Marathon and Halo -- Closer than ever before thanks to the gamepad
by Jared Rea 
{ Jul 31st 2007 at 1:54PM }
With the 2001 release of Halo, Bungie proved that not only were high quality, console-centric FPS titles possible, but they could be controlled just as well with a gamepad as with a keyboard and mouse. Since then, just about every FPS title to grace a console has attempted to replicate the precision and familiarity of Halo's scheme. So when it came time to bring a legendary Bungie title, Marathon: Durandal, to Xbox Live Arcade, the folks at Freeverse saw fit to keep it in the family.
"In moving the original, which was a keyboard [and] mouse game, we had to translate all the original behavior to the Xbox controller -- sticks and range of feedback instead of binary key hits." tells Ian Lynch Smith, president of Freeverse. "What we ended up doing is getting the actual curves and math that Halo 2 uses, so in those respects Marathon Durandal's controls have the exact same feel as Halo 2."
We can already hear the collective cry of the Marathon community. "Hold it! Doesn't injecting Marathon with bits of Halo compromise the integrity of the original?" Not so, according to Freeverse's Bruce Morrison as Marathon: Durandal still plays exactly the same.
"If it took 10 seconds to get from point a to point b on the original it will in ours."
Get a feel for the slick new controls yourself when Marathon: Durandal is released tomorrow on Xbox Live Arcade.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Phranctoast @ Jul 31st 2007 2:04PM
"just as well".
This is a joke right?
shadowrun uses autoaim.
Should be intersting with all the pro m+k and pro controller arguments.
Games from the west suck @ Jul 31st 2007 2:07PM
A good FPS and a bad FPS. Guess which one is good and guess which one is bad. I'll give you a hint on the bad one. There's a number in the title.
faceless coward @ Jul 31st 2007 2:11PM
Marathon 2: Durandal?
DaiMac79 @ Jul 31st 2007 2:23PM
Wrong in this case, Durandal improves every aspect of the first game. Graphics, controls, enemies are all improved. I understand what you're saying and 9/10 times I fully agree when it comes to FPS games, but this is the exception to the rule.
And I'm talking about the original game versus the original sequel, this version should be even better.
Grindstone @ Jul 31st 2007 5:01PM
Since your name implies that games fromt he west do, in fact, suck, it would be hypocrtical of you to say that either of the games mentioned are "good" since Bungie is very much "west" coast. Either you are a liar, or have no idea what your name implies [meaning, ignorant]. Which is it?
I'll be playing Marathon on my 360 soon. Cool.
DaiMac79 @ Jul 31st 2007 2:09PM
Almost as important to me personally is whether or not they added a crosshair, hopefully not. I've realized over the past few months playing AlephOne and Halo that one of the reasons I've always been better at Marathon is that you simply have to learn the angles of fire on your weapons, rather than relying on an artificial bundle of pixels in the center of your hud. For whatever reason this works better for me personally, so I hope this aspect is preserved. Haven't seen any in the screenshots so I'm hopeful.
stewa101 @ Aug 3rd 2007 10:11PM
Umm .. you know you can turn the crosshairs off, right?
3cubedminus3squared @ Jul 31st 2007 2:18PM
hmm, never heard of this franchise
3cubedminus3squared @ Jul 31st 2007 2:19PM
How long will it take for my pic to upload?
hvnlysoldr @ Jul 31st 2007 2:45PM
umm now?
jps @ Jul 31st 2007 4:21PM
The original used a keyboard. I can't even recall if mouse was implemented before the game went open source, but I recall playing with a mouse, groaning, and going back to using E&D to look up and down (I used the numeric keypad to move, spacebar and command key to fire and alt fire respectively)
tycho81 @ Jul 31st 2007 2:53PM
It's been a while since I've played marathon2 but I was pretty sure there was no mouse look until Infinity.
Also starting to think that those of us that played the Marathon series are dating ourselves a bit here.
I find it a little funny sometimes when people who love halo have never heard of Marathon.
Did everyone forget that Halo was NOT owned my MS, Bungie made kick ass original titles like myth? Oni (which could have been better. thanks MS for killing that game), Abuse, Pathways Into Darkness and of course the marathon trilogy. that halo was originally slated for PC/MAC and was supposed to have a HUGE war-like multiplayer and used to have a lot of ties to Marathon.
sigh.
but ya. Marathon has an awesome story to boot. haha, those crazy computer AI's.
captain underpants and the bringdown gang @ Aug 1st 2007 1:35PM
marathon 2 was famous for being the first FPS with mouse look.
DaiMac79 @ Jul 31st 2007 4:19PM
Actually Marathon 1 had "mouse look" but because of the way the engine/game was designed you had a very limited vertical viewing angle, so it wasn't really necessary for the most part. In fact in some ways its easier to play the original with just the keyboard, once you get used to hitting the lookup/lookdown keys. Also in some ways the auto-aim won't factor too much as again that limited vertical motion helps you fire straighter in general. In fact I remember one of the most disconcerting things when I first played Quake was feeling like the vertical axis was really loose because I was so used to Marathon.
