Welp! Marathon has been delayed. The writing was not only on the wall, but on the floors, the doors, the ceiling, cripes, how did it hit that one spot? A lukewarm (at best) reception mixed with a discovery that Bungie had wholesale lifted the work of another artist without permission all led to a reported free fall of morale at the studio, so this is honestly the least surprising thing in the world. In any case, let’s look at the post Bungie made explaining their decision to delay the shooter.
“Through every comment and real-time conversation on social media and Discord, your voice has been strong and clear,” Bungie wrote. “We’ve taken this to heart, and we know we need more time to craft Marathon into the game that truly reflects your passion. After much discussion within our Dev team, we’ve made the decision to delay the September 23rd release.” Worth noting here that a replacement date hasn’t been set, so this seems like quite a big one.
Bungie outlined some key areas that they plan to focus on with this delay too. For one, they plan on making it more challenging and making the AI encounters more engaging. They intended to make runs feel more rewarding with “new types of loot and dynamic events,” and to make combat “more tense and stratetigc.”
There are a few interesting lines too. They plan on “doubling down on the Marathon Universe” with “increased visual fidelity”, “more narrative and environmental storytelling to discover and interact with,” and a “darker tone that delivers on the themes of the original trilogy.” A lot of the complaints I’ve seen anecdotally have been about the presentation of the story, which has felt very unclear.
Bungie also quite vaguely wrote that they’ll add in more social experiences, part of that being a better experience for solo and duos, and the addition of proximity chat, “so social stories can come to life.” The solo and duos part will be welcome news to many, as being forced into trios was offputting to a lot of people. I hope that there’s something akin to a hub area to hang out in too, Destiny is very much a hang out and vibe kind of game, and it’s why people like the series.
The post ends with the studio saying that they’ll have more to share in the fall/ autumn, including the game’s new release date. It’s quite clear that Bungie, and presumably Sony/ PlayStation, are afraid of a bomb, something all involved parties will be desperate to avoid. The ghost of Concord can still be felt, after all.
I don’t expect this to be a minor delay. While Bungie didn’t go into a huge amount of specifics, they outlined a lot of big changes. I’m not confident that they can all be fixed in less than a year. We’ll find out in due time.