Bungie has announced that the new Marathon game has been delayed. The game will not launch on September 23 as planned, with no new date or release window.
The delay will give the developers opportunities to improve and adjust the extraction shooter, using feedback from the previous Alpha Test that ran back in April. The improvements includes, per Bungie, the following:
- Upping the Survival Game
- More challenging and engaging AI encounters
- More rewarding runs, with new types of loot and dynamic events
- Making combat more tense and strategic
- Doubling down on the Marathon Universe
- Increased visual fidelity
- More narrative and environmental storytelling to discover and interact with
- A darker tone that delivers on the themes of the original trilogy
- Adding more social experiences
- A better player experience for solo/duos
- Prox chat, so social stories can come to life
Expect to hear Bungie again with an update on new Marathon sometime later this year in autumn (September-November).
New Marathon is a reboot of sorts of Bungie’s first FPS franchise, which was a at the time a Mac-exclusive single-player shooter. This new take on Marathon reimagines the sci-fi world and lore in the context of a multiplayer PVP extraction shooter, where players in teams of up to three players scour the planet of Tau Ceti IV for loot to extract, or die and lose it all.
When Marathon locked in a release date, one game, Borderlands 4, had to do a reverse-delay to move itself away from launching on the same day as Marathon.
This was done before the taking account to the player response during Marathon Alpha test, which didn’t result in good buzz as expected from the new game by the developers of Destiny. Players were unimpressed with what the game brings to the extraction shooter genre, it is in fact missing features including proximity chat (“prox chat”), which allows emergent gameplay via live social interactions the genre is famous for. It doesn’t help that the game also ran into controversy when it was found out that the art assets of the game contained stolen artwork.
Marathon will be releasing on PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S.