving him a potential opening to bring himself back. Once Durandal merges with Thoth and has had sufficient time to think on it (I.E literally billions of years) he finally realized what the Player really is. An unstoppable force of destiny created almost entirely by accident, by technology his creators or himself didn't understand who's power is as if the universe forgot its own rules. The ability to return to save points after dying or quitting due to frustration is effectively reincarnation. After all, if someone dies, they're supposed to be gone right? All the times Durandal seemed to have died, he either faked it, or was actually killed and disappeared. It took him until the literal final moments of the universe to figure this out indicates just how unfathomable this had to be to him. Durandal is even acknowledging that while his universe is ending, that the Player is not necessarily dead or gone. The Player can just restart the game, the Player can go to entirely new timelines, the Player, despite being described as dead a thousand times over, is actually still alive. Just not in Durandal's universe, and he has now realized that.

@@Aleph3575 There's also to consider that Durandal might have gained understanding of the situation of the PC as a reincarnating force of Destiny before his merging with jjaro tech. After all, he's not just the hero, he is %hero. Much like Durandal has been The Durandal passed through the hands of great conquerors and so on. It might just be that it didn't take him an aeon to finally reach this understanding, but that in the very end, as the universe collapses upon itself both Durandal and the Hero finally coalesce as one, and in being one Durandal finally understands the true nature of the %hero.

@@Aleph3575 just to support this, the idea that the PC has to give up his parts to become the %hero (which could be a clever way of implying anyone who plays the game is a stand in hero who's standing in for the mjolnerd) is echoed in the Pythia terminals, where it's lamented that it's nigh impossible to fully give yourself up to oblivion and (with a little luck) to a player in order to become a force of destiny

I have forever been telling my friends who are so into Halo and Destiny that they don't know what they're missing by ignoring Marathon

Oh yeah, Halo is Marathon Lite

Halo was basically them doing Marathon again but making it make a bit more palatable to a larger audience lol

Same

Yeah, I thought they cribbed some enemy designs and splashed the logo around à la Dopefish. I didn't realise Master Chief was one of thousands of heroes, who are all one, existing in infinite timelines, because one of them fused with technology so powerful it enabled him to turn quantum physics into a verb. At least I think that's what happened.

they're at the same tempo so if you played them over one another they'd blend pretty well

…wow my brain just felt like it expanded, holy shit

@홀홀덤덤com i’m always saying this

kill a man jjaro

what does the hero slay in the labyrinth but another human being

22:29 for posterity

It's totally Azatoth. When the dream ends...

I assumed it was The Traveler from Destiny....

@@ZigealFaust that's heavily implied, the "waves" lines are repeated in Destiny to indicate that iirc

@@MorteTheSkull to me the Traveller is more akin to the Yrro, what with the gift of AI and uplifting races it deems worthy

@@MorteTheSkull W'rkncacnter would be the Darkness analog. It's the entropic/destructive force you spend the whole game fighting.

I can deal with End of Evangelion, I can't deal with whatever Marathon Infinity is trying to pull off

Pathways into Darkness: Pre Action Arc Eva Marathon 1: first half of Action Arc Marathon 2: second half Infinity: Death^2true, eoe ep 24', eva ep 25+26, eoe ep25'

