There’s an awful lot of schadenfreude in the video game industry at the moment. Players have long been skeptical of live-service titles, and one only needs to take a peek at Highguard to see just how bizarre the culture has become, as some beg for a title to fail.
Whether it wanted to or not, developer Bungie certainly got that ball rolling with the original Destiny and its lofty (if somewhat misguided) plan for a decade of support. Destiny 2 followed not long after, but Marathon marks the studio’s first non-Destiny game since Halo: Reach in 2010. It’s also a return to a franchise not seen since 1996, yet another live-service title, a punishing extraction shooter, and the first game to come out since the studio’s acquisition by Sony.
That’s a lot of Swords of Damocles loitering in the air, but not unlike one of the game’s Runners, Bungie might just have squeaked out of the other side with a compelling new title to match its rivals in the space.
Not a Sprint
In many ways, Arc Raiders was the breakthrough extraction shooter for lots of players because, at its core, it’s a storytelling engine in the same way that Helldivers 2 worked for PvE players. It’s a powder keg ready to blow at any minute, even if you or another player declines to light that fuse yourselves, and many of the same positives can be levelled at Marathon.
It’s a combination of desperation and a desire to survive, with relatively aggressive AI enemies in the creepy UESC bots that hover about the place and a limited amount of supplies. Where it differs from its genre ‘rival’ (we’ll come to why it’s not quite that cut-and-dry shortly) is that Marathon has that almost indescribable gameplay feel that Bungie does oh-so-well.
If you’ve played Destiny or its sequel for any amount of time, or even the classic Halo titles, you’ll know that the studio just never misses (pun intended) when it comes to making weapons feel lethal. Whether it’s the Retaliator LMG that cuts robots and runners to ribbons, a Combat Shotgun that feels equal parts Arnie and Doom to wield, or the Halo battle rifle-esque B33 Volley Rifle, every weapon feels unique, powerful, and like you never want to let it go.
Therein lies the rub, however: as an extraction shooter, weapons need to feel powerful but impermanent, because it’s not long before you’re gunned down in Marathon’s Tau Ceti locales.
Make no mistake, the time to kill (TTK) is fast (possibly too fast), and playing a Bungie game with a Kondo-esque mindset of letting your guns and gear go (albeit without your consent) after years of players hoarding Destiny 2 items is enough to give you whiplash.
Quests, at least in the server slam beta, were relatively straightforward, bordering on the mundane, with objectives like breaking windows around the maps like some kind of holodeck hooligan.
Permanent upgrades are plentiful, though, and doled out relatively swiftly between matches. As great as it is to earn a new weapon, grenade type, or just about anything else, I found myself more drawn to the lore tidbits: What happened on Tau Ceti? What’s the UESC hiding? Why are all the factions so weird?
While I could’ve done without a checklist of menus to open (more on the UI in a moment) after each run (Destiny 2 players, imagine having to tick off your Triumphs after every mission), I did appreciate that Bungie is weaving a web which, at the time of writing, just a few days ahead of launch, has no centre.
As fun as Marathon is to play, I’m desperate to learn more about its world and major players.
Shell shock
While each of the game’s character classes (or Shells) feel archetypical in the genre, there’s no denying that they’re an awful lot of fun to play.
I got plenty of mileage out of the Assassin, slipping in and out of invisibility while flanking and using smoke grenades to exfil safely, but it was tough to leave the Destroyer and its rocket launcher behind.
As I played, I noticed that almost all of the friends I played with began to drop into my squad with a different Shell. One buddy delivered clutch healing in one instance with the Triage Shell’s handy healing drone, while another used Recon’s Echo Pulse to spot enemies behind walls.
Finally, no extraction shooter should be without a more casual mode. Playing as Rook is just what the Triage Shell ordered, letting you slip into a no-name, factionless character whose only job is to ruin someone else’s day.
Forgive me, when talking about Marathon, for bringing up Concord. PlayStation’s ill-fated live-service shooter was shuttered just weeks after launch, and arguably had a problem with personality – or lack thereof.
In Marathon, however, Bungie might have the opposite problem. Elements of the game’s art style were subject to their own controversies, but it’s striking in every which way. On the one hand, you can identify Marathon from nearly any screenshot taken from any of the game’s locations. On the other hand, the commitment leads to some undeniable UI shortcomings, like menus feeling unintuitive.
Thankfully, those gripes are minimized the more time you spend with Marathon, as you find yourself navigating between contracts, factions, and swapping out your loadout, but if the opinionated art style doesn’t gel with your sensibilities, it might be a hurdle you can’t quite get over.
Marathon is angular, but never brutalist. It’s colorful, but never playful. It makes the maps of Escape From Tarkov and even Arc Raiders feel flat in comparison, at least from a visual standpoint. Every time I loaded in, I was able to orient myself by a landmark that was instantly recognizable, even in earlier runs – such is Bungie’s commitment to its art style.
I enjoy Arc Raiders more than any other extraction shooter because, in many ways, it’s shorn of the cruft of managing complex inventories and dealing with vague questlines, which have plagued the genre since Escape From Tarkov burst onto the scene.
It’s a game I can play for 20 minutes and feel as though I’ve accomplished something, and I think the same will be true of Marathon once players get over the initial feeling of being very fragile in its beautiful, dangerous world.
Like Coke and Pepsi, I truly believe there’s a world where Marathon and Arc Raiders coexist, offering sci-fi and post-apocalyptic takes on the genre with their own quirks and idiosyncrasies, positives, and negatives.
Much of that depends on how compelling a package Marathon shapes up to be at launch, but with so much riding on it, perhaps the highest praise I can give it is that I’m sad the server slam is over and I want to be back on Tau Ceti again.
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