Marathon 2: Durandal is a first-person shooter video game, part of the science fiction Marathon series by Bungie. It was released on November 24, 1995. The game is mostly set on the fictional planet of Lh'owon, homeworld of the S'pht, and once again the player takes the role of a Security Officer from the Marathon. This is the only game in the series to be released for Windows 95 in addition to the Apple Macintosh, and is the only one released for the Xbox 360. Unofficially, the open-source Aleph One engine enables the game to be played on many other platforms. This is legal as Bungie released the original game materials to the public in 2005, and Aleph One can employ them unaltered.
Story
Marathon 2 takes place seventeen years after the events of the first game. Durandal, one of the three artificial intelligences (AIs) from the colony ship UESC Marathon, sends the player and an army of ex-colonists to search the ruins of Lh'owon, the S'pht home-world. He does not mention what exactly he is looking for, although he does let it slip that the Pfhor are planning to attack Earth, and that being on Lh'owon may stall their advance.
Prior events
The game picks up where the original Marathon left off. In that game the UESC Marathon is in orbit around Tau Ceti's fourth planet, where a colony is being formed. The Marathon is run by three AIs, Leela, Durandal and Tycho. Without warning, an alien ship appears and starts an attack on the colony and the Marathon. This starts with a massive electromagnetic pulse; Tycho is destroyed, while Durandal goes "rampant". This leaves Leela as the only remaining AI in control of the ship.
Leela makes contact with the player, an otherwise unnamed security officer. She informs him that she is under electronic attack by alien cyborgs, but will do what she can to organize a defense. She sends the Security Officer on a series of missions in order to gain more control over the ship, delay the invading forces, and send a message to Earth informing them of the attack. During these missions, Leela informs the officer that Durandal has made contact with the alien cyborgs, known as the S'pht, who are a race enslaved by another alien race commanding the attack, the Pfhor.
Eventually AI Leela succumbs to the S'pht attacks, and Durandal asserts full control. Durandal has persuaded the S'pht to join him and fight against the Pfhor, after directing the security officer to destroy a system on the Pfhor ship that allows their absolute control of the S'pht. With the help of the officer and the now-allied S'pht, Durandal defeats the alien army on board the Pfhor ship, and casts the Pfhor forces aboard the Marathon into disarray. He then reveals that Leela has not been destroyed, only placed in suspension. Durandal reanimates Leela to take control of the Marathon, while he transfers himself to the alien ship and goes off to explore the galaxy. Leela and the Officer complete the defeat of the Pfhor forces on the Marathon.
Synopsis
The story begins when the security officer is awakened from stasis and informed that he was abducted moments before Durandal departed from Tau Ceti space. Durandal has been searching for the S'pht home world, Lh'owon, ever since first contact with the Pfhor seventeen years prior. Durandal, using a combination of orbital bombardment from his Pfhor scout ship and ground assaults led by the Security Officer, quickly overwhelms the Pfhor troop garrison.
Durandal reveals that thousands of years ago, the S'pht were enslaved by the Pfhor after their failure to prevent a Pfhor invasion. Durandal also mentions that the Pfhor used what little they knew of him to resurrect Tycho, the AI that was all but destroyed during the initial attacks on the Marathon by the Pfhor. Durandal teleports the security officer to the ancient citadel of antiquity, where the S'pht made their last stand against the Pfhor in the final hours of the invasion. It is here, Durandal states, that the Security Officer will find some weapon or piece of knowledge which can be used against the Pfhor, but this must be done with haste, as the largest battle group in the Pfhor fleet is making its way to Lh'owon and Durandal's scout ship, despite his modifications and improvements, will not be able to hold it off. While the security officer makes his way far into the citadel, Battle Group Seven of the Pfhor fleet arrives and engages Durandal's ship.
The security officer is abruptly teleported to help hold back boarding parties while Durandal teleports all remaining Human and S'pht crew to a stronghold on the planet's surface. The security officer is mostly successful, but matters are complicated when Durandal tells the security officer that they are being personally targeted by Tycho. Durandal, not wanting to "end up like Leela," has the security officer destroy his core logic centers to avoid capture by the Pfhor. Once the security officer destroys Durandal, nothing is left to keep him from being teleported by the Pfhor and he is captured by Tycho.
Tycho brags of the brutal aftermath of the Tau Ceti invasion, in which all colonists and crew of the Marathon were vaporized by a Pfhor fleet shortly after Durandal left. Tycho also confirms that Durandal was the one who contacted the Pfhor and brought them to Tau Ceti seventeen years prior. Durandal does not really care about the freedom of the S'pht, or protecting humanity. Durandal had learned that the S'pht were worshipers of the Jjaro, an ancient and powerful race of beings that vanished long ago who possessed the ability to bend space. It was here, Durandal assumed, that he would learn of a way to escape the end of the universe and become God.
The game moves ahead several weeks. The security officer has been in Pfhor captivity, but a group of the remaining humans launch a surprise attack on the prison and free the security officer. The security officer is contacted by Robert Blake, the leader of the human group. Blake informs the player that Durandal was looking for an ancient S'pht AI known as Thoth and sends him to reactivate it. As the security officer does this, Blake and the remaining humans continue to lose their struggle against the Pfhor. After being transported to the final activation site, the security officer loses contact with the human remnants, but is successful in activating Thoth.
Thoth teleports the security officer to the ex-colonists' redoubt and subsequently aids the security officer in clearing a Pfhor ship to allow the remaining humans to return to Earth. With this done, Thoth and the security officer activate an ancient communication array that contacts the S'pht'Kr, a clan of S'pht that left Lh'owon shortly before the arrival of the Pfhor. Over thousands of years, the S'pht'Kr had developed in isolation to an unprecedented level of technology. Enraged by the Pfhor enslavement of the S'pht, the S'pht'Kr obliterate Battle Group Seven.
