Marathon Alpha: First Impressions

 

The guy at the store told me these are the ultimate running sneakers, but I have some personal reservations, and the sole might not have enough grip.

In true Geezaws fashion, I’m coming to you in pure candor and good faith. I was lucky enough to be among the first batch of invitees for Marathon’s alpha test period. I’ve completed a few runs, enough to quickly familiarize myself with what this game actually is in practice. 

As you hopefully remember, I have not played an extraction shooter before, and the combination of core mechanics that make extraction shooters what they are is an almost near perfect amalgamation of game mechanics that would normally deter me (I discussed these details in my first blog post so, see: my first blog post).

Disclaimer

Visuals

Mechanics

• Runner Mechanics
• Map Knowledge
• The World
• Enemy-Encounters
• Contracts
• UI
• Performance
• In-Game Economy
• Gun-Play
• Team-Play

Lure

First Impressions Verdict

Disclaimer:

• I do not have 100 hours in this game

• I do not have a perfect understanding of the game or it’s loop

• I do not normally gravitate towards “wash, rinse, repeat” style games

• This is an older alpha build of a game that won't release for another 6 months

• The content of this has been bottlenecked to focus on making this alpha a technical test

I am not the best person to discuss this title and how “good” it actually is as an extraction shooter, but considering one of Bungie’s primary intentions with Marathon is to crack the niche genre open to a wide commercial audience, I might very well be the best person to ask. My opinions here are my own, they are not gospel, you may have a categorically different experience to mine, and that’s okay. Please do not use this as an excuse to validate whatever preconceived notions you may or may not have about this title, Bungie as a studio, or its developers as people. Everything you read here is my opinion and personal experience, both positives and negatives. Do not take what I say as the definitive rule of law regarding this game in its current or future state.

As many of you know I was active with this title’s promotional ARG last month, primarily attracted to the overall aesthetic of the game and less so the concept of an extraction shooter. If it was up to me, every game ever made would be a single player, 3rd person action RPG, but I can’t have that be the case, nor should it be the case. Some of my favorite games do not fall under those categories. New genres are good, different and experimental genres add to the continued growth of the industry. It is, categorically, a net positive that not every game is made for Geezaws. Can we agree on this? Yes? Good.

With all of that out of the way, let’s get into it.

Visuals:

What I can say with confidence is that, even in spite of the minor aesthetic differences between the reveal trailer and the game itself, this game is gorgeous. The neo-futuristic art direction coupled with the very artificial, plastic-y look of everything is one of the more unique visual identities I’ve seen in a long time. Considering most AAA games are pushing towards hyper-realism, this is a truly refreshing game to look at. I have only had time with the “Perimeter” map, “Dire Marsh” from the gameplay reveal eventually became available but I have not yet gotten any contracts to incentivize me to check it out yet.

I will say, I did imagine the world would look more saturated, a lot of the foliage outside of the constructed buildings look very dull in color, I have theories as to why this is the case:

1) Functionally,  I believe a more dull “nature” allows players to better identify POIs within the draw distance.

2) Narratively, I believe that there’s some commentary to be made about nature having a duller appearance when contrasted with the uncanny, unnatural colony structures that tower over the landscape.

However, the game feels a bit gray, which you wouldn’t necessarily expect by looking at the concept art. Considering I felt the game had a bit of a desaturated look in the reveal trailer’s “Dire Marsh”, this seems to be consistent across the maps. I don’t think the game needs to look like an acid trip, but the saturation could be dialed up a bit. This makes it all the more interesting that, in the main menu (which you’ll be interactive with a lot), there’s such great contrast in the neon green and hot pink UI elements against the rich, dark gray background.

I don’t think “cell shading” is to blame here, but I do think there should be some global saturation adjustments. It looks a little bit like going back to an LCD TV after living with an OLED one.

Suspiciously, interiors don't have this issue. Like at all. Every interior is the most atmospheric dungeon you've always dreaded walking into. Every room feels like a fluorescent-lit clean room where something either went wrong, is going wrong, or is about to go wrong. They can be bathed in vibrant reds, greens, blues, purples, oranges, etc. The interiors are so much more alive and striking than the exteriors and outside foliage. I have no clue what that's about. Paul Tassi posted a great example of this on Twitter.

