Marathon

It has been nearly two weeks since Marathon was launched, and at the time of writing, Bungie has not yet released the planned "endgame map", Cryo Archive, despite this being a fairly crucial part of the game's overall content framework. It seems to be on the cards, but it hasn't happened yet. This is despite the fact that, at the time of launch, Bungie asked the media to hold back on final reviews of the game, precisely because, although it has officially launched at full price, it's considered to be incomplete in its current form.

These are two somewhat paradoxical statements, to put it mildly; why sell it if you are just a few weeks away from adding the piece of content that completes the game? It's not certain that Bungie has slightly cynical motives behind its request to the media, but it has broadly worked, for right now there are very few reviews out there, even though the game has been on sale for two weeks.

So, let's instead find the happy medium here, for I feel compelled to set out the framework for my critical stance on Marathon, even though the Cryo Archive hasn't opened yet. This means that I will go back and update this review of the game should that piece of content prove to be as transformative as I hope, but I am also open to the possibility that Marathon, as it stands right now, is just as it is.

And I actually think Marathon is, broadly speaking, a rock-solid extraction shooter, built on the solid foundation Bungie laid and reinforced through Destiny over 12 years, even though there are several issues to address, some of which can be fixed with relative ease, whilst others will plague the game either for a long-time, or perhaps forever.

Okay, so what is Marathon really? Well, it's an extraction shooter, plain and simple. That means you have a set of menus that let you customise your specific character class, or "Shell", take on new contracts, and organise your gear vault, and when you're ready, you're dropped into one of three maps (soon to be four with Cryo Archive), where you run around between specific landmarks and topographical features to find loot, either randomly or from other teams you encounter, before escaping again... or not. That's essentially the gist of it and Marathon doesn't do much more than this rather simplistic description suggests and offers. In that sense, Marathon is also a fairly straightforward extraction shooter, without versatile "world events", without large, imposing bosses wandering restlessly around the map, and without events that drastically alter the strategic approach for each team. When you load in, you search for loot, shoot at other teams, and make a getaway.

Naturally, this is a somewhat simplified summary of the gameplay loop, but Marathon thrives through this more skill-based, simple setup because it allows players to focus so directly on the best the game has to offer. You see, Marathon is impeccably constructed in its very basic elements. Weapon physics, reload animations, movement, class design, yes, even the really short TTK (time-to-kill), Marathon is finely tuned, and after 35 hours of playtime, I'm ready to say that Bungie's expertise as leaders in this field is only cemented once again. Whether it's landing a headshot with a BR33 Volley Rifle or engaging in an intense firefight with a V66 Lookout, Marathon features some of the best moments the genre has to offer; there's simply no doubt about that.

Added to this is the game's absolutely stunning art design, which Bungie themselves apparently call "graphical realism". It doesn't sound particularly apt, but whatever we're to call this web-based explosion of colour, I love every bit of it. It looks great throughout, in all three maps, in the menus, everywhere. And thanks to Son Lux's, to put it mildly, fantastic soundtrack, Marathon sounds great too, always. We've already discussed and reviewed Marathon's visual and auditory presentation in our Server Slam impressions, but that impression hasn't faded over time, quite the opposite in fact.

It's with this in mind that I reiterate that Marathon's "bones", its technical and mechanical foundation, are so solid that, over time, you can build nothing less than a fabulous extraction shooter here, provided the players are willing to stick with it, for what I'm praising here is the important part, broadly speaking. But that doesn't mean Marathon doesn't have deep-rooted challenges ahead, which will rear their heads no matter how transformative Cryo Archive proves to be, or not.

Marathon's weapons are brilliant, but the way these, and loot in general, are placed, positioned, and signalled is downright awful. In Marathon, all the exciting loot is, first and foremost, largely disconnected from its surrounding environment. A fantastic shield, crucial ammo, a new weapon; they're all found in these anonymous containers, and these containers are both hard to spot and even harder to gauge the value of from a distance. Furthermore, these containers seem to have only a partial connection to their location on the game's map. There are many Weapon Lockers in one spot that might always offer a weapon, but the game's architectural layout doesn't really give you any obvious or subtle hints about where things are and therefore where you should look.

Consequently, searching for loot in Marathon becomes a rather confusing mess most of the time, and whilst one could argue that the game's more puritanical approach to the genre means you can "simply" hunt down other players and take their gear, Bungie really ought to work on making loot hunting more interesting. There are a whole host of ways to do this, but right now, for the most part, it's not really entertaining to drop in and to look for something specific.

But this could be fixed relatively easily through small tweaks to the visibility of the containers, a rearrangement of their placement and possibly adjustments to what kinds of items can be found where; however, this leads us quite naturally to the game's biggest problem and that is these maps. As mentioned, there are three of them, and although all three offer this incredibly beautiful "graphical realism" - which I haven't grown tired of yet - they all have fundamental structural and topographical issues. All three of them. For although these maps are beautiful, and offer striking art direction and visual coherence, Bungie has clearly failed to turn them into interesting "playspaces". By that I mean that in Marathon's three maps, there isn't a single exciting landmark you can see from a distance that naturally draws you in; there are no elevations or changes in the topography that give a team "high ground". There are no positions that are easy to defend, or correspondingly difficult to attack. It's always research laboratories, warehouses, and offices. Visibility is at times ridiculously low, making it harder to observe other teams in the midst of shooting each other, or the otherwise quite entertaining AI enemies, and the whole thing is, almost always, flat.

It's not that these maps don't allow for fun, entertaining, and intense exchanges between teams, and these AI enemies work quite well as challenging foes, and at times simply as "sound traps", but facilitating and enhancing are two very different things, and I never felt that these maps made these duels better through interesting layouts.

A tall tower on the horizon, a deep moat with exciting loot, a dangerous research facility on the edge of the map visible from a distance, a floating spaceship you can teleport into after a certain amount of time has passed, Bungie needs to work on the verticality here, and the result is that you quite quickly stop engaging with the map's structure, instead just looking for the shortest route to a randomly selected destination, often dictated by the active contract. This cannot be fixed straight away; it requires Bungie to rethink their strategy and I don't think they can do that quickly. But I can already feel it now. These maps simply aren't fun enough, plain and simple. Furthermore, these contracts are also a bit "hit or miss" in many respects, because the interactions you have with these Faction AI characters are actually exciting and a good way to add a bit of narrative spice to the game, but these objectives are almost laughable in their ambiguity, and because the game only gives you the name of the section of the map where your objective is, you quickly end up running around aimlessly looking for a very specific data terminal in a huge warehouse, which isn't fun, by the way.

As I said; Marathon's foundations are solid, strong, and well-functioning, and although the game might lack a hook, or simply maps that build on this solid foundation, I feel confident enough, even without Cryo Archive, to recommend Marathon solely on the basis of this rather fantastic loop. That doesn't mean Marathon is a fantastic game in itself, but it could very well turn out to be one, and that's more positive than for a great many other live-service games. As I said, I'll update this review with my impressions of this latest map, regardless of whether it has a drastic impact on my overall impression.