Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[Swine Schwein]

I can't be the only one who were potentially the game's audience, took a look at the fucktarded decisions Bungo made, and walked away.

A friend of mine tried it. Got confused by the retarded new player onboarding experience as well. Never played another day, although he liked the look and general feel of the gameplay. Another friend, pretty much the same thing. These anecdotes are everywhere and they are too common.

It's bad enough that there isn't a BASIC FUCKING STORY CAMPAIGN anymore to give the game structure and introduce its mechanics, but the UI is fucking obnoxious. It's so fucking horrible. The noob gets spammed with 300 different "quests" at once, most of them retarded introductory shit like "go say hi to a faggot character, he's a vendor!" or some other useless crap that is meant to help but does the opposite. Each "quest" also belongs to a subcategory, of which there are too many, and having some of the actual DLC campaigns buried in that retarded mess.

You get all these fucking boxes and menus and tabs and no coherence, and the funny part is that it's actually hard to give advice when the noob friend asks "What should I do? Where should I go?" because a) there's not a good answer for that, and b) you can't see the quests you have already done so your friend has to fucking read his screen to you while you try to explain how to navigate everything in this directionless, endlessly fractured piece of shit retard game. It's easier to help elderly people to figure out router settings over a non-functional telephone.

 

[dame dudi jench]

ve mentioned this before, but D2 only got to those numbers due to many a bad decision piling up on each other. Sunsetting, content vaulting, and the constant seasonal churn hurt the numbers before, though they remained mostly steady over the years, only really starting to dip once the overarching story reached a conclusion in TFS. Then a massive wombo combo of less and underwhelming content, more grind (with more grind promised to come), and complete radio silence from the devs (never did get that roadmap) hurt the game almost irreparably. Even when they backtracked on some of the bad stuff, a lot of players got burned and decided to check out until it was substantially better. Then the next update got delayed for them to push Marathon out the door, we still got no news for months, and when they finally deigned to talk to us again, it was to inform us they were killing all development.

But to imply that Destiny was not a big franchise is pretty silly, I would say. It's had its ups and downs, but it's had millions of players over the years, and many of them turned out once more for the last update. It had a unique combo of guns and space magic that you don't really get anywhere else, wrapped up in a world that has countless possibilities to explore. It probably could have been even bigger if Bungie (read: Jason Jones) weren't so retarded and didn't keep doing stupid shit that hamstrung its development, but c'est la vie.

D2 was up against engine limitations in making new content which is why they had to vault some stuff and apparently it was clunky to work with at this point. As far as anyone can tell they were choosing to not do D3 because the destiny model required they create too much content and they wanted to be able to underdeliver. hence the appeal of marathon where they thought they could make destiny $$$ for a fraction of the price by creating one shitty small cycle that has maybe a month's worth of content after your first season and loop it every 3 months. the shame is cryo archive is one of the coolest MP gaming experiences, you can see the good game they failed to make

 

[Oliver Onions]

I keep seeing people compare Marathon to that pile of shit, but I don't think its a good comparison.

Suicide Squad isn't a perfect 1:1 comparison, but it's the best I can think of for another live service nobody wanted that was DoA but defiantly limped on for a year pretending everything was fine.

The main difference is SS got an offline mode when development ended, I don't think that'll be possible for Marathon.

 

[King Dead]

It's a personal anecdote, but a friend and I were interested to dive into the game not long after it went F2P. After hearing about the absolutely horrible new player experience and the fact that it sunsetted content? We just moved on to Vermintide instead.

It's only an anecdote mind you, but I can't be the only one who were potentially the game's audience, took a look at the fucktarded decisions Bungo made, and walked away. Imagine how many players (existing and potential) they lost from that decision alone.

A friend of mine tried it. Got confused by the retarded new player onboarding experience as well. Never played another day, although he liked the look and general feel of the gameplay. Another friend, pretty much the same thing. These anecdotes are everywhere and they are too common.

It's bad enough that there isn't a BASIC FUCKING STORY CAMPAIGN anymore to give the game structure and introduce its mechanics, but the UI is fucking obnoxious. It's so fucking horrible. The noob gets spammed with 300 different "quests" at once, most of them retarded introductory shit like "go say hi to a faggot character, he's a vendor!" or some other useless crap that is meant to help but does the opposite. Each "quest" also belongs to a subcategory, of which there are too many, and having some of the actual DLC campaigns buried in that retarded mess.

