Who is durandal halo

Marathon 2 begins 17 years after the first game ends, as the player's ship arrives at the ruined S'pht homeworld Lh'owon. Durandal one of the Marathon's AIs from the first game sends the player and an army of ex-colonists to search the ruins of Lh'owon for information that would give Durandal an advantage against the Pfhor, who are planning a new assault on humanity.

Among the new characters in this adventure are Durandal's evil counterpart Tycho, who played a minor role in the first game; a Lh'owon-native species known as F'lickta; an ancient and mysterious race of advanced aliens called the Jjaro; and the long-lost S'pht'Kr clan. It is currrently the only title in the Marathon trilogy to be released on Xbox Live Arcade.

Marathon Infinity released in , and included more levels than Marathon 2 , which were larger and part of a more intricate plot. The game's code changed little since Marathon 2 , and many levels can be played unmodified in both games. Marathon Infinity was only released for the Apple Macintosh.

Forge and Anvil allowed a new generation of players to create their own levels using the same tools as the Bungie developers themselves. In Forge, distance was measured in World Units , which are roughly equivalent to 2 meters 6 or 7 feet.

Another improvement was the ability to include separate monster, weapons, and physics definitions for each level, a feature heavily used by Double Aught, who designed the Marathon Infinity levels. Marathon Infinity begins as the Pfhor destroy Lh'owon using a Jjaro-derived doomsday weapon known as the Trih'Xeem early nova. Unfortunately, the weapon also releases a powerful chaotic being which threatens to destroy the entire galaxy. Because of the chaos, or by means of some Jjaro tech of his own, the Security Officer is transported back and forward in time and through his own dreams, finding himself jumping between timelines and fighting for various sides in a desperate attempt to prevent the chaotic being's release.

After multiple instances of "jumps," the player seemingly the only being who realizes he is being transported between possible realities activates the ancient Jjaro Station, preventing the chaotic entity's release.

The ending screen of Infinity leaves the story's resolution open-ended, taking place billions of years after the events of Marathon Infinity. Halo: Combat Evolved shares many features with Marathon , though Bungie has confirmed that it is set in a different universe.

Common features include the Marathon logo embedded in the Halo: Combat Evolved logo, Hunters, and SPNKr also known as Lazyboy or Spanker rocket launchers, not to mention other similarities to other weapons and also can be seen on Captain Keyes' shirt in with his medals when you first go to see him. Halo plays very much like a modern, high end version of Marathon although it has far fewer puzzles. Bungie often recycles components, famous phrases, and jokes from its games, such as the Security armor , which intentionally resembles the armor worn by the Marathon series' protagonist.

You learn more about the aliens, work to fight off the attackers, and ultimately concern yourself and your unrealistic military prowess with trying to protect the human race however you can. In the broadest strokes, this sounds like Halo , right? It's not. It's actually Marathon , a very early creation of Bungie, the studio responsible for the first five Halo titles. The Marathon trilogy of first-person shooters was developed by the company at the earliest stages of its existence, with the first game coming out in , just a year after Doom codified what first-person shooters would be.

It was innovative for the time and featured remarkably elaborate environments, dynamic lighting, and the ability to look around with the mouse—a feature that is standard now but relatively unheard of then. It was also extremely clever. While things like audio logs and mission briefings are extremely common means of storytelling today, seeing this technique used here still feels exciting. Seeing that sort of storytelling in a game that played like Doom , a game famous for avoiding explicit narrative, was and is a fascinating move for the nascent genre.

Despite that, there's a legitimate chance you've never heard of Marathon. That's not the game's fault; coming out the same year as Doom II is a tough break for any title looking to be cataloged in video game history.

It was on the Mac, to boot, which wasn't the most prominent gaming platform around. But that gap in memory is a shame. If you want a novel first-person shooter to play that feels like Halo but has its own flare, there's no better choice than Marathon. For instance, consider Durandal. Durandal is one of three AIs aboard the Marathon, a giant space ship built out of a hollowed-out Martian moon Deimos, if I remember correctly.

His job is simple. More on that in second though. The reference to rampancy, coming right after I have learned implies that Cortana has figured out how to prevent or escape the insanity of rampancy.

This message is of a completely different tone than those that follow it. It is triumphant, where the others range from anticipatory to annoyed. This makes me suspect it comes out of sequence with the others. It really reads more like an ending screen than anything else.

Perhaps this is a glimpse of what will be achieved by beating Halo The reference to Eliot's "not with a bang but a whimper" means the world is ending with a bang. Some previews have indicated that the Halo is falling out of its orbit and will crash into the gas planet, hardly a whimper.

That's certainly a bang. Finally, Cortana is a friend of a friend. This can only mean it knows Durandal, the only real surviving "friend" of the Story page to which this message was sent. If someone still doubts, there are more hints to this effect later, and certainly Colleen Galvez's discovery of Cortana's Celtic myth origins a sword with the inscription: "My name is Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durindana" seems to end all argument.

The first line makes fun of the way Hamish introduced the original Cortana message on his site. The second alludes to the Halo and then the Covenant new friends. Of course, I always do. Cortana has had many enemies, apparantly I've had the strangest dreams lately. Is this a joke, or does Cortana, an AI, really have dreams? The demon folded in black clouds is strange, because it seems much too ominous to be the Covenant, for whom Cortana has only contempt.

They "challenge" Cortana, and do not want Cortana to get what the demon guards. Does the Convenant already have this, and Cortana would be taking it from them, or is the Convenant and Cortana both trying to get the same thing from the demon? The previews of Halo have indicated the game involves fighting the Covenant while discovering technology left behind by those who built it, lending credence to the second possiblity. And what of the Giants who formed this world?

The way this transitions seems to place those who built the ringworld seperate from the guarding demon. Perhaps the demon is not a reference to anything that exists, but instead is just a scepter of the unknown, lending a dramatic tone to the message. The Giants are the advanced race which built the ringworld, probably the Jjaro but possibly a new race.

Some have tried to use mythology to come up with four giants, but I think that's reading too much into it. And now one of the most mysterious lines. There was a fourth. You couldn't have known. And I haven't forgotten. Some think the fourth means a fourth Giant, but it's seperated from the Giants by the So many things to tell you line. My gut feeling is that this means there was a fourth AI on the Marathon, explaining Cortana's link to Durandal. You couldn't have known , meaning despite the Story Page's relentless analysis of Marathon there just wasn't enough information to realize Cortana's existence.

Forgotten what happened on the Marathon? There certainly could have been a fourth AI hidden perhaps in conjunction to the never-explained presence of ten Mjolnir cyborgs? Leela thought Durandal was hopelessly corrupted, but it seemed as though he wasn't affected much at all.

Perhaps he had Cortana to help him [I was there with the Angel at the tomb]? The similarity between the names of Cortana and Durandal suggests that possibly Bernhard was involved with Cortana as well, possibly Cortana was even a copy of Durandal.