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Regardless of Project Destiny or whatever secret projects Bungie has in store for the world; I would very, very much like to believe that Bungie has also scheduled to put some work into a possible new entry in the Marathon series.
Possible hope? G4TV, May 21, 2012
"The document also refers to Bungie's right to devote no more than 5% of its staff to develop an action-shooter prototype dubbed Marathon while Bungie remains under contract with Activision."
Okay, why bring back Marathon? Weren't the developers tired after taking their hands of Infinity; didn't they released the source code of all three games to the public? Why beat the dead goat even more after a decade? The thing is, I'm sure many of us young and old don't consider Marathon to be dead. It is far from it. I wasn't around to play Marathon from the Macintosh box sets, but thanks to the guys on the Aleph One dev team (amazing people who have devoted their lives to this project), I've been totally engulfed into the world of Marathon ever since I found the Marathon download link on the Universe forum. I've just recently played through Marathon 1 (after reloading countless saves) and it was worth every minute.
Halo is the juggernaut that put Bungie among the top. Marathon, however, was different. When other shooters plopped you in a killzone full of soldiers and demons, Marathon had the nerve to make the player read a novel's worth of terminals while fighting was still raging behind your back. When all the other shooters made the player feel like an overpowered badass, Marathon stripped the player of all feeling of control. (Half-Life) Not only that, instead of other human characters, Marathon focused on an eccentric - and sometimes insane - cast of artificial intelligences. (Portal) What can I say? It all worked unbelievable well.
Instead of external conflict, Marathon evolves to become a very personal story as the player character struggles with something not normally discussed in a first person shooter: the guilt of killing and destruction, and the hopelessness of being used as a tool. For this same reason, I was very interested in playing Halo: ODST. Every time the Rookie holstered his gun and wistfully examined the stuff his comrades left behind, I could connect with him.
The Security Officer
Bungie, please do not consider this as a plea to speed up development when you guys are already working your butts off trying to bring us something new. This is merely but a hopeful wish that Marathon will be revisited sometime in the future.
I'll join those planetside waiting for another epic tale of spilling guts and rampant AI's. Apparently, they're not the only ones waiting, either, right?
Hopefully, maybe we'll see each other starside once more.
[Edited on 06.08.2012 4:04 PM PDT]