Bungie: Marathon is 'on Track,' Plans to Expand Playtests in 2025 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 November 2024 / 2,199 Views
Bungie game director Joe Ziegler in a video posted to YouTube provided an update on the sci-fi PVP extraction shooter, Marathon.
Ziegler stated development on the game is currently "on track" and they will be expanding playtests in 2025.
View the developer update below:
"So, a lot of you might be asking the question, “What is Marathon?” Well, Marathon is our take on essentially an extraction shooter," said Ziegler. "And if you don’t know what an extraction shooter is, it’s a game type where you essentially go into a dangerous world, a world filled with essentially hostile mobs and players alike that are all sort of existing in that environment and a huge threat to you and challenge your ability to survive and get out alive."
He added, "Talking a little bit about the world of Marathon, our games obviously set in and the IP of Marathon which is one of Bungie’s classic IPs. I think the first game released in 1994 so it was quite a while ago. But what we’re doing with that world is we’re taking a lot of the familiar elements, especially a lot of the things around the mysteries and the kind of eeriness and sort of like the, how do I put it, like the psychological kind of creepiness of the entire, IP as it exists before.
"But we’re layering on some elements that we think really help modernize it and also bring it to a new story that we can sort of and new world that we can sort of like continue to update and and delight all of you with over the course of time."
Ziegler said there are different parts of the games that are at different stages of development.
"Where the game is out right now, there’s a variety of different things at different states inside of the game. Some things are a little bit more complete, like our environments are starting to come together in a really, really beautiful way. Some of the character models we’ve been iterating through. So they’re coming together but they’re not fully there yet. Our enemy models are still kind of a little bit in an early state. So we’re still iterating through and making those things land in a strong way and a few of the items are still kind of coming online.
"So it’s a little early to show you all of it as one piece but as you’ve noticed, like as many of you are familiar with, if you’ve been or if you’re familiar with game development, all of these things are on track. They’re not all together. But when they all do come together, we really, really are looking forward to showing you what that looks like especially in play."
The plan in 2025 is to expand the playtests and to add more players as milestones are reached.
"We’re looking to add a significant amount of players to each of our milestones as we’re going forward and some of these, big inflections are opportunities for you all to join us," he said. "We’ll definitely let you know when that happens but if you are interested in following us or learning more or sort of keeping up to date with all the updates that we have, definitely one of the ways you can do that is wishlist us on the storefronts that exist, whether it be Steam on Xbox or on PSN. All of them have wishlist buttons. If you click that, it will help us know that you want to learn more about the game and we can sort of send the information your way."
Marathon is in development for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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2 minutes into his monologue, all I hear again already is loot here, loot there, upgrades here, upgrades there and improving stats, all of which sounds like a song on repeat for over 15 years to me. Nothing exciting in these words specifically.
On a different note, I suspect to not see much confidence in his eyes.
I really wish them all the best for Marathon, though. But it's as simple as that:
If Marathon is going to show itself as a low effort game, only with different textures within microtransactions everywhere, you should stop development right there.
I've loved basically everything Bungie has put out since 2001... but I have some doubts about this reboot
Extraction shooters are so wildly boring imo.
Essay Pro