Also, I'm happy to be dated, all it means is we're old enough to rent cars, not ready for the nursing home for the most part :)
Jeff @ Jul 31st 2007 4:00PM
The Marathon's were great games, although I dunno if I ever actually ended up finishing any of them, but I did play quite a bit of it over LAN. I think Mouselook made it into a patch for Marathon 2, or something like that. I am one of the 3 people who own Marathon 2 for Windows and I'm almost positive that mouselook is implemented in it (which would make me assume that it was eventually implemented for Mac).
It's a funny thing about mouselook... My friends and I used to play Marathon Infiniti and Evil (awesome user conversion) on a school LAN against this one kid that had figured out how to successfully use "strafe" on a keyboard with some random assortment of keys. He was basically unbeatable. It was around this time that "mouselook" kind of came into popularity and we told this kid that we would probably kick his ass now if he didn't use mouselook. He didn't believe it, but sure enough, he was utterly decimated by us when we started playing. Guess you have to keep up with the times to compete. =)
-Jeff
http://alinktothefuture.com
DaiMac79 @ Aug 1st 2007 8:03AM
Ok, last post on this thread, I just launched Marathon 1 (original, not AlephOne) on a Mac G3 running OS9. If you select the Mouse and Keyboard control option your mouse is enabled to change your view by default. The only difference between this and more modern implementations of mouselook is the lack of fine-tuning control, but you could certainly achieve a measure of this with the Mouse control panel if necessary.
So yes, Marathon 1 and onward had mouselook, unless you mean something different by that term than I do.
tycho81 @ Jul 31st 2007 4:47PM
@DaiMac79
Yeah. That makes sense. It was a sort of mouse -> snap to look thing. rather than "free look" as was present in quake. I'd just used the keyboard. much more defined up/down, left/right -> no auto-aim needed. That being said, I don't know of anyone that actually used a mouse in any of the Marathon games (probably why I forgot it was there). Then quake came along and it took me a while to migrate over to using mouselook and the WASD setup.
I just hope they leave a setup on the XBLA version that doesn't require the stick on the controller.
haha, I seem to need a lot of repair these days. not long for the home. though, first I'd like to retire.
@Jeff
Looks like I'm number 2 of 3 that own it on PC as well. HA. the mac I had bit the dust quite some time ago and I saw Durandal on sale for like $10 at EB, I snapped it up right away.
Question... and possible spoiler if it's Durandal. I don't think so though.
but it was Infinity that had the alt. ending right? my friends brother was convinced he'd finished the game until we showed him the lava swimming ending. those juggernauts were hard to avoid while swimming.
Crying The Annual Kingo @ Jul 31st 2007 3:01PM
Uh, I think Halo (or Goldeneye, acutally) proved it was technically possible to control an FPS with a controller. But all they did to make it "just as good" was allow the controller-user to cheat by adding auto-aim! You can't have a fair battle of m/keyboard users vs. controller users to determine which is better when one side is freaking cheating!
TiaMaster @ Jul 31st 2007 3:24PM
err...'crying', both platforms have the autoam - thats what balances it out...
Knuckles Dawson @ Jul 31st 2007 5:07PM
I enjoyed playing it at E3 against Richard. It felt very good, control wise.
Striderhayasa @ Jul 31st 2007 5:46PM
uh..."just as good as mouse and keyboard"? Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? If it is, it's a bad one. Try again. there are too many FPS games coming. Far too many. I'm sticking with UT3 (splitfish controller) and Metroid Prime: Corruption (Wiimote) and calling it a day.
Victor Agreda Jr @ Jul 31st 2007 6:35PM
The thing about the Marathon trilogy wasn't just the gameplay (which was pretty good and fun, and Infinity added a clunky but serviceable level builder)-- it was the story. Some games have stories that stand out. Some aren't necessary, but in this case, Durandal sticks in my mind as a compelling *read* in and of itself. You can find the entire "transcript" and it's really cool. That was one of the incentives (rewards) for playing the game: learning more about this computer, that, like HAL 9000, had gone completely wacko. Respect to Bungie, pre-MS, they really pushed the envelope, back when that was a Good Thing.
Will @ Aug 1st 2007 4:05AM
This seems promising!
DaiMac79 @ Aug 1st 2007 8:05AM
Just finished playing the first four levels, this game is just as good as I remember. They used a weird scaling effect to compensate for the lack of vertical angle, but it works for the most part. Almost a bit too shiny/smooth, but thats just because I'm so used to AlephOne I suppose. Controls work very well, just remember only wussies use crosshairs (its optional).
I'm most excited about what will be offered as downloadable content, hopefully physics models at some point.
Also, MA75 seems a bit more rapid fire than I remember, but I've been playing so much Marathon 1 lately that might be the difference :)