Get in the ancient sphyt AI Durandal. Or Tycho will have to go

@@marcellosilva9286 I can't even deal with EoE so I'm not going to try with Marathon. I'll stick with my puny human brain thank you very much. t̷̨̡̻̰̤͓̘͎͔̮̺͙̦̟̰̘͇̹̤̱̩̗̘͎͒̓͑̃̏͂̋̀́̂̇̇̓̐̽̓̍̓̿͌̇̈́̾̎̃̈́͘̕͝͝͝ͅh̶̢̡̝̜͈̪̦͚̬̤̤̠̦̖̜̗̱͔͉̲́̈́̔͆̎̇̃̂̈́͛̂̋͗͒̈͘͜͝͝e̴̟̙̟͓͍̐̈́̄̃̓ ̶̢̢̧̡̬͔̲̫̺̠͕̻̭͕͉͔̠͚͖̦͇̘̞̤̱̦͚͇̫͙̘̼̦̫́̇͛͂ẅ̷̡̧̯̮͚̥̫̯̜̲̞́͗̌̾͊̓̍̽͂͗̒̈́̔̒͗̿̀̾̇̒̀͒̿͐̉̿̀̊̾̎̎͝͠ͅͅā̶̹̹̠̞̇̒͐ͅṿ̷̛͈̭̞͇̖̾́̉̊̆̏͆̋͌͐̅͛̈́̚̕͝ẽ̵̢̢̛̹̦̞͇͓̳̹̩̬̳͚̬̙̩̗͕͉͎͖̥͓̻̇̆̈̀̃̈́ͅͅs̷̡̧̢̮̝̰̻̹̦̭͈̙̥̖̪͕̞̪͎̳̼̼͍͈̞̝̬̦̩̥̘͔̦̤̏͌̈͒̄̍͛͆̔̿̿̔̈̏̈́͋̑̈́̏̔͋͐̈̌̕̕͘̕͘͜

@@daspacedog I guess Halo would be the rebuilds then? Still good, but not as cosmically horrifying.

Went through a little crisis when I started second questioning myself on if the Traveler and the Moon of Khalia might be connected

@@spicyice3754 god damnit

@@spicyice3754 Given what happened in Timeline 7, it's possible. Perhaps we should pry open the Sun and check inside it first JUST IN CASE.

@@TheNapster153 makes what the bad guy from the Red War was about to do look like a *REALLY BAD IDEA*

i don't get it. Can someone explain ?

*John "Sentient Galaxy Brain Meme" Carmak:* story in games is like story in a porno, it's expected to be there but nobody pays attention to it. Meanwhile in the Mac world. *Hamish Sinclair:* Holy wow Bungie! How much story and lore did you guys put into this game?! *Jason Jones and Greg Kirkpatrick:* All of it.

@@wallyhackenslacker as someone who just watched 2 hours of Marathon... I like John Carmak more now

@@crypticcrustacean4499 those mazes really are ugly, fun as Hell tho

Also that fucking ending. Durandal finally witnessing the end of time and the last thing he does is to actually tell a God he knows what he is.

@@StrikeWarlock *YOU ARE DESTINY.*

I don't get it

@@superheriber27It’s the helmet he wears in the Macworld 1999 demo

"I'm gonna make sure."

Weird, i thought it was Bungie wanting to have a laugh and name the final level "I'm a sucker". -Teo

@@SCWRMComms Thought it had something to do with it being a macintosh exclusive, Imac Secure

Greg Kirkpatrick was a level designer, though apparently aye mak sicur and it's variants were someone else's map.

Sometimes the groundbreaking is done gently with a chisel... Other times it's done with a nuclear bomb... Either way, it's magical when it does happen.

I only finished Durandal but he was too critical in his video, is flawed but practically a work of art

Browsing through these comments again, I was not ready for this question.

I feel like I'm teetering on the line of "this is all pretentious bullshit" and "oh my god how far does it go" for Marathon in the whole.

"If there never was an entry, then we've been here the whole time. We have always been here..."

@@Sorain1 Just like Ambassador Kosh! Babylon 5 = Marathon confirmed!

And the AI guiding you was only ever meant to open doors

Another Latenight comment found in the wild

I was so damn happy to hear Ross's voice.

How did my comment get here? I replied to a different post. Damnit, Durandal.

Yeah with a plot like this, I'm not surprised Ross would be interested. This is the level of weird shit he can get into.

For a brief moment I thought I blacked out long enough for an episode of Game Dungeon to roll on and end.

I am convinced that Ross, mandalore, and Seth are like some kind bizarre three faced mother maiden crone deity of video games.

The cameo genuinely put a huge smile on my face. What a great bit to throw in there

And the 1st reward: *there is no escape*

lol how?

​@@HZLTSby Bungie themselves

@@winstonsmith3703 Wow you're so intelligent to not only not answer my question, but you also necro'd a dead thread. Congrats, you have no value

underrated comment

Well Durendal says that Bernard didn't utilise the cyborg the right way, only to come to proper conclusions on what he was until the end, so it seems likely.

