- homocidalham
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- Exalted Mythic Member
"That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
Now try how and why."
I'd be lying if I said I don't understand the whole "Bungie needs to make another marathon game!" thing. I do. I've been there. I thought to myself "hey, this game has such a kick ass story and was so awesome at the time. They should make one now, it would kick so much ass!"
Then, after seeing numerous attempts at remakes fall flat, I realized something: Marathon was a product of it's time. It's story worked so well because it was set up in scattered text. Nowadays, it would look quaint. That isn't to say that Marathon's story doesn't have far more narrative depth than the average game even up to today, but baring massive presentation changes, it might not work so well. One might immediately object to this by saying "well, they could change some stuff." But that's the point, one of the things that made Marathon work was it's presentation.
Aside from that, the overall level structure would be nigh impossible to pull off today without a fully dedicated team of designers. One of the reasons games are shorter nowadays isn't because designers are getting lazy, it's because the increased amount of time it takes to create content as things get more complicated is nothing short of exponential.
Lastly, the game would look silly. Play Doom. Now play doom 3. Notice a difference? One of the advantages that designers had fifteen years ago was that people expected lower fidelity content, and were content with filling in the details using their imagination. The characters and art style in Marathon lends itself exceptionally well to this. It isn't quite cartoonish; it isn't quite realistic. As visual fidelity increases, however, the more that graphics have to declare what they are. It wouldn't affect me, but I can't imagine Bungie dedicating an entire team to something that wouldn't be commercially viable.
And I wouldn't want them to either. Look at it this way, bungie could spend their time trying to retread old grounds for a result that might not even be that great, or they could spend their time working on something that I can't even imagine at this point.
At that isn't to say I don't want more Marathon. No, I want Marathon, but I want to see what someone else makes of it. For the most part, that's what the community has been doing for over ten years, and they're damn good at it at this point.
It would also be interesting to see if someone took the "idea" of marathon and did something really unexpected and wonderful with it rather than just trying to port it pixel for pixel to another engine. I wonder how that would turn out...