- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Hmm. I voted in favor but...
I was hesitant. The fact is, Marathon belongs to the fans now. Sure, Bungie still gets credit for the first two games, and Double Aught for Infinity, but really, its not like the Marathon has just stopped growing altogether. When Bungie released the editing tools for Marathon, it was basically a way of saying "Ok, we at Bungie are through with this. We're handing the keys to the kingdom over to you fans." The result is that, we DO have Marathon 4 now. In fact we have dozens of Marathon 4's, and you can take your pick as to which one you prefer. For example, my favorite Marathon universe experience, and no disrespect to the original games, but my favorite Marathon universe experience is Marathon:Rubicon, hands down. A fan made sequel to M:I. But playing that was the first time that it really sunk in for me that video games had the potential to be art. Or, hey, if you don't like the style of Rubicon, you can go play Eternal, the latest Marathon scenario. Another sequel that takes the story in an entirely new direction.
The point is, Bungie doesn't really own the Marathon Universe exactly, except in legal copyright terms. But the spirit of Marathon rests solely with the fans.
That said, I would still buy a new Bungie-created Marathon game, and it would probably rock. But my hesitance comes from the fact that, no matter what, an official sequel would contradict Rubicon, which I have more or less chosen as my preferred sequel.
On an unrelated note, it's nice to see another person who has been a Marathon fan since a young age. I was only 8 when the game came out, and I too grew up playing it. Most long time fans were older than I am now when Marathon came out, it's cool to see someone closer to my age who remembers it.
Ok, time for me to go to bed. Those are some terrible sentences up there...
Edit: I would like to add that I am 100% in favor of the Marathon story being retold with updated technology. However, I don't see that this needs to be done by Bungie. For that reason, I have begun to tentatively experiment with the Dim3 game engine. It looks like it could be relatively easy to learn. While it is not guite up to the standards of the modern graphical monsters like Halo, it would allow one to escape the sprite based restrictions of the classic Marathon engine. I'm not really sure what sort of limits Dim3 has yet, but I'm working on it. Anyone interested in finding out more about my little project, send me an private message.
[Edited on 9/26/2004 1:38:15 AM]