Let's Play Marathon, pt 6 - The Rose
The situation gets messy.
It’s no longer your lone armored self pushing down abandoned corridors and echoing chambers with enemies everywhere you turn, leaving a trail of spent brass like Heckler & Koch Hansel & Gretel. The ship’s crew is in your AO now, and you can’t conduct yourself on the assumption that the only living thing at the end of the level should be you.
Wreckreational area.
Leela’s sent you to a scene of carnage as the Pfhor have broken into an area where significant numbers of crew were sheltering from the attack, and your objective is simply to save as many as possible. What was broad and abstract becomes immediate. Everything you did prior was to save people’s lives in a larger sense; slowing down the attack, repairing the ship, and so on. In The Rose, for the first time, you actually see the people you’re trying to save, and watch them die when you fail.
The other big thing in The Rose is the introduction of a new enemy type. Thus far we’ve seen Fighters, the skinny staff-carrying ones, Troopers, the bulkier ones with ovoid heads, Wasps, the annoying little flyers, and the S’pht hackers in their long robes. It’s time to meet Hulks.
Do u even alien invade bro
Hulks are what you’d expect. Basically bipedal elephants, they’re slow, can absorb fusillades of bullets before dropping, and punch like they’ve got an engine block on each arm. From a gameplay mechanics standpoint, Hulks’ function isn’t necessarily to be a major threat to life and limb, though they will kill you quickly if you let one get close. Because they’re so slow and can’t attack at range, they aren’t all that hard to cope with. But they do two things extremely well: Draw your focus and deplete your ammo reserves. They emblematize ‘low immediate threat/massive potential threat.’ A Hulk on approach has to be dealt with, to the exclusion of dealing with other problems, and the amount of ordnance you expend taking one down forces you to be very careful with your shots to avoid running dry right when you’re backed into a corner.
Hulks aren’t the special guest star of The Rose, though. That honor goes to Bob.
They’re everywhere.
I made vague references to ‘the crew’ of the Marathon earlier. Who are these people? They’re an interesting case. The game presents them in a curious tragicomic light and it’s left up to the player to decide how to interpret them.
The Marathon has no light speed-subverting drive, and made the journey from Earth to Tau Ceti over the course of many years. Its people exist in two basic categories. Some went into cryosuspension and hibernated through the long journey; they presumably are the bulk of the colonists on the planet below. Then there are the crew who have lived, reproduced, and died during the voyage. Their living legacy are the ones you encounter(and attempt to save) in the game: People who were born on board - BoBs.
Even considering the limited resources at the time, BoBs are painted less with a broad brush than with a blurry thumbprint. They have one character model, one face design, and once voice actor - who recorded all of about four lines for the game. The only thing that differentiates BoBs is that their solid color jumpsuits can be one of a few different colors.
These blank slates jogging around make you wonder. Have generations of a small population in a controlled environment yielded a bunch of identical people? Does your character view BoBs with such contempt that they all look the same to you? Conversely, is your character bad at relating or connecting with people, finding it difficult to glean any distinguishing details from those around you?
Maybe I’ll stick to being this floaty robot’s friend.
Whatever the case, the BoBs are on the scene and survival is not in their skillset. Their chief weapon is running around and yelling "They’re everywhere” - two chief weapons are running around and yelling “They’re everywhere.” Firefights become more complex. It’s easy for stray shots to find your jumpsuited wards. The presence of Hulks, BoBs, and defense drones makes a lot of the fights in The Rose complete clusterfucks. Hulks can kill almost anything in one to three punches, BoBs have no sense of direction, and when defense drones die they drift unpredictably for a few seconds before exploding. Your awareness and predictive sense has to cover a lot of ground on top of ‘what way do I point gun and how many bullets left?’
Our new players take a lot of the attention in this act of the drama, but the set design deserves credit as well. The Rose does well helping to instill in you some of the fear that’s running rampant in the people you’re trying and often failing to save. The level has a lot of twists and turns, tight corridors and dead ends.
Always makes me think of that one creepy tube Luke walks through in Empire Strikes Back.
There’s definitely a horror movie feel to a lot of the design. Blindspots, shadows, odd angles, no clear idea where you’re going and what you’ll stumble into when you get there. Then there’s the simple scary fun of riding a lift up a floor and entering this hallway:
…maybe I’ll just come back in a bit, then?
When you’ve finally winnowed through all the tight spots and driven the last of the Pfhor from the area, you’ll log into the end terminal and Leela will either congratulate you on swiftly acting to save an otherwise doomed collection of mirror image BoBs, or lament that their excessive losses are another blow in the increasingly fraught struggle for the ship.
But there’s no time to mourn. Another brushfire needs your swift boot.
***End Message***
***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***
