The Run to Cryo Archive!
Your very first moments in Marathon may very well be your last. Its steep learning curve and refusal to hold your hand are blatantly obvious from the moment your eyes open and you see the beautiful, hostile world of Tau Ceti IV surrounding you. Its futuristic neon coloured walls hide a brutal and unforgiving enemy that is actively hunting you down, and that’s just the NPCs, before you have even come up against another runner. It really is a baptism by fire and I heard from more than one in my immediate circle that it was enough for them there and then.
The thing about it though, when you fight back, get through your first encounter dropping waves of enemies and get out with your loot intact it becomes much clearer what Bungie was trying to do. I was cheering with the other members of my fire team as the countdown timer edged ever closer to getting my consciousness out of there, while we watched more enemies and a runner, who was just trying to get out with us, getting closer and ultimately failing.
It was an exhilarating moment, my heart racing and an audible cheer may have even escaped my lips. It was akin to the first extraction I made playing Survival mode in The Division near on a decade ago. I’ve played plenty of extraction type shooters in between but Marathon took me back to that feeling in the moment.
The fingerprints of previous extraction titles are very much evident, with most recently Arc Raiders and Escape from Tarkov sharing their DNA. They have tried to bring the genre into mainstream view with varying levels of success while keeping their core philosophy the same, risking your gear against AI and brutal human enemies in a timed raid, all the while a sense of dread follows you into every encounter as you try to get out with your valuables intact.
Marathon goes a lot deeper than others thanks to the writers over at Bungie. You have signed away your consciousness to be used by corporations till they deem your debt repaid, scavenging the distant planet of Tau Ceti IV, a planet once considered the future for a resource starved humanity. Now, with its original colony mysteriously deceased it has been overtaken and guarded closely by the United Earth Space Council and its robotic soldiers. Each being tasked with keeping Tau Ceti IV for the UESC and only the UESC.
As a runner your job is to slip into a robotic shell and loot resources and information from the ground at the behest of corporations, revolutionaries or religious bodies, all who offer you contracts filled with loot, money and delectable experience points. Each faction has its own agenda, be it the all powerful Cyber Acme that powers the AI you use to interface with your shell or the religious death cult of Arachne hoping for help ramping up the violence on the surface, there is a constant run of contracts for you to pick up. With each contract completion a little more story is unlocked delving you deeper into the lore of Tau Ceti IV and the war you are not a part of.
Unfortunately, while rich and deep the story is delivered like sitting in a lecture hall by an artificial robot image on screen. It does very little to connect you to the story being told. With the sort of budget that Bungie was given and time taken to develop I would have expected there to be more dedicated cut scene moments to portray what is obviously a very lore heavy story. The fact that once the moments you do get to see are played are not able to be seen again make it even more problematic as I along with many have rage clicked through and missed possible needed information all because I had just been slaughtered while trying to complete a contract on a run.
Gameplay wise, Marathon is another masterpiece showcasing exactly what Bungie is known for. It has devised an extensive armoury of weapons each as much fun to fight with as the next. It may be highlighted by an almost instantaneous time to kill but that helps in allowing you to feel like even starter level or “free” loadout weaponry allows you to be effective in gun fights. Each weapon is highly modular allowing you to improve aspects via mods found during runs or bought from the ever growing armoury shop that you unlock as your reputation grows with each faction. Loot is easily recognisable using the standard colour coded tier system and you will quickly find yourself drawn to your favourite weapon types be they a slower more powerful rifle or my favourite the low power but fast firing energy bolt sub machine guns. Its a system that rewards customisation of guns while adding another layer of fear of losing as when you die everything is gone.
Adding to its strong gameplay foundations Marathon offers a series of Shells for you to link with while on Tau Ceti IV. Each Shell offers different abilities and allows you to play a specific role in your fire team. Each Shell has a lower powered tactical ability, usually movement or shield based and a higher powered Prime ability. They can prove to be moment turning when used in the heart of battle but their long cool downs and relatively brief usage means that you will need to be back on it straight away and use them wisely to position yourself to get back in the gunfight quickly.
Marathon, like any live service game, works alongside a substantial monetisation plan designed to extract our hard earned. From what I have seen so far it borders on ridiculous much like many others have become in recent times. A free and premium battle pass is available for all meaning you can add some of the cool looking cosmetics to your armoury for free if you so care to but outside of the free gear there isn’t much yet to get excited about. In Australia a cosmetic runner shell will set you back $15 and if you want to buy a pack for a specific runner you’re looking at $30 plus. Now remember this is a first person extraction shooter so the only time you can see your runner is while they are a static image on the loading screen. Bungie has come out recently and addressed feedback leading to it tweaking the pricing and will continue to do so but this is proving to be a sticking point with a lot of potential players.
Marathon is high stakes, high risk and high reward. A competitive extraction shooter in every aspect of itself and can be the highest of highs or the lowest of lows. I have often described my time on Tau Ceti IV as very bipolar. When you’re on a good run it feels fantastic, but sooner or later you end up in the unemployed queue and a loss almost always leads to a string of them.
Marathon is not perfect by any means and its decisively hard point of entry will turn many people off very quickly. Where others have reveled in their successes it has always started with the community embracing the part of us that are only interested in the PVE aspect and not so much the PVP. As it stands right now Marathon is shoot on site. In hours of runs I have run into only one other player that was friendly and that is because they were running solo picking up the dregs at the end of a round. For it to grow a community needs to form.
As the first season unfolds we will be playing along and updating as we do in preparation for the launch of Cryo Archive, Marathon’s pinnacle end game zone later this month. Be sure to check in!
Playstation provided a release review code for this review
