Comparisons between Marathon, Pathways into Darkness & System Shock

[Dark Redshift]

A couple of years ago I made a comparison list of stuff in both System Shock games to Marathon. The first game is more a coincidence as it was made around the same time as Marathon but System Shock 2 not so much especially after seeing other similarities in Bioshock Infinite of all games. Calling it now: Ken Levine is a Marathon fan and put references to it in his games as a way of drawing attention to it.

System Shock 1 Marathon & PID comparisons:

1. GUI and movement controls (PID)

2. Time limit (optional) to complete the game (PID)

3. Non-linear levels with separate exits we have to use to go back and forth between (PID)

4. Newest version of the game removes point & click based movement option (PID Aleph One)

5. Rampant AI with ambitions of godhood (Marathon)

6. Cyborg protagonist (Marathon)

7. Text terminals telling the story in the floppy disk version & Enhanced Edition (Marathon)

8. All NPCs are dead and we have to piece together what happened to them all (PID)

9. Status Screen for player progression (PID)

10. Cyberspace minigame accessed via special terminals (cut from Marathon)

11. Pattern Buffers (Marathon, technically PID as well if we assume save runes work the same way)

12. Attempts to give areas in the game an in-universe purpose (Marathon, VERY limited compared to System Shock)

13. We have to play levels in the opposite vertical location to where we need to go first. (PID)

14. Small, floor level enemies that hide just around corners, sneak up on us and explode (Marathon)

15. Invisible enemies who are tough to kill (PID, unless you also count camo S’pht on Total Carnage)

16. Lightsabre weapon (Marathon Eternal)

17. Acrobatics are required in an empty storage or industrial area (Marathon)

18. Switch puzzle in a hanger bay (Marathon)

19. Limited jetpack feature (Marathon’s flamethrower)

20. Low gravity areas (Marathon, very limited in System Shock)

21. Multi step puzzles that may or may not require specific items (PID)

22. Radiation mechanic (PID’s gemstone & Marathon’s major ouch sectors for pfhor jelly)

23. Stock sound effects (Both PID & Marathon have a lot such as elevators and projectile sounds, System shock has Koopa’s roar in virus mutants as far as I know)

24. Night vision googles (Both again. Marathon has the VISR chip)

25. A mission objective where we must replace broken circuit boards (Marathon)

26. A mission objective that involves satellite dishes (Marathon)

27. A late game puzzle that requires we remember or write down a code we use in the lowest level of the game to set off a nuclear explosion and ascend to escape (PID)

28. A level where we navigate our way up a central shaft via side rooms in order to make it to the centre then the level exit. (Marathon)

29. Silver grey metallic biological growth inspired by Alien & Aliens that pulsates (Marathon)

30. A special late game item that is required to open the final door in the game before you can win it (PID)

31. ♥♥♥♥♥♥, anticlimactic final boss fights (Both)

32. Final stats screen with a scoring system (PID)

33. Jokes and memes in the credits (Marathon)

34. CD quality music that shipped with a specific version of the game that you can only listen to at all today thanks to piracy (Marathon, though as the original trilogy is freeware by Bungie’s blessing, anything else on the CDs containing Bungie’s IP is fair game)

System Shock 2:

1. GUI and controls (PID & PID Aleph One)

2. Non-linear levels with different exits we have to use to go back & forth between (PID)

3. Rampant AI with ambitions of godhood (Marathon)

4. Earth’s governments go to war with another power who’s actions at another planet in the Sol system killed a lot of people (Marathon)

5. Cyborg protagonist (Marathon)

6. Sensory deprivation tanks (Marathon)

7. A colony ship travels to the Tau Ceti star system on its maiden voyage (Marathon)

8. A corrupt, high ranking crewmember smuggles dangerous cyborgs onto the ship with intent to cause a mutiny and take over the colony (Marathon)

9. The rampant AI calls another party to Tau Ceti, triggering an alien invasion (Marathon)

10. Text terminals at the start of the game and subtitles for audio logs (Marathon, SS2’s text terminals are gameplay tips only and eventually stop appearing)

11. The ability to examine all items we can pick up to learn more about them (PID)

12. We are encouraged to collect alien artefacts for research so as to learn about the aliens and the secrets of the universe. (PID, we actually do the research ourselves in System Shock 2)

13. Status screens for player progression (PID, SS2 now includes an objectives tracker and records terminal text you read as Help menu items)

14. Is an FPS RPG with weapon skills, experience points and money (PID, SS2 is a traditional Ultima, Skyrim or Dark Souls style RPG while PID is more like a first person JRPG and unlike PID, money is actually used)

