Beyond Infinity Lies Destiny
Eternal is a free scenario for Aleph One, the multi-platform, open-source, first-person-shooter engine derived from Bungie's Marathon engine. It continues the story of the Marathon trilogy, and is a nearly total conversion, featuring:
- Fifty-two new levels, some revisiting familiar locations from the original Marathon trilogy.
- Over 650 new high-resolution textures, including a dozen original landscape textures, from a variety of human and alien environments.
- Eight all-new weapons, many of which must be scavenged from your defeated enemies.
- Fifty-six tracks and more than seven hours of original music, including more fantastic remixes of your favorite tracks from the original Marathon than you can shake a stick at.
- More than 360 sounds, remixed in stereo from their original sources or completely remastered, with new sounds to represent the game's diverse environments.
- And several new creatures and characters, alongside the complete cast from the original trilogy (and even some of Pathways into Darkness' cast), many of whom have gotten beautiful new redesigns.
Somewhere In The Heavens... They Are Waiting
Bungie's Marathon was a landmark first-person shooter first released for the Macintosh in 1994 that introduced many new features and concepts to the genre, including vertical aiming in mouselook; dual-wielded and dual-function weapons; friendly NPCs; and a deep, intricate narrative. Bungie released the sequel, Marathon 2: Durandal, in 1995. It improved on the engine technologies, greatly expanded the scope of the series, and added further innovations to the genre, including actively panning ambient sounds; liquids and swimming; and versatile multiplayer modes such as King of the Hill, Kill the Man with the Ball, and cooperative play. In 1996, Bungie ported Marathon 2 to Windows 95 and released Marathon Infinity for the Macintosh, which included a new scenario using a modified Marathon 2 engine and, perhaps even more importantly, the tools used to build it: Forge and Anvil.
In the year 2000, Bungie released the source code to the Marathon 2 engine, and the Marathon Open Source project began, resulting in the new Marathon engine called Aleph One. Finally, in 2005, Bungie authorized free redistribution of the entire Marathon trilogy and all related files. This means that the entire trilogy can now be legally obtained for free and played on nearly any computer.