Overall, I think the aesthetic has been well translated from CG to in-engine, and the game does look fantastic between its assets, UI, and models. However, I do think there needs to be some tweaking in overall saturation when outside buildings.

THIS GAME IS NOT FINISHED. BUNGIE HAS CONFIRMED THAT THEY ARE STILL ACTIVELY TWEAKING FINAL APPEARANCES. THE FINAL GAME MAY NOT HAVE THIS ISSUE. THE ALPHA IS STRICTLY A TECHNICAL TEST.

Mechanics:

I wish I could leave this at “it’s bungie shooting lmao, you know it’s good” but that would not be fair to you, or to the developers, as there’s actually quite a lot of interesting stuff going on here.

Runner Mechanics:

From a character perspective, your runner shell is pretty shit out of the gate, laborious ADS times and hilariously quick overheating (a functionally interesting stamina bar) that makes movement punishing in early runs. However, you can scavenge around for implants that temporarily improve your shell’s mediocrity, and you can purchase unlocks through your factions to permanently improve your shell. In my first few runs, aiming with an AR felt like I was trying to sling a motorcycle over my shoulder, but after finding a few solid ADS implants, it started to feel good. I was rewarded, tangibly. Which, I imagine, is the whole point of this kind of game. Eventually, I got domed from halfway across the horizon and lost this implant. Back to square one. Frustrating. We’ll get back to this when I discuss enemy encounters.

What makes each shell unique is that they all have an "Ult" and a "sub ability" unique to their shell. Yes, this is hero-shooter ish. Not full blown, but this is not something we can skirt around and act like isn't a reality, nor is it something we must condemn. Some of them have movement abilities (Glitch's speed boost), some of them have strategic abilities (Blackbird's enemy ping). You must know how and when to use these abilities as they are critical in ensuring the survivability of your team. In practice, this is no more hero shooter-ish than Destiny is, in my opinion.

One issue is that, if you're in team fill, you cannot change your runner after you've deployed. Meaning you cannot change your shell to make a more well rounded team. Unless you're in a party and discussing team composition before hand, you will drop in with the real chance of having a team full of 3 Locuses and no way to swap out.

Map Knowledge:

Map knowledge is going to be paramount here, quite literally a difference maker between extracting and losing everything. Plan and learn your routes. There’s also a lot of environmental storytelling going on here, turning certain corners can take you from running through massive, violently orange PVC pipe to slowly creeping through nondescript goo, only to walk right back into a clean but ransacked UESC laboratory. You will question the goo. “What the fuck happened here?” Exactly, what the fuck did happen there. There are a handful of POIs on Perimeter, distinct buildings where you will be doing most of your contract objectives and looting. However, the closer you get to the epicenter of these POIs is the closer you inch towards danger: AI enemies are abundant, constantly reinforce, and other players may have objectives here, move wisely.

The World:

There are a handful of "random events" that can happen in the game, you can also trigger certain interesting ones. One event sees a giant blue UESC square appear over a part of the map that will be seen by everyone on the map and littered with USEC AI bots. This is a random hot spot, and the loot is great. Another is a commander appearance, where a formidable commander team will spawn in guarding great loot. So there are dynamic events that make the world feel reactive on a surface level. As alive as the world feels, it can at times feel scripted or repetitive over time, which keeps the runs from feeling like lived-in experiences, and instead feeling more formulaic. Bungie wants to tell the story of an ever changing Tau Ceti as the planet reacts to the mercenary-led intra-corporation war taking place on the surface, but it never quite feels like there are any tangible consequences to these individual skirmishes. The basic UESC drones will redeploy when and where you expect them to, the UESC commanders will redeploy when and where you expect them to (for me, I noticed that it happened in the same spot on Perimeter multiple times, I'm not sure if it was intentional or not). This feels less like you’re making successive runs on a world reacting to your shenanigans and more like Groundhog Day or any other run-of-the-mill Battle Royale. Which, to me, was a bit of a disappointing realization. It made me wonder what this game would look like if Bungie stuck with their long abandoned initial idea of a persistent world.