You get all these fucking boxes and menus and tabs and no coherence, and the funny part is that it's actually hard to give advice when the noob friend asks "What should I do? Where should I go?" because a) there's not a good answer for that, and b) you can't see the quests you have already done so your friend has to fucking read his screen to you while you try to explain how to navigate everything in this directionless, endlessly fractured piece of shit retard game. It's easier to help elderly people to figure out router settings over a non-functional telephone.

No arguments there. Unfortunately, their retarded decisions made Destiny more infamous than famous, and honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if that played a part in Marathon's lackluster sales. Destiny got the benefit of the doubt from a decade of Halo releases, and that carried it through some of those early low points. But then they fucked up, and kept fucking up, and they both lost players and didn't gain new ones because, as you said, they refused to actually invest in making the game easier to understand.

So the studio that's famous for being pretty retarded for the better part of a decade is trying to sell you on a new game? Can't say I'm shocked most people said no thank you to that.

 

[The Noise]

I think they're contractually obligated to release season 3 because they sold a battle pass for it already.

Season 4 and beyond is incredibly unlikely as player counts hit the 1.5k range and matchmaking issues occur.

I'm already seeing on reddit Oceanic and Asian players struggling to find matches and it won't be long before European and NA servers follow.

I was gonna write something like "I really liked the story in classic Marathon so it sucks they'll 100% never finish whatever narrative they're doing now" but then I thought back to Destiny and how they literally just made the story up as they went along and loled. I guarantee there is literally nothing to the Compiler boss in the cryo labs besides nostalgia baiting. Also willing to bet Durandal has no relevance to anything and would only be used in a Cayde-6 style "KILL OFF/REINTRODUCE CHARACTER IN CASE OF EMERGENCY" situation.

 

[dame dudi jench]

No arguments there. Unfortunately, their retarded decisions made Destiny more infamous than famous, and honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if that played a part in Marathon's lackluster sales. Destiny got the benefit of the doubt from a decade of Halo releases, and that carried it through some of those early low points. But then they fucked up, and kept fucking up, and they both lost players and didn't gain new ones because, as you said, they refused to actually invest in making the game easier to understand.

So the studio that's famous for being pretty retarded for the better part of a decade is trying to sell you on a new game? Can't say I'm shocked most people said no thank you to that.

it's time to have your revenge

https://petecarsons.com/

@Swine Schwein wrote:
A friend of mine tried it. Got confused by the retarded new player onboarding experience as well. Never played another day, although he liked the look and general feel of the gameplay. Another friend, pretty much the same thing. These anecdotes are everywhere and they are too common.

It's bad enough that there isn't a BASIC FUCKING STORY CAMPAIGN anymore to give the game structure and introduce its mechanics, but the UI is fucking obnoxious. It's so fucking horrible. The noob gets spammed with 300 different "quests" at once, most of them retarded introductory shit like "go say hi to a faggot character, he's a vendor!" or some other useless crap that is meant to help but does the opposite. Each "quest" also belongs to a subcategory, of which there are too many, and having some of the actual DLC campaigns buried in that retarded mess.

You get all these fucking boxes and menus and tabs and no coherence, and the funny part is that it's actually hard to give advice when the noob friend asks "What should I do? Where should I go?" because a) there's not a good answer for that, and b) you can't see the quests you have already done so your friend has to fucking read his screen to you while you try to explain how to navigate everything in this directionless, endlessly fractured piece of shit retard game. It's easier to help elderly people to figure out router settings over a non-functional telephone.

Really well put, i'm now of the mind that everyone at Bungie knew the game was a miss and not ready. their own lack of clear thinking about how to build it is reflected in all of these fragmented confusing design decisions. they never fully joined the pieces. those are the kind of projects you cancel or delay further, which bungie couldn't afford to do. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulta...gie-morale-launch-worries-and-changing-plans/ i wasn't following marathon before it came out, but looking back at this coverage, i think that's why morale is low. the articles framed it in terms of being demoralized about art theft, but artists all steal from each other, that's how it's always nobody is going to be that horrified about what is essentially concept art theft besides maybe some naive customer support or junior artists. esp. nobody will give a fuck on the engineering side where your job is to steal other people's code from stackoverflow or github and it would be irrational not to steal. it looks like the devs were telling bungie leadership the game wasn't good but they got told to forge ahead anyway. and it's why the team and joe ziegler were so responsive in making good balance changes during most of season 1 before they started doing the usual bungie thing and fucking things up in s2 - stuff like CARRI are likely concepts team members wanted to insert from the get go but were told no on initially.

