Let's Play Marathon, pt 5 - Couch Fishing

I have some bad news: Durandal has gone rampant.

Now we know for sure. Depending on how we’ve played to this point, the hints and evidence we’ve accrued, we might’ve been sure already. The variety in the clues - an article explaining what rampancy is, Leela’s remarks about Durandal’s unexplained knowledge of the Pfhor, a garbled plea possibly from third AI Tycho, a short story about a man trapped by immovable forces and by his own mind - has given us a depth of background that allows it to land with much more impact, makes it more real, than a linear series of alike clues would. Durandal’s rampancy has been given technical, personal, historical, and even artistic-autobiographical context. All through the use of the game’s terminal entries.

So now that we know, what do we do? First, venture into part of the Marathon’s central networking area to hit some switches. Those switches will prevent Durandal from gaining access to certain critical systems. There’s an important message for all of us intrinsic to Couch Fishing - physical security is part of computer security, and all data storage is eventually physical somewhere. Durandal can manipulate coding and break cryptography as fast as he likes; if a system he wants to access only connects to the network via a physical wire that can be disconnected by a mechanical button, he’s out. The best lockpick in the world can’t unlock a wall.

The process of finding those switches and the design of the level around it makes Couch Fishing perhaps the most perfectly named level in Marathon - and I think one of the best-named levels of any game, ever.

Why do I get the feeling a Restoration comedy is about to start?

Couch Fishing is a nest of narrow hallways, little rooms, and side corridors. There are three switches to hit and they’re located at three points in the depths of the couch. They’re not in identical rooms, or at the end of similar corridors, or even in areas with a similar layout. Each is positioned in a unique spot and you just have to keep looking until you find it. That can be a comforting realization. There’s no real pattern you’re straining to see, no particular sense to be made of the map. All you need is patience and persistence.

I get a weird kick from interior windows. The out-of-placeness of a window that looks from one inside space into another inside space gets at my love of the unusual.

Mind these trip hazards. We may be 00 days since our last deadly nonhuman aggression, but our last workplace accident wall sign is happily climbing the double digits.

Even the feeling of searching, wandering, getting a little lost, is mitigated by the level design into something comforting and, as the name suggests, homey. In some other levels, the seeming expansiveness of the ship around you is an eerie labyrinth with who knows how many access tunnels and maintenance crawlways you might wander down and never be seen again. Couch Fishing’s halls and rooms and mazy corridors are contained in a tight area and most of them loop back on themselves. You turn right, walk up a spiral staircase, through a room, down another spiral stair, and come out on the other side of the hallway you left from. Most exploration leads you to a few honeycombed chambers with dead ends, and you’re back to familiar turf. Poking into one crevice after another, without ever traveling too far. Couch fishing.

I cast Push Button.

Earlier in this series I wrote about Marathon’s ability to swiftly transition between environments with very different spatial qualities. After you’ve pressed three buttons like the one above, and fought your way through Pfhor encounters like the one below -

Who needs bullets when you have muzzle flash like this?

You enter a completely new area, a walkway that skirts around several huge open spaces, chock full of Pfhor to fight. You get up from the couch, and get to work.

Apparently whatever’s just to my right is more interesting.

The timing of this transition is spot on. In spite of the cozy feeling of the main part of the level, it might get old and claustrophobic if drawn out too long. Capping off the enclosed button hunt with a wide open alien shootfest keeps things interesting with contrast. It makes you feel like you’ve done something important when, immediately after you do it, a mass of armed aggressors tries to stop you from going anywhere else to cause more trouble. And if you weren’t really enjoying the maze, it’s an ideal valve to release that tension.

This can only be settled with a walk off.

Tension and release, cramped searching and wide open fighting, hitting switches and emptying magazines. It’s a series of beautiful contrasts as you try to stop an insane computer from killing everyone when you’d barely started to save them from an assault from beyond the stars.

By the way, Durandal just let the Pfhor into part of the ship where a bunch of crew had holed up. Likely doomed rescue mission? Sign me up and zap me out.

***End Message***

***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***