The Marathon trilogy stands out from most FPS games of the time and even today for its extremely involved story, communicated to the player through diegetic computer terminals which I find aesthetically fascinating to this day. Despite having zero interactivity, limited graphics, and no voiceover, these terminals prove to be a surprisingly versatile expository tool, thanks to writing that is exceptional even by today's standards (at least in the video game realm).

The thing is, while I have a lot of nostalgia for the games, I find them rather tedious to play today. There are a few ideas that put me in mind of resource management-heavy games like System Shock, namely limited saving via "pattern buffers," diegetic healing terminals, and vacuum-based levels that drain your oxygen tank and restrict you to certain weapons. Unfortunately, inventory management is nonexistent, and the systems overall are hardly more complex than Doom's. Taken as action games, and despite a few impressive features like alternate fire modes and dual wielding, Marathon and its sequels play for the most part plays like Doom clones with shoddy AI and floaty physics. They could be excellent if they either had better/more nuanced action gameplay, or were expanded into more robust survival/resource management sims—the complicated story and cryptic level design have me leaning toward the latter—but as it stands I find the trilogy more of an interesting relic than anything else.