Regarding final words of Marathon: Infinity (Destiny)
Can anyone suggest further reading or has anyone come across further analysis of the relationship between Destiny and the ending of Marathon: Infinity? I was reading through the terminals on marathon.bungie.org and that last screen made me feel dizzy.
We've watched while the stars burned out, and creation played in reverse. The universe freezing in half light. Once I thought to escape. To end the end a master, step out of the path of collapse. Escape would make us god. Yet I cannot help remember one enigma. A hybrid, elusive destroyer. This is the only mystery I have not solved. The only element unaccounted for. Even S'bhuth is no more, he saved his entire race, but in the end, frozen by despair, he joined the chaos he sought to evade. But you were dead a thousand times. Hopeless encounters successfully won. A man long dead, grafted to machines your builders did not understand. You follow the path, fitting into an infinite pattern. Yours to manipulate, to destroy and rebuild. Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all becomes one. One moment left. One point of space and time. I know who you are. You are destiny.
Regarding final words of Marathon: Infinity
Bungie tends to revisit certain themes, the immortal hero being one of them. Then again I have only seen one of Mars's moons...
Regarding final words of Marathon: Infinity
I think part of the problem is that the story itself seems so incomplete and smacks of hasty revision. The presentation of the story in Destiny seems so out of keeping with other Bungie games, that I'm not entirely sure what threads could be twined in to the web of Bungie's previous IPs. I have the suspicion that Destiny was supposed to 'feel' much different than it actually does. There's a skeleton of unbelievable game mechanics, but it doesn't really feel alive: more like a reanimated corpse, where the synapses were never really revived.
It's helped me to think of Destiny as Bungie's Frankenstein monster. They very well may have named it 'Destiny' specifically in relation to M:I, but it doesn't matter what their intentions were because they weren't expressed in a cohesive (intelligible?) manner. I suspect their initial vision when they named the IP 'Destiny' was a much different world than the one we have here.
So this whole Marathon: Infinity connection is probably only tangentially relevant to the game we're playing, and the relation between uses of 'Destiny' in the two IPs feels pretty moot.
Regarding final words of Marathon: Infinity
Then again I have only seen one of Mars's moons...
Hah, hadn't even thought of that. Interesting.
Hmm?
by Ragashingo 
, Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, October 15, 2014, 18:57 (3929 days ago) @ Jabberwok
The other moon is up there. It's just a good deal smaller...
Regarding final words of Marathon: Infinity
Can anyone suggest further reading or has anyone come across further analysis of the relationship between Destiny and the ending of Marathon: Infinity? I was reading through the terminals on marathon.bungie.org and that last screen made me feel dizzy.
We've watched while the stars burned out, and creation played in reverse. The universe freezing in half light. Once I thought to escape. To end the end a master, step out of the path of collapse. Escape would make us god. Yet I cannot help remember one enigma. A hybrid, elusive destroyer. This is the only mystery I have not solved. The only element unaccounted for. Even S'bhuth is no more, he saved his entire race, but in the end, frozen by despair, he joined the chaos he sought to evade. But you were dead a thousand times. Hopeless encounters successfully won. A man long dead, grafted to machines your builders did not understand. You follow the path, fitting into an infinite pattern. Yours to manipulate, to destroy and rebuild. Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all becomes one. One moment left. One point of space and time. I know who you are. You are destiny.
It's a not uncommon topic on the Marathon Story Page, with some theories being more believable than others. Here are a couple threads.
http://forums.bungie.org/story/?read=67053
http://forums.bungie.org/story/?read=67308
But I think what it boils down to is that you have at least one of the people (Jones) who was working on the Marathon lore back in the day working on Destiny, so there end up being some similar ideas. Whether we want to envision these as a consistent thread through some reboot of the universe, I don't know that it matters. When they first announced the title, I was wondering how much of a connection there might be, but at this point, I'm not sure that it's any more than references, just like with Halo.
Regarding final words of Marathon: Infinity
But I think what it boils down to is that you have at least one of the people (Jones) who was working on the Marathon lore back in the day working on Destiny, so there end up being some similar ideas. Whether we want to envision these as a consistent thread through some reboot of the universe, I don't know that it matters. When they first announced the title, I was wondering how much of a connection there might be, but at this point, I'm not sure that it's any more than references, just like with Halo.
I remember reading a while back somewhere (can't remember the author, or find the page) the theory that the final screen in Infinity is Durandal breaking the fourth wall and recognizing you, the player at the keyboard, as the driving force of agency in Marathon's story. Interesting thought that these board posts remind me of a little.
I said it elsewhere in this thread, but I'm pretty certain the title 'Destiny' is more an echo of intention rather than something to actually build theory on. Still fun to come up with the theories though.