: Maybe it was an inspiration for Alex and Jason (or merely a good coincidence)
: when they made the PID pyramid, like Shiguru Miyamoto's exploits around
: the Kyoto wilderness and caves when he made the first Zelda.
: The water caves and religious purpose of the pyramid seem to link with the
: PID Alpha story about the immortality spring deep in caverns which is
: referenced in Marathon 1's Smells like Napalm terminal in one of the
: tunnels.
Pretty sure the fountain of life stuff has more greco-romeric origins and they weren't going to use a pyramid in the yucatan peninsula at first (how would those guys be crossing over to another continent?), and it was probably a follow-up to what they started in Minotaur. It's neat that there's a process of evolution in Bungie's games starting with scrapped ideas that were too similar to their previous game, then a revamp where some of the old influences are still there, but it's a totally new thing (Minotaur -> Pid alpha story -> final PID -> Marathon alpha demo -> final Marathon +M2 and infinity -> Halo alpha story -> final Halo)