Marathon
Please runner... Do not disappoint...
I // Beginnings
I have a long complicated relationship with Bungie games. I grew up a fan of Halo. I fell in love with the world building with its intricate web (for a preteen boy) of religious themes, government secrets, existential threats like The Flood. It was a staple of childhood sleepovers where my older brother and our friends would stay up way too late all jacked up on Mountain Dew. We played split screen multiplayer and co-op campaigns; we hunted skulls and made custom game modes and attempt to break the physics of the sandbox.
Halo 2 is my first ever experience with online gaming. It was my first time using a microphone to chat with strangers, where I was educated on and maybe skipped a couple grades in juvenile trash talk.
I read the books! The lore behind the games, and it's unique spin on pulpy sci-fi, captivated my imagination as a kid. The Fall of Reach and Contact Harvest were two of my favorites because they really fleshed out the world in interesting ways that lead me to theorycraft and thinking about where the games would go next. I fell in love with the art direction - the chunky machinery and utilitarian design of humanity to contrast the brightly colored curves of The Covenant design grabbed me. Hell it's only with hindsight that I'm able to appreciate how inspirational the graphic design and UI of the Halo games were on my own individual growth as an artist and game developer.
So color me curious when I discovered that Bungie had made a precursor to Halo and it was getting a release on Xbox Live Arcade. Marathon's security officer was a clear rough draft of the Master Chief. The same flavor of lore and world building that drew me to Halo could trace its ancestry to Marathon. I dove in...
...and bounced right off. I was not prepared for the "old game is old" feeling I got from the gameplay. It wasn't true 3D - the way things moved with billboard sprites and locomotion combined with the frame rate kinda made me feel motion sick. I was also young, and had no real sense of nor an appreciation for gaming history. So I absorbed the main story beats via summaries and forum posts I'd read online.
II // Time Moves On
My main passions as a kid were playing drums, drawing, and video games. My interests shifted and evolved through the 360/PS3 generation as I was a teen. I was figuring out my passions, and ended up giving up music. I became obsessed with getting better at art. I wanted to try more variety of games. But Halo remained a constant. Heck Halo 3 vidocs were what made me acutely aware of the human element and artistry behind my favorite hobby, and that being an artist on a video game was a valid (if rare) career path.
I'm much more mellow and reserved (read: socially anxious) as an adult than I was as a kid. So it's not surprising to me as I look back and my online gaming probably peaked on the Xbox 360, before my interest in indie games and single player experiences sort of overtook my time with the hobby as I gamed less and worked on art more.
Heck I played most of Destiny as a predominantly solo game - mostly dipping in for the DLC campaigns, running strikes with randoms on mute, never playing the raids, and rarely PvP; basically maybe the worst way to experience that game and probably why I fell off that treadmill post Forsaken and the decision to start vaulting of content. My relationship with Destiny 2 may also be colored by my experience and complicated feelings and history with working on Borderlands. I remember the nervousness around the studio when it came to Destiny. Which...OK looking back it was all sorts of nuts. When Destiny 2 was announced and launched before BL3 there was serious palpable tension at the studio. The bruises from a crushing defeat against Blizzard with the Overwatch v Battleborn still stung and had greatly shifted the internal culture at Gearbox to be more conservative about what came next. Which made for a lot of unspoken tension and frustration during development.
As an up and coming dev, eager to learn and get better, I began to frame my interaction with the game as competitive analysis to maybe learn from a game that the studio viewed as direct competition as a looter shooter. Which...is an extremely unhealthy way to view your hobby! This maybe poisoned the well for me for a lot of games during this period of my life, because I was perceiving an act of leisure like work instead of enjoying it for its own merits.
So upon hearing that Bungie's next game would be an extraction shooter, I was a little flummoxed. Here was a genre I was only vaguely familiar with as "a thing for masochists" due to Tarkov's brutal reputation. In my head this game was almost predetermined to "not be for me". I was resigned for it be something that passes me by again, that I'd appreciate from afar for it's cool aesthetic as a graphic designer, but also cheer on from the sidelines as a fan of the studio.
III // Escape Will Make Me God
So, dear reader, imagine my utter shock and delight when I say that this game has its hooks in me.
It has revitalized my interest in online gaming in a way that I haven't felt in years. The last time maybe being Battlefield Bad Company 2? Heck it's gotten me to plug a headset into my DualSense and talk with randoms in game chat again. I've sunk over 200 hours into raiding Tau Ceti IV.
The lore of Destiny was always so intriguing to me though, as it retained that pulpy sci-fi tone to its world that I fell in love with in Halo and had now come to view as basically Bungie's house style. I loved reading the expanded stuff in the Grimoires as a way to still interact with that game that I kind of struggled to engage with as a live service. But the way lore has been gamified in Marathon as loot to extract made the experience of earning lore through gameplay so much more interesting to me than my time with Destiny.
Previously all of the lore and interesting stuff was found outside of the games, but now I'm chasing Codex entries because I want to know more about Shrink-wrapped Bonsai or learn about how the colony began skimping on nutritional content of their Drinkable Cheesburger with unideal recycled nurtrient sources and the colonists treat it like an afterschool job at McDonald's where they put in the bare minimum to keep the condescending NuCaloroc corporate overlord AI pleased.
Marathon...has the juice.
I'm finding myself chasing Codex entries to get a little bit more of the lore drip feed. I do Rook runs for the love of the game, when I don't feel like completing contracts and just want to sneak around and learn the maps. I find myself wanting to engage in PvP, sometimes actively seeking out confrontation to practice approaching gunfights. It's thrilling to be sneaking through a building, planting C4 around all entrances to your location, and hearing someone sprinting just above you and you know they're also thinking of ways to get one over on you.
The tense atmosphere skulking around Hauler, knowing that you might get jumpscared by another team or maybe accidentally catching the attention of the UESC Commanders patroling the Secured Resources. It's delightful and chaotic fun, and I find myself engaging with its systems and gameplay in a way I really haven't done with a shooter in years. Simply put there's just so much variety, which is the main reason I love this game. Each run is a combination of each party members current Contract (Quest), leading to a unique combination of different objectives that makes every run different than the last. It's such a tight sandbox experience. I love the process of discovering new aspects of each map to engage with. I love the experience of cracking open a wall safe or secured resources and getting a fun new piece of kit or a purple bit of salvage/valuable that will unlock a new piece of the Codex.
Sure there are things I wish would get fixed. I would love to experience winning Cryo Archive, but I'm not sweaty enough to compete with the crowd of people that it attracts. I wish there were more chill queues cause I sometimes just want to complete a priority contract that requires all of its objectives being done in a single run without it becoming a grind of attrition. I wish there were a more casual mode like Firefight (or Helldivers campaigns) that would let me try new kit and onboard friends who do not vibe with PvP. But the highs of this game wash away any qualms I have with some of the design decisions made.
If you've read this far and are curious about the game then I'd say give it a fair shake. It's got a lot to love for all kinds of gamers. I never would have considered myself a social gamer, or someone who plays multiplayer games in a dedicated way that's outside my weekly game night with friends...but here I am dozens and dozens of hours deep into this game. I'm hooked. The chunky minimalist designs of everything, the tense electronic soundtrack, the slick neon color palette, the sound and feel of each gun... Nothing fucking sounds or looks OR plays like this game, and it's awesome.
Please give it a try if you made it this far.