I know this sounds like a bad thing, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Allow me to explain. The game feels repetitive in the way Helldivers 2 does, you drop into a map you’re familiar with, do a number of activities you grow familiar with, and leave the map. The enemies are always kind of where you expect them to be, or where ever the map tells you they are. The contract objectives are all kind of “go here and do this thing” (open crates, kill a target, download research, etc). This is not a bad gameplay loop. This works for Helldivers. It will work for many players. The problem I have is that Helldivers is supposed to feel like an endless, meaningless struggle as a meta-commentary on the inefficiency and outright waste of resource wars. Moreover, the progress made in Helldivers is actually reflected in live "liberation percentages" which do affect the larger story depending on whether or not certain planets are liberated. In Marathon, where what’s happening on Tau Ceti is allegedly supposed to have some sort of grand, cosmic-scale consequences, it feels particularly inconsequential. Again, this is a technical test, god knows what kind of real time activities are going to coincide with the title's life cycle when the game releases. We’ll get back to this when I discuss what the lure of the game is.

For dynamic weather, rain makes overheating less punishing, there are implants that actually improve how efficient the cooling effect of water is on your overheating. This is cool. There is literally nothing wrong with this conceptually or in practice. Rain also masks footsteps, so there are pros and cons to weather changes, the dynamic weather actually is dynamic, and actually matters.

Enemy Encounters:

Plain and simple, you will spend 90% of this game interacting with everything but other real people. More often than not, you’re going to be engaging with a plethora of well-tuned AI that can either be dumb as bricks or shockingly effective and lethal. It never feels unfair, though, you get what you came for; if you were looking for basic loot, you'll have an easy time, if you were looking for good loot, you will struggle for it. Some of the higher end AI can have abilities; cloaking tech, riot shields, super sprints, grenade launchers, etc. But they always feel manageable, and since we’ve already discussed the “repetitiveness” (non-derogatory) of the map, you can always be sure when you’re about to get into a fight of any given caliber when it comes to AI, and plan accordingly.

The problem with this is that, due to the infrequency of other real players, I always felt like I was getting jumped when I did come across real ones. I was almost never prepared to face a real squad. This could simply just be because I’m not good at preparation for extraction shooters, but there’s a real frustration in going from “all quiet on the Western Front” to getting descended upon by a capable team. Half the time, I would be killed before I could even be certain of what, or who, killed me. No matter how good Bungie’s AI is (and by God is it in top fucking form here), there is a jarring gap between the best AI enemy and real people. It’s quite honestly irreconcilable. You spend 90% of the game tuning your response time and tactical approach to good-but-predictable AI only to get jumped by a real team. Unless you’re being stupid, you will almost always escape an AI encounter. Crossing another squad? Your game might be over before you’ve even realized you were in the scope.

Again, I’m not good at this type of game. If this is how Tarkov plays normally, then so be it. However, this is going to be a huge, huge barrier of entry for casual players or other newcomers to the genre, which Bungie is hoping to expand into. It might be something you can learn to live with, but again, these are my candid thoughts. It is the most serious case of “back to the lobby with you, buddy” I have ever experienced. This isn’t a fortnite lobby, this is a niche shooter being played by people who will outmaneuver you on a consistent basis, and it can feel defeating, frustrating, and will turn people away.

