: Oh, I understood mostly about the arbitory(sp?) bits of storyline, just not
: what was going on in the storyline I was fulfilling.
: Thanks for your links, I'll go read them now. :)
: ~Alex
You've definitely come to the right place! It can be a bit intimidating to try to wade through all the endless discussions on the smallest of details of the story of the Marathon trilogy, but there is more collective wisdom here than you'll find anyplace else. I assume you got here via the Story Page itself but, if not, click on my link or on the S'Pht glyph at the top of the page to be taken there. If you scroll down the left-hand frame, you'll find not only links to all the terminals in the trilogy, but to discussions on almost any topic of interest.
Callie21V's suggestion to read through the Volunteers Series on the original trilogy is an excellent one. The discussions that took place there cleared up a lot of the details for me, and even inspired me to go on and lead volunteers series for a number of the 3rd party scenarios that are out there. Which reminds me, I need to get back to the series on Trojan, which has been on hiatus due to my recent move to Detroit.
In any case, in a nutshell the single most important thing to realize about the story of Infinity is that it is not a sequel to M2. The events of Infinity are the result of a breakdown in space and time and we end up shuttling among a series of alternate realities of the events in M2. This occurs because at the end of M2, the Pfhor in a last-ditch attempt to save face release the ultimate doomsday weapon, the trih xeem, which causes Lh'owon's sun to go into an early nova. What the Pfhor don't realize is that trapped within Lh'owon's sun are the W'rkncacnter, beings that live in chaos. Releasing the W'rkncacnter in ordered space results in chaos and the destruction of the universe as we know it. But we are not mere mortals and as a cybernetic being with Jjaro implants, we are able to use the chaos to go back in time and to attempt to save the universe through the exploration of alternate time lines. This is what makes Infinity seem so crazy - one minute we're helping Durandal, and the next we're helping Tycho - but it's all because we're trying different strategies to ultimately prevent the release of the W'rkncacnter and, hence, to save the Universe. We start Infinity on an ancient, abandoned Jjaro space station, and we finish there. It is only after we merge Durandal's core program with the ancient S'Pht (or possibly Jjaro) AI construct named Thoth that we are able to find the one solution - to use the station's power to contain the nova event and prevent the release of the W'rkncacnter. That in a nutshell is what happens in Infinity.
BTW, Infinity with AO SDL on the PC can play as well as it does on the Mac if everything is set up right. People here know that I'm a Mac fanatic, but I am forced to use PC's at work and am comfortable using them. If you have a decent PC with an adequate graphics card and have the preferences in the SDL version of AO set up properly, Infinity works fine. There are quite a few quirks, however, and some of the PC folks on the forum can help you out if you explain what makes Infinity play like crap on your PC. Also, be sure to download the high-res textures for the Marathon trilogy - they won't make Marathon feel like a modern game, but they bring it a lot closer.
