Game PC Marathon 2 User Manual

The Adventure Continues...

™

© 1995 Bungie Software Products Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Thanks!

Thank you for purchasing Marathon 2: Durandal. It is because of your support,
as our customer, that we are able to continue to develop cutting-edge products.
If you also bought the first Marathon, then we think you’re extra special.

Please Don’t Pirate!

’nuf said.

Customer Support

As our customer, you are our most important asset. If you have any questions
about how to use or install this software, please get in touch with us through
one of the channels listed below. We are more than happy to help you out. Many
questions (especially hints) can be answered online in our AOL forum (keyword
BUNGIE) or on our web site (www.bungie.com).

Bungie Software Products Corporation
Customer Support
PO Box 7877
Chicago, IL 60680-7877

Telephone: [phone]
Facsimile: [phone]

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WWW: http://www.bungie.com
America Online: Bungie1

If you need to buy stuff from us call 1 800 295 0060

Wherever possible, additional attitude was liberally applied to all text in this manual.

Remember The Marathon....................................................................................3

Introduction ....................................................................................................4

Getting Started ...............................................................................................6

Main Screen .....................................................................................................7

Preferences .....................................................................................................8

Controls .......................................................................................................10

Game Interface ...............................................................................................12

Playing Marathon 2 ........................................................................................13

Weapons.........................................................................................................16

Network Play .................................................................................................17

Replays ........................................................................................20

Troubleshooting .....................................................................21

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table. of.c ontents

License Agreement ................................................................22

Credits .....................................................................................23

Serial Numbers .............................................................................24

Remember the Marathon .....

Those of you who played the original Marathon might think you’ve got this game
all figured out. You survived the assault of thousands of Pfhor warriors on the
starship Marathon, and reasoned your way past deck after deck of traps and
obstacles—not easy things to do. Now the hero of Tau Ceti and a living legend,
you might think the Pfhor and their minions hold no more terrors for you.

Think again. While there is a lot that you will recognize—green Fighters, no
problem, blue Fighters, problem; the time-honored “grenade hop” will still get
you onto a troublesome ledge; you probably want to waste the last three bullets
in the clip before entering Super Mega Carnage Room—you’ll soon learn this is a
new world with new rules.

You’ll find it’s often sink or swim, and the winds and waters of the S’pht
homeworld might lead you toward your goal, or mask the sound of approaching
threats. The harmless and hapless BOBs you used to shoot offhandedly any time
they got in the way (“we’re everywhere!”) are now just as happy to shoot you if
your aim gets too careless.

And network games have been brought to another level. If you’re having trouble
with any level, go in with a couple of friends and see if teamwork doesn’t get you
through. If you’re expert at the Every Man for Himself scenario, try playing King
of the Hill or Kill the Guy with the Ball, where the different victory conditions
require strategies more complex than just running and shooting.

remem be r.the.

➤

marathon.. .

There are other surprises as well—you might find yourself in an entirely
different reality than the one of the starship Marathon.

So, steel your nerves, dive in and take risks—another life is only a TAB key away.

Happy Happy Carnage Carnage!

3

➤

introduction

Pfhor Battle Group Three, Central Arm, hung motionless above the dusty ball of
rock that was Lh’owon, the second planet of a dim star ninety-seven light-years
from the gravitational center of the Milky Way. The gigantic battleship, three
smaller destroyers and twenty auxiliary craft had not left the system for nearly
six years. They were not to be relieved for another two.

Lh’owon had once been a marsh world; now it was a nearly waterless desert. It
had been populated, a thousand years ago, by a race of highly intelligent
creatures who had already landed on their own moons and would soon have
headed to other stars. Below, their cities stood empty and ruined.

In its glory years, Battle Group Three had been known throughout the Empire;
decorated in every battle anyone remembered from the Wars of Imperium, for
turning back the loyalists at Tahrm’s Gap and holding the approaches to the
Pfhor homeworld itself during the slave revolt of the Nakh.

Undefeated in battle, it was finally politics that splintered Battle Group Three;
by sending a few ships to suppress subservient races here, a few more to
garrison the fringes of Pfhor influence there, the nobility had slowly
broken the power of the old Navy.

What was left of Battle Group Three had been assigned to this
dead world in the Galactic Core. To defend the system against
a single enemy no one expected would ever arrive, and who
had last been seen thousands of light-years away.

4

The tedium of blockade duty had destroyed morale and
discipline.

In the dark between the orbits of the sixth and
seventh planets, slightly above the ecliptic, a
ship vanished, folding soundlessly in on itself
in impossible ways. As the long craft twisted
and faded in one place, it began
simultaneously to appear in another.

The stolen ship had been in the system
for days, keeping its distance from
Lh’owon and the Pfhor fleet surrounding it; dodging among asteroids and moons,
testing and measuring. Looking for something. Waiting.

Alarms sounded throughout Battle Group Three, screaming that a vessel had
folded into existence less than thirty kilometers away from the battleship.
Computer operators throughout the fleet stared in disbelief at their tactical
screens— no ship could jump this close to a gravity source. For three seconds,
no warning was passed, no word spoken, no action taken.

The invader erupted in a hundred thin lines of green fire, striking out toward the
Pfhor ships, phasing through their shielding, destroying weapons or engines or
communications gear. In seconds Battle Group Three had been disabled, and
their ships began exploding. In two minutes only one ship remained among the

debris in orbit above Lh’owon.

Down on the planet, as the orbital bombardment began, the Pfhor garrison was
only just beginning to understand how hard their life would become over the
next few days.

* * *

I stared through the window of transparent
metal alloy and out into space. For a

moment I’d thought we were still at the

colony, still on the alien ship in orbit around

Tau Ceti. But there were too many stars here,

and the sun was too red and the planet too big.

The ship felt different, too. Cleaner, but older.
The scars of the battle which had nearly consumed
it had been erased. Most of them, anyway: I thought

that I remembered firing the grenade which

had buckled the armor plating
in the hallway outside the

room where I awoke. The dent

was still there, if you looked

close enough. Painted over and

smoothed out, but still there.

introduction

➤

When it turned out that Durandal had

brought me here, instead of leaving me to be

the hero on Tau Ceti like I deserved, I wasn’t

surprised. Durandal was the rogue personality

construct who had been the brains behind the defense of the

colony ship Marathon. I’d been the brawn. Durandal had always

been unpredictable, even when he was just opening doors and managing food
processors three hundred years ago on Mars. Together we had fought off the
Pfhor invasion of Tau Ceti. I don’t think a single one of the three-eyed creatures
survived, but we’d taken their ship.

Now Durandal said that we were in the Galactic Core, thousands of light-years
from Tau Ceti or Earth, and that seventeen years had passed since we left Tau
Ceti. He had ignored my questions, mostly, telling me that I wouldn’t have
wanted to stay on Tau Ceti anyway.

Seventeen years in an alien stasis chamber, in a space a little too tall and too
thin for human comfort, unconscious and dreamless within a few degrees of
absolute zero. Seventeen years, while Durandal had raced about the galactic
core in a stolen Pfhor attack ship. He’s probably right when he said those years
were boring, but nobody asked me what I wanted.

Now he says there’s fighting to be done, and that I’ve got fifteen minutes to
prepare for transport down to the planet. I guess I’ll figure things out as I go
along. Just like last time.

5