It is a war game where one commands armies against enemy armies, but one rendered in full 3D, complete with variable-elevation terrain. I confess to having played lots of netgames of it at Bungie.net, an online site that players can connect to so as to arrange games with other players. As with the Marathon series, the second one is named after a character of the first one who mysteriously survives at the end (Durandal, Soulblighter). The third one, however, is a prequel from 1000 years back, featuring when some of the original series' "bad guys" were "good guys". For some fan-run sites, check out
they has oodles of Myth stuff, and I don't see the point of duplicating them.Instead of being nuts-and-bolts science fiction like Bungie's previous production Marathon, Myth is Tolkienesque sword-and-sorcery with some cute twists, such as surly dwarfs that throw Molotov Cocktails. Although I've never cared anything for JRR Tolkien's work, and I'm not particularly fond of sword-and-sorcery, Myth is nevertheless a good game.
One interesting possibility is to use Marathon characters in the Myth engine; one could lead armies of Bobs and Marines against Pfhor and S'pht, while F'licktas come out of the swamps to menace them both. However, the Bungie guys probably want to do other things for awhile, and there is the question of how this would fit into the Marathon story. However, some Myth fans have actually done such a Marathon-to-Myth conversion, and it ought to be available at The Mill.
Back in early 1996, the Bungie guys had actually been working on a version of Marathon with an improved engine, but it seemed to them like all they were doing was a Quake clone (Quake and its successors are made by id software). As they were working on it, trying to seriously make decisions on it, a project they had called "The Giant Bloody War Game" had been attracting more interest, and when chief programmer Jason Jones came up with a crude level editor, complete with height adjustment, they decided to dump their would-be Marathon sequel and go with this new game. And they succeeded in creating a whole new gaming genre, armies fighting without having to be built; resource building is a very common feature in similar games.
The Myth series itself has experienced a change parallel to that abortive Marathon follow-up. The first two had the characters, trees, and some assorted items be sprites, with the world surface and big scenery objects being models; this is like the Marathon series having all the characters and other inhabitants be sprites and the environment be one big model. The third is all models except for flame effects and the like; not only the characters, but also the trees, are models. The leaves are handled by putting several on a model polygon, painting them in sprite fashion.
A note about strategy: one of the most controversial strategies is camping, that is, avoiding fights, and often staying in one place. Some Myth netgame types encourage camping, because one is scored on having touched some objects, and if one gets into a premature fight, it can hurt one's army and let some other player defeat your armies and get to those objects. However, camping is usually not as thrilling as fighting, which can make it rather annoying.
With that in mind, let us consider these renamings of several Myth netgame levels:
For Myth 1, The Fallen Lords:
For Myth 2, Soulblighter:
And for Myth 3, The Wolf Age:
Also, there is an interesting symmetry between Myth netgames:
| Goal | Flag (stationary) | Ball (mobile) |
|---|---|---|
| Get other teams' objects; lose your objects and you're out | ||
| Be the last one to get a one-of-a-kind object | ||
| Touch as many as you can; no need to hold | ||
| Get as many as you can |
To my game-room page.