One Thing I Love About Marathon.

It’s Sunday night and I have to get up for work in about six hours. I can’t seem to find the desire to lay down. I’m sure if I did I would probably fall asleep with relative ease; it was a long day of running around cleaning up errands I’ve been putting off for a bit too long. Procrastination, ultimately.

It’s been a sobering summer thus far, in the worst of ways. I've had a lot of time to reflect on myself, my career, the aspirations I have when I look forward, family, friendships (or the diminishing prevalence of), finances, free time, regrets from years past; the things you think about when you’re trying to sleep but always seem to flood you with anxiety right as you drift off. Those thoughts aren't unique to this summer. I've had them before. What's changed is the conclusions I'm starting to draw from them. When I look at the state of my life and the increasingly insurmountable hurdles that crop up preventing me from advancing my life in ways that I thought I’d always be able to, I feel fatigued. Physically, psychologically, existentially: I’m tired of running. 

And yet, I keep running.

There’s one more conversation that needs to be had or one more errand that needs to be attended to, one more attempt that needs to be made at advancing my career and one more wrongdoing on my part that needs to be reconciled. There’s one more burst of excitement, one more thing to collect for one of my stupid hobbies that scratches my brain, one more story to read and one more hilariously dumb experience with people I’ve grown fond of. While all of these things can be found in the myriad world’s players have come to know and love, there’s never quite been one mirrored the exhaustion, the desperation, and the futility that comes in life’s lulls the way Marathon does.

I lose, and lose, and lose again, and adjust my highest aspirations accordingly, but there’s always going to be another thing that’s reasonably within arms reach that can break the cyclical melancholy of surviving in the world.

I’ve said as much before: I am not supposed to like Marathon, and if I’m being honest, part of me still doesn’t. During my most formative years as an adult I inundated myself with single-player narrative driven games that catered to my insatiable need for escapism; from Horizon Zero Dawn and Red Dead Redemption to Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring. I conquered these worlds alone, as intended, a power fantasy that wouldn’t end to make up for how genuinely helpless I’ve felt in my life for the last few years. I was almost completely uninterested in the prospect of giving up that fantasy to someone who could outclass me and break the illusion; and remind me of the very state of mind I was trying to escape: people are better than you, and try as you might, there will always be someone better than you. There was a semblance of control I did not want to give up.

Until May 24th, 2023. 

A cinematic trailer set to Heavy Metal x DVNO would debut at SIE’s showcase (during what, at the time, seemed like the very pinnacle of the industry) and enrapture me with an obnoxiously vibrant color palette that only the studio behind Destiny 2 could get away with. To my abject horror, I’d soon find out that it was a hardcore extraction shooter: Punishing, consequential, survival, no power fantasy to be had, a constant reminder that my mistakes and shortcoming were my own and that I’d have to clean up the mess; everything I’d grown to avoid like the plague.

And yet, the colors, the music, the sheer fucking audacity of Bungie coming off of The Witch Queen and resurrecting the IP that influenced everything that came after it: my fate was sealed, it was time for me to return to a serious competitive shooter, in spite of how masochistic it all felt.

I’d go through three years of witnessing one of the most troubled development cycles I think the industry has ever seen, one too many “we’re so cooked”, one too many “we’re so back”s. That actually has nothing to do with Marathon’s development cycle, it just happens to coincide with the volatility of my life for the past three years. That’s just the point though, I wasn’t waiting for Marathon, I was waiting with it.

If, despite everything, the title could see some modicum of success, if it could pick itself up and deliver, if it could just cross the finish line despite the adversity: there’s a chance I could do it too.

For 327 hours I would trudge away during Marathon's first season, taking every loss personally and being equally validated by every triumph; there was frustration and elation in equal parts. Not everything was life changing, sometimes it was one more burst of excitement, one more thing to collect, one more story to read, or one more hilariously dumb experience with friends. When season two started the excitement was renewed, hot off the heels of reaching the game’s apex with friends I could turn to for help in killing the Compiler. I would put another 50 hours into the game during the first two weeks of Season 2 before life would call me away from such heavy investment: I haven’t really been able to play Marathon for two weeks, life is taking too much time away from me and in the time I do get to relax, I am not exactly ready to contest for my life after spending all week contesting for my actual life.

To give the longest answer possible to @MarathonGG_’s question: the one thing I love about Marathon is that I’m already running endlessly in a world controlled by AI influenced corporate oligarchs, but holy shit is Tau Ceti IV so much prettier. I think that’s what’s made it the most potent and visceral vehicle for escapism I’ve ever experienced.

Rally, Marathon, rally. Cause I’m gonna keep running, too.