Watching

Continuing my film history journey with another movie recently added to the public domain French silent film form 1928: The Passion of Joan of Arc.

My word I’ve never seen so many faces!

Interesting back story to the film; It was deemed heretical by the church (if you watched you can understand why) and all known copies were burnt. Thought to be lost to ignorance and time until 1981 when an original cut of the film was found in perfect condition in the closet of a sanitarium in Oslo, Norway.

This story about how the film was almost lost forever is just a further reminder to me that I have never seen my favorite movie. I will never hear my favorite song and that great people are slain before they are out of the crib. Appropriate feelings to be brought about by a film focused on the subject of God’s grace.

The film itself is spectacular. Its impressionist set gives an eerie air of unease to the “trials”. The relentless barrage of close-ups on faces refuses to let us turn away from the human cost of Godly judgement. There are some truly haunting shots that break every rule of film language but still work to stir emotion.

This film also does what good art is made to do: It engages me further with things outside myself. I went down a deep Joan of Arc rabbit hole, which led then to a dive into the 100 Years War and ultimately becoming enthralled by the history of King Charles VII of France.

This film also tackles one of my favorite theological/spiritual questions of philosophy: “Who’s body is this?” What is fear in the face of faith and what is faith if you know God exists? Questions I ask myself all the time.

About 3 days after I got sober in 2013 I had a spiritual experience. I believe in a brief moment, during the overnight shift at a headlight factory in Seymour Indiana, I had direct contact with my higher power. In that moment, my desire to drink was lifted and I have not obsessed over alcohol since. As someone who before that was drinking to die, I have no other name for that than miracle.

I don’t hide this fact in my life. In fact, I try to live and share a life worth living everyday to fulfill this gift I was given. And in a world where no one will bat an eye when folks say they trust zodiac horoscopes; I often get odd looks when I tell my story. I’m sure because it’s easier suspend disbelief when someone believes a star constellation that probably burned out a million years ago has influence on their life today, than when faced with the unshakeable fanaticism of “I met God.”

Just to be clear, I don’t believe I met the Christian God like Joan of Arc, nor do I believe my HP wants me to evangelize or strike fear into their enemies. But I do believe I have been given a second chance and that my actions should try to be a reflection of that miracle.

I say all this to ask: Whence cometh fear? If Joan met God why does she fear the fire? God has directly promised her salvation so why the hesitation? The obvious answer is she is still human, all too human. The flesh makes us weak. This might be part if the answer but the true answer is that: Knowing something is true is weaker than having Faith something is true.

I have faced quite a few trials in my sobriety (Hardly anything like being burned at the stake mind you) and every time my Faith in my higher power (HP) had to grow. Knowing my HP removed my desire to drink is useful but that knowledge is of no use for my desire to drink today. I have to have faith my HP will continue to keep me sober.

In The Passion, Joan yields and admits to witchcraft in order to avoid burning at the stake. Afterward, her hair is cut and it lies on the floor before her. The camera holds on these trimmings for quite some time before Joan calls her captors back into her cell to rescind her confession and be burned.

Joan is reminded that her hair was never her own. Her breath was never her breath. This body is not hers; It is God’s.

A great movie. Terrifying that it was almost lost to time and what a gift to live in an era where it can be seen for free on YouTube.

Playing

I was able to play in both closed alphas for the now defunct version of Bungie's latest game Marathon way back in April(!) of 2025. In that alpha version I had many issues with the game even before finding out the art team had copy/pasted direct visuals from an artist’s Instagram. Since the art theft debacle, Bungie delayed the original launch by six months, regrouped and reworked a lot of the game. They presented the community a “Server Slam” weekend of Feb 27th to March 2nd and I was interested to take a look.

When I first wrote about the game I said I was ok with paying $40 to check out what Bungie was bringing to the extraction shooter genre. Today (Monday 3.2.2026), however, after playing about 10 hours of the server slam weekend: Bungie is bringing significant changes to the extraction formula. Not enough to pull $40 away from me.

This is not saying that Marathon is a bad game. I found the combat, the world, the faction cutscenes and the audio design¹ to be spectacular. To the game’s credit; In a game where I could lose everything I had if I lost a gun fight, I still found myself trying to get in gunfights. As anyone familiar with Bungie games will know, their gunplay is great.

The world design is vastly improved from the Alphas is way more readable. The cutscenes that introduce the game and the factions are on the level you would expect from Bungie. Cool, cryptic and haunting. I want to know more. The audio is somehow alien but also extremely readable.

On the topic of sound design I found that, much like Hunt: Showdown (A very similar game) audio cues play a significant role when tracking other players. Not just footsteps and gunshots but environmental ques as well. Every section of the map have some some sort of “sound alarm” that tells me exactly where other players are. Flocks of birds that take flight when a player nearby spooks them, nests of goo-spiders (I’m sure they have a real names but that’s what I was calling them) attacking, automated turrets coming online to take pot-shots. All these “sound alarms” would be worthless if the spatial sound was not so fine tuned. When in a building I could tell if someone was above me, to the left, what speed they were moving and which “frame” they were running just from a few sound cues. It’s great and definitely a big check in their plus column.

So, with all those positives, what, pray tell, are my negatives?

