Marathon

I remember playing Marathon a little on a Mac long ago, but I ended up playing Dark Forces more instead. Marathon is an early first person shooter (trilogy) developed for the Mac by Bungie. Just like DOOM, it is (or appears to be) a FPS of the more advanced ray casting type. Marathon's story is told through consoles which are scattered around the various levels. NPC soldiers called Bob's, and floating tanks occasionally join the player in battle. Most of the enemies and items in Marathon are colorful hand drawn billboard sprites, which puts it in contrast to FPS'es with a more gritty/realistic inclination.

There isn't much art of the player character (an unnamed Cyborg). I managed to find some in the manual, and a few pieces by Craig Mullins. I don't remember encountering the M.A.D.D.s in the game, but it appears that they are friendly tanks. The BOBs are actually some sort of "Born On Board" human crew member. They sometimes join the player.

(I did some full color highrez art of all the Marathon characters / monsters (a Poster for the Bungie store), but I can't put those up here.)

The Pfhor are the main antagonists. For some reason some of them insist on using close combat weapons, enabling you to kill them in droves with your flamer, flechette gun, SPNKR, etc... unless you punch them to death with your bare hands that is. Well, you're a state-of-the-art military cyborg so you can do awesome stuff like that.

Some of these designs are my own and not from the game. The robot on stilts can be seen on a blurry screenshot of an earlier version of the game. There's only one type of hovering Juggernaut in the game, but I drew one with legs and a smaller variant as well. Some kind of black sphere acts as a hovering engine, it seems. I like consistent design language like that.

These unfortunate monsters have been enslaved by the Pfhor.

Pathways into Darkness

Pathways into Darkness has an engine that is more similar to Wolfenstein than DOOM. I haven't played it, but I did read a Let's play. Just like Marathon, it's a quite story heavy game where the player is required to pay attention and actively pursue information. There's still a lot of shooting though, with upwards 2000 enemies in the entire game.

Primary qualities

PiD has a few interesting features which sets it aside from most other FPS games.

• You know how some adventure movies begin with a scene of Conquistadors or Nazis raiding some ancient temple... then they all die and the movie skips to present day? In PiD the story is actually told by people who died (i.e. corpses) in the temple that you're exploring. Actually, the story isn't told. You have this yellow crystal which can be used to talk to corpses. Interestingly, you're not given the typical 2-4 dialog options with sentences being put in your mouth. You have to throw (type) words out and the dead person will free associate around those. This makes the dialog feel alive and unlimited. I found myself morbidly curious in the fate and relations of the dead people. Also, several prominent characters are mentioned, and even though they died long ago it's interesting to catch up and finally discover their fate.
• All corpses are permanent, and you can travel back and forth between the levels as you like.
• I normally don't like time limits in games, but in PiD it seems to work. Time manipulation is important in several puzzles (slowing down and speeding up), and it becomes a resource with some depth to it, rather than being just a stressful countdown timer. You'll replenish HP when resting I think, but time will pass quicker and you might be caught off guard. It would be interesting to further expand on this with a more persistently simulated awakening temple.
• Lovecraftian setting with a colorful twist.

Bad things

PiD is an old game, and as such it exhibits some features common in old games.

• You are in a maze of twisty little passageways, all alike.
• Dilution. The game doesn't have enough enemy variants, corpse images or textures, which makes it look a bit repetitive and artificial.
• The game doesn't have any intro images, title screen aside. I haven't looked in the manual yet. Craig Mullins painted at least two PiD images, but these were done much later afaik. It would be interesting if talking to the dead people created some form of telepathic reality of speech and images (explaining how the player can talk to the Germans and Cubans).
• I don't like how the player death messages break fourth wall.
• I'd like to see more traces of the firefights mentioned by your fallen team mates. There probably needs to be more rotten monster corpses laying around too. There are a few but for some reason (lack of appropriate sprites) they look fresh. PiD does well in the "sense of history" department thanks to the dead people, but the architecture and litter has a much more sterile feel.

