Halo: Original Game, or Sequel?

A year ago, when Halo debuted, I was playing some multiplayer Halo at a friend's house and recalled just how strikingly similar Halo was to Marathon: Bungie's previous installment of First Person Shooters. I remember being overwhelmed with a deja vu-esque sense that I was in fact playing a Rose that was going by another name, and made a mental note to eventually look into the matter.

So I did some research, and came up with some fairly strong evidence to prove that it seems to be a very well done transfer of the Marathon legacy to the 3D gaming world. Why bother? Well, because as a fan of Marathon, I saw what an incredibly tight game Bungie had on their hands, and lamented the fact that nobody ever wanted to play a one of those "Mac games." By the responses I got, it seemed like I was asking them to do something immoral. To this day, many die-hard PC-only fanboys still scoff at the idea of Marathon. Can you blame Bungie for creating a sequel but changing the name in the interest of selling more titles?

There were rumors of Marathon "easter eggs" throughout Halo, and I think there's something more to the following similarities than "easter eggs." Games like Duke Nukem which had homages to nearly every FPS that came before it (Doom, Dark Forces, etc) had easter eggs. Halo has what I would call an identity crisis.

::WARNING:: HALO SPOILERS FOLLOW ::WARNING::

Single Player

The Marathon Logo.

It's seen in the game often enough for it to be almost persistent. The first place I noticed it was on the chest of Captain Keyes, the commanding officer of the Pillar of Autumn. This screengrab is from the opening cutscene, so you won't have to go very far in the game to see it for yourself. The Captain wears it here as if it's an emblem. Just as Star Trek officers wear the emblem of Starfleet on their chest, the Captain is seen here with the Marathon logo displayed proudly.

When looking for a website that discussed some of these rumored "easter eggs," I found a screengrab of the Pillar of Autumn, the capital warship you start out on in the beginning of the game (note: I'm not certain what part this screengrab is from, as the Pillar of Autumn isn't seen at this angle in the opening cutscene). While the logo is more hidden here among the geometry of the sihp, it's still displayed somewhat prominently (and largely), and towards the end of the game you can see it's mirrored on the opposite side of the ship as well.

Consider the bridge of the Halo itself. When the Master Chief walks out onto the gangplank for the first time, he's in the immense and expansive sphere shaped command center of Halo. The platform he's walking on extends and eventually intersects with a circular platform where the controls are located. I couldn't find any screengrabs that had a wide enough shot of the Halo control room, but if you look at the opening shot in the cinematic for that section, and imagine what it looks like from above, you can see that the negative space around the catwalk is the Marathon logo.

Lastly, we have Exhibit A. The Halo logo itself. This is a larger version of the Halo logo which I nabbed off of Bungie's site, but it's the exact same as the smaller one depicted on the front of the game box. Look in the background, dead center, just between the A and the L. You can't miss it. I don't know why I didn't see it when I first picked up the box. The Marathon logo dead center in the Halo logo pretty much seals it for me. This title was meant to be Marathon.

The Premise

It should be noted that both Marathon and Halo are nearly identical if one were to describe them to a friend: A First Person Shooter which involves the player using futuristic armor and weapons to defend the fate of the Earth and humanity itself from a hostile, unknown, alien civilization. The player is aided by an Artificial Intelligence onboard his ship, and can even use dropped alien weapons.

The Master Chief's Name is Bob.

When I first saw Halo, we were playing it in Multiplayer mode. What I saw was a bunch of Master Chiefs in Mark V armor running around, and something about the whole experience struck me as very familiar.

In Marathon, there were these characters who would show up from time to time to aid you in your quest. They were usually crew from the human ship you called home, and they were typically equipped with human weaponry. For whatever reason, be it their expendability or the fact that they all looked and sounded the same, they were nicknamed "Bobs." [Which turns out to mean "Born on Board." --b] By the time Marathon Infinity (the third Marathon in the series, and the one which most recently came out before Halo), the Bobs were upgraded to have armor (possibly Mark IV armor?) and a better pistol. Unfortunately I couldn't find a better screengrab on the net than these, but I think you can see how the Chief resembles a Bob all too closely.

Weapons

Marathon's weapons all had a very distinct and recognizable look to them, and some of Halo's bear a striking resemblance. Of those, the pistol has a vaguely similar look and feel about it, and the assault rifle is positively straight out of Marathon. The only thing it's missing is the grenade launcher underneath it. Even the ammo countdown (where each individual bullet is displayed as it is expended) is incredibly similar to Marathon.

