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

[Ecco]

Somewhere in an Halo level, you can hear a Myth Music...

[Ecco]

Somewhere in an Halo level, you can hear a Myth Music...

[FreekShow]

WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK?!? THE PEOPLE AT BUNGIE WOULD LAUGH THEIR ASSES OFF IF THEY SAW THIS POINTLESS SHIT!! WHO FUCKING CARES IF HALO IS A SEQUEL?! IT STILL EXISTS EITHER WAY, SO WHO GIVES A FUCK?!?

[FreekShow]

WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK?!? THE PEOPLE AT BUNGIE WOULD LAUGH THEIR ASSES OFF IF THEY SAW THIS POINTLESS SHIT!! WHO FUCKING CARES IF HALO IS A SEQUEL?! IT STILL EXISTS EITHER WAY, SO WHO GIVES A FUCK?!?

[FreekShow]

WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK?!? THE PEOPLE AT BUNGIE WOULD LAUGH THEIR ASSES OFF IF THEY SAW THIS POINTLESS SHIT!! WHO FUCKING CARES IF HALO IS A SEQUEL?! IT STILL EXISTS EITHER WAY, SO WHO GIVES A FUCK?!?

[Eric]

ok... FreekShow... +5 Troll... If I had a rocket launcher....

To the few of us that actually played thru the Marathon series, Halo is an extension. To the PC folk who mock Marathon simply because it was on the Mac, you don't know what you missed. Doom sucked. Even Doom 3 sucks compared to Halo. I wouldn't classify Halo as a Marathon sequel, but it's the same universe with the same toys. Think Star Trek TNG and Voyager and DS9. Different cast, different parts of the same universe, but a unified, coherent, similar feel. To the guy who asked about Halo's vehicles... ok so the added new features. Good for Bungie. Thats not enough of a difference to nullify the similarities. Halo 2 now includes support for dual-weapons. Halo-only players are like "wow thats way cool yo", Marathon players are like "been there done that". Marathon's graphics look crappy by todays (read, Halo's) standards, but break out your copy of Doom from 1994 and compare. You'll see a world of difference. Marathon introduced looking up and down, dynamic lighting, sound, and physics, intelligent enemies, and a wicked story. Doom = see demon, shoot demon. Perhaps amusing to the kids, but by no means captivating. There's a reason Marathon is as talked about as it is. It was ahead of it's time and defined what a good FPS was all about, up to Rainbow 6, then Halo. TOZT with your SPNKr anyone?

[Marathon2]

Stay off u pc losers.. stfu.. u aint noe shyt.. though my 66mhz mac is stored away in the basement for years. i now use a penitum 4.. but marathon is tite as fuk... marathon 4ever!!.. marathon used the dual weapons and it was awesome.. Eric..u have good point :) .. MARATHON RULES! MAC RULES!.. why yal jus hatin Macs cuz everybody says it.. its so stupid

[vyroglyph]

I don't know if anyone else noticed this because I didn't read all of the comments, but in the book "Fall of Reach" there is a class of ship called Marathon.

[vyroglyph]

also, in marathon there is a level called "I wish i had a rocket launcher" and in halo there is one called "I wish I had a super weapon"

[tbg]

actually, halo is like a souped-up marathon with different names for all the characters. I use a pc but I still like to play marathon on my mac. Why don't you people who say marathon sucks get a clue. You have no idea what brilliant ideas bungie came up with before halo. I bet you never even heard of Rock'n'Roll Racing.

[jarro]

did anyone think that maybe, forerunner is what the humans/covenant called the ancient race and "jarro" is what they called themselves?

[Tim]

Just got Halo 2, and hadn't played Halo 1, but I played all of the Marathons (Marathon 2 is on PC AND Mac, BTW)...

First things I noticed were the logo, the spnkr, and (was this in Halo 1)? The HUNTER creature, which is lifted DIRECTLY from Marathon. Looks like and acts like the Marathon hunter. So if they are in different universes, this creature knows how to travel between them ; )

I can't see why people would be so resistant to the connections... they are both excellent, story-driven action games with a lot of similarities... Marathon players know, this is the same universe...

[SangreViento@USEast]

First of all, the reason Bungie added things from Marthon into Halo, is too attract people who had been Marathon gamers! Secondly, THE FLOOD!!! Finally, you MUST CONSIDER THE FACT THAT BOTH GAMES ARE MADE BY BUNGIE,SO THEY HAVE TO BE SIMILIAR IN THE FACT THAT THEY HAVE THE SAME CREATORS!!!!! It is the same thing as WARCRAFT and STARCRAFT both are made by BLIZZARD, thus they are VERY simialar!!!!!

HALO IS DEFINATLEY NOT A SEQUEL TO ANY GAME!!!!!

[Zachary Mohney]

Something that i was thinking about playing halo 2, is that the covenant is attacking earth and possibly aiming to destroy it, which would definately warrent the colony ships that were in the marathon series to start being produced and sent out to attempt to keep the human race alive.

[jjaro]

why are you so angry that someone thinks halo is a sequel? i dont get it. and stop posting the same thing so much its annoying.

[vyroglyph]

Many of the employees at Bungie now were not at Bungie at the time of Marathon, so your argument that similarities between the two games are due to them having "the same creators" is invalid. Any resemblance between the two is certainly NOT coincidental.

[vyroglyph]

Many of the employees at Bungie now were not at Bungie at the time of Marathon, so your argument that similarities between the two games are due to them having "the same creators" is invalid. Any resemblance between the two is certainly NOT coincidental.

[merv]

The so-called Marathon symbol is also the shape of the control room(s).

Download Aleph One (part of Microsoft's Open-Source Initiative). It plays on Windows and OS X (a Linux version is reportedly in the works). For me, it's like Halo with a better frame rate.

[Rygo]

Okay, kinda late, but I just gotta say somthing. no one really thinks halo is a sequel, she just wants to see all you dumb ass noobs get bent about mac's (because they kick more ass 'n stuff). as I type this on my my iBook, I have all three Marathon games on my hard drive, and the first halo. Marathon was an awsome game back in the day, and anyone who disses it should be kneecaped. in '95 i was 9 years old and back then it was THE SHIT, so stuff you ass with a cork M$ whores cuz your talking out of it. everyone looks back on something I their childhood fondly, and for me one thing is marathon. (sad? mabey, but now my imagination soars.) it had somewhat less action, but what halo has in action, marathon had in story. as for the similarities, the reasons are obvious: marathon was GOOD. the symbol. just look at it. come on... its cool, huh? and spnkr? thats l33t speek before l33t. and, oh yeah, when you get hit with it, you...get...spanked. in reality halo is a collection of things origionally made for marathon, but up-graded (excepting the plot, but then again, I'm partial to marathon) hey... why not reuse genius?

P.S. M$ stole bunjie from the free world because they needed a kick ass game, and after reveiwing their past record, they knew halo would be good.

[I made this for one post]

Anyone else notice that on the mission were your on the halo for the first time on halo 2 that the other spartans look exactly like the 'bobs' from merathon?