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

"See you next Season"


Ver archivo adjunto 9243308

Don't leave out the "... maybe"
Even that guy knows what's comin.

 

[evilsponge]

I was gonna write something like "I really liked the story in classic Marathon so it sucks they'll 100% never finish whatever narrative they're doing now" but then I thought back to Destiny and how they literally just made the story up as they went along and loled. I guarantee there is literally nothing to the Compiler boss in the cryo labs besides nostalgia baiting. Also willing to bet Durandal has no relevance to anything and would only be used in a Cayde-6 style "KILL OFF/REINTRODUCE CHARACTER IN CASE OF EMERGENCY" situation.

You find out quickly these mystery box narratives are usually empty

 

[Steven Chapman]

we love a little Paul Tassi rage baiting Marafags on a Wednesday morning.

 

[StacticShock]

A friend of mine tried it. Got confused by the retarded new player onboarding experience as well. Never played another day, although he liked the look and general feel of the gameplay. Another friend, pretty much the same thing. These anecdotes are everywhere and they are too common.
It's bad enough that there isn't a BASIC FUCKING STORY CAMPAIGN anymore to give the game structure and introduce its mechanics, but the UI is fucking obnoxious. It's so fucking horrible. The noob gets spammed with 300 different "quests" at once, most of them retarded introductory shit like "go say hi to a faggot character, he's a vendor!" or some other useless crap that is meant to help but does the opposite. Each "quest" also belongs to a subcategory, of which there are too many, and having some of the actual DLC campaigns buried in that retarded mess.

this is always funny because if you look at the red war campaign it teaches you the basics but bungo had to remove it because they didn't want the game to be 200GB or something in the period that was a target of mockery with COD and shieet.

remember that? when people used to mock COD for it's large install size? pepperidge farm remembers.

 

[NoMercyNoRespite]

A friend of mine tried it. Got confused by the retarded new player onboarding experience as well. Never played another day, although he liked the look and general feel of the gameplay. Another friend, pretty much the same thing. These anecdotes are everywhere and they are too common.

It's bad enough that there isn't a BASIC FUCKING STORY CAMPAIGN anymore to give the game structure and introduce its mechanics, but the UI is fucking obnoxious. It's so fucking horrible. The noob gets spammed with 300 different "quests" at once, most of them retarded introductory shit like "go say hi to a faggot character, he's a vendor!" or some other useless crap that is meant to help but does the opposite. Each "quest" also belongs to a subcategory, of which there are too many, and having some of the actual DLC campaigns buried in that retarded mess.

You get all these fucking boxes and menus and tabs and no coherence, and the funny part is that it's actually hard to give advice when the noob friend asks "What should I do? Where should I go?" because a) there's not a good answer for that, and b) you can't see the quests you have already done so your friend has to fucking read his screen to you while you try to explain how to navigate everything in this directionless, endlessly fractured piece of shit retard game. It's easier to help elderly people to figure out router settings over a non-functional telephone.

Get filtered with you gay ass adhd niggers.

 

[creaturestorm]

You find out quickly these mystery box narratives are usually empty

I think you’re right and part of the problem is not in how it’s told, but what is told. Take Elden Ring or a Souls game for example, every item serves as a clue to lay the foundations of the world and to piece together what is happening, but ultimately you playing the game and the decisions you make therein conclude the story. Do you continue through the gauntlet to throw yourself onto the alter of sacrifice or do risk it all in an attempt to bring about a new age? So little is left up to you, but ultimately you do complete the story.

While Marathon has an amazing set up so far, I don’t think they can continue to tell there story in this way. We don’t have 300 years worth of lore to be digging up and we know enough about the setting from the previous 3 games to fill in the gaps. the story of what happened to the colonists is basically concluded. Durandal has been reassembled by the Runners… What’s left to tell and how do you tell it? Through more random rare drops? The contracts and tasks afford barely any story.