Future 10AM Geezaws here. After I pre-wrote this post last night (to make it as fresh-in-mind as possible), I went ahead and had a few more runs between 9:00 and 10:30 PM. This point is semi-outdated. During that hour and a half I would have non-stop, successive runs where I would immediately get descended upon by real players. They hit fast. They hit very, very hard. Quite honestly, they hit a bit too hard. There is no reasonable universe where you can expect to compete with people who drop in with maxed out kits if you repeatedly die just trying to get out of the drop zone. I don't know if this is just how extraction shooters are meant to be experienced, but this is far too punishing for the average player who probably already gets this strain of rush/entertainment out of any of the 400 free Battle Royales that exist. It reminds me of people who never made it to the first bonfire in a souls-like. Prior to 9:00PM, I saw no reason to compare Marathon's gameplay loop to Apex Legends. After 10:30PM, I saw little reason not to, you will spend hours getting cut off at the knees before you have a half decent run, and even then you may not successfully extract. Except this is like if there was a version of Apex you could play where you started with nothing and the closest team to you started with final circle loot. This balance (rather, imbalance) has made me incredibly alarmed for the average/casual player who's not particularly great at shooters or who doesn't have time to make up for the skill inadequacy by playing the game for days on end. I am concerned about the PvE; in my personal experience, it's either been completely inconsequential, or so heavy handed that it's kind of off putting, and considering you lose your gains when you die, genuinely devastating. It's not that the game shouldn't have PvE, it's that the implementation is, to me, not where it should me. I got to the point where I was deploying just to deploy, armed with nothing more than a basic pistol out of the blackmarket because I knew I'd get killed within 3-5 minutes of deployment without even seeing where I was getting shot from before I was dead. That would come to fruition between 10:00 and 10:30PM, when I deployed on roughly 7 runs only to get eviscerated at the closest POI to spawn. 7 times in a row I dropped in with a pistol because I didn't want to risk losing half decent loot, 7 times in a row I died before I could aim that pistol at whoever was shooting me. Once your squad is a runner down, it is damn near impossible for the remaining two members of your team to make up the difference unless you're playing with a formidable teammate on your side. That said, this could possibly be remedied by good teamwork, which I was personally not privy to very frequently, I discuss this more in team-play).

It's not so much that real players are "too hard" (that's literally the point), is more so that an enemy team descending on you changes the fundamental feeling of what you're playing so rapidly, it's not integrated well in my opinion. It's a bit like watching an animated movie but one scene is very obviously more well animated than another. It is jarring, and you'll sit there like "wait? what the fuck was that? why isn't the rest of the movie like that? Or why was that one scene double the amount of frames for no fucking reason? Something here feels out of place and incongruent". In PvPvE, either the P or the E feel too different to gel with the other. This is not an irreparable flaw, it just needs a bit of reworking. This can work, but it's a smidge experimental as it stands.

Again, this is an alpha, they are still working on this game. Moreover, this alpha is dated, we do not know how the game has advanced since Alpha 5.0 (the version of the game we are currently playing that could be very, very old functionally).

Contracts: 

To counteract the ache of having your ass relentlessly handed to you, Marathon employs a contract system, the effective campaign of the game. You, a mercenary, accept one contract per run from one of six factions available. Should you complete the contract, you are rewarded with whatever the contract offers. If not, time to redeploy and try again. However, not every contract is contingent on successful extraction, in fact, most of them can be completed without extracting. Which, in practice, means there is still tangible progression even if you aren’t good enough to extract 100% of the time.

These contracts reward you with credits, faction rep, notoriety, and some bespoke goodies defined by any given contract. With faction rep, each faction you grow more favorable with will offer you better items to buy from the pre-game lobby “blackmarket” (a place to buy items if you don’t have a lick of shit after getting your ass handed to you and losing everything, including weapons, consumables, and gear). You also unlock the permanent shell upgrades I mentioned earlier with higher faction rep. However, you will have to buy these shell upgrades through an absolute disaster of a currency situation, we’ll get to that when I discuss in-game economy.

Contracts are also used for world-building. Increasing faction rep levels can unlock new cutscenes or dialogue options with each faction's representative Artificial Intelligence bot. These are all cool, no comments, always exciting to watch, very well made, and intriguing. They progress the story and each successive level up contributes more to the lore. A good engine for engagement.

Again. Another reminder, this is a technical alpha, I do not know how much more immersive or engaging contracts will be on release. They're good as they are now, so I can only imagine how much better they'll be on release.

UI

The UI is very barebones, while I imagine this might just be the Alpha, I would not be surprised if this is just the UI for the release version. If you’re not in the middle of a run, you are poking around very minimalist menus. There’s quite literally nothing in this game outside of running on Tau Ceti or poking around menus. No other modes, no community hub. Again, this is perfectly fine for some people as it places the focus of interacting with the product on actually playing the game's focus and not dicking around with emotes, but for other people this might end up feeling very impersonal and routine. You can’t even rotate the runner models, whose decision was that?

