Yesterday Joe Zeigler, Game Director for Marathon, dropped an extremely informative article about how the first three months of Marathon went, what Bungie has learned since launch, and how that knowledge is going to shape the game moving into Season 2 and beyond.
A Full PvE Mode Is Coming To Marathon
There was a ton of really cool insights in this article, so I highly suggest you go read it all, but the thing that stood out to me most was this:
In Season 2, we will be experimenting with two modes, one at the beginning of the season and one towards the middle/latter half of the season. The experimental mode at the beginning of the season will focus more on PVE, but with a light touch of PVP. The second experimental mode will be a PVE-only mode that’s focused on crews being tasked with completing objectives together and making some progress across matches.
This is huge. I mean game-altering huge. Up until now, Marathon was a PvP extraction shooter. Yes there are PvE elements to every run, but it is a shoot-on-sight, kill-enemy-Runners-first type of game. It is much more PvP heavy than Arc Raiders (especially with Arc’s aggression based matchmaking system), and working alongside other squads hasn’t happened a single time in my 100+ hours of playtime.
This type of environment can be good and bad. Personally, I love how aggressive it is an knowing that if we see another squad, it’s going to be a fight. Arc Raiders is a phenomenal game in it’s own right, but there were many times that my squad would be friendly and hold off on attacking another squad when all I wanted to do was get into a 3v3 bloodbath.
But there are a ton of people out there that find the pure PvP focus extremely frustrating. Marathon is not a chill game. I have not once played it and felt relaxed for the whole play-session. It is tense, it is stressful, and it is sweaty, and adding a PvE or PvP-lite mode will give players the option to just chill and enjoy the world of Tau Ceti if they want to, which I think is a great idea.
Marathon Is Ready For More PvE
Now in some extraction shooters, like Tarkov, I’d say a PvE mode may not be all that enjoyable due to the lack of variety and complexity in the game’s PvE experiences - but Marathon already has difficult, unique, and addicting PvE content. Wardens, UESC Commanders, the Compiler. Cryo Archive has numerous puzzles and a depth to it that I’ve only just scratched the surface of. Bungie is a company known for making some of the most intricate and challenging PvE Raid encounters (in Destiny) that the gaming world has ever seen.
PvE Could Be GREAT! Or…. Meh.
With all the glorious potential of what might come should Bungie choose to flex their PvE design superpowers, I still find myself asking: What will they actually give us?
If it’s just a standard Marathon run with PvP disabled, I don’t think that moves the needle at all and will feel half-assed. Even if they ramp of UESC presence on the maps.
But what if they give us a boss fight that’s so hard that multiple squads need to work together to kill it? I would love to bring in all the cool gear I had gathered over all my runs into a pinnacle raid/boss fight where I didn’t need to worry about losing it all (unless the boss killed everyone). THIS would be my ideal PvE only mode.
But what about PvP-lite? This is very intriguing as well, maybe moreso to me than PvE only, but I have no idea how they would build this or how it might play. Maybe certain map areas with the highest quality loot have PvP but the rest of the map doesn’t? Maybe prior to a run you can buy an item that disables PvP for you, but reduces the quality of loot you can find? I guess we’ll find out!
For the rest of the updates and for information regarding the wipe and Season 2, take a look at Bungie’s full article.
See you on Tau Ceti!