If it were a person, Marathon seems like it would spend the most time out of its house after 1AM. Its characters wear chunky, neon helmets that make them look like grasshoppers at Coachella, and its official music is all electronica that would sound better in a humid basement, because, according to Bungie global franchise director Philip Asher, the upcoming extraction shooter is largely influenced by late '90s debauchery.
He says so in a Twitter exchange with Michael Douse, publishing director at Larian, which is currently working on Divinity. That series is more concerned with the kind of debauchery that happened around the time of the Ottoman Empire, but Douse nonetheless writes in a post that Marathon "reminds me of the 90s and 00s PlayStation UK era which was dominated by club culture in their comms, bright colors and big speed. (A complement)."
Asher agrees, explaining, "We're deeply inspired by that era’s futurism and how we can pull it forward to today's fashion/club/design scene." In particular, the juicebox-colored 1995 racing game "Wipeout, the PS ads of the 90s/00s (Mental Wealth), translucent DualShocks are all huge influences."
I'm particularly interested to see how Mental Wealth impacted Marathon. The commercial was one of the most infamous PlayStation ads of the late '90s – though the time period, in general, gave fledgling video game companies many opportunities to be esoteric.
The ad featured the young Scottish actress Fiona Maclaine, whose face had been distorted to look like a balloon animal alien with pigtails. She monologued about why you should "forget progress by proxy. Land on your own moon." So I'm now taking this to mean Marathon will either feature a similar motivational message, or it'll have people who look like they're about to leak helium.
