Bungie has released a cinematic trailer for new Vandal shell coming to Marathon. As is the case with any of Marathon’s cinematic trailers, we don’t really get much in the way of gameplay here. Rather, the trailer focuses entirely on the vibes that Bungie is going for with the new shell, and a showcase of how their abilities would work within the setting of Marathon. Check it out below.
The trailer begins with the Vandal perched atop a high wall, looking at some enemy forces coming in through drop ships. After almost immediately antagonizing them, Vandal then leaps into action, all while dodging a hail of gunfire. Eventually, after getting to a better vantage point, the Vandal decides to strike, taking out a single enemy and dropping a grenade to wipe the rest of the squad out. The trailer culminates with the shell using their high speed and ability to get a jump boost to get to the squad’s leader.
Marathon is currently in the midst of its second season, dubbed NIGHTFALL. Bungie has confirmed that the season will mark the arrival of two new game modes, with the first one focusing largely on PvE with “light” PvP elements, and the second one being purely PvE-focused. The first one was launched at the season’s start, and the second one is slated to be released at a later date.
NIGHTFALL also brought with it a new variant of Dire Marsh, dubbed Night Marsh. In a blog post, Bungie noted that this variant has been designed to be “slower-paced than Day Marsh and plays more like a survival horror experience, with slightly fewer players and extra environmental challenges with navigating the darkness and threats within.”
Despite Bungie’s continued post-launch support for Marathon, the fact that it hasn’t really been getting the number of players that the studio or parent company Sony would be happy with isn’t exactly a secret. Sony CFO Lin Tao had noted back in May that one of the company’s aims in the coming months is to improve its overall performance by bringing in more players.
“Going forward, we aim to improve the performance of [Marathon] by working to retain highly engaged core users through the introduction of additional content, further improvements in the gameplay experience, and expansion of the user base,” she said.
This would eventually lead to the Marathon Open Play Week earlier this month, which invited players to give the PvPvE extraction shooters a shot for a whole week. The Open Play Week also included the Sponsored Survival PvE mode.
Interestingly, the Open Play Week would come with its own host of problems; some PS5 players discovered that they could get their hands on the Digital Deluxe Edition of Marathon for only $14 during the week. This turned out to have been a mistake, however, leading to Sony quickly updating the PlayStation Store page for the game to offer clarification that the $14 price tag is only for the Digital Deluxe itself, and doesn’t include the base game, which would be needed to access the content.
