Bungie has faced plenty of criticism in the past with regards to how it handled content vaulting with Destiny 2. With extraction shooter Marathon, however, the studio hopes to avoid the issue altogether. In an interview with Space.com, creative director Julia Nardin spoke about wanting to make Marathon “an additive experience” where players can jump in without having to worry about missing content. While Marathon will continue to feature a “live narrative” through the release of seasonal updates, Nardin noted that the studio learned many lessons from the mistakes made from Destiny 2.
This also means that, regardless of when players decide to hop into the extraction shooter, they won’t have to worry about missing out on important story moments. Rather, questlines will remain in the game through future updates, and players will be able to get their hands on achievements and fill out their item collections without worrying about missing out on anything.
“We want Marathon to be an additive experience in the sense that all priority contracts and story content aims to be evergreen, meaning that it doesn’t matter when you join, you’ll still be able to play through the established questlines and fill out your Codex with achievements and collections that allow you to uncover additional layers of the world,” she explained. “We’ll be adding to this foundation over time in the live service environment, depending on our players’ response and at a cadence we can support, but we know what direction we want to go in and what we want to create for the community to uncover next.”
When discussing how this narrative actually unfolds through Marathon‘s the extraction shooter gameplay loop, Nardin explained that it will all revolve around scavenging an abandoned colony. While there will be plenty of the story told through the various quests players can take on, Marathon will also reveal more of its worldbuilding through item descriptions, text files and audio logs.
“The core loop is about scavenging an abandoned colony, so we set out to tell the best possible story about that colony and the people who lived there,” said Nardin. “A lot of that is done through the loot itself – there are text files and audio logs that you can collect that will help you piece together what happened on Tau Ceti IV.”
“Many of the contracts you take from the factions who have a vested interest in the Marathon expedition also guide you and your crew along that journey, encouraging you to explore different corners of the world on your way to profit and mutual understanding. Durandal is back, of course, and we also have a lot of new characters – human, AI, and everything in between!”
Bungie had first decided to vault content for Destiny 2 with its 2020 expansion Beyond Light. While the expansion brought in a host of new content, with its story taking place on Jupiter’s moon Europa, it also removed essentially all of the campaigns released with the base game, and the Curse of Osiris, Warmind, and Forsaken expansions. Several locations, including Titan, Mars, and the Tangled Shore had also been removed from the game, along with a variety of raids and strikes.
Marathon is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
