Following recent rumors about a possible future where Bungie decides to merge Destiny and Marathon, the studio has now revealed more details about what it has planned for the PvPvE extraction shooter. In a lengthy social media post, Bungie has confirmed that it will refresh the progression systems, rewards, and the live experience of Marathon with an update in October.
This will be followed up with a major update in December – Symbiosis – that will bring in the shooter’s first permanent PvE game mode along with other content like an expanded version of Perimeter, a new shell, improvements to the onboarding experience, and a new social space where players can hang out together. March will see further expansion of these concepts through what the studio has described as “connected PvE, PvP, and PvEvP experiences” along with deeper progression, a refactored version of Cradle, expansions to the story, and new enemies, along with an entirely new zone.
While the core PvEvP experience is meant to be an important part of Marathon, Bungie has said that it wants to offer players more options when it comes to the survival experience they want. More details about the PvE mode are slated to be revealed as we get closer to the release of the Symbiosis update, as parts of the experience are still being finalized.
“Some players want a quick, lower-pressure run after work. Some want to spend an entire night with their crew. Others want to test a build, compete directly against other players, chase a difficult challenge, or follow a strange clue deeper into the ruins of Tau Ceti IV. Marathon needs to support all of them.”
Bungie has also revealed more details about how it plans to overhaul its onboarding experience since, in its current state, the extraction shooter “asks new players to learn too much, too quickly.” To deal with this, a smoother onramp is being designed that will allow players to easily learn the core fundamentals for Marathon. The social space will play into this, since it will also include a firing range where players can test out their weapons and shell abilities.
“We know that rebuilding trust requires more than talking about the future. We need to share our work and clearly communicate what’s changing so the Marathon community has an accurate understanding of what each update will and won’t deliver.
“While we build toward December and March, we’ll continue making meaningful quality-of-life improvements and running focused experiments that allow players to participate without reorganizing their lives around limited windows.”
Bungie had confirmed earlier this month that Marathon would be moving away from its seasonal content model. This involved pushing back the release of the shooter’s major new update from its originally planned September 22nd date.
At the same time, Bungie has also confirmed that it is working on improving Destiny 2 by bringing back content that was vaulted with the release of its Beyond Light expansion. This means that players will finally get to re-experience the campaigns from Red War up to Forsaken.
