Extraction shooters have historically been grounded in gritty realism, but I’ve always longed for a compelling entry that incorporates hero-shooter elements, such as traits and abilities. Marathon, an extraction shooter developed by Bungie and published by SIE, tackles exactly that.
It features a diverse selection of character classes with compelling abilities, an addictive loot grind, a high-stakes competitive PvP environment, and a unique, visually interesting art style that will leave you wanting to start another run as soon as possible. Weave yourself a new runner shell, download your consciousness into it, and journey with me in this examination of a somewhat niche and flawed, but quite compelling game.
The Struggle for New Cascadia
After humanity loses contact with the UESC colony ship, a distress call from Tau Ceti IV is broadcast through space. A collection of corporations responds by planting their flags in this new, unknown frontier. As a runner, you must progress through corporate faction contracts while navigating their proxy war, facing off against competing runners, gathering loot, and uncovering the mysterious story behind New Cascadia.
New story elements are offered through corporate faction contracts progression, which serve as this game’s implementation of quests. I was surprised at the depth of lore offered, and it kept me invested in leveling up corporate factions and excited to hear the next bit of story provided. Once a faction is unlocked, you can progress through any of their contracts in whatever order you’d like. Additional lore is unlocked by completing Codex challenges, where you’ll find a wealth of additional information about everything from how and why specific abilities work to backstory on the universe. You can delve as deep into it as you want, or skip it and get back into your next run with haste.
Cut-scenes and voice-recorded dialogue provide insights into the various factions and their distinct qualities and motivations. For example, NuCaloric Agricultural is a major food production company that seeks to understand how the Marathon mission failed, so its contracts revolve around gathering data and samples to support this endeavor. The visual aesthetic of these cut-scenes was interesting and, at times, unnerving, with abstract, woven designs featuring bold, vibrant colors.
Dynamic Fights Using Abilities
After selecting a faction quest, you can customize the character class and loadout desired for any given run. A wide variety of character classes, known as “runners,” are available, including those with traits aimed at players who want to act as medics (Triage), those seeking close-quarters combat and high mobility (Vandal), those looking to take a stealthy approach to their encounters (Assassin), as well as a number of others.
While I’d normally gravitate toward the Assassin class, who’s tactical ability is invisibility, allowing him to cream up in stealth and surprise opposing teams, I ended up spending a large portion of my time playing as the medic, Triage. Their prime ability, Reboot+, allows the player to resuscitate downed players from afar. I enjoyed staying out of the main line-of-fire in most gunfights so I could position myself to resuscitate them together if they were both downed, quickly turning the tides of a losing battle.
Fighting against teams with one or more Vandal class players could be challenging, though. They have additional movement mechanics like double jumping, and their prime ability increases movement speed and weapon dexterity. They’d quickly enter close-quarters combat, inflict large amounts of damage with close-range weapons, and then retreat to safety before using their ability to shoot a cannon that damages and causes a blowback effect, scattering the team in multiple directions, knocking them off rooftops or pushing them into environmental hazards.
Adding in combat against a Thief could further complicate the battlefield and make remaining aware of all enemy positions a challenge. Thief has the ability to grapple in any direction, allowing them to quickly flank you or otherwise reposition between buildings or other elevated positions. I’d often be surprised and caught off guard by gunfire from a new direction, only to realize they had grappled elsewhere while I was focused on other enemy players. Employing the Recon class helped, as they can ping enemies, making it much more difficult to lose track of them during a gunfight. Still, all these combined abilities make for dynamic and chaotic encounters that never cease to surprise.
Extraction is Your Only Option
After choosing a runner archetype, you can either build a custom loadout with gear from your vault or equip paid or free “sponsored kits,” which disallow bringing in other custom gear, but provide a solid foundation for those looking to go into a run without substantial risks. Interesting perks can be equipped using “implant” and “core” slots that have significant impacts on playstyle, such as providing a second charge of Thief’s grapple hook ability or causing Assassin to become invisible after aiming down sights for an extended time. A scavenger-specific character class called Rook is also available, which enters existing matches solo at any point prior to the 10-minute-remaining timer, but this class cannot bring in any custom gear and cannot progress contracts.
Before entering a match in other extraction shooters, I’ve often struggled with fear of losing loot from failed runs. This mentality can significantly hinder one’s ability to succeed against competing teams. Marathon somehow managed to quell these concerns, allowing me to feel comfortable going in with some of my most coveted gear, and not feel too heartbroken when the loot is inevitably lost in an unsuccessful run. I’ve struggled to narrow down exactly why this is, but part of it has to do with how rewarding I found the loot grind. Guns have three or four attachment slots that change significant aspects of it. This includes expected attributes like handling and magazine size, but also interesting perks or abilities, such as one that temporarily cloaks the player and causes them to appear as a blur for a period of time after successful eliminations.
