Bungie appears to have extensively plagiarized an artist's work in their extraction shooter "Marathon" according to this Bluesky post
BILLAIN (@billain.bsky.social)
Bungie has issued an official statement, they are throwing an artist under the bus and pledging to make it right with the original artist.
This is a developing story.
Why did they have to copy anything?!
BUNGIE LITERALLY ALREADY MADE MARATHON
This new game has essentially no relation besides name and logo to the old Marathon games. Sadly, because the old ones were the shit.
How dare you.
I loved the Marathon games. They were better than Doom!
Edit; My bad, I thought you said they "Were shit," instead of "The shit."
My bad. Carry on.
It's okay, 'the shit' is a weird phrase anyway. And as a Marathon trilogy connoisseur, you're clearly alright.
This just reminds me of this guy…who also has one about the word ‘ass’.
I'm so glad you linked this because it was my first thought as well and I was like damn I am going to struggle to find that haha
This is brilliant, thanks for the link!
Yeah, it's a weird phrase, today. It was popular 20 years ago.
It meant "The best" back then.
But thanks for the positive vibe, and comment.
No cap fr fr
I’m a little late to this party but this can be easily avoided by using the phrase “the shiz”. Just gotta train autocorrect to accept it.
Calling this a Marathon game makes no sense, and I don't just mean aesthetically. The business case can't possibly be there, either.
Anyone who has a nostalgic attachment to Marathon (👋) won't be interested in this new game, and anyone interested in this new game probably doesn't care about the name "Marathon."
On top of that, there's the fact that Marathon kind of looked like Halo. When Bungie made Halo, they were clearly taking after their own art style from their previous games. Which means Bungie could have announced that they're making a singleplayer first person shooter that kind of looks like Halo. Everyone would have lost their minds. Instead, they announced yet another live service game, and no one is interested.
Well now I’m not buying it.
Its worse than that: this game is somehow CANON with the original Marathon
My vent core feels retroactively unblasted by this revelation. You really can't expect anything good from any of the major studios anymore these days.
It's hilariously awful because, as a fan of the original Marathon trilogy, the aesthetic of the new game is the only thing that appealed to me; and it was stolen.
I have no interest in an extraction shooter. You can make an extraction shooter if you want, but you gotta make something that players can get emotionally invested in first. Original Marathon players won't recognize this and new players won't care so what was the fucking point of any of this, I'm going crazy. This industry has lost all direction
They did steal artwork, but the whole aesthetic wasn't stolen... the stuff they stole is a very small part of the game (I'm pretty sure, haven't and won't play it). I'm in no way defending them, but saying the whole aesthetic was stolen just because they used some text and icons from someone istället just dumb.
Much of the aesthetic was clearly inspired by The Designers Republic
Every game's style is inspired by something else. For example, Sable has a great style, but it's largely inspired by Moebius (the artist), and that's OK, and actually encouraged.
There is nothing in this world that is not inspired by previous experiences.
This stuff is directly lifted. https://youtu.be/F9Ute6uvpQg
I was hoping it was gonna be a clever, fun story shooter like the original. But it just sounds like a reskinned Helldivers with no connection to the original besides the name.
Luckily classic Marathon is available on Steam for free.
OK, criticism is fine, but reskined Helldivers? It's nothing like Helldivers. It's an extraction shooter, with a focus on PvP.
I guess Helldivers is a shooter where you extract, but it isn't an extraction shooter. Extraction shooters are like Escape from Tarkov, Gray Zone, and the upcoming ARC Raiders. They're about entering a game with items, collecting loot, and leaving. If you die you lose everything you brought. Nothing like Helldivers.
That makes even less sense to me. Nothing in the original game is about collecting resources or leaving the ship
Nope. I don't really know why they decided to do this, but it does use the existing lore. The Phor are going to be involved, and a bunch of other Marathon stuff is going to be used. It's almost the exact opposite game mode of what Marathon was though.
I think it’s because a game with challenging puzzles and compelling story takes work and talent and a game that says “collect 20 widgets and get back to the extraction point” can be churned out like cheap hot dogs by overworked devs.
I'm just spitballing, but the ip owner needs to do something with the ip so they can keep it? IIRC similar things have been mentioned here and there when some long forgotten ip suddenly gets a new loweffort installment.
So, could be that they were making the extraction shooty anyway, so they slapped Marathon on it "just to refresh the timer"? I dunno if that's how it works, not a lawyer.
I don't think so, because If I remember correctly:
When Bungie was bought by Sony, they specifically included in the contract that they get to make a Marathon game if Destiny 2 reaches certain goals. So they aimed for a marathon game for a long time and specifically included that in the negotiations. Beats me why they would do such a poor multiplayer take on the SINGLEPLAYER franchise that is fondly remembered by fans.
"something something monkey paw curls" - maybe the contract didn't specifically mention it would be a game of their liking, and so sony dictated it has to be a online-pvp-shooty
But then again, destiny was already an online-shooty so.. dunno.
Never played a Marathon game, but as they are free on steam (bundled with some source port with AFAIK modern controls), I need to gather my pals and play them.
To be honest, the games are too old gameplay wise for me to enjoy as games, but the story? Its great
I just wish they would revamp it with a modern engine and smooth out the story a little. I’d pay for that again. I bought the original as a freaking preorder back in the 90s (loved that box) and just adored it.
I played the original games, on a Performa 6100 Mac, back in the day!
Look at you with your fancy PowerPC model. We had to make do with a 68040 and we liked it!
goes outside to yell at the clouds to get off of his lawn
Legit, i only clicked this because i was "wait wtf? system 7 marathon??"
Yeah but that Marathon was innovative, looked good, and was fun to play. That would never work in this day and age. Also I think the only thing that same about the two is the name.
