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PF Volunteers - Hot Potato
Posted By: Steve LevinsonDate: 7/12/04 4:55 p.m.

In the M1 level The Rose, you were charged with the nearly impossible task of saving enough Bobs to gain valuable information on the aliens attacking the Marathon. In Hot Potato you are given the far simpler task of saving an armored vehicle that, likewise, contains invaluable information about alien bases and the like. Unfortunately, the armored vehicle in question - we'll see more of this design later - is programmed as a monster and a large contingent of Pfhor are arrayed around it, set to recognize it as their foe. Unless you are incredibly fast, it is extremely unlikely you will be able to save it before the Pfhor destroy it. Fortunately, other than the exit term message, success does not affect game play in any way. There is a small window overlooking the vehicle near your starting position - although difficult to see from this vantage point, take a close look - this may be the only chance to see it intact. I've never succeeded in saving the vehicle except on Kindergarten, just to see if it was possible.

Besides attempting to save the vehicle, there are two main objectives here - to exterminate the level and to read a pair of key terminals that provide significant backstory. From the starting area, after dropping down an elevator, to the left is the door to the area with the vehicle - head there first if you think you can succeed in salvaging it. Careful, though, the vehicle has a very nasty death explosion. Straight ahead is a pillar with a 2X recharger facing you and a recorded message from Osindir on the other side, to the right is an entrance to a very dark room we'll visit later, and further ahead and up some stairs is a pattern buffer. The hallway with the pattern buffer contains a maze with lots of monsters and some rooms to play in. A terminal in the maze proper discusses the discovery and colonization of the "Roman Stars", Romulus and Remus, and their planetary systems starting in the 23rd century. How two stars located a mere 17 light years from Sol could have remained undiscovered is beyond me. Shortly thereafter, the Plyxcos system was discovered a mere light year away. Aggressive colonization proceeded over the course of the next few centuries, with the New Phoenix colony being established on the New Arizona moon in 2552 with the aid of 8 Earth governments and several large corporations. Initially open only for research, it was eventually opened to colonization in the face of protests from the citizens of the sponsoring governments. The research, however, remained highly classified. Hmm, something's fishy here.

The other terminal is located at the end of a ventilation shaft, reached by traversing three rooms in the maze an ascending some stairs. It provides an historical perspective from a somewhat different perspective. This is an interesting approach - I don't recall this ever being done in Marathon. From the second terminal we learn that there are a number of potentially habitable planets and moons in the three star systems, but that only two were capable of supporting life when discovered, but not human life. These were terraformed with only a little effort and became thriving new earths. Hmm, I wonder what happened to the original inhabitants? Continuing:


The Plyxcose system has the least development of the three systems. A colony was finally established by Earth governments. It was on the largest moon of the farthest planet from the star. Not all of the political reasons for spending billions of credits on a colony on the edge of the vast emptiness of space are known. Some, again, speculate alien influence. Others believe military is involved.

The New World of Space is thriving. Several independent nations have arisen, and more are believed to follow. It is estimated that within the next 100 years, ninety percent of the land in The New World of Space will be owned by independent space nations. The vast distance protects the revolutionaries from the mother Earth governments.


Revolutionary governments? Sounds like a setup for multiple plot elements, as we'll see. In any case, after reading these terminals, the player still has to exterminate the rest of the level and find the exit terminal. Remember that large dark room I mentioned previously. The player can certainly jump down there - there is a stairway back up from there, but there are a lot of invisible compilers down there. Better to get them to come up to you, so that you can take them out individually. Off this room is a door to another large, dark, complex area, with lots of monsters to play with. The trick is that the player needs to jump down onto a ledge that is about half way down and find a switch that will open access to the exit terminal. Once the switch has been flipped, the player can jump the rest of the way down and enter the exit room, which has a large platform in the center. At the top of the platform is the exit terminal and opposite it is a narrow teleporter that will return the player to a point from which they can return to the other part of the level.

The exit terminal is not from Osinder - it's from Mece! Mece tells us that all of the colony's AI's are now functional. Hmm - I wonder were the 4th AI could be? In any case, Shaki is busy trying to consolidate his power and Osinder is busy trying to piece everything together and dealing with the data, or lack thereof, from the armored vehicle. But now it's Mece's turn with you, and he has a medical facility he wants you to find for him for what we might gather will not be purely altruistic reasons.

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Replies:

PF Volunteers - Hot PotatoSteve Levinson 7/12/04 4:55 p.m.
     Re: PF Volunteers - Hot PotatoDr. John Sumner 7/13/04 2:38 a.m.
           Re: PF Volunteers - Hot PotatoSteve Levinson 7/13/04 7:34 a.m.

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