I consider the connection with marathon as a split time line. The real connection would be pathways into darkness, which was the brain child of Jason Jones, who is still at bungie. And as this is another one of his creative endeavors, I feel there is ground to claim common lineage. At least place the point of divergence in the time lines, which comes after pathways but before marathon. At the very least we can gain some insight into how some of the pieces fit together, because they've shown us these pieces before.