Marathon (play)

The game takes place in the future, in the year 2794. Humanity begins the colonization of deep space with the help of huge space ships. Seven years ago, one of them, “UESC Marathon”, reached the Tau Ceta solar system and began the colonization of the fourth planet. The colony is flourishing, and the ship after the landing of the colonists began to perform a security function. The protagonist of the game, a nameless colony security officer, witnesses an attack on a colony of an alien race that calls itself Pfhor. As soon as he got into the canoe and miraculously avoided death after the explosion of the shuttle, he returned to the Marathon. The main character begins a long way to free the colony from alien invaders. In this he is assisted by three AI ships of the Marathon, which are responsible for different systems: Leela, Durandal, and Taiho. All three AIs were attacked by an electromagnetic pulse, after which only Leela is operational, which organizes resistance to the invaders.

With the help of Leela, the main character reactivates the ship’s defense systems, which slow down the attack of the aliens. The second AI, Durandal, came into contact with other aliens, C-ft (S'pht), who were slaves of Pvhorov, after which, according to Leela, Durandal became more self-conscious and independent. The main character cuts off Durandal’s access to vital parts of the ship. In response, the "violent" AI opens Pvkhor's access to previously closed areas of the ship. In the end, the main character manages to isolate the aliens on the ship and send a signal to Earth.

Durandal steals the main character, but Leela rescues him and reports that the C-fts have organized an attack on her. Despite all the efforts of the protagonist, the aliens destroy Lila, and control of the ship completely passes into the hands of Durandal. The AI ​​helps the main character set up Marathon teleports for teleporting to the main ship of Pfkhorov. On it, the main character destroys a cybernetic device that controls the actions of C-fts. After that, the C-fts rebel against Pfkhorov. The main character returns to "Marathon".

Durandal reports that he is going to seize the ship Pfkhorov. He also reports that Leela was not completely destroyed, and the freed C-fts no longer attack her. He reactivates Lila and leaves the solar system on an alien ship. The main character together with Leela finish off the remnants of foreign invaders.

Multiplayer game supported team or normal deathmatch . Up to eight people could connect to the game via a local area network . Multiplayer mode was one of the distinguishing features of Marathon, thanks to which the game in 1995 received the award Macworld Game Hall of Fame. ^[one]

Before the acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft in 2000, the authors of the game laid out the source code for Marathon 2: Durandal in open access. This code became the basis for the port of Aleph One, which after several years of development began to support all the games of the trilogy.

In 2005, Bungie studio gave permission to publish a trilogy for free distribution, ^[2] thanks to which it became possible to launch the trilogy games on modern platforms ( Mac OS X , Linux and Windows ).

• Marathon on Bungie.net
• The Trilogy Release
• Marathon Open Source Project