The Cord: "Marathon Is Dead", Long Live Marathon.

 


This has been a busy week in terms of Bungie news. When I decided to take up the role of covering all of this, I did not expect a major controversy, patch notes, a Season 2 outlook, SIE’s earnings call, and an address from the game’s Director, Joe Ziegler, to all hit in the same week.

Alas, we get into it all the same.

Good evening, it is Thursday, May 14th, and instead of squeezing in whatever Cryo Runs I can on my busiest day of any given week, my ass is once again glued to my desk, as Joe Ziegler has sent us an open letter about the state of Marathon going into Season 2 next month.

There’s a lot Ziegler was able to go over here; from major changes that have affected the game, to an appreciation for the core community that continues to engage with it. We’ve spent just under three months sending our consciousnesses to die on Tau Ceti in hopes of realizing the title’s core pillars; Danger, Progression, Risk and Reward, and Survival.

A few of the highlights of the season have undoubtedly been Cryo Archive, Ranked, experimental queues, and seeing just how ready and able the team is to listen to feedback and implement appropriate changes. Frankly, it’s been unprecedented from a studio of this size.

Some key takeaways that the team is chewing on, according to Ziegler, are that the game’s learning curve is too steep, progression can stagnate, the endgame lacks enough balance, and that Marathon maybe just needs to chill out sometimes. To really analyze these pain points, Bungie has been gathering and reviewing data from experimental queues and how they’ve affected both player engagement and the title at large, especially with respect to population splits and player retention. It’s clear these experimental queues are operating almost like live development testing, and that’s both good and concerning.

On the one hand, it’s good that the team is quick to make changes and address these issues based on real feedback. On the other hand, it makes you wonder how the game might have turned out with more time in the oven, something we know SIE was unwilling to give them. That being said, it seems increasingly clear that Marathon’s core foundation might actually be strong enough to see this game through its full realization. More on that shortly.

Ziegler was shockingly open about the future plans for Marathon, offering details “in the name of transparency” that extend well beyond Season 2. We’ve covered what’s expected in Season 2 previously, so there’s no reason to fully rehash all of those details here. Looking forward, however, Bungie is planning to add a new zone with heavier sci-fi and alien themes, new enemies both from Tau Ceti and beyond it (something fans of the original trilogy are likely going to appreciate), new weapons, and, interestingly, new exfil philosophies that appear designed to make runners carefully weigh safety against extraction value.

The team also plans to address onboarding and ease-of-access in Season 3, alongside changes to contracts, priority contracts, and how progression through those systems is handled overall.

You may be wondering what the title of this article is about, though. That comes down to Ziegler’s confirmation that Season 2 will introduce two experimental queues: PvP-lite, and full PvE.

There’s no real way around this discussion; these modes do risk compromising part of Marathon’s identity. When we talk about a hardcore extraction shooter predicated on the importance of PvP engagements, we have to acknowledge that reducing or outright removing that friction is ultimately meant to appeal to a broader, more casual audience. How Bungie chooses to balance loot acquisition and long-term progression in a mode where hostile players are no longer the primary mitigating factor remains to be seen.

That said, I can’t say a part of me isn’t at least a little curious to see whether this implementation brings in more timid players, or players (or Journalists) who have felt alienated by the punishing nature of forced PvP encounters. Especially when Bungie themselves admit the current onboarding experience simply is not good enough.

So while Marathon may ultimately need to appeal to a more casual, but much larger audience at the expense of some of its original identity, it’s increasingly obvious that this title is going nowhere anytime soon, and Bungie is prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure Marathon gets its full day in the sun.

Marathon is dead, long live Marathon.






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