The average experience (after you’ve selected your runner shell) is:

> Look at your loadout to lament all of the shit you just lost or ogle at all the goodies you just successfully extracted

> Collect your contract reward and select a new one

> Set your starting load out

> Drop in

That’s the entire game's experience, and it’s all funneled through 3 different menu screens.

Again, please, mercy, this is a technical alpha build. It says it in hot pink letters on every page of the menu. Please, do NOT assume this is final version criticism.

I understand how you might see something like COD multiplayer and go "but Geezaws, COD Multiplayer is literally just poking around menus and dropping into a map", but that's a single mode for a much bigger game, and even then there are an incalculable amount of sub-modes. Moreover, this is not COD. It's supposed to be bigger than COD. How it can claim to be the ultimate live service, bigger than COD, but offer less in the way of means-of-engagement is puzzling.

Performance:

I’m playing on a PS5 Pro. Genuinely fucking ridiculous. Not a single texture pop-in, not a single frame dropped, not a single stutter. This performs better than most finished games these days. I cannot believe how tight the performance of this is. I have literally no comments. Wait time for deployment was near zero, loading times were pretty short. Shockingly good. Shockingly good. Overall, buttery smooth, we know that internally, the game was developed to make sure there was as little friction as possible, it shows.

In-Game Economy:

Some time ago people were hoping that Bungie’s next game wouldn’t be so heavily dependent on 400 different currencies. I am genuinely sorry to say that not only does this game have a fucking truckload of currencies, almost everything is a currency. The shit you pick up that you can use can either be used or sold for credits. The shit you pick up that you can’t use can either be sold for credits or turned over as faction-specific currency to unlock permanent upgrades. Everything has a bespoke purpose, and there’s so much of it. “What’s worth extracting with, this legendary AR or this random fucking wire?” both. In different ways. It was immediately overwhelming. I will not give Bungie a pass here. I find this to be ridiculous and verbose. Some items work for multiple factions, some do not. Credits (the primary currency) works in the black market to buy consumables, perks, or gear, or as a supplement in buying permanent faction upgrades, along with whatever random shit you picked up on Tau Ceti. Everything you can buy with credits you can lose, immediately. You can pick up some copper wire, or a valuable box that you can either sell for credits or are necessary for a faction upgrade, or any number of other random nondescript shit. Sometimes you will pick something up for a faction upgrade, but you haven't unlocked that upgrade yet, so the item will stay in your vault for an indiscernible amount of time. You have to know what every fucking item means for every faction and every faction will require different materials for every type of faction upgrade. Expanding your explosive bags with CyberAcme might require 4 copper wires, 2 pieces of rubber, and credits, but buying the upgrade that lets you buy cores from CyberAcme in the black market requires leaves (like, fauna leaves) and mircro processors. Unlocking backpacks with NuCaloric requires filament and lenses, unlocking a rifle with NuCaloric requires a different type of filament and a different type of processor. If that all sounds incoherent and overwhelming; it is. It sucks. Also, these faction upgrade resources have literally nothing to do with the contracts themselves, and the interests rarely overlap, so you have to go out of your way to remember them as side objectives if you want one specific upgrade. You cannot pin them as a side objective in your menu, either. Ultimately, you’ll probably pick these random knick-knacks up along the way regardless, assuming you want to fill your bang with random shit on the way out. Your choice (literally your choice, this is an intentional strategic element of the game that exists to incentivize you to be smart about what you're taking home). 

Gun-Play:

WAHAHAHAHAHA BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. Every gun feels good. Every single time the trigger is pulled, it feels like crack. The way only Bungie has only been able to do for 30 years, Marathon once again shows that there are few other studios that have ever been able to stand next to them when it comes to gun-play, and no other studios that have been able to do it so consistently. This is the highlight of Marathon for me. The pistols feel heavy, the ARs feel precise, and the snipers feel rewarding. There are no downsides here. Every gun I’ve used has been true and utter joy to pick up. I've already heard complaints about aim assist and how that might kill the game, I literally do not think it matters. The guns feel good, people like playing games with guns that feel good.