Idea time!

It's impossible for me (and probably everyone else) to play/research a game without getting ideas. I wrote mine down so I can expand upon them later.

• The temple has been around for a very long time, unless it was changed by the dreaming dead god every now and then. I can imagine that it would have to be tidied up every 500 years or so at least. Perhaps aliens visited the temple at some point? I'd like to see gothic rune weapons and alien stuff, hinting at this.
• More textures, landmarks, 'furniture', enemy variants. Wall and ground/roof textures should connect and be in context with each other (and not clip badly). I'm not sure if the rooms, corridors and general architecture should make sense. The purpose of the pyramid is unclear. If it was just the manifested insanity of the dead dreaming god, then why make it look like a temple at all? Why fill it with doors, monster guys and puzzles? This will have to be addressed at some point. One option is to use mysterious furniture and create the impression of some sort of alien function.
• The replicator box is potentially overpowered. Aside from the time limit, perhaps it can only crudely replicate things (like a jittery printer). This way ammo and knives isn't a problem, but electronics and advanced alien artifacts would be. Replicated ammo magazines could jam weapons sometimes. If I were to technobabble on its design, I'd say it's a 3D scanner/printer which pulls mass from a miniature black hole.
• Insanity. Some of the dead people have gone insane, but in a Lovecraftion setting the main character should go insane too. I'm not sure how easy it is to implement in a game. A few games have tried it, Dead Space 2 being the most recent.
• Character classes. I don't like them, especially not when it means that medics magically can't use machine guns or whatever, but it could be interesting for the sake of replay value to allow for characters with different base skills. At the beginning of the game, the player could tick a number of check boxes, imposing restrictions on himself (each box could have a difficulty score). Perhaps the character's name and appearance is a result of the boxes ticked.
  • () Male, () Female.
  • [] Strength. Male characters are stronger, can carry more, and hit harder.
  • [] Speed/Dexterity/Stealth. Affects movement speed and melee.
  • [] Techie/Engineer. Can repair broken weapons, improvise gadgets and figure out some artifacts.
  • [] Archeologist. Can figure out certain engravings and artifacts. Might give the player expanded descriptions of some items.
  • [] Medic. Knows stuff about potions, herbs, poison, etc. Heals faster.
  • Weapon proficiencies. [] Melee, [] Machine guns, [] Explosives and grenades, [] Pistols, [] Sniper rifles. The character knows how to maintain the weapon type, keeping it in top condition. This affects Damage (higher muzzle velocity?), Accuracy (steadier aim), Reload time (mag exchange). Jams are less likely, and faster to fix. Melee weapons are kept sharp and blows are stronger and swifter. Explosives would be faster and easier to set up.
• Several stories can be written from the point of view of the adventurers who stumbled into the temple. Natives, Conquistadors, Nazis. Perhaps they took slightly different paths down into the temple, giving the player some replay value depending on which path he chooses. For example, he can choose to listen to the clues given by the dead native and end up exploring that story more.
• Strange animations. Rather than the monsters doing their idle, walk, attack animations, it would be interesting to have some plain strange things going on to freak the player out and keep things unpredictable. Perhaps an enemy is found laying on the floor, and has a seizure when the player approaches. Another one could be busy groping a wall before noticing the player. It could also be simple stuff, like "ticks" or enemies running off on some urgent errand.
• Time manipulation and anachronisms?

Alternative designs with a little more grit and different proportions.

With a 3D program and a rendering script, it might be possible to pre-render a form of parallax/normal/bump whatever mapping. Not sure how it would look in practice though, and how many frames would be needed. Clay, a mirror and a camera could also be used. I mention the mirror because the textures might have to be symmetrical. The vertical edges can't have any indents, like in my top example. Of course, this only works in a primitive raycasting engine where you can't move vertically.

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- by Niklas Jansson, 2010. The Marathon (trilogy) setting was developed by Bungie (1994-1996). No infringement intended.