: In M2, you are personally liberating an entire alien species from a thousand
: years of slavery, in the process beginning the downfall of a millennia-old
: galactic Evil Empire, all the while searching for the secrets of a
: long-vanished mysterious godlike race in an attempt to escape the closure
: of the universe itself. The implications of the events of that plotline
: are HUGE. It's less personal and less philosophical than M1 was, but it's
: a much 'bigger' story if you get what I mean.
In M2, the attraction for me has been the oddly believable Alien races- which is strange, becuase I believe quite strongly that trying to 'explore' an Alien culture is futile since it simply makes things cliched, or too human (read, Halo 2- oh god...). However, what's amasing about Marathon 2, specificaly, is that despite the very detailed level with which the Alien cultures are explored, we never get the sense that their cliched.
The Pfhor, for all their nastiness, do not seem like a cookie cutter "evil empire" or what not. They're a high civilization, characterised by very complex socail systems, technologies and so forth of which we never see! We only get a very cursouary examination of what killing their soldiers is like- and so, in a way, we can only assume what its like to be a Pfhor magistrate on some foreign planet, or too live as an aristocrat on their capital. My point is, we only see- and only then on glimpse really- their military side, but that gives us no reason to assume their a totaly militarist culture.
With the S'pht, we have the beautiful and melencholy tragedy of their civilisation, highly advanced, but strangely confined to only their own world- looking inwards instead of outwards (very Chinese actaully). Indeed, with the S'pht one gets the impression that in their philopshy on believes lives something very worth examining- very ancient and very intersting. Quite similiar to Greek or Chinese philosophy. Considering, in fact, that all of Marathon 2 never leaves the S'pht system, it actaully seems rather confined- very small. Totaly indiviudalistic. But then, with the rebellion going on in the background, and the Pfhor juggernaught's slow movements of retalitation, we find the 'larger' story, at work. Yet, we never see it. It's only at the fringes of our view. I think in the Volunteer's posts, M2 was described as "archeological" and think thats exactly the idea. We are reliving a past, a beautiful, fascinating past, in the present. We can feel it around us in the game. The levels in the Tower of Antiquity or the Bunkers are particularly haunting, for this reason. And why, as an (arguably) normal soldier cast into this enviroment, should we care? Why should it matter to us- and yet, somehow, it does.