Team-Play:

Team-play is a must. You venture out on your own and you’re getting smoked. You’ll have genuine trouble handling AI groups depending on how late in the round you are (as time ticks down AI groups that deploy are more capable and hostile), and god forbid you encounter a real squad alone ("encounter" is a hilarious word to use here, I had several cartoonish ass experiences where I'd turn a corner, see a yellow glint in the distance, and go *gulp* "huh oh spaghet-" before getting domed to shit). While professional players might have an easier time solo-queuing, the average person is getting smoked like ham at a country fair.

Good team-play is rewarding, out maneuvering an AI squad or real person squad is good and makes everyone feel like good noodles. About the same as it does in a battle royale. However, while everyone in a battle royale has the same objective, if you're random queuing, all 3 runners will have 3 different primary objectives, and without communication, this makes strategy impossible. The ping system is incredible rudimentary and stripped back from industry leading systems like Apex. In a game where everyone has a different objective, this can have devastating consequences for planning.

This game is impossible to play without communication. Full stop. You must have on game chat with team-fill. This is non negotiable. The pings are not sufficient and do nothing outside of telling your teammates that there’s an enemy somewhere or letting your teammates know that you found the extraction location on the map that everyone else can see too. 

You cannot see your teammates' contracts, so if you need to go south and they need to go north, there’s nothing you can do but desperately ping south on the map in hopes that they’ll just follow you down there there is no "my contract objective is in this area" ping. You cannot strategize like this, you cannot route plan everyone’s contracts effectively like this. You must have comms on. This is both potentially obvious for a strategic shooter but also potentially alienating. I do not like talking to random people, I will only ever deploy with a party of my friends. This is not good. I need to be able to see my teammates' contracts in my loadout menu or somewhere else. Unless I missed it, but if I missed something that critical, then that’s bad UI design. Not everyone has the same contract on deployment, but no one will know their teammates objectives unless comms are on.

Lure:

The subtitle for this post is “The guy at the store told me these are the ultimate running sneakers, but I have some personal reservations, and the sole might not have enough grip.”. While I think that’s a funny subtitle, it’s both true and not true. Off the bat, there are people who will love the simplicity and straight forward nature of this game. There are people who currently love the simplicity and straight forward nature of this game. However, there will be people who hear about a deeply-narrative based shooter, spend $40 (or whatever it is) on it, and are immediately disenchanted by the reality of the gameplay loop. I’m not sure what the hook for Marathon is yet. I’m drawn in by the ominous yes piecemeal story offered by the factions about what happened in Tau Ceti because I enjoy the lore of the original (now 30 year old) titles, and the gun-play. However, this is only enough to keep me coming back to the game ever so often, casually, and not enough to make me sink my life into this title. Unfortunately, I imagine this might be the case for much of the wider audience Bungie is trying to appeal to here. The stakes can feel too high and the punishment can feel, well, too punishing. 

There’s nothing to experience in the game beyond dominating a run or being dominated. More often than not, it will be the latter. This is not a souls situation either, where the triumph of personal victory triggers that patented “Soulslike” high that outweighs the punishment (and even that is a tough sell for people). No, this game has a visible count down clock in each run that adds pressure, and while you can learn the map and AI patterns, there’s no learning curve for encountering another enemy, and it can ruin your run at best, and ruin your night at worst. I can say confidently from now that, based on my initial experience with the title, Marathon as a game is not my bread and butter. There is no world where I lock myself in a room and play this for 200 hours straight. However, it is objectively good, and may find itself as a game I come back to to play a few rounds of every so often, while I engage the developing lore of on youtube or in discussion communities (I sincerely hope that this is not the case in reality, and that I only continue to grow incentivized to really get into it long term, which may be aided by actually being able to play with my friends). For “the ultimate live service”, that’s not enough. That’s nowhere near enough. A title this big and this critical for Bungie in their current state cannot exist like this. 

That said, the world-building is undeniable. Whether or not the game can be mechanically convincing enough to engage people, the promise of Tau Ceti, the story Bungie is attempting to tell, will be good. IT will be worth engaging and following along with. So the narrative here is a huge part of the lore, but I don't know if it's engaging enough to get people to engage the lore in game as opposed to just waiting for a youtube lore dump at the end of the season. There is a very thick line between wanting to experience a story for yourself and just being like "eh, ill watch a video essay recap from a youtuber who was actually good or dedicated enough to progress the story". That's what happened to Destiny. It's what's been happening to Destiny for 11 years.

