Marathon is leaving seasons behind and introducing Deathmatch, permanent PvE, and more
Bungie announced a series of changes to Marathon's update cadence in the coming months
Season 3 of Marathon has been retooled and delayed from its original September 22nd release date, Bungie announced in a blog post today. Bungie is adjusting the content release schedule of Marathon, separating the next patch into two updates— one refresh update on October 6th and another major content update on December 8th — and eliminating the seasonal model of content delivery all together.
The October 6th update will include a reset to progression and the in-game economy, a new rewards pass, quality-of-life improvements, and balancing passes across the board. Bungie is also bringing back Vault Breaker—the short-lived PvE experimental mode on the endgame map Cryo Archive—in order to test the effects that a full PvE mode has on the updated progression a few weeks after the update.
The next major update coming to Marathon on December 8th is called Symbiosis and will introduce Marathon's first permanent PvE experience. Bungie said that this will be a new way for players to progress and engage with the world of Marathon beyond its existing PvPvE premise. A refreshed version of the Perimeter map, a new social space with a firing range, the next Runner Shell, and a PvP Team Deathmatch mode, and improvements to the new player onboarding experience are also all planned for this update.
All of this is part of the plan for the studio to stop adhering to a strictly seasonal model for content delivery, with the intention of giving their team more time to iterate, test, and build out more meaningful content updates and features instead of meeting a regular deadline. The team says that their focus is "on delivering bigger, more meaningful updates".
Bungie promised to begin more frequent communication about their future plans for Marathon via blog posts and Dev Insight videos in the weeks to come. The first update covering the game's evolution into "a more alien and dynamic survival experience" is scheduled for later this month.
This new path forward for Marathon comes almost exactly two months after former game director Joe Ziegler announced he would be leaving Bungie. Del Chafe III took over as game director, stepping up from his previous assistant game director position and creative director before that. Chafe is leading the charge for Marathon's new vision alongside fellow Destiny-turned-Marathon lead, Julia Nardin, who has previously been Marathon's narrative director and is currently the game's creative director.