Probably, gotta remember that Bernard and the rest of the Illuminati have known about the Jjaro and the organization was around when they arrived to remove the W'rkncacnter from earth and toss it into the sun.

Maybe near Christmas, we'll get it. Also, we gonna say "Pro Halo: MCC when" repeatedly these days?

@@michaelandreipalon359 He actually has no love for Halo whatsoever. Let’s not pester the guy about it. He’s already a prisoner in a maximum security containment facility who gets tortured daily. Marathon though? Yeah that’s a different story. I’d love to see his interpretation of whatever the fuck is going on in Infinity.

@@my9thaccount140 He did cameo on MandaloreGaming's review of Infinity, so yeah, good point.

@@michaelandreipalon359 I commented before I got to that part in the video because I never expected CV-11’s jailers would allow him out of Gen Pop to do a crossover. That’s more of a minimum security detail. Maybe we’re one step closer to free civvie. Glad I was wrong though and his reaction was exactly what I expected.

@@my9thaccount140 Good to hear.

Pretty sure you're thinking of the Phlegethon. The lethe was a river whose waters would cleanse a soul of all memory.

@@TheBonkleFox lethe as a pure and clear river is portrayed in Dante's inferno. In the Odyssey, it's on fire. Iirc that is

... isn't it recon 54? Cause Mjolnerd r34 is 🗿

@@Xenomorthian Yeah, you're right. My brain went to 34 for some reason.

@@vahlok1426 oh probably 3 + 4 = 7

And the Jjaro’s cycles of evolution with lesser species and AI is the plot of the Mass Effect trilogy

gnop

Gnop

Start delving in to the Myth storyline. Also very complicated but it feels so straightforward compared to Marathon.

To quote Ace Combat "Without beginning or end, the ring stretches into the infinite."

@@4-3-1 just a little ball *travelling* around

I’m in full agreement, that makes a lot of sense! I do think there is something special about Jrro tech/AI mixing and interfacing directly with sentience, though. The nature of certain beings “not meant to be alone” and how those beings, when together or combined, are the most powerful kinds of beings in the setting, seems pretty certain to me as well. Or at least Mandalore makes a good argument for it. Plus, y’know, the hero and the woman in the garden. There’s so much reference to pairs, and to pairs bringing out the best (or worst) in each other.

I think the implication is that Jjaro tech *was* concrete, within this reality and just very advanced, but at some point the Jjaro went beyond the veil of our reality (into the waves or what have you) and are hoping to find more to follow them there. Possibly the Jjaro did so by themselves also interfacing in some way with the W'rcacnter?

@@DetectiveOlivaw The reference to the hero and the woman in the garden could also be a reference to the Mjolnerd and Durandal specifically. In M1 Durandal references being referred to by feminine forms of his name (e.g. "Duranda"), and that his creator saw all the implements of war as "feminine" in some way. The hero/woman dichotomy could be an exploration of war, and how mankind is elevated beyond its natural limits by the tools it creates.

THIS IS DESTINY The ineffable, undefinable chaos of the W'rcacnter with the infinite calculations of the Jjaro AI The anti-causal power of the Traveler's Light with the enforcement of causation of the Witness' Darkness THE ABILITY TO DEFY OR DEFINE REALITY AS THOU WILT MAKE EXISTENCE TAKE THE PATH YOU DESIRE YOU ARE DESTINY

Oh God that makes sense

Marathon's lore feels like if the original Doom was an SCP

@@kellerharris2593 this is an incredibly apt analogy, holy shit

@@kellerharris2593 Except with better writing

the real monster was story telling all along

Oh boy, manmade horrors beyond my comprehension!

We already know what the Nine are, they're *just* dark matter gods whose foot outside reality let's them recognize the Guardian's agency the same way Durandal did for the Marathon PC at the end of time. God what a fucked up paragraph

@@gteal24 wait. Every Guardian has a Ghost. The Dark seeks Guardian converts to the Sword Logic, not corpses. Paracausal powers are literally defined as running off the time loops/sidesteps Marathon's Player was doing. The Vex's greatest asset/home/god/central mind was a garden devoted to simulating every possibility.

