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A selection of images from Duality, a cancelled early 3D FPS by Double Aught (the creators of Marathon Infinity and its endlessly complicated storyline) being developed in the late ‘90s, using their own engine, for Mac OS and PC.

Duality is a completely original, true 3D action game built on Double Aught’s proprietary engine. Double Aught is a small company that split off from Bungie after completing Marathon II. Duality takes place on a distant planet, far in the future.

Duality’s world is harsh - in many ways. The planet’s axis points at the sun, so that one side is a perpetually baked desert, while the other is all darkness and ice. The narrow band at the equator is the only liveable area. The human society on Duality is equally divided - at the top are the aristocrats and the Factors, a priesthood that controls the last remnants of ancient technology left on the planet, while at the bottom are the common people and the Polys, a class defined by physical deformity and doomed to the hardest labour. Deep within the planet’s caves, and under the glaciers and deserts at the poles, wait the Builders - a sentient race laid low by a supernatural enemy many thousands of years ago. Slowly, they - and their enemy - have been reawakening.

The player is thrown into the midst of this world, with few clues to where he comes from or what he is. The player must fight well and think carefully in order to survive, and as more and more of the game world descends into civil war and chaos, the player’s fight for survival becomes a fight to save humanity - and the Builders - from destruction.

The only piece of this world to eventually get public release - outside of screenshots and the occasional soundtrack snippet - is this short story hidden deep within the depths of Marathon Infinity, set in an early version of the Duality universe.

It’s not known if any playable pieces of Duality still exist anywhere - it has been suggested (only half-jokingly) that all development materials currently reside in a lead-lined box at the bottom of the ocean, alongside the Marathon II for Windows 95 source code…

Something that is self evident in screenshots of early 3D FPS games that is often lost in modern "Boomer Shooters" is just how much the level designers clearly loved the new found freedom true 3D offered them.

Look at all the curved architecture that's in every screenshot for this game! Marvel at the pointless filigree, the caves made from subtractive/carved brushes, the verticality and sheer sense of scale that oozes from every pore and pixel that exists of this game. A lot of these screens exude strong 90s Quake mod energy, too, which makes this game's demise hit me that much harder.

This sort of "playground" approach to 3D level design extended to more genres than FPS games, but it's evident in nearly every 3D FPS from 1995 up to about 2002 or 2003 or so, and it's an aesthetic and attitude that desperately needs to be stolen and expanded upon.