Bungie Trademarks "Aerospace" and "Marathon"

Bungie has been and always will be a second tier developer. Luck and opportunity happened to be with them at the appropriate time in history.
Marathon was no great shooter, neither was Halo (and still isn't) However, what it did do and why they have there place in gaming history is because they successfully brought the FPS experience to the console. Something that others had tried and failed at and more importantly made multiplayer a viable medium and made Microsofts fledgling Xbox LIve significant.

Remove Halo from it's historical constant and the game simply does not match up to the visceral action provided by countless other titles and I don't mean simply Call of Duty.
Right place, right time. Much like Microsoft's story.

So them securing their trademarks, leaving the Halo property, staying on it, or whatever is about as interesting to me as Nyquil.

I have given them ample opportunity to impress me, as a paying customer. I plopped down my money. On all their products hoping that in between games some form of inspiration has come over them. But instead, their games just seem to get more and more stagnant and they rejoice when they can add things like ricocheting bullets or more than 4 enemies at a time on the battle field.

These guys need to play other developers games and stop reading and most importantly believing their own hype machine press.
same something enough times and you start to believe it.

Marathon done right would be not be Halo.

Good level designs in Marathon (I've been there) are clastrophobic to a point. Some of that was due to limitations of the engine, but some of the best SP and MP maps were ones with limited open areas to fight and instead tight corridors with enemies jumping down in front of you - no circle strafing was possible due to areas. So what Bungie's done with Halo is good, but they need to rethink level design and approach if they make a modern Marathon game.

But the biggest seller here to me is that Bungie's Marathon story with the rampant AIs makes for a very compelling story that could be told better today with better game engines. I would love to revisit Durandal (the AI) because, IIRC, eventually you have this crazed AI that think it can reform the universe in its image and using any thing it can as a toy to get to that end.

The entire concept of "Marathon" being a colony ship carved out of one of Mars' moons already gives enough playspace to work it; add in the Pfhor ships and homeworlds, and that can be properly revisioned for today.

With Bungie now free of M$ there could be nothing better for episodic gaming than the return of the Marathon series.

As much as I love Marathon, I'd love to see new things from them.

Halo is so much a modern remake of marathon anyways that a new Marathon game is going to feel like a remake of Halo to those who don't know better. Even a lot of the weapons are pretty much the same (sorry Halo, the WSTE-M shotguns were way better)

I admit, I'd love them if they did, but I expect this Marathon trademark is for a mobile version or something else and their next game will be original ip.

As an old fan from the days of the original Bungie.net (BNA Brent at your service), Marathon, and Pathways into Darkness, I am very excited if we get more Marathon in any form.

"The second filing, made on March 8th is for "Marathon", the title of Bungie's second game and first hit. Halo fans will be the first to note that Halo and Marathon most likely occur in the same overall universe."

well... the marathon logo is right smack in the middle of the Halo logo between the A and the L. Pretty obvious it's the same universe isn't it?

http://www.bungie.net/Projects/Halo/default.aspx

Whatever they do, they have to be planning on taking it to the next level. If they just wanted to grind out games they could've done that at Microsoft.

I hope they pull off something interesting. They've always been heavily story driven, so I expect them to stick to that core strength.

Maybe they're branding their engine as Aerospace? Doubtful but seeing how fun Forge can be on the console I'd love to play with their tools.

Bungie Aerospace is obviously being set up to take on Armadillo Aerospace. They're taking on Carmack in two arenas now!

Hopefully if they go back to Marathon it won't just be re-branded Halo. That would be a shame.