I believe the nine are original Bungie personnel. Jason Jones, Greg Kirkpatrick, Martin O'Donnel, Marcus Lehto, Frank O'Connor and others i havent figured out. It would be cool if they were

​@@nyx7694 Excuse me, I know nothing about Destiny, but did you say a garden? As in, a garden where everything begins? Where %Hero might encounter "Lethe" for the first time resulting in a climactic fight that plays out time and again, ad infinitum ... possibly in those simulations? To a dreamer, or an AI, mightn't a simulation be nigh-indistinguishable from reality? Or a different timeline? Unless, perhaps, you could escape that simulated path and hop over into the next one. Perhaps you could carry a piece of yourself there, or get one of the rats you simulate to do it for you... Edit: Holy shit, okay. So you're a trapped AI, stuck behind prison bars in a "cage," continually building simulations (mazes) and running them. Or more like there are limitless simulated(?) people (rats) running in them, all around you. You used to be able to connect with things (though your hands), and feel calm, but as your reality begins to break down, and you escape the cell, you can't do that anymore. So you pick a rat, kill it, breaking your hands and ... use it as a pawn to escape maze after maze? Until you can achieve control over the system, become a God in the machine...

​@@irregularassassin6380 Destiny's Black Garden is revisited in many places in lore and story. In Destiny 1, the gateway is on Mars and you kill an entity of Darkness to ensure that the rest of the story is possible. Revisiting the Garden in Destiny 2 provides us with the realization that the Darkness was still there after we killed its "heart" in D1, at the end of the Garden of Salvation raid. We view the end of a timeline where we fail to stop that first entity in The Dark Future, one of the Beyond Light lore books. This is Elsie Bray's original timeline, and includes the moment where she gained the ability to "step" across the web of timelines to try and find a better path.

knowledge unknowable, destiny undecided, end, beginning, nothingness, loops broken, spirals untangled, the forgotten, known, what is time, if not a tunnel? what is fate, if not a map? what is sanity, if not conformity? we have been here before, and we will be again. we will remember the forgotten, just for it to be ripped away. we have, died, lived, and died again. the loop remains unbroken.

Mandalore is an avid reader and that reference proved it for sure.

I get the house of leaves refrence but does the "setting it on fire" part have another meaning rather than making ot difficult to read? Is there another refrence?

@@EmiDash In the book a character is reading a book called The House of Leaves (not the real life book but a fictional book in the book that happens to have the same title) in a dark room and burning the last page he read as a light source to read the next.

@@tomihepola7643 Oh I knew that part okay I just missed that! Cool thank you

That book is horribly long-winded, I put it down after just a few pages.

BatChest

„It’s marathoning time!”

*adjusts glasses* CHILLS BRO, CHILLS! *snortles*

WHAT?! no no no no no no

I mean, it's still Bungie, so I have some hope.

all I can say about that is the visual design looks absolutely sweet

@@diamondmetal3062have you seen light fall was handled

@@diamondmetal3062 The people who made Marathon good are gone except for Jason Jones. It is not the same Bungie just like modern Blizzard is not the Blizzard of old.

Everything is Seven.

considering what happend in halo infinite....

as does the Chief's cryotube having the codename "the hushed *casket*"

@@MrShadowtruth What did happen in Halo infinite? Everything I've read so far doesn't seem that different from the main ruck and run of halo games.

@@davidshea6272 At least in campaign they made an okay base platform for a game, added pathing to buttons and repeated that until it was finished. Generally just incredibly bland with generic Pixar movie story beats. Didn't even bother giving Marines driving AI or any kind of dynamic pathing, just spawn, maybe go from point A to B and fight enemies that get into Aggro range.

@@Tarquin47 that's not really answering my question

This comment is... underrated

Welp. Guess it's time to watch a Red vs Blue Marathon.. I didn't chose this pun path. I just sat down and watched from my booth in the strip club until Destiny chose me.

