I didn’t expect Marathon to leave as large of an impact on me as it has. While I’ve loved Bungie games in the past, including hundreds of hours spent in Destiny 2, from the outside looking in I didn’t anticipate it would nail the extraction-shooter loop as well as it has – nor how well it would mesh with Bungie’s existing expertise.
For anyone not familiar with the genre, Marathon is much like its peers wherein death means losing whatever equipment and items you choose to spawn into a map with, while successfully extracting means relishing in your new spoils. On a basic level, Marathon’s core gameplay is best-in-class. Bungie has always excelled at gunplay, and that rings true here, as well. The same can be said for the game’s Runner shells; Marathon’s “hero-shooter” take on how a player opts to take-on the mysteries of Tau Ceti IV.
Marathon is a systems-heavy game that rewards players who can make the most out of everything it has to offer, and Runner’s kits are no different. Thief’s kit feels like the perfect example of this; I liked using their drone to be a real nuisance to players, as pestering players with it makes them drop their highest value loot, which you can then snag up. Maybe you mess with a group of enemy Runners by opening up a door to guide them into an ambush. If you’re feeling adventurous, wait at an exfiltration site and poke at a group right as they’re about to leave the match, helping yourself to their pilfered spoils.
Bungie’s audio design can’t be praised enough for how well it conveys the information players need to make informed decisions during play. Sound travels far, so picking fights with NPC enemies can be a risk. All across the map, players make their presence known. Even more succinctly than its peers, Marathon gives you all the tools you need to monitor other players’ actions on the map. Even something as simple as knowing what distinct sounds each weapon helps inform your plan of action.
The other part of the equation is the maps themselves. Marathon is a strikingly beautiful game, but it’s the synthesis of how gorgeous these areas look and the escalating complexity of their layouts that give them the sense of weight that I craved. Visually, the game is a treat, but it’s not long until you start considering the environment in a different light – how, and where, players might be hiding is obvious, of course. Yet the extra wrinkle that elevates the game’s maps past its peers are their individual gimmicks that force a constantly evolving state of play.
Lockdown events in Dire Marsh can randomly derail a run, assuming you don’t bring consumables to allow access to the cordoned area. Searching for colored key cards in Outpost – or looting them off of player bodies – inevitably leads to a battle over control of Pinwheel, the map’s central location with all the best loot, alongside alerting the whole map that its security has been breached.
Map knowledge and how your particular Runner can take advantage of it are stressed more and more with each successive run, and never is this more evident than with Cryo Archive. Cryo Archive doubles down on level complexity while also flooding you with enemies across its labyrinthine halls. Slotting in elements of Destiny’s puzzle-like raid design – seeking out security clearance in order to access more and more passages through the map, or batteries to power doors to vaults filled with the game’s best loot – works to ratchet the existing tension of other players to a pinnacle.
Like any good extraction shooter, Marathon is a game about the choice and consequences inherent within a run. Yet, it’s more than just that. Bungie’s excellent audio design and gunplay, paired with increasingly complicated level design borrowing from over a decade of expertise designing Destiny raids coalesce into something special. Marathon is proof Bungie is still at the top of its game.
