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 | Re: The First Marathon Is The Best | |
| Posted By: Yossarian | Date: 3/17/04 2:04 p.m. |
| In Response To: Re: The First Marathon Is The Best (Steve Levinson) : Yes! The lonliness. That's it! Although M2 is my absolute favorite, none of
I think another major factor that is either equal or second to this is the fact that in Marathon, there's nowhere else to go. You basically start with your back to the wall; the ship is infested, unorganized, and you're poorly armed. But unlike M2 where you have the expanse of a planet and different ships, and MI where you have separate realities and times to jump to and from. In M1, we have only the Marathon, and, for a few exciting levels, the Pfhor ship. While on Marathon, there is nowhere to go. Psychologicaly we know that the levels are "closed" and we cannot go beyond the map, but we also know that beyond the level there is only the rest of the spaceship, it is an island if you will. From this, the feeling of claustrophobia we get while playing the game is not only visual as we run through dark halls, but psychological as well. This dual-layer of claustrophobia works to amplify the terror we'd feel aboard the ship. This is the terror of having nowhere to run, understanding the reality that victory is the only path for survival. Take also into consideration that we cannot even control where we are moved within the Marathon, and the feeling of powerlessness is even stronger. When we sojourn to the Pfhor vessel its out of the frying pan and into the fire. The environment is not only closed and strange, but there are two additional factors that, to me, caused a jump on the ol' adrenaline meter: First, the environment is not only hostile, but unfamiliarly hostile; we are given the psychological experience of being in the enemy's own den. This stirs the innate instincts within us for as animals we know that others defend their own territory with as much or more zeal than they attack. We also know/sense/feel that because we are in their territory, we're closer to all of them, they are now more than a shuttle trip away from us, they're all around us and cannot be contained. Second, we are cut off from our own. Even though in M1 the BOBs don't assist, we are cut off from them and have no way of communicating iwth our AI's. In the Pfhor ship we are alone, surrounded, and uninstructed. And that is why I think it is such an affecting game, it gets your whole mind involved, from the amygdala to the cerebellum, it is all engrossing. This is not to say M2 or MI were without these aspects, they were very much present, just different emotions in different combinations, and I think M1 stays especially because it kept this same grating tone throughout the game. In the others the mood could switch not only from level to level but actually within a single level. Consider Charon Doesn't Make Change in M2: you go from the relative comfort of the surface where you can dance with Fl'ickta to the cramped confines of caves dark and filled with baddies. So in conlusion, I'd say M1 was more potent in its effect, even if that effect was more or less monotone, whereas the sequels take you through a series of moodswings within levels and from level to level. making them richer overall but lacking an dominant "feel". Does this make any sense? Yossarian.
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