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Bungie have finally broke the silence on their beleaguered extraction shooter Marathon. The team have detailed where Marathon is heading over the next several months, responding to feedback that the game is difficult for new players to learn and whether the game has any future after a poor launch.
Moving beyond pure extraction
Marathon launched as a cutthroat PvEvP experience, and Bungie say that format is still here to stay, but it won't be the only way to play going forward. The studio are building toward connected PvE, PvP and PvEvP experiences with varying levels of intensity, aimed at giving solo players, casual sessions and hardcore crews all a way in without forcing everyone through the same high-stakes loop. The key part here is: Does Marathon have enough players to fill all these playlists? I certainly hope it does.
October: Nightfall Refresh
Rather than sticking to strict seasonal releases, Bungie are pacing updates around the size of the work itself. This means Nightfall Refresh arrives in early October as a smaller update, bringing back a rotation of previous game modes while Bungie wrap up the development of bigger updates.
December: Symbiosis
Symbiosis is the first major step in this overhaul, introducing Marathon's first permanent PvE mode, alongside an experimental Team Deathmatch option. The Perimeter zone is getting a visual overhaul built around a spreading fungal ecosystem, new points of interest, and a pinnacle encounter against the Tick Queen, Marathon's largest enemy yet. A new shell, Bishop, a fast melee-focused robot samurai, also joins the roster, alongside improved onboarding and a new social space for testing weapons and gear.
March: Marathon's evolution
Bungie are calling March's update Marathon's evolution, bringing everything together into an interconnected system of permanent PvE, PvP and PvEvP modes. It also includes a refactored Cradle with deeper shell progression, more focused narrative content, new alien enemies, and an entirely new zone. Bungie describe this as the point where the game starts operating as a connected whole, rather than the end of its development.
All in all, on paper, this sounds like a good set of updates, but what really bugs me here is how well this is executed, whether players return and what it means now that Bungie have also announced they are not done with the Destiny franchise and are unvaulting Destiny 2 campaigns, destinations, and raids.
In the ideal world, Bungie has enough resources to push both franchises forward, but in reality, it's hard to imagine them having the workforce to keep two live-service projects alive at the same time.
