Somewhere in the heavens… there is profit. Not a lot of it for Sony and Bungie, but Marathon is still a blast regardless of numbers.
Bungie’s extraction shooter, Marathon, released back in March and I’ve thus far clocked in just over 100 hours — experiencing MOST of what the game has to offer, alongside the season 2 release earlier this week. To put a long story short, I believe Marathon is one of the most thrilling gaming experiences on the market right now, as long as you’re willing to pick up what it is Bungie is putting down. It is a game that is unapologetically dedicated to kicking your ass over and over again, encouraging the development of the Marathon mindset — that death is the first step to success on Tau Ceti IV.
People will tell you that this very idea isn’t for everyone, but I’d argue it actually is — the real problem being that people are unwilling to meet Marathon on its own terms. To not get too deep into the zeitgeist of online culture, there are many issues pertaining to the inability to engage with art in this way. Here, I want to mainly take Marathon for what it is (eat your heart out Meredith Brooks), but I’ll also touch a little on the contextual aspects orbiting this game just to throw my two cents in.
The UESC Marathon was a colony ship sent on a journey to Tau Ceti IV, a mission to expand humanity into the stars. The game takes place in 2893, almost 100 years since the colonists arrived and subsequently disappeared from the planet — the Marathon ship still looming in orbit. Touching down as bio-cybernetic shells, runners (the players) are tasked with looting and extracting information from the planet for various factions that all have vested interest in the happenings of Tau Ceti IV. Many threats await you on the surface — from the UESC’s deployment of bots policing the surface, to alien anomalies that whisper their way into your mind, and other runners who will rob and gut you for the fun of it. You will face these challenges in a crew of three, on your own, or if that mode permits it, a duo. The gear you find will make you stronger, let you face greater challenges, and open up more opportunities for growth — that is if you manage to extract from the planet before you get terminated.
My personal experience in season 1 was mostly solo, completing all priority contracts (main quests issued by the factions) and hoarding my fair share of prestige loot — the best of the best. My favourite of the four maps was Outpost, a map designed to be progressive, letting you solve mechanics that reward you with increasingly better loot. I tried my hand in the Cryo Archive a few times, managing to collect two of the 6 items necessary to unlock the endgame boss encounter, but ultimately proved far too difficult for me personally.
Now going into season 2, I’ve almost exclusively been playing in crew fills and making new friends across runs, which in itself is proving to be much more fun than how I was playing last season. Not to mention the new zone condition, a night version of Dire Marsh, which makes the game even more suspenseful than it already is by having to navigate the darkness and new creepy enemies that imitate runner voices. Alongside this, there is a mode of this map that essentially removes the PvP elements of the game (PvP-Lite), letting you make a lot of progress much easier than ever before. All in all, I’d make the point that the core loop of this game is a strong point once you’re dug into it, and personally prefer the season 2 take of speeding up how quickly you can rotate good loot into your runs.
Marathon’s greatest strength however, is the simple fact that it is a Bungie shooter. Nowhere other than Marathon and Destiny can you find a game where it feels this good to aim and fire a weapon at something. The gun design across Marathon is genuinely outstanding, especially with the fact that a lot of them have upgrades that make them downright absurd for defeating your enemies. The movement couples into this for its Bungie’s Tiger engine that makes their games feel this good to play. It is also design decisions around the runner shells themselves, as they are equipped with abilities that play to the taste of the player. Offering avenues for applying pressure with a shell like Destroyer, gathering intel on enemies with Recon, or stealing all the loot with my favourite shell Thief. Which brings me to Marathon’s other core strength, its visuals; which I’d say is easily the most interesting looking thing maybe ever. Honestly, even if I hated this game completely, I’d probably still buy a bunch of things from it like I do with Fortnite skins whenever a cool collab happens.
My final glowing point, as I feel I must always point to, is the soundtrack. Ryan Lott absolutely kills it with creating this otherworldly electronic soundscape. Honestly one of my favourite albums of the year, as it works well on its own even detached from the game. Its truly a credit to artistic expression that just creeps into every aspect of the game. One track called Code Race has kept me on a hook since I first heard it, even more so with its remix. Check it out!
All that being said, there is definitely issues with Marathon — I mean it is a Bungie title after all. My biggest observation is how the ‘best’ load-outs calcify into the worst version of the game. From overtuned shotguns to spamming throwables into corridors, in a game like Marathon things that step out of balance can shape how much people enjoy playing and I definitely felt it against these, while also having to value my own loot accordingly. On top of that, the Recon shell being what it is; tuned up mid season 1 and now overbearing and supporting a playstyle that just offers game-changing information for free. It’s not too much out of balance in honesty, but the few outliers are very visible, especially as you get deeper into the season and people start chasing more ‘aspirational’ goals (aka joining the death cult).
Another point I’ve heard and have resonated with a little, is that I do kind wish there was just a bit more to the game. Like more modes, different kinds of way to play the game. They’ve already committed to things like this, and we’re already seeing it with the aforementioned PvP-Lite mode introduced in season 2, but I do want to see them push the needle with how innovative they can be with the extraction style gameplay. Too add to this point as well, It being primarily one mode can sometimes be limiting, specifically for the servers. Playing on Oceania servers, there are times in the day where the game is just completely unplayable, and I imagine it’s the same for other isolated regions. The PvP-lite mode solves this, given little to no other players spawn in, which just makes me wonder what else they could do with more PvE modes, if for nothing else but accessibility.
Finally, I’d touch a little on the discourse surrounding the game. The truth is, Marathon, or more so Bungie itself has been responsible for a lot of… frankly, bullshit — from announcement to release, there was always something bad happening over at the studio. Not to mention the studio’s handling of the Destiny franchise, which just recently has announced end of service for a 12 year long journey with no clear plans for the future. It is clear Marathon is the new direction of the studio, and I’d even agree with the discourse that it is simply the wrong decision. Marathon is a fantastic game, but it has nowhere near the draw of Destiny, and with Bungie and Sony choosing to effectively kill that game it only works to make people more upset and direct those emotions towards Marathon. Beyond being tangled in the studio’s history, there is also a side of gaming discourse that just simply wants to see failure — though, most of this is just noise from people who would never care to try the game for themselves anyway. So realistically its hard to discern the difference between valid frustrations about the game design, resentment towards the studio, and grifters online that just want to be validated in their aimless game-killing crusade. However, there is bleak truth to this, with Marathon’s player counts not being where they need to be for what was approximately $200 million in development costs, and reports by Paul Tassi suggesting that Marathon’s very low player count on the Steam platform being the largest across consoles on top of that.
It is a shame to see such a quality game be beaten down in almost every corner of the internet, but regardless, Marathon is very fun, and is probably my personal top contender for Game of The Year already. Even if the studio’s future is uncertain at this moment, I am allowing myself to enjoy Marathon as a video game, a work of art even — the numbers are inconsequential to me, in the same way that a song’s streams on Spotify make no difference to how much you actually like that song.
If you are at all interested in giving Marathon a go for yourself, there is currently an open week trial that you can jump into right now alongside a sale lasting through June 11.
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