But the giveaway is in the rocket laucher. In Marathon, the players and fans of the game nicknamed the rocket launcher the "Spanker." It was a two-shot, two barreled rocket launcher (one above the other). The Halo rocket launcher is a double barrelled two shot rocket launcher, and has the letters "SPNKR" written on the side of it and the ammo cases found laying around the levels. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Chapter Headings

Marathon and Halo both sport witty chapter titles at the beginning of each chapter and sub-chapter. It's a small point, but it's another one to add to the growing pile.

Your Artificial Friend

In both games, you are instructed by the ship's sentient onboard computer. In the case of Marathon it's Durandal, Leela, and Tycho, and in Halo, it's by Cortana. The AI play a pivotal role in all four games; without them your cyborg hero would lack direction. One could even argue that the addition of a second, sinister AI (343 Guilty Spark) harkens back to Marathon Infinity when Tycho (the "evil" AI) tried leading your character astray.

Mutliplayer

Speed

Worth noting is a sort of an unexplainable "zen" similarity between Marathon and Halo multiplayer: the speed at which you run. Considerably slower than any other FPS on the market, both games seem to move at a sim-like slow pace (compared to games like Quake and Unreal).

Body Physics

Marathon was probably the first FPS I had ever seen where they assigned a specific "death animation" to each way of dying. Of particular note was the rocket-launcher (or spanker) death, where the victim would fly through the air in an almost super-man like fashion flailing his arms and limbs, and upon hitting the ground, wall, or other solid surface, would turn into a pile of pink goo and bones.

Sure enough, if you hit a group of people/characters with a grenade or rocket in Halo, the bodies go flying. You won't see this in many other FPSs. Typically the other games tend to "gib" the victims into pieces rather than waste engine processing power projecting a parabolic arc for the body to fly in.

Gametypes

This pretty much put the icing on the Halo = Marathon 4 argument for me. After taking the grand tour of Halo, and seeing all of the familiar hallmarks of a Marathon game, I explored the multiplayer game types.

Marathon really expanded what "multiplayer" meant when it innovated the genre and came up with incredibly new and original game types to expand on the traditional deathmatch. While capture the flag was never an option in the original Marathon series, they came up with two types of deathmatch that are original to the Marathon franchise:

Kill the Man With the Ball. Is it in Halo? Would I be writing about it if it wasn't? Kill the Man With the Ball was this incredibly fun game wherein the object was to capture a skull which was placed in the middle of the arena, and whoever was able to hold the skull the longest won, but with a catch. The player holding the ball could not run (only walk), and could not use any weapons. Finding it in Halo was like seeing an old friend you hadn't heard from in a few years.

King of the Hill. No, it doesn't have anything to do with living in Texas. It's similar to KtMWtB, only now the winning player must stand in a designated zone longer than anyone else in the game. Standing in the zone doesn't nullify your weapons, but it does make you one hell of a target. Again, my heart sang when I found its welcome presence in Halo. The only other multiplayer games to ever even attempt these games was Goldeneye, so seeing Bungie carrying on the Marathon legacy is a sight for sore multiplayer eyes.

Is Halo just a Marathon sequel? Should it have been named Marathon: Halo? Will Bungie ever cop to the fact that Halo is Marathon 4, and not just an "homage?" I guess we'll never know for sure, but I know that there's a lot of Marathon fans out there who can't wait to get their hands on Marathon 5 Halo 2.

Research sources used:

http://www.bungie.com
http://halo.bungie.org
http://marathon.bungie.org
http://www.bungie.org
http://www.marathon.org

Comments

[Bunnykun]

"but its called halo b/c it has to do with a halo, the other one was called marathon b/cit had to do with a ship called marathon. =) so no, halo isn't marathon 4 b/c there is no marathon ship anywhere."

By your logic, Halo 2 isn't really the sequel to Halo, because Halo 2 takes place on Earth, not Halo or another Halo installation. Since it takes place on Earth, should it be called Earth?

Even if it was called "Earth" and not "Halo 2", it would definitly be the Halo sequel.

[Bones]

This is great, just like the old days when discussions about the Marathon plot raged on for thousands of pages!

I think the Bungie folks realise just how compelling the original storyline for Marathon was, by being ambiguous they promote this kind of debate. I also think that Bungie were always great fans of the Mac and liked the idea of putting Marathon references into the Microsoft flagship game, kind of an insider joke for old Mac cronies.