15. Pattern buffers (Marathon, technically PID as well if we assume save runes work the same way)

16. Psychokinesis powers emitted by an object we hold in our hand and are related in some way to the bad guys (PID)

17. All human NPCs are dead or die when we meet them and we have to piece together what happened to them all (PID)

18. An item that makes us faster (PID, also in System Shock 1 where it behaves just like PID’s one but I forgot to list it)

19. A formally friendly AI that gets compromised and taken over by the bad guys (Marathon)

20. Radiation mechanic (PID’s gemstone & Marathon’s major ouch sectors for Pfhor jelly)

21. Poison mechanic that does not wear off on its own, requiring a specific antidote (PID)

22. Hazards on the floor that damage you when you walk over them or otherwise get too close (PID)

23. Powerups in the form of cybernetic implants (Marathon)

24. Defence robots and/or turrets which go berserk and fight against us (Marathon)

25. Dangerous areas the crew have no choice but to pass through (Marathon’s lava rivers and Galaxy Quest hallways & lifts, SS2’s coolant tubes)

26. Seemingly friendly NPCs who run up to us and explode (Marathon)

27. Characters who end up joining the chaos they sought to evade, willingly or otherwise (Marathon)

28. A mission where we have to recover and install a replacement circuit board (Marathon, reused from SS1)

29. We have to play levels in the opposite vertical location to where we need to go first (PID)

30. Lightsabre weapon (Marathon Eternal)

31. Captured crewmembers forcibly turned into cyborgs and made to serve the aliens against their will (Marathon)

32. The aliens reproduce using eggs (Marathon, though we never see actual Pfhor eggs: the ones in-game are actually pupae according to the devs)

33. A mission where we have to use certain machines or terminals to prevent or at least slow the spread of an intrusive entity throughout the ship (Marathon)

34. A grenade launcher weapon with several different types of grenades, one with lower splash damage but a bigger boom (PID)

35. Alternate ammo types (PID, reused from SS1)

36. Alternate fire modes (Marathon)

37. Venomous spider enemies (PID)

38. Invisible monsters (Both)

39. We end up working for the rampant AI if we have any hope of saving the ship (Marathon)

40. We’re encouraged by our AI boss to get a certain item to help us fight the aliens (Marathon. Durandal has us get a device that presumably lets us interface with Pfhor pattern buffers & health/shield stations. SS2 has us get exotic weapons)

41. We can find and use alien weapons though we don’t fully understand how they work (Marathon, but we research said weapons in SS2)

42. Flying swarm enemies who can’t be killed and must be dealt with another way (PID)

43. Incredibly annoying wasps (Marathon)

44. A very basic target range (Marathon)

45. A nuclear fusion based weapon (Marathon)

46. A mission that revolves around setting up and activating a satellite dish to send a warning message to Earth (Marathon)

47. A mission that requires us find and/or remember a code to allow us to complete a major goal (PID, reused from the first game)

48. The Von Braun logo looks like the Marathon one tilted on its side with the shaft in the bottom centre filled in.

49. Large hulking monsters that seem to be nothing but muscle (Marathon)

50. A secret that requires we combine a certain thing at the very start of the game with a similar thing in the late game (Marathon, except unlocking Hats Off to Eight Nineteen is a lot more involved than playing basketball as is the reward of said multiplayer map)

51. A third party causes the main antagonist’s slaves to rebel against them (Marathon. Remember on level 5 in the aforementioned secret, the monkeys said they were the ones who turned the Many against SHODAN)

52. The aliens plan to invade and take over Earth once the colony ship is dealt with (Marathon)

53. Floating aquatic looking enemies who shoot ball lightning and come with even stronger variants (PID)

54. A level that takes place on the bridge of the colony ship (Marathon Eternal and Marathon Redux)

55. A level and/or section of a level taking place in a shuttle bay (Marathon)

56. A mission where we must kill every example of a given enemy before we are allowed to leave (Marathon)

57. Confusing as hell level design that does not make the ship look like anyone could comfortably live or work there (Marathon, SS2 has the design of the Rickenbacker or at least what we see of it)

58. A level where we go outside the ship into total vacuum and have to deal with lower gravity (Marathon, cut from System Shock 2)

59. Hostile characters that really make us think about the human condition and how violent & self-destructive we are as a species (Marathon)

60. A puzzle where we must use lifts or objects on lifts to make a staircase to the exit (Marathon)

61. Levels with lower gravity (Marathon. System Shock 2 has the Rickenbacker level 2 with the gravity reversed yet still feeling lighter)

62. A working radar screen on the bridge of one of the ships (Marathon Eternal & Marathon Redux)

63. A level where we are sent into the enemy’s source to kill their centralised controller (Marathon)

64. A level inside a fleshy nightmare full of infected monsters and sphincter doors, where we are antagonised by a major villain serving as the monsters’ brain before blowing the place up. (Halo 3 …Just a minute! THAT’S CHEATING!)

