Bungie & Marathon
On March 5, 2026 Bungie released Marathon - a re-imagined game of their previous 1994 game by the same name. This was the company that created Halo and Destiny so I was definitely interested in a new major IP of theirs being released.
This game however was going to be an extraction shooter which was increasing in popularity as a genre of game recently. In absolute basic terms your goal in each match is to extract from the match safely with everything you've obtained - die and you lose everything. This type of game is does not jell with everyone as playing for ~30 minutes to die at the end means you've accomplished nothing progression wise.
However, I play Escape from Tarkov which is the absolute pinnacle game of extraction shooters with a few odd twists. There are no markers guiding you, no logic preventing you from gunning down your teammate, there is nothing stopping you from loading the wrong bullets in the wrong gun. Tarkov requires an additional monitor for maps and guides until you've memorized everything as the game in unrelenting in confusion. I was hoping a new extraction shooter in the hands of Bungie would be a bit more forgiving compared to Tarkov.
As the game released I was a day or two behind the rest of folks before I got it installed and running. I started the tutorial and like any game I struggled to know what item I needed, what a health item vs shield was and how to quickly access things like inventory, gear, etc. I kept dying to bots and it took me 3 times to replay the tutorial until I successfully passed it.
Once done though the beginning of every game is so much fun. You have a large crowd of people all collectively learning the game together. I found the guns to mimic what you'd expect from Bungie with weapons that sounded and felt great to use. I stayed on the original character (shell) which matched closely to the titan character I remembered from Destiny and I struggled hard in the beginning of the game. I quickly learned I was losing way more than winning though - maybe because I did not play the beta from a few weeks prior.
I might take a few enemy shots and be down before I could really react to what was happening. My instinct to take out my shield started helping but I'd either double tap it and remove it instantly or have the shield broken and die. I quickly learned this is a game about sound and positioning which resulted in making less noise and playing a more campy style of game.
Very quickly inventory management became a chore as you could win a few games and be out of space, unable to acquire rewards and be forced to delete weaker stuff. On the flip side you'd die a few games in a row you have no gear remaining. This is where I believe Bungie learned from their previous games how to build a live service game more efficiently. Within a week of community complaints v1.0.5 came out allowing larger stack sizes in the vault. It was great to see quick changes even if some of those patches broke a few things along the way (i.e sounds). Bungie seemed to have greater control of server side changes allowing quick changes to any exploits - including perks on gear.
Every so often we'd stumble upon a team that was kitted in gear which meant they had probably played hundreds of hours of the game in the brief time it had been out. They would have colors of rarity that I hadn't even obtained yet. That always sucked because they understood the meta at a different level. You can obtain some items like signal jammer (clouds your appearance) or self-rez (return to life after down) and I felt kitted teams had stacks of those items when I couldn't even buy them yet in the game. Their runners would be upgraded to the max and could heal everything back in a few seconds while I needed to apply 5 different items in comparisons.
Sometimes losing to a team more geared than yourself felt unfair, but nothing tilted me more than playing those squads that didn't even care about your kit. We got jumped once by a team that eliminated 2/3 of our team in mere seconds - our 3rd got away and 6min later returned to our bodies to bring us back. Our gear was untouched with exception of some of the prime healing items. We called in extraction which started a 10s count down till we were out safely. With seconds to spare that team was back firing some sort of weapon that pushed us out of the circle and killed us again.
It just bugged me - this team didn't care about us. They knew they only had downed two and stayed far enough away to lure us in for a revive. They could move the map in seconds to any area with their abilities. A few games like that probably would push anyone away - the same way a Halo game would if the enemy team would refuse to the capture the flag and instead pad stats with killing.
My experience was not alone with others online complaining that the streamer or "sweats" were affecting their experience. It was the common "sweats" vs "casuals" argument that arises for every game, but what you can't argue is the amount of players playing is decreasing week after week. I'm not in 2016 anymore gaming an insane amount - I work a full time job which probably places me in the "casual" category of gamer. I like the game, but maybe an extraction shooter is not the type of game for someone wanting a bit of relaxing gaming after work.
There are pinnacle level activities (raids and ranked) and I have under 5 plays for both of those combined. I'm struggling to obtain gear and keep it - my upgrades are so far behind compared to others, but boy the game is fun to play. With Bungie's hyper-care mood at the moment releasing near weekly patches and reacting to any game breaking exploits - this game is fun, but who knows if the rest of the players will stay.