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]

My only reservation to thinking that Halo is the unofficial sequel is a bit of a technology lapse. In Marathon, there were obviously star-trek-like-transporters. BOB's transported in to help you out. In Halo, no there are no such things. Of course, you could argue that the transporters are located on the Pillar of Autumn and therefore could not be used at all, BUT the Halo novel makes absolutely no reference to any such device. I think there may have been another technology lapse that made gave me doubts, but that's the main one.

[Marathon Ownz ALL]

Wow, I never thought of that one, good job. It's pretty obvious when you think about it. But the big, BIG, thing we're missing, is the AI. Sure we have cortana and she's all good and all, but she isn't like the AIs out of Marathon who control different portions of the ship. Also the transporters...you SHOULD have them on PoA, but you don't. There are transporters though, and Cortana and the 343 Guilty Spark use them to transport you in different levels such as "343 Guilty Spark" and well...i forget the other one, but Cortana sends you in upside down because she's getting the hang of the transporters.
Thanks for the posting.

[Chris]

Actually there shouldn't necessarily be Teleportation technology in Halo. Halo is a prequal to Marathon, so Marathon is farther into the future.

[James]

You can get a wide shot of the control room quite easily......

You do it late on in the game, after you use the plasma pistol to shoot down the 4 sentinels and when you clear all the covenent and get out side, you make your way down the pyramid. You then get into a Bamshee....you then fly back on yourself into the pyramid and into the control room, now fly up and look down on control room from above. E A S Y.

As for your comparisons, I never played with a Mac before so I can't say, but old references to other stuff is always cool in my books.

[Andrew White]

The rocket launcher was actually *called* the SPNKR in Marathon: Durandal and Infinity, wasn't it?

I get so pissed when I see most-influential-games-lists claim Quake or Duke Nukem as being the games that brought 3D to first person shooters. I was fragging my friends on 6100s local-talked together years before Quake came about.

[Bunnykun]

Actually, Cortana can control many parts of the ship, according to the Halo novel. From what I remember, Cortana can control the weapons and lay down an effective defense, can navigate, and do start up procedures. . .she pretty much has the run of the ship. In fact, all ships in the fleet had an AI. The Pillor of Autumn is unique in that is had two AI's, it's normal AI and the much more advanced Cortana, who was really developed as a supplement to the Spartan she (Cortana) chooses.

[Cody]

ya i noticed the name "Foehammer" in marathon a while ago too

[Donahue]

Halo might have some relations like the emblems and the suit but i agree HALO IS NOT ANOTHER MARATHON really marathon got very old very fast

Bungie just was used to creating games around that area of intrest

[Punchie]

Between the "A" and the "L," I see an "O" in that logo. Halo is EVIL, I tell you.

[Arkhain]

I don't know if anybody said this already, but Cortana is Durandal's counterpart sword. Charlesmagne had Durandal, his cousin had Cortana.

Halo also takes place some 3~400 years before Marathon. Plenty of time for the Flood, etc, to die and for Sph't and P'fhor to come around.

However, Halo is not Marathon 4. If anything, it's the prequel. It's like Command and Conquer and Red Alert. RA is the prequel to C&C, Marathon being C&C with Halo being RA.

[Malachai]

There are a lot of similarities, yes, but not having played Marathon I can't say one way or the other.

However, you did kind of push out the fact that nearly all FPS games have some sort of King of the Hill.

Perfect Dark for the N64 has both a King of the Hill and a Capture the Case mode, where the object is to hold a briefcase for the longest. Unreal also has the Domination mode, where your team has to capture a specific location, and hold it for a set amount of time to earn points.

It's also important to point out that games include fan throwbacks all the time. In Perfect Dark, the guns from GoldenEye are displayed in the Weapons Testing area of the agency office.

[zeroxerozero]

Everyone who is saying no are you stupid Halo is not a sequel blah blah blah, is retarded. You should play both games before you make such an article blah blah blah of course they played both games or otherwise they wouldnt have any time of premise or basis for comparsion, also never once in the article does it say Halo is a sequel to marathon. The whole article poses the question is it a sequel? Some smart people have said no its not and these are the reasons but most people dont use their brains and just rant about how there no way that it is and have no support evidence. Maybe you all should take time to READ the article before ranting.