To start, the UI is out of control. Some parts great, most parts unreadable. I can imagine it is better with mouse-n-keyboard but on the PS5 controller, very much ass. This is not shocking to Destiny 2 players on the PS5 I’m sure. But not only the menu UI, but understanding the game’s item system is going to be a huge learning curve (read: bouncing off point) for new players. There are bunch of healing items that do completely different things but look almost entirely identical. Players will have to hover over items to learn what they are. Standing still in a menu in the middle of a match where you could lose everything in a second; Just reading item descriptions in a menu. There is no clear understanding of what any items do without reading a description. I have to do a little comparison to Escape from Tarkov here because it’s setting alleviates this problem. When I am asked in a Tarkov quest to retrieve 5 light bulbs, I can go into the world and see light bulbs that I need to pick up. In Marathon, I need 5 nano-polymer bundles… I have no idea what a nano-polymer bundle looks like. I have no context for this item which means I will be picking up random stuff until I read the correct thing in the menu.

Same with weapons; Can anyone tell me, just from the name, what a V11 punch is? Is it a Sniper Rifle? A LMG? Or maybe an Assault Rifle?

Or take this gun, I’ll even include a picture.

Just from looking: Is this a shotgun? Assault Rifle? SMG?

So imagine, you’re in a raid and you find a really good mod for a B33 Volly but you have no idea if that’s a gun you even want to use. I know when I’m in a Tarkov raid that if I find a sinper rifle mod, I don’t usually take it because I don’t like sinper rifles.

That’s the problem (one I am not smart enough to have a fix for, but then again, I’m not a developer on a $250,000,000 video game) there is no context for these items. Of course there is going to be a learning curve for any sci-fi game when it comes to things having weird names. Destiny has a ton of weird names for sure but I also wasn’t in a high pressure raid where seconds stuck reading item descriptions in a menu could lead to dying and losing all my stuff. Again in Tarkov, I have seen enough action movies and played enough video games to know what a Mozambique is, or a M4 or a 1911 or a Berretta, or a KAR98, etc.

Also, I don’t know how any of these guns feel until the first time I encounter an enemy in an actual raid. Even Tarkov gives you the ability to try a gun before you take into a raid. As far as I can tell there is nothing like this in Marathon. Sure, you can read descriptions in the lobby but that doesn’t account for how a scope, or a mod, or a barrel will change how a gun feels until you have to pull the trigger in a live-or-die fight. In Destiny, you could take your new drop out on some patrols and figure out if you like it before taking it into a serious raid. Item/Weapon knowledge is going to be a huge learning curve for new players and I don’t think most of them will stick around after a few raids, let alone for the first season.

And that’s the next problem: Seasonal Wipes. As far as I understand you will lose all of your progress and upgrades with factions every season² (You will keep any and all cosmetics purchased or earned). This means every ultra-rare weapon, mod and attachment gone. Now, most Destiny players have at least a low level hoarding diagnosis considering people have drops from 2014 in their vaults. So I’m not sure they will find this aspect appealing. When I originally heard Bungie is making an extraction shooter I was pumped that, with all their seasons of Destiny content behind them, they could figure out how to “fix” the wipe problem of extraction shooters. Remember that extraction shooter genre (and by extension; regular wipes) is the accidental byproduct of Trakov developers trying to create a different game. I was hoping that Bungie could figure out how to run progression without having to wipe every 4 months. It seems that despite all their money and backing from Sony, they are bringing nothing new to the core gameplay of the genre.

The AI enemies are way too hard. I think they should be de-buffed a little before launch because a regular stock PvE enemy should not take half my ammo to kill. Their difficulty would be fine if enemies were dropping ammo and health items but they rarely do. So you start a raid, encounter one group pf PvE and now you’ve wasted all your ammo and health just in time to run into a actual player. It’s not fun, its sweaty.

Also, a small nit I have is that I cannot run multiple contacts at once. One of the great joys of surviving a raid in Tarkov is seeing all the XP drops on the end of raid screen. Completing multiple quests in one raid is not easy which is why it is so rewarding. My worry is that Marathon is slowing down the progression to a trickle just so they can milk season and career XP boosts in micro-transactions. Either way, it’s makes the game feel shallow. When I load into a raid and finish my quest within minutes, I feel aimless, nothing to do other than leave or try to find a fight. But why would I go find a fight if dying makes me lose all my stuff?

Lastly, the entire I time I was playing, looking at the cool art style, listening to awesome sound design and engaging with the awesome world building, I kept thinking: “God, I wish this wasn’t all attached to an live-service extraction shooter.” I would love to experience this game at my own pace instead of having to go up against mega-sweats and under so much pressure to survive. Destiny was good at allowing me to drop in, see the new stuff, play some story missions, run some patrols and chill out. The option to get locked in and play PvP was always there but not forced. That’s my biggest disappointment by far. I have to grind an extraction shooter like I’m unemployed to see all of the content. Oh and I get to pay $40 for the honor.

And that’s the thing, it’s a good enough game with so much potential, that I want to play more. I just don’t want to pay for a live-service game that will be dominated by sweats in less than a week. Who knows, maybe all these issues are fixed in the full release and I’m the asshole.

Right now, I just want to play more Marathon. I’m definitely giving it the weekend to see how the full release compares to the server slam. Though, I am a very sick person and I might just end up buying the game and kicking myself when it goes free-to-play in 6 months³ .

P.S. Note: This was written before the bizarre and intensely bifurcated discourse around this game blew up in my feed. Please know that I do not wish for games to fail. I want games to be their best selves because I WANT TO PLAY THEM. Live-service fatigue is a huge problem in the industry right now and that does inform my own critique of the game. However, live-service or not, it deserves to exist because people made it. It can fail in 2 weeks or last for 10 years for all I care.

Other Notables

** ChatGPT install numbers dive 

** Everyone should read Infinite Jest.

** Necessary conversations about video games.

1  God, if only Tarkov had this good of locational sound design.

2  Seasons only last “about 3 months.”

3  I did end up buying the game. TT-TT