65. An alien entity in the game has an oesophagus that terminates in a womb instead of a stomach (Marathon)

66. The rampant AI we are working for wants to exploit technology that folds time & space and rewrites reality and/or opens holes to new ones (Marathon)

67. The main antagonist corrupts reality into their image, intending to consume it all and take over what’s left (Marathon Infinity)

68. A final level (or levels) that’s a corrupted remake of the previous games’ inside Null Space (Marathon Infinity Vidmaster challenge)

69. The final boss is a tall AI based woman with wires for hair and powerful attacks (Marathon Eternal new versions)

70. The protagonist is not really a silent protagonist but we never hear him speak outside very specific circumstances (PID & Marathon)

71. The ending sucks balls and ends on a cliffhanger that was never resolved, preferring instead to focus on spiritual successors with the potential brand new game in the series running into serious hot water. (Marathon. System Shock 3 went to Tencent & is rumoured to have been cancelled and Marathon’s teased new game is a Void Bastards or Destiny clone with none of the soul)

72. Jokes and memes in the credits (Marathon)

73. A mod was made to carry on the story, including time travel & timeline hopping and shares its name with an official game in a rival series. (Marathon. Marathon has Marathon Eternal/Doom Eternal, System Shock has System Shock Infinite/Bioshock Infinite)

I never expected the list for System Shock 2 to be this big. It puts even the System Shock 1 Marathon Comparison List to shame. Across both games that’s a grant total of a whopping 107 similarities between them all, and only slightly less if we subtract duplicates appearing in both games.

[Dark Redshift]

Part 2 due to post length

As mentioned before even Bioshock Infinite has some comparisons to Marathon Infinity among other parts of Marathon. Let's run down that list too.

Here’s a list of comparisons to Marathon Infinity and/or other games or mods in the series I saw in Bioshock Infinite:

1. They share the same title, Infinite being another form of the word Infinity

2. Both games feature time travel/timeline hopping as major plot points

3. Parts of Infinite’s story is told through literal analogues to terminals in the form of Voxophones (record player audio logs instead of tape recorder or CD player ones from the other Shock games) and Kinetoscopes (silent movies based on a real form of very early television set). Marathon 2 & Marathon Infinity were going to add video terminals but they were cut, though the code remains in the game unused. Similar case for security camera terminals like Duke Nukem 3D & System Shock 1, which in Bioshock Infinite take the form of telescopes.

4. We have nightmarish dreams at certain points with cryptic hints to our past (implied in Marathon, definitely the case in Bioshock), some of which reveal an apocalypse we get to witness later. In Marathon Infinity, we witness this apocalypse first and can see it again in a different timeline via the secret levels.

5. We time travel sideways in time (technically diagonally in Marathon’s case) to see a total of 3 alternate timelines, looking for a solution that can stop the main antagonist who wants to turn the world into firewood to burn. In our original timeline, these events didn’t exist due to being stopped at the source.

6. The main antagonist is at war with another faction rebelling against him but the latter side have grown too heavy handed in their methods and wind up a different shade of evil even if a lesser one as a result, similar to the US & UK responses to the War on Terror (Marathon Eternal, which in that particular game was a plot point I missed completely until I read about it years after I first played in 2013)

7. We are forced to help an antagonistic character (but not the main one) take over from their masters which spans at least 2 timelines before they turn on us.

8. We are aided by similarly time travelling entities whose “advice” solely consists of being cryptic and annoying the player character (not necessarily us as well in Bioshock’s case)

9. Some enemies are heavy hitting cyborgs turned against their will and forced to serve the bad guys as combat slaves. Marathon has the stalker tanks, Bioshock has firemen and handymen

10. Some enemies are robotic defence drones & turrets used by the bad guys. Marathon 2 had a level where we turn the drones to our side using a computer virus though that isn’t in Marathon Infinity, Bioshock Infinite lets us “hack” turrets, flying turrets and motorised patriot robots using the Possession plasmid.

11. The main antagonist plans to destroy the world using his power and technology. At one point, we are taken to the future and see he has succeeded, everything we know and love is being consumed by almighty idiots. In Marathon Infinity, this happens 4 times, once per timeline except the final one. The only way to stop him is to go back to his source and erase the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ from existence (sound familiar?). In Marathon Infinity, we do this by trapping the W’rkncacnter in a black hole using the same terraforming station the Jjaro Yrro used thousands of years before, before it can escape via the sun it’s currently trapped inside being forced into supernova. In Bioshock Infinite, we commit assisted suicide at a key point in our past because the antagonist is an evil version of us.

