🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <450oss$7...@falcon.ns.net>, dme...@ns.net (David Mellenthin) writes:
> DSKe...@UMich.edu (Dennis Keeler) wrote:
>>   A lot of people don't seem to care, but I can name one place that
>>Marathon beats DOOM and DF hands down: story line. The story line of
>>Marathon is complex, well-written, and verbose. DOOM doesn't seem to have
>>any story, besides a little bit of text in the manual that seems to be
>>written by a sixth grader. DF is better than that, but the only text that

> I have to disagree with you.  After having played, and finished,
> Marathon, I feel like the plot of the game was much more similar to
> DOOM than people are willing to admit.  I will concede that the
> background behind the story (the AI's, etc.) made for an interesting
> premise, but the ultimate goal of each level was to make it to a
> transporter.  Plain and simple.  No oher goals.  In this case,
[cut]
> Now, in DF, almost each and every level had some sort of basic goal,
> restart the hydro station here, obliterate General Mohc there, etc.

I'm surprised that you've finished Marathon yet still feel this way.  In
Marathon there were a lot of things you needed to get completed in order to get
off of the level.  Nothing too complex, but in one of the alien ship things,
you had to observe as much as possible before getting transported, which deals
with how much of the map is discovered, I assume.  Also, in The Rose, you had
to save as many humans as possible before Leela would transport you away.  In
the end, Marathon is a game full of violence and shooting up monsters, but it's
a lot more complex than you're admitting.  The engine also allows for this --
in the well-designed (despite all the typos in the terminals) adventure up on
AMUG (I can't remember the name, actually), there are several things you have
to repair before you can get to the final level, where you have to save as many
humans as possible or suffer "CODE 57", in which the ship blows up (and you
lose).  That's a pretty difficult goal to accomplish, and it's acheivable
through the use of a good engine like Marathon's.  Marathon 2 looks like it
will be even better with a rampant AI teleporting you all over the place to do
his bidding on the planet's surface.  I just wish you could do what you really
wanted to do (and not complete all necessary requirements before moving on) so
that if you don't do something when you should, you have to go back and fix it,
or you can't fix it at all (sort of like an Infocom game with lots of violence
and incredible graphics).  Later,
-Chris Carman
-carm...@muohio.edu
-http://www.muohio.edu/~carmance