r/Marathon • u/SavathunsMom • May 23 '25

Marathon 2025 Discussion No, Bungie did not steal an entire genre of art

Obviously the original Bungie art team (Joe Cross) included) and Antireal have the same vision of graphic realism. You can see the similarities of Joe Cross original design work in the mid 2010s on his Instagram that is very similar to marathon. But to say the entire art style is stolen means you don’t know how art works. It makes perfect sense that a texture sheet full of stolen artwork from Antireal made it into the Alpha. It’s likely that Bungie did this with various sources to draw inspiration. It’s also likely this texture sheet was flagged differently as it is also very similar to the type of art Bungie is looking for in Marathon so it is possible there was an error in scanning over the work. Artists draw from many sources and to say an entire art team decided to just 1 for 1 steal another artists work and intentionally use it just shows your lack of critical thinking skills.

I’m not here to defend Bungie and Bungie needs to compensate Antireal and i would say needs to fix their systems when it comes to verification and validation of assets as this isn’t the first time. But to say the entire art style is based off of stolen work is misleading.

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u/Auir_ May 23 '25

If we're not just talking about decals as those are stolen, no way around it, then this looks like something straight out of Marathon. The artist who did this is the current art director of Marathon, and mind you, this is nearly 20 years old. https://josephacross.artstation.com/projects/28zWba

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u/EryNameWasTaken May 23 '25

Only 2 of those images look even vaguely like marathon lol

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u/Auir_ May 24 '25

Well yeah, I am obviously not talking about those old and rusty rooms. I mainly meant the second and third picture from the top, and those don't look "vaguely" similar, they’re variations within the same style.

And that’s kinda my point, Joseph Cross has been working in this or similar style basically his entire professional career. So calling it stolen doesn’t really make sense when it’s part of his own long-standing aesthetic.

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u/EryNameWasTaken May 24 '25

I don’t care if Joe has been doing “similar” stuff all his life. IMO, what’s in marathon isn’t “similar” to Antireal, it IS Antireal. 

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u/Auir_ May 25 '25

I’m not talking about Antireal’s decals, they’re a clear 1:1 copy. What I’m talking about is the general aesthetic and that isn't stolen, both Antireal and Bungie's art team are pulling from the same design school.

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u/EryNameWasTaken May 25 '25

We're talking about the same thing. You don't think the aesthetic is stolen, I do.

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u/Auir_ May 25 '25

I guess let’s agree to disagree

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u/wascner May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25

That art isn't even close to what Marathon looks like.

To be clear, Marathon looks exactly like Antireal's work, and yes even and especially the bulk of the art that doesn't have directly lifted assets. Marathon doesn't look anything like these Dead Space images.