First Impressions Verdict:

Is Marathon a Good game? Yes. Categorically, in my opinion. There is clearly a lot of love, effort, and talent behind this title. There’s a lot going on under the hood and there’s potential for this game to really flesh itself out over time. The contracts are implemented in an engaging and rewarding fashion. Even though the visuals are not finalized, this game looks beautiful and performs just as well. The gunplay is sensational, and those looking to enjoy more of Bungie’s trademark gunplay will find it here in spades. The story is engaging and, if you like the lore, it is enamoring.

However, the game does not address what makes this genre niche in a way that would crack it open for a wider audience in its current state. It is not currently the Fortnite to Tarkov’s PUBG. It feels like there is something integral missing, and whether it's a deeper sense of personal immersion or a more consequential role in the supposedly “living” Tau Ceti, I do not know. The game is good, and those who like extraction shooters are probably about to be given the very best of the genre come September. However, it may not be good enough in its current state to be the lifeline Bungie needs or wants it to be. 

For the last time, these are my initial (literal day 1) impressions of a handful of hours with an alpha build of a game that not only won’t release for 6 months, but has been manually bottlenecked in content for the purposes of making this exclusively a technical test. All, or most of my concerns may be addressed come release. Again, I am not the core target audience for this game. I could be way out of my depth talking about this. However, something tells me that Bungie needs people like me to be part of the audience, so I should be talking about this. I still think there’s quite a distance before this Marathon reaches its finish line.

Despite my grievances, and the fact that I haven’t been wholly enraptured by Marathon quite yet, as I sit here writing this… I can't wait to jump back in when I get off of work today. Make of that what you will.

Marathon releases on September 23rd, 2025. I’ll continue to play it throughout the alpha week and will have an updated impressions post when the alpha comes to a close. Outside of the currency issue, what Bungie has made is all largely well done, (even what i perceive to be imbalance in PvE might not even be imbalance or bad, at the end of the day, I might just fucking suck. Seriously, if you read this and your conclusion is "holy shit Geezaws fucking sucks at this game if this is what he's complaining about, good. I genuinely hope that's the case. I'd rather be shit at a good game that other people can enjoy, than first class in a dog shit one no one is playing). It’s what isn’t here that might be the real issue with attaining the massive active player base this game seemingly needs.

Maybe I’m completely wrong. I sure hope I’m wrong. I want nothing more than to see good developers succeed with something they clearly put their heart and soul into. I want to see this game succeed with or without my dedication. I hope people find a game here that they love. But again, "the ultimate live service"...? I'm just not sure yet.

I hope this didn't come off as mostly negative. Overall, I see the value here, I could even see how this game could consume certain people's lives, but I don't think it'll be the case for me. Also, there is no merit to the "Concord 2" criticism, there never was. If anything, it's closest to Apex and even that's a bit of a disingenuous stretch. "it's slower Apex if you lost all your shit and had to fight AI enemies too", "if my grandmother had wheels she would be a bicycle". There is something here, I just feel like, similar to Tau Ceti itself, more excavation is required before we really find out what Marathon actually is. If this at all sounds like "Bungie didn't make a game for Geezaws and he's upset", then I'm really sorry. That is not how I feel, at all. Quite the opposite, I want to let people know that this game may not be for them and that that is totally okay, but whether it's for them or not, there are issues that need addressing that I think aren't as subjective as my own personal gripes.

Personal Pros (what I really liked):

Great art style

Great gun-play

Great world and lore/narrative

Great environmental story telling

Great enemy AI

Dynamic weather

Genuinely interesting mid-run events

Personal Concerns (Things I feel need to be addressed for a wider audience):

Frustrating enemy team encounters

Repetitiveness of successive runs

Washed out colors when outside buildings

Brutally punishing gameplay loop

Skill gap between AI and other players

Alienating for people who might want to live in the world independently

Personal Cons (Issues I think need addressing now, immediately):

No ability to adjust team comp with team-fill

Currency system

Unrefined comms dependency / inadequate ping system with team-fill

Also, while I take liberty in creative commons and would love for people do discuss anything I write, please do not repurpose or redistribute any of my writing out of context and/or in bad faith.