I Have Never Played An Extraction Shooter.

I Have Never Been Interested In An Extraction Shooter.

I Don't Even Think I'm The Target Audience For An Extraction Shooter.

But Escape, Allegedly, Will Make Me God.

    Assuming you're here from my Twitter, you know what Marathon is, I haven't shut up about it for two weeks straight now. No major gaming outlet has, for better or worse. Bungie Inc.'s new game based on their (now-30-year-old) Landmark IP of the same name. Though, while it previously existed as a DOOM-esque, narrative-driven FPS title, it now finds life reborn as a Tarkov style "Extraction Shooter". 

And that's... interesting. I think the genre is niche for the same reason most other genre's are niche, "it's on PC and has yet to be funded into the mainstream market", Bungie does have a chance to change that tune much in the same way that Epic changed the perception of Battle Royale style games in the footsteps of PUBG.

The potential is there, but people need to allow it to happen. In an industry that's become increasingly tribalist and reactionary, where titles are increasingly expensive and time consuming to produce, the task at hand only becomes more difficult and risky. But it can break through the noise, and most likely, given time, probably will.

I started playing games around 5 years old, my earliest memories are of Pokemon Ruby Version but that very quickly turned into AAA titles when my dad brought home COD 2 for the Xbox 360. It was always local bot matches in multiplayer or against friends on split screen, I never had a penchant to jump into the online world and get my ass handed to me by faceless douche bags with slurs in their handles. I wouldn't play anything online (club penguin doesn't count) until 2014.

Destiny was my first real online experience, and I fell in love with it. It coincided with my ventures into online COD lobbies as well. Effectively, Destiny popped my Online Multiplayer cherry. I didn't really give a shit if it was kind of "mid" by some standards, it was awesome, it is awesome. As bad as Destiny has ever been, even into it's sequel, it's still awesome. Halo is still awesome. 30 years later, the original Marathon trilogy is still awesome. Bungie is really. fucking. awesome.

After spending my adolescent years dreading the idea of playing online with strangers; it wasn't that bad. I'd feel similarly when the Battle Royale scene blew up and I got on that train late too (aside from one off matches with friends in 2018, I wouldn't really get into it until the pandemic); it wasn't that bad. So while I dread the idea of an extraction shooter, I imagine, it won't be that bad.

The truth is I love video games, I like the escapism, I like trying new things, especially when those new things are presented with care. Extraction shooters on paper represent everything I dislike about a video game: pressure, sweaty competitiveness, overall lack of personal progression, repetition for the sake of repetition (see; Fortnite, COD, etc.)

But I've grown to embrace those aspects in various games on a case-by-case basis, so it stands to reason I'd be open to it here.

I think the thing that pisses me off the most is that Marathon has been received as a "Concord 2", and that doesn't mean anything. In fact it comes off as thinly veiled anti-wokeism. While I'd normally chalk that up to desperate click bait, early public reception has become critical to live-service games, espeically to Bungie's new parent company Sony Interactive, who shit canned Concord and sandbagged Bend Studio after a categorically good sales presence in Days Gone, but which failed to procure rave reviews from critics. 

I have a very busy life, too busy sometimes, too cluttered and sometimes too real, for personal reasons it's been too involved with lawyers and court dates, struggles with extended family, first family, unreliable relationships of both the platonic and romantic types. Yet, for 20 years, the escape of video games, the novelty of new experiences, has at times been the only thing keeping me going. The promise that there's something new to try and sink my time into, some new character I can project myself onto and live through vicariously.

So, trust me when I say, the idea of being a 3d printed mercenary who operates in their own self interest at the expense of corporate overlords and oligarchical government structure but make it space sounds really... really fucking good right now. Especially right now, all things considered. I bet a tariff wouldn't work on Tau Ceti IV. 

The colors, the overall art style, the sound design and score, the promise of jumping into a 30 year old IP with a new lens, the ferocity of punishing encounters that turn every run into a night at a casino? That all sounds immaculate right now.

So why the iron-clad defense for Marathon?

It's not specifically Marathon, but it is a timely suit to wear. The industry is dying. Similarly to film, this medium will not go quietly, it will explode. Violently. And the reason it will explode is because for the last 10 years players have demanded everything and nothing at all, every game needs to have cutting edge graphics, but no game should have ballooning budgets. Every game should have endless content for $70, but no game should be a timesink ignorant of players' lives. Every game should have PvE, but no game should solely be PvE. PvPvE doesn't service Destiny's player base, but Bungie can't rest on the laurels of Destiny for another decade.

These contradictory opinions and think pieces that have continued to drive the industry to its oblivion. No game launches without controversy, no game can launch without a developer being threatened, whether the title comes from industry giants like Rockstar or indie developers who either go entirely unsung or are lambasted for projecting themselves onto their own title and not pushing generic slop.

I won't even get started on how any involvement of minority inclusion has become a catalyst for some of the most categorically disgusting "discourse" surrounding quite literally everything. But for those looking for my commentary on the subject: it's 100% totally okay if you don't want to fuck the protagonist, or the villain, or the side characters, or the architecture, or the developers, or the HR department, or art style, stop being a basement dwelling freak, you'll survive.

This is really less about solely Marathon and more about most games these days, Rockstar will eat shit when Lucia is the closest character to the foreground on the GTA 6 box art. Ubisoft ate shit for simply including a largely optional Black protagonist in AC Shadows. Concord ate shit for being colorful and its heroes having pronouns (God forbid someone has fucking pronouns).

But these opinions are never quite right, they piggyback off of a larger narrative. In the case of Ubisoft, it's consistently lost goodwill with its player base via consistently mediocre releases and inexcusable monetization. This isn't a "god save the corporations" piece. So when a game is set up for failure for "legitimate" reasons, grifters can blame it on the "enemy of the day". But when it beats out expectations, these critiques are suspiciously retconned (see: Monster Hunter Wilds, Link's Androgyny in BOTW).

In the case of Marathon, however, I think it's getting to a tipping point. A largely new IP (or at the very least a new approach to) is being lambasted for... trying something new? having colors? being shipped by SIE? being generic? being niche? having familiar gameplay? having gameplay that deviates too far from Bungie's prior titles? I literally don't know what the fuck the problem is this time.

I think this can all be summed up by this specific tweet:

1) A monetized twitter account

2) Likening Marathon to a critical and financial failure over a speculated MSRP

3) A price point being attributed to Concord when it was first debuted by SIE's Helldiver's 2, which is objectively a success.

Dextero has expressed no direct ill-will towards this project or its developers, but this insistence on pushing this rhetoric for ad revenue is shameless, and disgusting, they know fully well what they are doing, and they know how this can skew public perception.

But the game is ultimately just a game. And no amount of paid-per-letter opinion pieces should prematurely alter your perception on art, especially before you yourself have even tried it. You should make of it what you make of it. Everyone loves a game that they swear no one else understands, allow yourself to make personal connections with these experiences, or at least try. You may end up really enjoying it. But you'll never know unless you try.

Marathon, on paper, is not a game for me. Marathon might not be a game for you. Marathon is a game for a new community Bungie would like to court while they've promised to continue servicing and adding content to Destiny 2. 

30 years ago Bungie developed an IP that saw a rogue AI express, and act on, its desire to escape the confines of its own universe, to create a new one tailored to its own liking. Escape would make this AI God.

In 2025, I plan to escape the confines of my own universe, and jump into the fictitious and mysterious world of Marathon, where I hope to tailor my engagement and experience with that universe to my own liking. And, as only video games have been able to do so convincingly over the last 20 years of my life, to remove me from the plights of my real life, even for a moment:

Escape Will Make Me God.