The benefit of entering a run with good gear ended up far outweighing my fear of losing it, and the loot grind was compelling enough for me to enjoy engaging with it to find new, rare gear combinations to fill my vault. The variety of builds that can be created is extremely. The choice to reset all players seasonally also helps alleviate any anxiety around losing loot, as everyone is reset at the start of each season, providing an equal footing for the whole player base whenever this occurs.
Still, at its core, Marathon is an aggressive extraction shooter. Many of its design choices cater to a more hardcore audience than its most notable modern competition, ARC Raiders. You’ll immediately notice your inventory offers no slots immune to loss if you fail to extract. Known as “safe slots,” this is a feature found in many other games of the genre, but not here. Everything you take into a run is at risk and lost if you do not successfully extract; there is no safety net when you fail. This will be seen as an asset to some players, and a difficult hurdle for others to overcome, but this design choice forced me to get over my fear of losing high level gear and helped me get the full experience of gain and loss central to every extraction shooter.
Download Into Your Shell
With a loadout fully configured, you are offered a selection of three maps, with more to come in future seasonal content. New players can optionally enter the “Perimeter (Beginner)” map variation, which incorporates elements to help new players get comfortable in the world, such as less aggressive enemy AI and PvP matching with other new player teams.
The normal “Perimeter” map raises the enemy AI difficulty, introduces bosses, and allows players of all levels to enter, resulting in dynamic PvP fights. Some of the PvE elements can be somewhat irritating, such as large ticks that explode and damage the player when they get close enough, but these can be easily avoided in most instances. The next map, “Dire Marsh,” raises the AI difficulty even further, and introduces more player teams on a larger, expansive map. The final map (for the moment, until Cryo Archive end-game activities are opened), “Outpost,” cannot be accessed until player level 12, and includes extremely hard-hitting enemies. This map is smaller, with tight corridors and a converging central area all players will move toward; it is a 4-team map designed to force PvP encounters in confined spaces.
Robot enemies in Marathon hit hard. It’s easy to get downed by these NPCs if you aren’t paying close attention to your shield charge and health levels, or if you get yourself overwhelmed and surrounded. Enemy AI is also surprisingly smart and persistent. They strafe behind cover. They follow you if you try to flee. Some are more aggressive, pushing in on the player location from multiple angles, while others take a more ranged approach. I loved the variety of enemy AI behavior; it kept runs interesting and challenging, even when not encountering other player teams.
All levels also offer various types of puzzles, such as loot rooms filled with poisonous gas that must be cleared prior to entry, but “Outpost” features some of the more advanced and interesting puzzles, and was my favorite to explore when I wasn’t getting gunned down by competing teams. To get to the central area containing the high-level loot, players have multiple puzzle-based avenues that expose different breach options.
These puzzles act as their own “mini quests” during runs and are quite engaging to solve, but are, not unexpectedly, often interrupted by PvP encounters. These fights can be quite demanding, and the TTK (time to kill) is relatively low, so one mistake can easily get you downed by an enemy team. Even with the character abilities offered, the standout feature during these fights is the signature Bungie gunplay. It feels sublime. Whether it’s the kick of the recoil, the pop of the gunfire, or the sound effects of breaking a shield, Bungie has dialed in every aspect of gunplay to perfection. The combination of these elements and more create an unbelievably satisfying gunplay experience that holds its own against any other FPS game on the market.
The Future of New Cascadia
Whether Marathon succeeds against popular and established games like ARC Raiders or will remain to be seen, but the two experiences are different enough for both to have a place in the market. Unlike ARC Raiders, there are few, if any, friendlies to be found in Marathon. It cultivates a kill-on-sight kind of mentality, where looting is the primary motivator and making friends is at the bottom of the priority list.
This differentiates Marathon and creates a compelling product with exceptional gunplay, fun abilities, addictive looting, interesting puzzles, and more. I regularly found myself wanting to boot it up between other work projects to squeeze in a run, and I found myself daydreaming about strategies I wanted to implement in later runs while doing other things. Bungie has put together an addictive gameplay loop that feels challenging and fresh. Still, the difficulty might put off more casual players, something that has been borne out in the player count numbers. Even so, I expect Marathon to see an uptick in players with the release of the highly anticipated “Cryo Archive” map, as well as a ranked mode.
With how much Bungie has riding on the success of Marathon, I expect them to continue rolling out updates quickly and responding to player feedback. Assuming the seasonal content continues to impress, I’d recommend you give this extraction shooter entry a try. You might just become as hooked as I did.
Stay tuned for final, scored thoughts soon. We don’t want to finalize until we’ve played Cryo Archive and the upcoming Ranked mode thoroughly as that is required to give a full picture of the experience. Thank you!