I like to think of Halo as some kind of prequel, The character is a cyborg (hence the first level name "Cyborgs and AI first") and could be the same character as the Marathon series.

Also (on a slightly more anorak note) someone mentioned earlier that there was no UNSC in Marathon - but there was a UESC...and in the prolog for Marathon2 the cyborg character starts after spending 17 years "in stasis" - sound familiar?

[Bunnykun]

From just reading the Halo novel, I noticed that there is a class of ships call Marathon-Class. Interesting, no?

[scott]

One thing Master Chief's first name is John !!! NOT BOB !!!

[Scott]

One thing Master Chief's first name is John !!! NOT BOB !!!

[Scott]

One thing Master Chief's first name is John !!! NOT BOB !!!

[Scott]

One thing Master Chief's first name is John !!! NOT BOB !!!

[7x7x7 Guilty Spark]

This title, wasn't meant to be Marathon. Halo is Marathon. The name of the race that created Halo is the foreRUNNERs. Marathon, Forerunner. Hmmm...

I believe that the sequels to Halo are intended to eventually tie the games together cohesively and unmistakably. I believe we will see some star wars type of revelations/surprises in the future Halo games.

In the game Master Chief is referred to as the Reclaimer by 343 Guilty Spark and it is implied that Master Chief or individuals who looked like him had used Halo before.

Born On Board. MC is awoken from cryo-stasis on the PoA at the very beginning of Halo. MC helps out and backsup the marines similar to the way the B
OBs worked. Perhaps the original 150/75 candidates were the BOBs from Marathon and Master Chief is the last one alive many years later.

[7x7x7 Guilty Spark]

This title, wasn't meant to be Marathon. Halo is Marathon. The name of the race that created Halo is the foreRUNNERs. Marathon, Forerunner. Hmmm...

I believe that the sequels to Halo are intended to eventually tie the games together cohesively and unmistakably. I believe we will see some star wars type of revelations/surprises in the future Halo games.

In the game Master Chief is referred to as the Reclaimer by 343 Guilty Spark and it is implied that Master Chief or individuals who looked like him had used Halo before.

Born On Board. MC is awoken from cryo-stasis on the PoA at the very beginning of Halo. MC helps out and backsup the marines similar to the way the BOBs worked. Perhaps the original 150/75 candidates were the BOBs from Marathon and Master Chief is the last one alive many years later.

[John117]

Forerunner = Marathon

Master Chief is born on board at the start of Halo.

[Marathon Owns ALL]

simple and easy, sorry Game girl advance writers, but someone beat you to your obvious punch. If you go to http://marathon.bungie.org/story/ it has all the information you put and more. There is strong correlative arguments that your character is the same Mjolnir Mark IV Cyborg which existed in Marathon and the same as Halo and if you look even further back, you can date it to Pathways into Darkness. Halo has millions of simlilarities, but I won't waste time writing them as they're already put down by Hamlish the writer of this website, just click on the halo section in the left half of the website once you enter. Sorry to kill this thread with proof ;).
-Daemonecles

[Marathon Owns All]

Also, to kinda put down those arguments that the master chief is a BOB or the same cyborg you play in Marathon. The master chief was said to be put together on the planet that the Pillar of Autumn hailed from. If you go into Marathon and read up, you find out that two asteroid planets got into a huge war between each other, sorry, but i forget the names, but in this war, the two sides manufactured the first "battle roids" and these were placed in battle and quickly killed everybody. I can't put my finger on a correlation between this and Halo though, as the asteroid planets cannot be the same as the one the master chief came from, but it looks like it was possible that the same technology was put together and mabye the body of the old cyborg soldier you were was arisen again by this technology after being found ?floating in space? But I need to read up on the end of marathon Infinity, because that was the last in the series, but i remember that in the end of Marathon 2: Durandal, the character and Durandal are rumored to have escaped the end of the universe and become gods, so mabye Halo was just meant to be a better/different/more recent/more mass marketed version of marathon? Because marathon didn't sell as well, but had a very devoted fan base such as people like me and you all reading this.

[Marathon Owns ALL]

sorry for a THIRD post, but just have to say this: Halo and Marathon were both based on different sci fi books, but there are similar ties between them, which means could they be just different generations of "battle roid" Mjolnir Mark IV Cyborgs? halo was based on a book by Ian M. Banks called Culture and another one by him called Consider Phlebas, which are both excellent books and even the cover has Halo on it. Marathon was based on the book, Marathon by Alexander Smith, both should be bought post haste if you want to understand the backgrounds of both.

