As soon as my business trip plans for London last week were finalized, I knew I was going to have to arrange to meet up with at least one Bungie fan in the city. The first and most obvious choice was Stuntmutt, the author and artist behind the Halo comic One One Se7en, hosted at HBO. (Apologies to c0ld vengeance, whom neither of us thought to call until the second beer-- catch you next time, promise.)

[image:8780 right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] I took the Heathrow Express in from the airport to Paddington Station on Friday evening after work to meet Stuntmutt, planning to go into the city for a bite to eat, something to drink, and a bit of conversation about life, the universe, and the meaning of Halo. I was also planning on retiring early enough to make it into the queue for the Apple Store that was opening the next morning on Regent Street; but alas, that was not to be-- not that I regret not trying, given the temperature in London that evening.

I imagined a rather dinner-with-Andre type scenario, with clever drinks and witty banter. Of course, in a way that's exactly what transpired, but with enough emphasis on the former that my recollections of the latter are most certainly exaggerated. There's something nearly magical in the effect of beer that is able to create the lasting impression of having been extremely funny the previous evening, despite having erased any specific memory of what had been said, and heightening the recollection of having a painful close encounter with a hotel automatic sliding door that was somehow configured carefully to deny access to inebriated people.

What did become clear, as the evening wore on, is that Roman Abromovich (pronounced Roman Abr-r-r-r-r-amovich) is the Forerunner, and he created Halo to destroy Arsenal. Ooops... sorry for the Halo 2 spoiler.

[image:8778 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Of course, it wasn't actually possible to exit the train station without having a beer, so the first stop was a bar actually inside the station for a couple of warm-up beers (as opposed to warm beer-- I was gracefully spared any lecture on the proper serving temperature of beer or urged to partake in the chunky alcohol soup known as Guinness, instead opting for a couple of cold lagers, which suited me fine) followed by a visit to The Heights, a rather swanky-looking and overpriced hotel bar with a nice view of London's skyline, where I promptly sat down at a table and waited for Stuntmutt to powder his nose. A waiter came by to explain that the table I was seated at was only for patrons having dinner, and a glance at the drink menu had already indicated to me that we wouldn't be doing so. Since I'd already had a few drinks, I decided the logical course of action would be to respond only in Russian and pretend I didn't speak any English, in the hopes that eventually the waiter would just give up in frustration and allow us to remain seated.

[image:8779 right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Of course, before the subterfuge could be completed, Stuntmutt returned from the washroom, and not knowing what I was up to, promptly blew the whole scheme out of the water by speaking English to me, obviously expecting me to understand; oh well. We moved to another table and I admitted that it had been worth a shot.

At any rate, while it was hardly an interview (from either side) I did want to get an idea of why Stuntmutt had ended up creating One One Se7en. As it turns out, he approached Halo fandom rather like many of the new fans-- from other console shooters. And by "other console shooters" I mean, of course, GoldenEye-- a game I played once for all of fifteen minutes, if that, before dropping the controller and wondering what all the fuss was about.

[image:8781 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Of course, my objection wasn't so much to GoldenEye as to the console itself. I hadn't owned one since the Atari 2600, instead relying on a series of computers that functioned both for gaming rigs and general productivity; a Commodore 64, an Amiga 500, and a series of Macintosh laptops and desktops. Of course, there's never really been a Golden Age of Macintosh gaming unless you count the reign of Marathon, where there really was nothing else with such a comprehensive and creative vision out yet on the PC in the nascent shooter market, where the revolutionary but simplistic Doom had given way to the three dimensional but simplistic Quake; a game that gave every impression of having had its art design been done by schizophrenics. Quake's themes were so all over the map that it was hardly possible to have any cohesive story unite all its disparate elements; whereas previously the Marathon series had created an entirely immersive and believable world.

Traveling to that world, of course, requires more than just a valid passport; and despite the magnanimity of Bungie in releasing Marathon's source code as well as the excellent and exhaustive work of those at the Aleph One project, visiting the Maraverse is still an acquired taste-- such that even those as deeply steeped in Halo as to write a comic about it several times a week have never managed to make the trip there.

Most of that, of course, is about controls. Despite the marvelous improvements in the graphics and the addition of TCP/IP play, Aleph One's mouse control still reveals the fact that Marathon was really never meant to be played with a mouse. For many players, going back to using a keyboard for everything after playing with a mouse or a joypad is too much of a step back. Which is a shame, since Marathon is worth it.

However, there are more than a few moments in Halo 2 that are strongly reminiscent of Marathon-- the vacuum portions of Cairo Station, for instance, and parts of the Forerunner installation in The Arbiter; especially the parts with moving geometry, that look like what the scrolling textures in Marathon were supposed to imply: imposing moving machinery.

[image:8777 right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] I was lucky there was no moving machinery in my future aside from the Tube train; after a quick stumble from the hotel bar to a Chinese food restaurant where the topic became the Halo 2 storyline-- or at least as much as could be discussed without spoiling it for me, since I haven't completed the game yet-- and the role of significant others in extended hours of Halo playing.

After that, a quick trip back to my hotel, where I had the unfortunate encounter with the automatic door, which convinced me I'd probably not be making it to the early line for the Apple Store the next morning, either.