Bungie expands on the future of Marathon with new developer insights
Don't count Bungie's Marathon out just yet, they have more than a few tricks left up their sleeves.
Bungie has been fighting an uphill battle with Marathon since its release earlier this year. After a less than stellar launch and low player retention, the studio has been hard at work pushing new features and gameplay options that players have largely enjoyed.
Today, Bungie has expanded on what Marathon's future will look like going forward with a new blog post and developer insights video, and the future looks bright.
Most of the juiciest information — like a peak at the returning Pfhor enemy faction from the original trilogy — is in the video. We also get the perspective of the developers with new and familiar faces reflecting on the game's rough launch and what they're excited to be working on for the upcoming December 8th Symbiosis update to the game.
The bulk of the blog post is broken down into the goals for Marathon going forward and what to expect in the near and far future. Bungie says that they want to give players more ways to play, more agency over their arsenal of Runners, and reintroduce players to the connections between the original games and this brave new world.
To that end, the December update will include the previously announced PvE experience on Perimeter — the map itself is getting a total makeover with a new fungal threat ravaging the environment, an expanded playspace with more points of interest and an underground area, and a lurking Tick Queen boss enemy for players to take down. The update will also bring the promised PvP team deathmatch mode for experimentation, similarly to the previous Sponsored Survival and Vault Breaker modes.
December will also see the introduction of the new Runner Shell, Bishop, which is said the be the "robot samurai" of Marathon. The new character is "fast, surgical [...] built around speed, surprise, and devastating bursts of melee damage." The studio is also bringing a new CyAv-sponsored social space and gun range with the update.
March will be Marathon's first anniversary and Bungie is planning "something meaningfully larger than Symbiosis". This will include:
- more interconnectivity between PvE, PvP, and PvEvP, creating a more seamless experience
- a fully new onboarding experience
- deeper progression for Runner shells and a reworked Cradle
- new and more focused questlines
- An expanded and deeper narrative
- new alien combatants
- a brand new Zone (not a Night Marsh or reworked Perimeter situation, again)
After the blog post on Monday reasserting Destiny as the foundation for Bungie's future and the team stating that Marathon was never meant to replace it, it's really nice to see Bungie so clearly excited and dedicated to the future of Marathon in tandem with Destiny, not being forced to pick one or the other. It seems like Marathon might get its Taken King moment, yet.