 

[King Dead]

I think you’re right and part of the problem is not in how it’s told, but what is told. Take Elden Ring or a Souls game for example, every item serves as a clue to lay the foundations of the world and to piece together what is happening, but ultimately you playing the game and the decisions you make therein conclude the story. Do you continue through the gauntlet to throw yourself onto the alter of sacrifice or do risk it all in an attempt to bring about a new age? So little is left up to you, but ultimately you do complete the story.

While Marathon has an amazing set up so far, I don’t think they can continue to tell there story in this way. We don’t have 300 years worth of lore to be digging up and we know enough about the setting from the previous 3 games to fill in the gaps. the story of what happened to the colonists is basically concluded. Durandal has been reassembled by the Runners… What’s left to tell and how do you tell it? Through more random rare drops? The contracts and tasks afford barely any story.

Since you've probably gotten through the majority of the story stuff, are there any clues as to how this is supposed to fit into the original story? Marathon 1 ends with Durandal hijacking the Pfhor ship and skeedaddling off to Lhowon for Marathon 2, somehow kidnapping the Security Officer before he leaves (and then don't even get me started on Infinity). While the Marathon is left behind, Durandal should be gone, so how is he still around? Is it a retcon, an alternate timeline, a copy of Durandal, or what?

 

[dame dudi jench]

Since you've probably gotten through the majority of the story stuff, are there any clues as to how this is supposed to fit into the original story? Marathon 1 ends with Durandal hijacking the Pfhor ship and skeedaddling off to Lhowon for Marathon 2, somehow kidnapping the Security Officer before he leaves (and then don't even get me started on Infinity). While the Marathon is left behind, Durandal should be gone, so how is he still around? Is it a retcon, an alternate timeline, a copy of Durandal, or what?

curious if creature has seen more, but i poked at this and from what i can tell they're being deliberately vague. infinity had the combination of causality-fucking jjaro tech and the causality-fucking w'rkncactner leading you to jump between alternate realities to find the solution to your problem, then everything collapses into one reality where the w'rkncactner doesn't escape. so for them to do an alternate timeline or retcon thing now would undermine the original trilogy. it doesn't seem like they want to do that. so that suggests he's a copy or fragment of Durandal left behind.

this codex entry in cryo archive sounds like it's between Thoth and Durandal separating at some point, maybe it's Thoth going rampant. And then it starts going on about multiversal stuff again (maybe). But it also sounds like it knows everything Durandal knew after Infinity. So who knows, they might not even know and it's all vaguely writen b/c it's a BS jj abrams mystery box they'll figure out later. such a bummer we won't see a single player campaign story.
https://codex.cyberacme.systems/?search=unknown+reverie

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/introduction-into-the-unknown

 

[creaturestorm]

Since you've probably gotten through the majority of the story stuff, are there any clues as to how this is supposed to fit into the original story? Marathon 1 ends with Durandal hijacking the Pfhor ship and skeedaddling off to Lhowon for Marathon 2, somehow kidnapping the Security Officer before he leaves (and then don't even get me started on Infinity). While the Marathon is left behind, Durandal should be gone, so how is he still around? Is it a retcon, an alternate timeline, a copy of Durandal, or what?

I’m not sure if I just double posted or what, but I only saw half of what I wrote just posted so I have to rewrite this shit again… fuck.

Anyways


I can yap about this forever if you want, but long story short: it’s my interpretation that this is a direct continuation of the best possible timeline where the Security Officer and Durandal become Destiny tm.

Strauss was doing some heavy experimentation with Durandal, trying to shape and alter him in a way that would have benefitted humanity. When ever Durandal got off course, Strauss would make alterations to him.

Durandal, in an attempt to preserve his own sense of self and please his creator decided to kill a lesser AI responsible for detecting rampancy. Durandal enjoyed consuming the “tattle tale” and in doing so was able to assume its identity by leaving a small copy of himself in its shell, only reporting what Strauss was wanting to hear.

In the present Durandal manipulates the Runner into collecting his subroutines that are scattered through out the Marathon, from these he is able to rebuild himself entirely.

S3 should be an exciting romp through the galaxy and alternate dimensions with Durandal, but this game is made by Bungie… lol.