The fascinating shared DNA between Bungie's Marathon and Halo.

A few days ago Classic Marathon was released on Steam for free, Marathon 2: Durandal, and Marathon Infinity will be coming to Steam as well at a later day. Thanks to the efforts of the talented Aleph One fan Developers, and Bungie consenting to their work keeping Marathon alive, and letting it be published on the platform.

DOOM gets a ton of credit for being the father of the FPS genre, but Marathon wasn't content in just being a DOOM Clone, in fact, Bungie was hot on the heals of Wolfenstein 3D with their previous game Pathways into Darkness. I feel Marathon is a vastly underrated game series, I'd consider it the thinking man's Answer to DOOM, and Halo has a lot to thank Marathon for. Many Ideas that would become staples of Halo were first conceived in one form or another in Marathon. Going back to this game of Bungie's Roots, It's quite an experience seeing just how innovative Marathon was at the time, and how much of Halo was there so early.

For starters, we have the setting itself. The first game takes place on the Massive Titular ship the UESC Marathon. There are times in Marathon you can gaze out into space and spot the Pfhor races ship or even board it in some levels, and it's very reminiscent of the Human and Covenant ships you can spot, and board in Halo.

The Pfhor bare an obvious resemblance in their designs to the Covenant as an enemy faction, to the point Halo just reused the Hunters from Marathon with some adjustments, and there is a great resemblance between the S'pht race and the Engineers that would later appear in Halo 3 ODST.

When it comes to the Alien Weapon you can take from the Pfhor is similar in it's gameplay design to how Covenant weapons will be. Marathon was innovative in how you actually had magazines for your weapons, and you needed to reload instead of firing endlessly until you ran dry. In fact, the actual Ammo you picked up carried over to Halo CE, before it would later be streamlined and replaced with simply picking up all Ammo from walked over weapons. The Alien Weapon could not be reloaded, nor could ammo be picked up for this weapon. You simply fired it until it ran out of juice, and you'd pick up a new one.

When it comes to the Human weapons, the gameplay design of the Assault rifle very much continued into Halo CE. It is an inaccurate weapon, but it makes up for that with a large magazine. Marathon's AR also comes with a Grenade Launcher for it's secondary fire, and these Grenades while not quite the Mini-Nukes you'd throw in Halo CE, it's clear how the grenade launcher lead to Halo having Grenades on your 2nd trigger. Amazingly for the time You could even Grenade Jump, while Grenade Jumping is a neat trick in Halo, in Marathon you could even find well hidden secrets with Grenade jumping, of course at the cost of your Shields, yep Marathon had Shields just like Halo would, and not just Shields, but you could overcharge them as well, if you were lucky enough to find a powerful enough shield station.

Similar to the Shield stations there were Save Stations, and idea that would later become the Checkpoint system in Halo, Bungie didn't want to similar give the player unlimited quick saves, and it's arguable that the Save Stations is a better system then the Checkpoint one, we've all made bad Checkpoints automatically in Halo before. In Marathon Save Stations are placed thoughtfully though the level design, so thoughtfully they can actually raise the tension and immersion of the game, You see just because you finish a level that doesn't mean the game is saved, You'll still need to find a save station before you let your guard down.

Marathon is very Atmospheric, and it easy to get drawn in to checking your Corners, carefully trying to find the next enemy in these claustrophobic Corridors, and it's clear how the developers of this game, could later be able to make the Flood. To help with hunting down enemies, Marathon had a motion tracker. Yet another big staple that would be put in Halo. While it wasn't until Halo 2 that Dual welding was added to that series, Marathon has the honors of being the first FPS game to feature Dual Welding, although it shares that honor with Rize of the Triad which just so happened to release it's shareware version on the very same day. Marathon 2 would feature dual Welding Shotguns the play style of which would later inspire the Brute Maulers from Halo 3.

The last thing I'll mention is the style of Marathons Story telling. Marathon was quite notable for it's story being a big focus just as much as it's gameplay was. The terminals you could first find in Halo 3 are reminiscent of the main way you receive Information in Marathon. You access Terminals to communicate with the AI of Marathon. While we spend most of our time explaining AI with Cortana in Halo. Marathon features several AI personalities. First you meet Leela the cold but well meaning AI aboard the Marathons ship helping you how she can. You'll then later meet Durandal… and ho boy he is quite the character. It's hard not to love his rampant charms, and these AI are commanding the player character, the Security Officer. A Marine Cyborg who is very good at shooting himself out of Situations. It's clear how The Master Chief as a character would evolve from the concept of the Security Officer, to the point Halo CE's manual and the game itself refers to the Master Chief as a Cyborg a few times. I'd say the difference between Halo's story telling and Marathon's is that Halo is content with mostly being a cool war action story first, and the deeper lore while there can be an optional read for more the Intrigued fans of the world. Whereas with Marathon, if you aren't just skipping past all the terminals then you're going to be taking in quite a bit about the universe of Marathon… and not just one Universe. To the point, you won't be blamed if you lose track of where you are and what exactly is happening when you experience the 3rd game Marathon Infinity.

I'm sure there is more that could be said about the comparisons of Halo to Marathon, but I'll just end this here by saying Marathon can be every bit as cool as Halo can be. I recommended giving the games a shot, especially if you're a fan of Halo CE, and they're free nowadays, any toaster PC can run them. If you'd prefer to play on an Xbox then Marathon 2:Durandal is available and backward compatible, although that version isn't free. I'll understand if the game might be too dated for some people nowadays, but I thoroughly enjoyed how Unique of a classic FPS Marathon was when I first played the games 4 years ago, and I'm glad to do another playthough.