[isthaq]

According to the Myth: The Total Codex production journal, Bungie stopped production on Marathon 4 to make Myth. Marathon 4 was going to be a 3D installment of Marathon. Wether or not the story was going to follow the others is not reported. Most likely the work they did for Marathon 4 evolved into Halo. If anyone running Windows wants to check out Marathon, Marathon 2 was ported, and the demo can be downloaded for free. You might want to check bungie.org if you're curious.

[Joyeuse]

I wouldn't call Halo a sequel per se, it seems pretty obvious it's supposed to be it's own game. But I was long ago convinced that it takes place in the same universe as Marathon.

As somebody mentioned, the very interesting gap in the timeline of Marathon corresponds very nicely with the Halo timeline. The player in both games can't be the same person, because while Halo is taking place, the Marathon is en route to Tau Ceti, and for this same reason it also means that Durandal and Cortana cannot be the same AI. However, it is widely accepted that the player in Marathon is a Mjolnir Mark IV Cyborg. The similarities to this that turn up in Halo are too much to dismiss out of hand. They both certainly seem to be the same kind of entity.

After the first Marathon game, Durandal whisks the player off to Lh'owon in a stolen Pfhor ship. By the time he arrives there, in 2811, not only is the player halfway across the galaxy from any Halo-related events that may be occurring, it's also around 300 years later to boot. To me, this explains why there might not be much correlation between Halo and the events in the second and third game.

[Simon]

Well then, I suppose I could start out saying that I'm a big fan of Halo and that when I had a Mac a few years ago I played a little Marathon and loved it. It's kinda wierd, I'd actually forgotten about it until I read this and it gave some sort of crazy flashback/seizure due to the sudden realization that you were talking about "the" marathon (the first screenshot really did it for me)I don't really see why there's a debate over who's who. And what game is a sequel to what. Most annoying are the few who have posted that haven't played both games, you know who you are......(they like to scream "halo rules!" and usually have nothing worth saying) anyways, I would describe this thread as "Being riddles with pointless bickering and hoobjabbering with occasional bursts of piercing logic and rational creative thought."
And I'm done.....

[Stephen]

well, now that u mention it, yeah, id have to agree with you. but ten again, witt he timeline of Marathon and Halo, would u call it a Sequel or Prequel?

i mean, in Halo they have the more advaced Tech but the Marathon was launched 200 years years before Halo, so that could b the reason for that.

as for manyof the people here who just cant accept the possibility, i think most o the jus dont want to admit that they would like anything that should be bearing the Marathon name

[Stephen]

oh, and just a note to Malachai, the Briefcase game in Perfect Dark was not King of the Hill or anything like it. much more akin to the KtMWtB game. only real dif being the ability to run and use weapons.

King of the Hill is a lot diferent, and personally, i think its a hell of a lot more fun.

[Stpehen]

and teh last note.. i swear.. is that the placement of the Marathon symbol scarily enough makes it AOL

so yeah

[FrostByte]

You put up a fairly good arguement and I was almost convinced. But reading up on the stories of both I would say that it was just Marathon reverences thrown into the game as something some people would get. But calling it a sequel because of an Easter Egg would be like calling Dukem Nukem a sequel to Doom because the Doom character makes an appearance. Now that I think of it though...doesn't the guy from the Doom and Quake games look eerily like the guy from Halo?

[A-O]

Look at Final Fantasy games. Different worlds, same names, places, music (even a character named Cid).

You really can't blame bungie for using some logos, and names from a previous project.

By the way, Halo IS the best FPS game ever created. Nothing can change that.

[Chris]

Marathon was one of the first computer games I ever played, and I played a lot of it. A friend had a small LAN in his house and we would play Marathon for hours. I would have to agree that HALO is just a logical sequel to the whole Marathon series. Too bad Microsoft snatched it up in an effort to aid the Xbox.

[Malachai]

Yes, Stephen, that was my point. All the games these days have a KotH/KtMWtB form of play.

[Talos]

ya missed an obvious one. Marathon logo on its side in the 'O'.

Bobs are Born On Board's.

[rodtod]

The graphic on the main page that links to this
article seemed to be about Halo and AOL, rather
than the connections between Halo and Marathon.
The red circle between the "a" and "l" of HALO
threw me off ;)

[Elerrawyn]

Spin-off. Not a sequel, a spin-off.