A new rumor claims to provide significant details for Bungie’s upcoming game Marathon, which is announced in May 2023. Not only does it provide new details, but claims the game is testing poorly.
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
This rumor surfaced on 4Chan and notes that the various changes the game is undergoing is not a response to the failure of Concord. From there it does note that “repeated focus testing with Destiny, Tarkov and Hunt Showdown players has been continually negative in its feedback.”
It adds, “Leadership and creative design decision makers have been a revolving door with every new change comes a ‘new vision’ to fix the project.”
READ: Report: After Massive Layoffs, Bungie To Make “Lighter, Smaller” Content Updates For ‘Destiny 2’
There might be some veracity to this part of the rumor given IGN reported Christopher Barrett was removed as Game Director back in March and was replaced with former Valorant Game Director Joe Ziegler. The outlet also claimed “the game’s direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler’s new leadership.”
Ziegler shared at the time that he had become the Game Director writing, “Hey everyone! Fun update: for the last 9 Months I’ve been working on Marathon as the game director. We’re still baking, but I’m excited to share with you more info on the game as we get closer and closer to bringing it to all of you.”
Joe Ziegler on X
However, a recent report from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier claims that Barrett was removed for “inappropriate behavior.”
Schreier reported, “Barrett was terminated following an internal investigation in which at least eight female employees raised complaints earlier this year that he had behaved inappropriately toward them, according to eight people, including multiple women who reported Barrett as well as other Bungie employees who were either involved in the investigation or spoke to the women involved.”
Specifically, the report claims he called female employees attractive, played truth-or-dare, and suggested he could help individuals advance their career within the company.
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
READ: Nintendo Banned Switch 2 Owner After Playing Used Games — Reversed Ban Quickly After Appeal
Barrett seemingly denied the report telling Bloomberg, “I feel that I have always conducted myself with integrity and been respectful and supportive of my colleagues, many of whom I consider my closest friends. I never understood my communications to be unwanted and I would have never thought they could possibly have made anyone feel uncomfortable.”
He added, “If anyone ever felt that way about their interaction with me, I am truly sorry.”
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
Regardless, the rumor continued noting that the scale of the game was being reduced, “As the game currently stands it will ship but it will not be the product on the same scale as originally promised.”
It specifically shared that the game be “comparable more to the survival minigame mode of The Division” and the “map is now a single fixed map with a Fortnite style storm bubble.”
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
As for characters, they are “being pulled back from straight hero shooter character to ‘archetypes’ where you may pick a body type, voice type and a couple of height and build adjustments but for gameplay purposes you are the “archetype” which is more comparable to Destiny’s titan/warlock/hunter system where everyone who wants to is a hunter but you were never playing cayde 6 for example.”
Some examples include the voltrunner which is described as “a high mobility focussed (sp?) archetype which has benefits to using weapons such as SMG’s and pistols. Can ‘blink’ to teleport either forwards or up/down even through a surface if its not impassable like the ground and has a chaining electricity grenade.”
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
Another archetype is an engineer who has a “drone that can close up windows and doorways with a destructable (sp?) cover ala Rainbow Six Seige (sp?).” There is also “a ‘deaf’ character that trades clear hearing for a form of ‘detective vision.'”
Finally, this leaker shared that Bungie scrapped plans for a hacker type archetype “that would do a small minigame in the style of Warframe or Bioshocks hacking minigames to seal doorways or activate dormant npc robotic defenses but it lead to too many players softlocking themselves in a room they couldn’t escape and was more trouble than it was worth.”
The report from IGN back in March claimed the game was “moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes.” It appears they might be shifting away from the cast of heroes and back to these so-called archetypes.
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
READ: Bungie Senior Narrative Designer Defends Sweet Baby Inc., Tells Gamers “You Need To Grow Up”
These archetypes will do battle in something akin to “Titanfall 2’s large maps with wall running, grapples but with destiny style abilities and grenades albeit without supers.”
Players will “be able to store weapons in a stockpile to equip each of your archetypes” and “the weapons use a ‘normal’, ‘special’ and ‘exotic’ classification system.” The leaker claims weapons will be like “Cyberpunk 2077 meets Call of Duty.”
There will be daily quests or “bounties to complete e.g collecting X amount of materials from harvestable nodes that count wether (sp?) you extract or not.”
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
The leaker also asserted, “There is now no ongoing overarching story. You are mercs sent down to recover files, artefacts and materiel from the surface so go nuts and shoot your heart out.”
There will be PVE enemies as well. The leaker shared, “There were originally no PVE enemies, not even bots, and was mostly a hectic mad dash through a ghost town colony that has now changed and there are enemy robots, fauna and even a few rarely spawning “nemeis” type strong bots of player archetypes to mix things up and give players objectives to make progress even if they fail to extract or die.”
As for the game’s art style, the leaker claims it’s been “changed and is much closer to Destiny 1 with more emphasis on things like dust particles in the air, darker shadows and greater depth of field that were reduced for Destiny 2.”
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
Much of the rest of the rumor surrounds the game’s cost and engine. It will reportedly cost $40 similar to Concord and Helldivers 2, but will have higher tiers similar to Destiny. Speaking of Destiny, it appears there might be a bit of a crossover or collaboration when the game launches where you can unlock cosmetic content in Destiny 2 if you purchase Marathon.
The game will also feature a battlepass as well as seasons similar to Destiny 2.
Regarding the game’s engine, allegedly Bungie futureproofed it so the team will be able to perform “quicker changes much faster. For example to change the location of an assett e.g a shipping container and saving the map as a finished, rendered project would take over a day in D2 but in Marathon takes about 20 minutes. That ability to change the map so easily is expected to be a major selling point.”
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
This rumor comes in the wake of Bungie significantly downsizing its company by laying off 220 employees, about 17% of the company, moving 155 employees to Bungie’s parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment, and spinning out 75 employees into their own studio at the end of July.
While announcing these massive changes the company’s CEO and Chairman Pete Parsons indicated the company would “focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon.”
He added, “We still have over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon, and we will continue to build amazing experiences that exceed our players’ expectations.”
A screenshot from Marathon (TBA), Bungie
What do you make of these rumored and alleged details regarding Marathon?
