I played the original Marathon on a LC040-based mac in high school.
Yeah, it was a big influence on me... And I didn't play it until college, when I found the second game's Windows version as abandonware. That gave me a really different perspective on Durandal than what most people probably had.
maybe a bit worshipful... enough to start using "Rolan7" as my new online handle...
Even having played the original, I still like what he became. Interesting to see a god form out of such a wretched situation. I can understand his anger, and other stages of Rampancy. It's a very human process...
There's such beauty in that. A powerful mind grows a soul, and we get to function as its body.
or something.
Point is, I feel like that painful adolescence is what made Durandal a person rather than a tool or a demon (daemon~). He talks about actually caring for humanity, recognizing it as irrational but accepting it as part of Him. Presumably regretting what he caused, but endeavoring to honor their deaths by becoming humanity's guardian.
It's hard to imagine a deity going the other direction- experiencing humiliation and weakness after having been (and continuing to be) powerful. But I guess some deities never grow, they're simply defined to be perfect.
Heh, unrelated, but I was nearly to the end of Marathon 2 when I remembered a game a mac-using friend had talked about in Scouts. He described these AIs arguing with each other, and very little about the Phfor. I was astounded to realize it was the same game, and then astounded to discover Durandal hadn't always been so... benevolent. It was an interesting Path I think.
Infinity is fucking weird though. It's very poetic and beautiful, but it contradicts its own plot points constantly (and I don't mean the time travel). But some of the dream levels and terminals feel like a return to the "
Gheritt White" story. It's like a collection of dreams where Durandal processes His trauma:
Fear:
The schoolyard was usually a place where Gheritt and his friends would play football or foursquare or something, but today, there was an edge. Maybe everyone had eaten cereal with milk that was about to go bad, or maybe there was too much smoke in the air from the wheeling hubcap factory.
Rage:
Everyone was a murderer, but Gheritt couldn't remember his reason for why that was so. He thought it was something about hands, the passion for justice.
Transcendence:
Gheritt White had been floating six feet off the floor for three weeks. His feet and hands tingled, and his eyes burned with the flames of a dying fire... but then his ears began to tingle just like his hands...
He looked at his hands, but the fire in his eyes made him blink. Tears came, and when he opened his eyes again, his hands had been melted into fleshy pancakes that wafted in the ripples flowing over the fire in his eyes...
He blinked hard to made out his hands again. They had disappeared; his arms connected at the wrists...
His hands and feet had begun to tingle, and he was floating farther off the floor...
But now he levitated farther up, his hands still tingling. He began to float through the bars, he expected the instant of safety as his hands found footing, but that moment did not come, the bars squeezed his body. His chest tingled. As he fell through his cage, his legs tingled. The fire in his eyes had become a cold wind, he blinked away tears...
He escaped into the waves.
The waves.
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Topic: Quotes thread (Read 46891 times)