Before reading or posting to the Trojan Volunteers Series, please do everyone a favor. Download the scenario if you haven't done so before and read the manual! This will save everyone a lot of trouble. In order to appreciate the Trojan story, you need to know a bit about the backstory. I'll not repeat it all here other than to note that Trojan takes place in the distant future, long after the fall of the Pfhor empire, at a time when large corporations rule the known universe. The UESC is long-gone, left in the dust by the massive deployment of FTL technology by corporate interests. Are we the same Mark IV Mjolnir cyborg of old? Who knows, but we are now in the employ of CyberCorp, a giant galactic entity with its own interests at heart. So much for truth and justice, right and wrong and black and white. And as is often the case when selfish interests prevail, everything is not as it seems.
Trojan was truly the first total conversion for Marathon, and it was a conversion of the M1 engine, coming out seemingly impossibly soon after the original release of Marathon. Keep in mind, this was before any real mapmaking tools existed, making the feat even more incredible. In Trojan we will have all new weapons - even the fist is replaced by a knife - all new textures and all new monsters. I'm not sure of the names of all the monsters, but I'll try to use the names used in the Spoiler Guide when appropriate. Speaking of which, there will be no walk-throughs in this Volunteers Series. If you need help, read the excellent spoiler guide that is bundled with the scenario. We will, however, cover secrets that aren't discussed in the spoiler guide and we'll note differences between the versions of Trojan - the M1 Mac version, the M2 Windows version and the unofficial AO version.
In Prelude, we arrive at a small planetoid known as Troy 465, home of one of CyberCorp's space colonies. We are responding to a distress call and are immediately attacked. This small level is really just a chance to pick up ammo. The first thing you will notice if playing the AO version is a strange tubular specimen container in the floor right in front of you - an obviouls bug. There are red siren lights in the M1 version that are absent in AO (not sure about M2) and I suspect that this may be the problem - substitution of one object with the wrong one. In any case, you can hear what will soon be the familar sounds of the enemy, but you cannot see them on this level. Doors here open as you approach them. Another AO glitch - one of the other marines onboard invariably gets caught in a door and crushed. Oh well . . .
When we transport down to the surface, we're immediately struck by something different - a landscape. Remember, M1 took place entirely in space. If you play M1A1 you can now experience an alpha version of the original Marathon that plays like PiD and has an open landscape and sky, but we never encountered anything like it in the original M1. The sky on Troy 465 is deep red and we can see some space ships in the distance. Here to greet us besides some fellow marines (remember that bobs in M1 were passive, so this is another innovation) are a couple of strange new aliens. Let's state it up front - the aliens in Trojan are pretty basic and cartoonish. They aren't nearly as sophisticated as even the M1 Pfhor, but the fact that they're all new is still quite an accomplishment. We also note the presense of music - all original music with a bit more percussion than in M1 and somewhat simpler, but with an amazing soundstage. When you play, turn up the volume and connect your Mac to some good stereo speakers and note just how precise the stereo imaging really is, with sounds originating well beyond the placement of your speakers. I don't know what software the Trojan team used to creater their MIDI soundtrack, but it's impressive.
Our first aliens are stripped creatures (as will be the case with most of the aliens) - brown and blue - that seemingly correspond to regular and projectile fighters in M1. There are no visible weapons - they seem to fire directly from their right hands - that's right, they're all right-handed, and they only have a right eye. Pretty clownish looking if you ask me. There will also be some passive bobs - every bit as annoying as the originals, but with a more logical vocabulary: "You gotta get me out of here - they're going to kill me!" To me they seem to have a Brittish accent. Once you get inside the colony you'll also find some other flavors of aliens - a white or grey variant that packs a greater punch and some floating blue and grey variants that fire a weapon that reminds me of the Pfhor hunters. I swear that some of these seem guided, but perhaps that's my imagination. And finally there is a monster that looks like a headless chicken with a mouth that looks like, well, a part of the female anatomy. These are the only ones so far that are not stripped, and they fire a rather lethal goop, but they're easy to kill - only a couple of shots of the magnum on TC. The other monsters are particularly susceptable to the knife and can all be stand-punched, or rather stand-knifed, making it easy to conserve ammo. Oh, and there is one more enemy here, exploding "Boomers" as they're called in the spoiler guide. These are similar to the original lookers, but small, floating and amorphous. They float just below your line of fire, so you need to aim slightly down. These in every way work like Rubicon's PCM's and I would bet they served as the model for the latter.
Arrival is little more than a find switch - hit switch - find new opening level. Eventually you will find a terminal that takes you to your next mission.
