I just feel like I have to say this in here. I feel like the Marathon community should know. Sorry if it annoys anyone, I know Halo isn't generally looked upon a good topic to discuss in here... but this might be an exception.
Marathon is what made me a Bungie fan back in early 1995. There wasn't much of a community back then, at least none that I was aware of. I had a Mac at work, and a co-worker installed Marathon for me and a few other folks who had Macs. We invested in some serial numbers so we could kill each other every night over the LAN, but I was one of the few who got swept away in the single player game. In all my years of gaming, I'd never seen anything like the writing in the terminals. I thought it was genius. So rich, so much depth, so many layers. You know what I'm talking about.
The only reason I was ever interested in Halo was because of Marathon. While I was initially disappointed when I realized that Halo was not going to offer anything even remotely deep or satisfying as Marathon in terms of story, hey, that was OK. In my opinion, Halo's combat gameplay and level design left Marathon's far behind, so it was sort of an even trade. Marathon had more brains, Halo had more brawn. I was able to accept that.
OK, now I'll get to the point. Last night, I finally succeeded in finding all of the terminals in Halo 3. I had assumed they were just going to be a fluffy bit of fan service and not add anything substantial. But after reading all of them and mulling them over and putting the pieces together, I have to say, it really added a lot to the story. To the whole trilogy, to the whole concept in general. Obviously throwing a few teriminals into the final game in the trilogy doesn't suddenly put it on the same level as Marathon. But it really does put the whole thing in a new light. Very cool revelations.
*spoilers*
Turns out the whole friggin' thing can be traced back to a 100,000 year old rampant A.I. that betrayed the Forerunner during their original war against the Flood. It was this A.I. that planted the seed ideas in the race that eventually became the Prophets that led to their religion whereby "the gods" demanded that humanity be destroyed, and formed the Covenant to achieve that.
The Forerunners were not the first, and they didn't create the Halos. They inherited them from... the Precursors?!?! Nice to finally understand what the Hell Cortana was talking about when she mentioned that some of the structures on Halo were newer, built on top of older ones. Anyway, the Precursors bequeathed the Halo array and the "Mantle" of galaxy guardianship to the Forerunner, and the Forerunner bequeathed them to humanity. Were they also bequeathed to the Precursors? Is the galaxy old enough for that?
As a Marathon fan of almost 13 years who has always enjoyed Halo, I just wanted to share with you guys.
