In the lead up to the Cryo Archives being added to Marathon, new challenges have appeared within the in-game Codex. While many seem quite arduous, one in particular is a lovely callback to a particular quirk of the original Marathon series.
This is Dedication Syndrome, found within the Vidmaster tab of the Titles section, rewards players with a special profile background to those who manage to complete all CyberAcme Cryo Archive limited contracts in a single weekend. This background features Destroyer holding a cyber skull and spinal cord, which while gnarly on its own, is a reference to a wonderful piece of art by Craig Collins.
That art, which you can see here, features a Cyborg holding a similarly grisly trophy in his hands, albeit a vicious crimson hunk of cyberised bone rather than the bloody blues seen in the modern game. It’s a nice tip of the hat if you will, to the series’ roots.
There’s also potentially other nods to the OG series. Located within the new Cryologist tab in the Titles section, Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap requires players to find a hidden cache. While not itself a blatant callback, those who played the original games (especially Marathon Infinity – gosh) will know there are some truly absurd hidden terminals sprinkled around for players to find. One hopes we won’t have to grenade hop our way to this one.
There’s also a continuation of a little easter egg in Marathon and scattered throughout Bungie’s repertoire of games. Drop 7, a new challenge that requires players to eliminate seven hostile runners in a single run of Cryo Archive, has not used seven arbitrarily. The original Marathon was littered with references to this numeral: the assault rifle had seven grenades, The Power of Seven made the Marathon 2 theme, and so on.
It’s also nice to see, via the new exploration challenges for Cryo Archive, that the Marathon ARG steps were named after different regions on the new map. Index, Control, Preservation and so on. There are also entries from Bernard Strauss’s journals to collect – one wonders if they’ll dive deep into that OG Marathon lore. Show Tycho some love, darn you.
There’s plenty to dive into but here’s one more fun tidbit from these challenges. If you watched the pre-launch cinematic trailers, you’ll have seen the Assassin putting a little circular chip into his head (before being shot). That appears to be an AI subroutine, which you can collect to access the Cryo Vault as seen in the Cryo Archive codex tab. Escaping with them all will allow you to access Archive 07 – there’s that number again…
All this and more will be unlockable when Cryo Archive is properly unlocked, hopefully this weekend alongside the game’s ranked mode. One hopes it’ll be full of visual treats for us to pore over. Be warned though it, like much of Marathon’s PvE enemies, will be a tough challenge.