12. The main antagonist’s actions drive people in the bad future insane by the time we get there. In Marathon Infinity, it’s at least 2 major characters and we only read their last words in terminals. In Bioshock Infinite, the only insane main character is lucid by the time we meet her and is trying to undo what she did, being the reason we’re in the future (and alive at that point in the game) in the first place. The rest of the insane ones are regular mooks and we have to fight them at several points, especially if the children turned into insane living security cameras spot us.

13. An item we find in a failed timeline (or rather another time period in that same timeline) is required in the present to help a major character find the solution to a major enemy. In Marathon, it’s saving Durandal’s primal pattern/memory chip when we are forced to kill him by Tycho, saving his life which we install into Thoth in the successful timelime/future of the current one so they can merge and find out how to stop the W’rkncacnter in the present. In Bioshock, it’s an old Elizabeth in the bad future giving us the notes CAGE for the whistler organ statues to summon and control the Big Daddy Songbird so we can give it to Elizabeth, allowing us both to use Songbird to destroy a syphon machine, unlocking Elizabeth’s full powers.

14. An existential ending taking place in a singularity where our partner character muses on the concept of fate, our role in all the events leading up to now and ending with us finding out a massive revelation about ourselves. In Marathon Infinity, the ending is ♥♥♥♥ because it’s still technically a cliffhanger that was never resolved, despite the ending taking place at the Big Crunch. In Bioshock Infinite, the ending is better because we survive our fate and wake up in a new timeline where we likely earned our happy ending, with our daughter now free to explore the universe and all alternate ones with her powers and even escape it. There’s apparently a sequel in the works too but unlike Marathon it just might be good. Let’s just pretend the DLC Burial at Sea never happened because Episode 2 is a difficult, bleak, plot hole infested fatberg clogging up the Bioshock pipes.

15. The hardest difficulty level is super unforgiving, requiring intimate knowledge of the levels and mechanics to survive and at times it stops being fun. (vacuum levels, Hang Brain, Aye Mak Sicur & Vidmaster Challenge in Marathon Infinity and the System Shock 2 style money requirement for revival on death, expensive items in vending machines, harder combat and the potential to screw yourself out of any revives at all in the final fight in Bioshock Infinite)

That makes 122 similarities to Marathon and PID across the Shock series as a whole not counting duplicates. At the end of Bioshock Infinite, Anna Dewitt says “there’s always a man, always a lighthouse, always a city” setting up the story formula for Bioshock as a whole while also pointing out the idea of constants and variables, but it could also refer to potentially entirely new universes in other games that just happen to have those constants.

For example, Space Colony Citadel in System Shock 1 could be seen as both a lighthouse and a city. Ken Levine thought so too at it was going to appear in Infinite but in the final game, it’s unused and can be found floating out of bounds in one of the levels. Tau Ceti V could be a lighthouse for System Shock 2 except the city that is the Von Braun crashed on the rocks, which would be the Many.

In Marathon, the lighthouse could be either the Earth W’rkncacnter’s pyramid or Jjaro technology found on Mars and its moons (especially if we count Doom as a stealth Marathon prequel like I do) and the city could be either the Marathon itself and even the ruined cities left behind by the S’pht on Lh’owon. We could also count the Pfhor cites in Eternal & Rubicon and maybe even the Jjaro Shield World too. Naturally, the protagonists of all those games are men.

The possibilities of potential crossovers have fuelled fanfics between all the games, such as Goggles and the Tears I linked above and the mod System Shock Infinite which was referenced in Episode 4 and used as an example in the comparison lists here. Will we even get new mods across all the games that combine them all to the same extent as System Shock Infinite? Maybe even a Super Smash Brothers style multiplayer crossover that plays like an Xbox Unreal Championship or 2007 era build Team Fortress 2 clone? The only thing we have for that last one so far is the Doom mod Quake Champions: Doom Edition where Marcus Jones and Durandal are playable characters. It seems to be limited mostly regular FPS games only though.

[cookedbread]

Why are you including fan scenarios

[Dark Redshift]

Originally posted by cookedbread:

Why are you including fan scenarios

Only about 2 or 3 examples as i still noticed them so they should count. The non fan stuff list is bigger though.

Only fan things mentioned are the lightsabres, ship bridge & its radar in Eternal and the existence of both Eternal & System Shock Infinite. The Halo 3 Cortana level example for Body of the Many is more a joke than anything as Marathon doesn't have something like that.