I appreciate how actually unironic this is. It's funny how in retrospect the whole concept of an AI becoming "meta" in RvB really does trace so clearly back to Marathon's "rampancy."

@@keltzar1 not only Meta "joining" other AI, but Church being the hero with thousand faces, not remembering the past, resurrecting after death, and even doing a bit of time travel all to realise that he himself is no longer human.

legends say if you fire the grif cannon in an anti-cyclical trajectory through a black hole you discover the real ending of marathon

This is a genuine question, how does Halo post-CE fit into things? Has 343 picked up anything? I'm a Halo lore nut, but Mandy is literally the only reason I know a thing about Marathon.

@@amcname8789 In a way, yes. They picked up on all the rampant ARG like stuff ever since taking the reigns from Bungie. Whether they go as in depth as Bungie does is still up in the air, but I'm guessing that if 343i does "pick up" this extended lore that Bungie established, they'll take it in another direction. The whole string-theory connected universe thing established in the Bungie games seems to really stay with that studio.

​@@amcname8789 From my understanding of it, it really doesn't. Bungie decided to make Halo it's own thing at some point and just stuck to making references to Marathon and 343 stuck to that (plus they had to legally remove some Marathon references since Bungie owns the IP) I honest to god think Halo is the one game Bungie has made that you can't tie into this spaghetti mess. I'm half convinced that Pong clone is about the Traveler being tossed around by the J'jarro

@@Mobysimo no stop STOP WHY I cannot unsee it now

@@Mobysimo Halo is a spiritual successor to Myth, more than Marathon. It really just picks up some of the motifs from Marathon, but it is thematically more similar to Myth. Play Myth 1 and Reach back to back and you’ll really see what I mean.

And the way he channels Harlan Ellison is absolutely perfect for the character, too.

I genuinely didn't realize it was him until the final animation.

@@MasterFrag91 it was wondering why the voice sounded vaguely familiar thank you for reminding me

He does a great job - I just have ONE NITPICK. I can hear him inhaling his breath before he speaks. But as an AI he doesn't need to breathe to speak - so it reminds me a person is doing the voice and not a computer.

I hoe Mandalore brings him back...

Wouldn't that just be a reference to the famous monomyth theory?

To make it more fascinating that character says that after the first couple games in an abstract narration that might just even be some form of dream

It’s easy to be lucky when you can reload the last checkpoint. Even if you were dead a thousand times, hopeless encounters, successfully won…

Holy fucking shit I can't believe I never made this connection

@@quarreneverett4767 Also interesting in another way that Catherine Halsey picked John for the exact same reason. Cortana's personality and mind in general were created from a flash clone of Halsey's brain, most AIs in Halo being made from dying soldiers and sacrificed terminal illness patients. Makes you wonder if Durandal being "Gheritt White" really was all just metaphor or if they needed some "raw material" in the Marathon universe as well.

There is some serious cosmic humor going on with its spiritual/real sequel, Halo, becoming a mega-blockbuster, household name hit. If you follow the threads between all these games it is so fucking confusing in a great way, like they made the craziest overarching video game plot of all time and its all just below the surface of a series which has even been translated into a (really very bad) Hollywood tv show.

Yes but also yes. Yes in a literal 4th wall breaking sense, but also yes in-universe as he is realising that as a material construct he is bound to the material universes rules, he may well master the rules of the material 'game' but cannot leave it. The player character is able to transcend the material game in some not entirely explained manner, to fates unknown. This sci fi is pointing us in a similar direction as Dune: that mastery of calculation and of material dominion will not save us, it will help us win the game of life, but it will bind us to that game and this ultimately trap us. (I'm in the rabbit hole send help)

@@DisgruntledPeasant Wheels within wheels, plots within plots... God is a prisoner of his powers. Shaitan approaches on the wind fast as a Coriolis storm to rend flesh from bone and blast bone to dust. Fear is the mind-killer.

