I learned how to play Marathon, but ONI the Irish AI taught me how to feel about it | Tech Radar

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I learned how to play Marathon, but ONI the Irish AI taught me how to feel about it

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“Engaging affirmation protocol,” says the voice in my ear as I pull out a knife and head for the nearest loot stash. “Assert: you will be forgotten. Assert: you take relief in that realization.”

The tech minds in Silicon Valley dream of AI agents: independent systems designed to operate without oversight, booking holidays based on a single prompt, or making complex coffee orders to your tastes. Frappuccino, decaf, semi-skimmed, Lake Geneva in the summer.

But they could be dreaming bigger. In the first-person extraction shooter Marathon, one AI agent is an eerie, maternal silkworm who “helped shepherd your consciousness into your very first shell”. Another, Gaius, is committed to ensuring humanity’s survival by attending to food production as our species spreads throughout the stars. And then there’s Vulcan, who is flanked by an enormous digital lion - its skin rippling like a CRT monitor doused in water. Vulcan has some important functions too, but thanks to the big cat, it’s a little difficult to concentrate on what they say.

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For the corporations that once had a stake in Tau Ceti IV - the doomed settlement Earth had such high hopes for - the AI agents appear to be a link in the chain of plausible deniability. As a freelance runner, you’re hired to carry out tasks to disrupt the operations of rival companies or investigate whether profit might still be salvaged from the planet below. No matter the damage you cause, however, you can’t be easily traced back to your employer. Since you never speak to a human being directly, the executives who benefit from your sabotage are protected. They are, to use a Marathon-appropriate term, behind a bubble shield.

Your only regular companion in this lonely setup is ONI - the Irish-accented onboard navigational intelligence, who guides you through Marathon’s earliest contracts and updates you on the status of your robotic body as you creep through the ruins of the colony. “You may exfiltrate if the possibility presents itself,” she says on your first meeting. “But a far more likely outcome is your expedient demise.”

ONI is a straight talker. It’s her tone that steels you against the mechanical reality of playing Marathon: you will die, frequently, without grace or meaning. When several teams spawn into a map, nobody’s success is guaranteed; by the end, every player might well lie in a pool of their own cerulean blood, after clashing with each other or the robot battalions left behind by the Unified Earth Space Council.

ONI routinely chimes in with a comment when you beam down to the surface at the beginning of a run. “Neurologics optimised,” she might say. “Shell primed for exploration and violence.” Pay attention, and you’ll find she delivers practical pointers, advising caution and shrewd risk assessment. Is there any better extraction shooter advice than to “calculate your strategic response to threats based on your run objectives”?

This, uniquely among the competitive FPS genres, is the one where combat is not a given - and not necessarily the wisest course. Survival in Marathon is often about deciding when to let a team pass, knowing you’re already too battered to pull off an ambush, or loaded down with too many valuables to take on the risk of a chaotic gunfight. Not for nothing does ONI recommend “moderate ego detachment during your runs”. Pride comes before a fall. Though I wish I hadn’t phrased it quite like that. Now I’m thinking about the digital lion again.

At the galaxy brain level, ONI offers a new perspective on Marathon, and perhaps failure in general.

At the galaxy brain level, ONI offers a new perspective on Marathon, and perhaps failure in general.

The orientation process of playing Marathon lasts for at least 20 hours, I would argue. During that time, you’re still wrapping your head around the aural clues that fill the air on Tau Ceti; learning to distinguish the hi-NRG rattle of turret fire from the staccato splash of player fights. Before you’ve learned how to move unheard, you’ll give away your position without even knowing you’ve done so - picking up an innocuous data card, or rifling through a munitions crate.

It’s a magical period of death and dawning understanding; one in which you’ll need the philosophy of ONI’s affirmation protocols in order to push forward. Whether it’s a reminder that “every reset refines your potential” or that “previous failures may inform your strategy for future success,” there’s a kind of mathematician’s optimism to be found in her words. A comfort after yet another squad wipe.

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Sometimes, ONI’s voice is simply used to instill tension and existential horror. “Observation: the settlers here valued expansion over survival,” she says when arriving in the diseased agricultural zone. “They are now deceased.” She’ll warn you not to pay attention to any apparent screams you may hear, which - as she explains with the cold reasoning of a piece of code - can’t sensibly be attributed to the long-dead. “Reminder: Please refer to your operating manual if you experience repeated memory loss,” she says, helpfully.

But at the galaxy brain level, ONI offers a new perspective on Marathon, and perhaps failure in general. Every time you die on Tau Ceti, your consciousness is ejected from your shell and flung back up into orbit, ready to be installed in a new bit of humanoid hardware. ONI identifies the possibility that, through mechanical reincarnation, you may one day be freed from the terror that grips every new Marathon player. “Reminder: death is not the end,” she says. “Let it sharpen your focus for the runs ahead. You rise again on bones spun new and fresh.”

It’s useful to view your in-game vault in the same way. Every wipe clears space, making room for future gear and helping you to reassess your priorities. The cobwebs are blasted away each time an opponent shreds you with their LMG, and ultimately, that’s good for both parties. It might not be enlightenment, exactly, but ONI’s natterings have helped me to process the repeated losses that come inevitably in Marathon, and to embrace the beauty of Tau Ceti’s eternal opportunity.

“Move without fear, as you have died before and will again,” she says. “Memories of pain have been purged. You are free to run.”

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Jeremy is TRG's features editor. He has a decade’s experience across publications like Games Radar, PC Gamer and Edge, and has been nominated for two games media awards. Jeremy was once told off by the director of Dishonored 2 for not having played Dishonored 2, an error he has since corrected.

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