Become a Runner in Bungie’s upcoming sci-fi PvP extraction shooter, Marathon. You are a cybernetic mercenary venturing into the unknown in a fight for survival and fortune where any run can lead to greatness.
They are in the same universe, and they are both FPS, and that seems as far as similarities go. But maybe it won’t be just that, maybe they’ll tie the plot of the new game to the old ones somehow, maybe the ship marathon crashed in the alien planet where the whole extraction thing happens, and maybe that’s the reason? I’ve never played the original games, but recently watched a youtube video about them and it seems that it was really loved by bungie, and they took many of the lessons from it to make Halo. My bet is that someone at Bungie has always kept those games in a corner of their memory, thinking about how they could revive them one day. Usually, when old franchises are revived, it’s because of some execs trying to make use of their popularity. But it doesn’t seem to be the case here, as Marathon was quite an obscure game.
The problem isn’t so much the lore connections; everything seems to more or less line up from the rough pitch they’ve described. It’s more that no one who loved the original games for their amazing world building and storytelling is going to be super jazzed about a psuedo sequel in the form of an extraction shooter. That is the absolute antithesis of a story driven game, as far as I can see.
If this was a side project to acompany a new single player Marathon game, I wouldn’t care. But announcing this as the continuation of Marathon just feels like a slap in the face.
Exactly. If this was “Marathon: Return to Deimos” or “Marathon: Battleroid Arena” or even “Marathon Infinity Plus One” I wouldn’t complain. Much.
But just taking the name (and logo) of the original one? The game that started Bungie’s path towards being one of the big names of the FPS genre? That’s like saying they went straight from Pathways Into Darkness to Halo. That’s not honoring Marathon, it’s a soulless recycling of an old IP.
They are in the same universe, and they are both FPS, and that seems as far as similarities go. But maybe it won’t be just that, maybe they’ll tie the plot of the new game to the old ones somehow, maybe the ship marathon crashed in the alien planet where the whole extraction thing happens, and maybe that’s the reason? I’ve never played the original games, but recently watched a youtube video about them and it seems that it was really loved by bungie, and they took many of the lessons from it to make Halo. My bet is that someone at Bungie has always kept those games in a corner of their memory, thinking about how they could revive them one day. Usually, when old franchises are revived, it’s because of some execs trying to make use of their popularity. But it doesn’t seem to be the case here, as Marathon was quite an obscure game.
The problem isn’t so much the lore connections; everything seems to more or less line up from the rough pitch they’ve described. It’s more that no one who loved the original games for their amazing world building and storytelling is going to be super jazzed about a psuedo sequel in the form of an extraction shooter. That is the absolute antithesis of a story driven game, as far as I can see.
If this was a side project to acompany a new single player Marathon game, I wouldn’t care. But announcing this as the continuation of Marathon just feels like a slap in the face.
Exactly. If this was “Marathon: Return to Deimos” or “Marathon: Battleroid Arena” or even “Marathon Infinity Plus One” I wouldn’t complain. Much.
But just taking the name (and logo) of the original one? The game that started Bungie’s path towards being one of the big names of the FPS genre? That’s like saying they went straight from Pathways Into Darkness to Halo. That’s not honoring Marathon, it’s a soulless recycling of an old IP.
My vent cores feel distinctly unblasted.