: Per Hamish’s suggestion I’ll post bits of the story episodically over time,
: so it’s more digestible. However, considering how the storytelling works
: it really is best to look at the big picture when analyzing the story.
Thanks for doing this. Agreed about the big picture. But sometimes the picture is so big few people can see it all. Or in this case read it all.
: Dream levels:
: I’m not going to speculate or analyze the dream levels. I don’t have the
: time, and I don’t believe they should be treated literally or
: diegetically, anyway. I personally think these are just meant to convey a
: certain sense of tone and atmosphere to the players, and are not in fact
: experienced by the main character. I have some justification for this, but
: I really don’t want to get into it.
: I also don’t think there are any direct symbols or allegories happening
: between the dream levels and the rest of the story. But, it doesn't matter
: that much because I'm not going to analyze them.
I remember Grek K writing this on usenet:
A bunch of you guys are on the right track, but I think that you're still not seeing the big picture. What's been going on since M1? What do we all dream about (non-Freudian)? What in a general sense are all stories about? What is life about? What does the Jjarro have to do with all this? What is the connection between dreams and reality? What is the connection between a story and reality? What is the connection between our perception and reality?
Answer these questions and you shall know the truth.
I always thought his comment about "dreams and reality" was meant to infer something within the game.
: The first half of the game is pretty easy to follow along with. The second
: half of the game, however, descends into incomprehensible chaos and
: uncertainty to an unprecedented degree, and let me just say that if this
: is all some sort of “the medium is the message” style of storytelling to
: communicate what it’s like to battle a cosmic being of incomprehensible
: chaos and uncertainty, then WOW, hats off to Greg Kirkpatrick and the
: team. (the second half of the game is not actually incomprehensible, I
: just said that for the fun comparison, but it is very confusing and
: uncertain, that’s for sure)
Grek K had this to say about the later half of the game shortly after it was released:
I thought I'd throw in my opinion here, as one of the primary creators of the Marathon story. I can see why people would think that the Infinity story gets weaker towards the end. Knowing this, I know that as a storyteller I have failed somewhat. But I can also assure you that the end of the story does the difficult trick of actually ending the story(something that we forgot to do in Marathon 1 and 2.), although what happens exactly is subtle.
: So, I might be busy this week, but I’ll try to make the first actual summary
: post soon. Get ready.
Looking forward to it.
Cheers
Hamish