[Marathon Owns All]

oh wow holy crap i didn't think about this one, but the forerunner could be the alien pfhor ship that Durandal comandeers and takes across the Galaxy because as one point in the game it shows how Durandal went around the galaxy with his new warp drives and he meets up with you again in Marathon 2

[Marathon Ownz ALL]

and no, master chief is not BOB on the Pillar of Autumn, BOBs are second or any following generation of children born on a starship and that's the name they get. You wouldn't be called Master Chief but BOB and you aren't born, just brought out of stasis

[wow]

who cares? if they're both good games, forget about it and just enjoy them!

[...]

marathon owns all...what can i say...

MASTER CHIEF WAS NOT "BORN" ON THE SHIP!
HE WASN'T "PUT TOGETHER"!

he is a cybernetically advanced HUMAN...
he was born from a mommy...do you know how that works? first, your mommy and daddy fuck each other...the momma gets fertilized and out you pop!

if i'm wrong feel FREE to correct me

[RazorSkin]

Does it really matter if it is sqeual? I mean it is pretty cool that the DEVs for this game through in all this stuff and it probally was ment to be a sqeual in its early stages of planing but do you really think the name Marathon 4 would have sold to the XBOX gamers who at the time were looking foward to new, fresh and original titles.

Halo was like th only micorsoft only on xbox, for xbox, design by XOBX, to make xbox what it is game. Would have this game really drawn in the crouds? I mean it would have been seen a add on to an almost dead series. Sorta like peoples take on the plans for tribes 3.

I am just glad they made the gmae and am really happy to see that the programers (DEVs) took the time to add in these little reminders of Halos heritage in the gaming world.

[True]

True if you read the HALO books it is clear. Masta Cheif was born and is an enhanced person. I won't say human because they didn't make that clear. He comes from another world then earth. He is also the last of his class of powersuit enhanced warrior.

[Marathon Ownz ALL]

to "..."
the master chief was born yes. But so were the battleroids, the cyborgs are old dead bodies which are rebuilt. He was never born on the ship, yes, but if you read the intro in the manual, you see that he is "created", i'm not sure on the words they use, mabye trained, if so, then i'd need to rethink my argument, but he is "created" on the planet where the pillar of autumn came from. This sounds so much like what happened on the asteroids. But the master chief IS an enhanced person, but he was dead and then re-animated. he is in a powersuit and all, but these are all cybernetic enhancements and the suit is not the only source of power he holds.

[Razor]

The Covenet Symbols in the ship are the same as the marathon logo.

[waka]

Wow, I can't believe this is even a debate.

Someone else pointed out the Marathon logo's presence within the Halo logo years ago, when Halo was first demoed on a Mac G3 at Macword. In an interview, Jason Jones (lead programmer and cofounder of Bungie) mentioned that there were "common threads" running throughout all of Bungie's games. The example he mentioned at the time was that in an earlier game of theirs, Minotaur (1992), the character can find a sword named Durandal.

I doubt the question "is Halo a sequel" matters. Bungie works common elements into their games.

waka

[Kyle Thompson]

OK, that's it. I am now refering to Halo as "Marathon 4". No one will know what the hell I'm talking about, but hopefully it'll relieve a little of the anger I have that there is no and never will be a Halo for Mac.

[Chris]

This hole Strand got me very interested in delving deeper into this issue. And I found some very interesting things.

First I went to compare Timelines here's what I found:
In the Marathon Timeline there are constant events in the year 2000 era. But between 2472 and 2611 there are no events It mearly says: "(This century intentionally left blank. Seriously, nothing really happened.)".
Now I looked at the Fall of Reach Timline (Halo book) And found that every single event was from 2494 to 2552. That's a little interesting dont you think?

Also In the Marathon timeline it says "c.-6.4E07 (-60,000) Unnamed 'God' crashes on the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern Mexico."

And in the Fall of Reach timeline it says " 2512 A geological survey team on Sigma Octanus IV finds rocks with odd compositions - these were introduced from meteor impacts roughly 60,000 years ago"

Both 60,000 years ago. Interesting no? I have just begun my research so I'm sure I will find more interesting tie ins later.

[Marathon Ownz ALL]

Nice job chris. Keem em coming!