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A Wider Base Supports A Taller Tower

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Good morning, it is Friday. We’ve all had 24-odd hours to digest the recent info dump from Bungie regarding Marathon’s upcoming December update, along with additional details and Easter eggs hinting at what to expect from its follow-up in March 2027. Players have spent the last day analyzing the Dev Diary frame by frame, uncovering everything from potential future weapons and cosmetics to enemy types and Map 5 details. It’s been nice. Refreshingly so. After spending the last six or so months trying to highlight where Marathon succeeds while also trying to be reasonable about its pitfalls, it’s a nice change of tune to see excitement and intrigue from a wider subset of players. This is also, in part, due to the renewed promise of Destiny’s future at Bungie, as many players who outright rejected Marathon, believing it to be responsible for the abandonment of Destiny, have now vocalized an interest in jumping in this December, or even sooner in some cases. We’ve covered these developments...
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The Cord: Marathon's Taken King?

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Two weeks ago, Bungie announced that the next major update for Marathon, originally scheduled for September 22, would be delayed until December 8. The announcement was relatively straightforward: the content would be rolled into a larger update called Symbiosis, an October Nightfall Refresh would keep the game moving in the meantime, and Bungie would be moving away from a strict seasonal schedule to give the team more time to build, test, and iterate. A few days later, Bungie announced something considerably larger. Following the decision earlier this year to end active development on Destiny 2, the studio's new leadership walked that back, announcing that Destiny 2's vaulted campaigns, destinations, and raids would begin returning to the game while Bungie recommitted itself to Destiny as a foundational part of the studio's future. At the same time, Bungie acknowledged that Marathon had not reached as many players as it had hoped and that the game would need to evolve beyon...
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Shit Is Just Expensive Now.

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  (The original version of this blog post was written on June 25th, 2026. In an effort to preserve the original sentiment, it was published as it was written. However, an addendum has been added at the end, regarding the recent discussion about whether or not a game similar in scope and size to Insomniac's Wolverine can demand a $70 launch MSRP). This is a boring one, so I’ll try and keep it short. Rockstar Games’ long awaited Grand Theft Auto VI will launch on November 17th for a base price of $80, with an Ultimate Edition priced at $100.  Many players expected as much, some even theorized that the title’s base sticker price would be $100, so $80 is far from “surprising”. That being said, there is reasonable disgruntlement among potential buyers, due to what actually separates these two editions. GTA VI will be released as a single player experience, while its Ultimate upgrade will include 5 additional stores, multiple cosmetics, and two story missions. The idea is that conte...
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The Cord: Marathon Season 3 Delayed.

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Marathon “Season 3” will be delayed until December 2026. The initial shock lasted about 10 minutes. Of course, we need to talk about that, how it probably happened, and why, arguably, it needed to. We’ll discuss this in 3 main parts: how we got here and why it needed to happen, what “here” is, and what it means for the future of Bungie’s Extraction Shooter. Part I: How We Got Here and Why It Needed To Happen. Good afternoon, it’s been a while since we’ve had an update on the state of Marathon and, as such, a similarly long time since I’ve been able to deliver a “Cord”. The waiting game between Bungie and the impatience it wrought on their players had begun festering over the last few weeks due to Season 2 being artificially extended, built upon a completely fucked economy, and ultimately lackluster. In response, the game’s playerbase has dwindled, and probably will continue to do so between now and December as Marathon will have to contend with the launch of Modern Warfare 4, GTA 6, an...
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This Physin't What We Asked For, Sony.

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Anyone who knows me knows that for the past 15 to 20 odd years of my cognitive life, I’ve been a stalwart and at times stubborn Playstation supporter, a self-procclaimed “Pony”, if you will. The very day I was born there was a Playstation in my house, which I’m sure is true for many people reading this due to the seemingly irreplicable success of the almighty Playstation 2. I think the first time I remember ever being given a console was a launch edition PS3, the fat one, the one that had backwards compatibility built into it. I still have that very same console, it’s sitting in a display case. At the time I didn’t know how divisive the PS3 actually was, I was 6 years old and the “you should want to get a second job to afford this bad boy” of it all was very much my father’s problem. To me, it was just a box under a tree that contained a console I’d spend a decade putting through its paces. As problematic as its price tag and software-limiting architecture was, I loved that thing. I st...
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#Sekitember: Shell Trace, Sentinel, "Avarice"

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ANALYZING… FILE TYPE: Dead Drop Message PERIOD: Present Day TOPIC: Shell Trace, Sentinel, "Avarice" SUMMARY: A corrupted message recovered from a Dead Drop Location at AI Uplink. ===================================================================  I've been in this fucking swamp for days... I think. I 've managed to stave off the degradation by plugging myself into Relays, and I've been b oarded up indoors so long I've lost track of the solar cycles. More often than not I keep track of time by how loud the voices are; they're worse at night. So, so much worse. I can't recall the number of times I've heard them. It's usually the same ones, always shrieking, always blood curdling. Ever so often it sounds like children, but those are always weirdly cut short. You get used to it, you learn to tune it out or chalk it up to the ambiance. Sometimes I think it's the Skracs, those things freak me out; though I think I'm more comfortable with the...
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The Cord: Final Push For Season 2

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Good morning, we are in the final leg of Season 2 for Marathon, which is confirmed to end on September 22nd, 2026. In the final five weeks of the season, Bungie is offering a new experimental event called “Ordnance Heist” until September 1st, a PvPvE experiment that promises to put vault keys and high-end loot at the forefront of the extraction shooter. Within this update resides a new prestige store skin for Destroyer, along with the introduction of the game’s first “power weapon,” the Firestorm; a single-mag modified Repeater HPR rifle that shoots incendiary explosive rounds and notably cannot be reloaded. To acquire the elusive weapon, players first need to collect UESC Manifests and Key Templates from UESC enemies on Perimeter. Those Key Templates can then be taken into Dire Marsh, where completing their objective and successfully extracting turns them into Firestorm Locker Keys. You'll need three keys to open a Firestorm Locker, which can appear on Perimeter, Dire Marsh, and O...
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