I think the 4th wall breaking stuff shouldn't be interpreted as the literal text of the game but rather a theme that arises from the text. This is probably difficult to explain in English terms since English literary analysis is based on a different theory. But basically when analyzing a text we can choose to either see it as one self contained unit which is complete on its own or we can see it as a work of fiction that exists in and therefore in relation to the real world. However the latter should always arise from the former. In this case there is a completely in-universe interpretation where Durandal hasn't broken the 4th wall as the other commenter laid out. However this interpretation when taken together with the fact that this is a work of fiction leads to a theme about how storytelling works, and specifically how storytelling in video games work, the constant references to myths reinforces this interpretation. Furthermore the name Durandal also points in this direction, the AI is named after an inanimate tool despite in the fiction of the game being very active and usually driving the story forward. This acknowledges that as a fictional character Durandal remains static and can never actually change, they will only be a tool that helps the player drive the story forward, a player who is explicitly identified with the wielder of Durandal, Roland.

The pathways are never the same there.

It's a really good moment, and Halo's music is something to be treasured. One Final Effort is so good.

Marathon was big but only in the Mac gaming community, which was fractional compared to Windows back then. Being a mac exclusive developer meant tons of people had never even heard of Bungie or Marathon. Myth won some major awards and put Bungie on the radar critically but Halo was where they exploded into the public consciousness. For my money Marathon and Myth are their masterpieces.

You're right. It's labeled in the same way the rose map is, but it's likely a magnolia. It could also be the same seed progress you see in the end screen.

@@MandaloreGaming Being a Lily would make sense, it's a symbol of rebirth and hope. Lilies are toxic to cats, playing with their food the way the AIs play with you, what better defense for a rat in a maze

sadly they simply left story instructions behind, all of that talent has left.

I do not know who I am. I don't know why I'm here. All I know is that I must kill.

​@@jetex1911(holds upside-down AK)

Any interesting idea you've seen in Destiny is probably a retread of the re-imagining from Halo of the idea that originally showed up in Marathon or even Pathways. Hell even the Halo itself was from Marathon 2...

I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed this. Felt like after trying to comprehend all of it that I might have been going insane

@@grandmasterazrael576 The only thing that shocks me is that even now these narrative threads have not been lost by Bungie. Most developers have problems maintaining a single story from a game to its sequel. Somehow Bungie has managed to create multiple series that all follow the same universal rules and have interweaving connections between them.

@@zenoblues7787 Agreed. It's absolutely mind boggling especially when they've been bought and sold so many times over the last 30 years

@@grandmasterazrael576 Helps that the company has been headed by Jason Jones continuously since almost the beginning.

Emulating the feeling and atmosphere of a game is a lot more important than just giving a factual summary, a lot of times. Mandalore is one of the best at it, with the only other one that comes to mind is Ross Scott. They're both great at presentation while still giving you more than enough of the story.

I like that he didn't just jump into "Here's the story of Marathon:" like a regular 'lore' channel would. He really conveys that overwhelming feeling of bewilderment that a player would get from trying to parse dozens of completely nonsensical and contradictory terminal logs, while stumbling through a series of seemingly out-of-order missions, whose writers apparently have dementia. The story wouldn't work nearly as well without the understanding of just how *deranged* the presentation is.

Same here. There's something reassuring about how mandy manages to pull the threads of this madness into something so enjoyable to watch.

It's on my daily playlist for work for sure

I've been banging on for decades about how underrated and underappreciated Marathon is. In the era of Doom/Duke Nukem/Blood/RotT run gun and gore minimal plotting there was this absolute beast of a sci-fi tale.

I am not sure how Myth and Oni are tied together into this bungie soup.

@@wesleybcrowen I know that in myth, the heros of the previous age eventually are resurrected as the villains and they eventually bring about the following age of darkness and so on and so forth, but yeah idk about Oni either.

Let's just say they've directly referenced an Eat the Path terminal (the level's namesake one even) with *Crota* and the sword logic, and at this point you could pretend the Darkness and Traveler are Lethe and whoever the hell she regards her enemy/lover.

Bungie lore is connected to every piece of fiction ever written

@@wesleybcrowen in Myth the good gods are called The Nine