Surprise, Marathon is delayed. Now what?
Marathon, Bungie’s extraction shooter follow-up to Marathon, Bungie’s first person shooter is delayed. The news going around is positioning it as “delayed indefinitely” which is factual if not a little dramatic. It feels like saying a game without a release date is never coming out. True until we learn more, but a real letter of the law, not spirit of the law kind of situation.
Which I suppose makes sense, Marathon looks like it’s in trouble. It has for a while now. If you’ve listened to my episodes of Point to Point on Marathon, you’ll know how I feel about the game in general, but let’s speed run the feedback: I just wish it was more. Marathon is (was?), by all indications, a by-the-numbers extraction shooter putting a sci-fi coat of paint on an existing genre. Almost everything they showed in the alpha test and in pre-release marketing amounts to little more than a (really nice looking) superficial coat of paint on a successful genre. They tried to Fortnite Tarkov’s PUBG…Which is a nonsense sentence that demands you touch grass if it makes sense to you.
Bungie has been in some hot water with Marathon too. Turns out, the game is somewhat derivative, doesn’t have a ton of that Bungie charm outside great gunplay, and was wrapped up in a seemingly cut and dry case of artistic plagiarism. You’ll be surprised to know that stripping out the stolen art wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the delay post. One must assume that’s part of the new ‘darker’ direction. Recent reports from inside Bungie have alluded to plummeting morale within the studio as well; I imagine it has something to do with all the feedback about Marathon, but the whole being bought by Sony then failing to meet impossible numbers with the Final Shape and watching the 11 other Sony live service games drop like flies or be canceled within 9 days of release certainly can’t help.
So, Marathon is delayed. The team will probably be working altogether too hard to meet internal goals and milestones to appease the corporate overlords, while grinding their creativity into dust. The art team will spend countless hours patching over and redoing the world of a “former team member” while the rest of the team is deploying “gameplay updates and testing new features.” Bungie’s stated focus is: “upping the survival game,” doubling down on the Marathon universe,” and adding a “darker tone that delivers on the themes of the original trilogy.” If that doesn’t sound like building a game on top of the game, then I don’t know what it is.
As a person desperately looking forward to hopping into Arc Raiders with my buddies, I want Marathon to succeed. Much like I’m always trying to find the Metroidvania that will work for me, I want to find the extraction shooter that I can call home. The Division’s dark zone was interesting, I tried Call of Duty: DMZ (and liked it the best of its latest modes), and the punishing difficulty and randomness driven gameplay of Nightreign is working for me. There are so many good games out right now and a lot of good ones in this genre-space too, I can only hope that Bungie does what Bungie has always done: taken what’s out there and mash it all together in a cool way.
As much as my main draw for Marathon is the glorious (partially stolen) art style, I really think that Bungie’s gunplay and world design can be the one to get me into the game. I hope the team is able to take their time incorporating the feedback they’ve received and make the thing Bungie is able to make: a sticky, well-crafted shooter with unique incentives, impeccable style, and orbs for dunkin’.
