{"id":93831,"date":"2025-04-25T02:26:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T02:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/25\/what-we-loved-and-hated-about-the-marathon-alpha\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T02:26:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T02:26:53","slug":"what-we-loved-and-hated-about-the-marathon-alpha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/25\/what-we-loved-and-hated-about-the-marathon-alpha\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Loved (And Hated) About The Marathon Alpha"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Marathon<\/em><\/a><\/span> is out in less than six months and there\u2019s still a lot we don\u2019t know about it. But thanks to the current closed alpha, we\u2019ve had a chance to finally go hands-on with Bungie\u2019s first new project in over a decade and the latest live-service game coming out of the PlayStation portfolio. The results so far have left us scratching out heads.<\/p>\n

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Spider-Man 2’s New Web Wings Make It Feel Like A Proper Sequel<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Right now at least, Marathon <\/em>is a fascinating sci-fi premise<\/a><\/span> wrapped up in a pretty familiar and somewhat forgettable extraction shooter facsimile. The alpha was originally going to be NDA\u2019d but Bungie ended up lifting that requirement after many content creators balked at the provision. And while there\u2019s definitely still plenty of polish to be added to the look of Marathon\u2019s <\/em>world, its UI, and other visual elements, things seem to be running well under the hood. No real bugs, no real performance issues on PlayStation 5, and no problems matchmaking or staying connected. <\/p>\n

But while the moment-to-moment gameplay in Marathon <\/em>can be solid, the alpha left us with a bunch of questions about how Bungie\u2019s new shooter can succeed<\/a><\/span> and what will set it apart in an ever-more-crowded field of established alternatives.<\/p>\n

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Ethan Gach<\/strong>: Still waters run deep. Can we say the same about Marathon<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Zack Zwiezen: <\/em><\/strong>You can only answer that if you got an alpha code. Which both of us did. And while I don\u2019t have an answer for your smarty-pants philosophical question, I do have thoughts on Marathon<\/em>! Not all of them positive. <\/p>\n

I spent a lot of my time playing and then thinking about this game and going \u201cHmmm…\u201d<\/p>\n

EG: <\/strong>It\u2019s in a very weird spot! At least what\u2019s playable in the alpha\u2014two maps, four runners, and a couple of contracts.<\/p>\n

As someone with a need to watch XP and faction rep meters fill up, I felt surprisingly un-obsessed with Marathon <\/em>after playing a couple hours (the game has some of that stuff but it wasn\u2019t enough to overcome my ennui). Still, the conundrum of what Marathon<\/em> may or may not end up being is something my mind keeps coming back to.<\/p>\n

ZZ:<\/strong> Yeah. After a few hours of playing Marathon\u2019s <\/em>alpha\u2014which as you mention is not the full game\u2014I\u2019m not really hungry to hop back in. And I\u2019m also not sure who this game is actually for…<\/p>\n

The alpha feels too watered-down to attract the extraction sickos who have 2000 hours in Tarkov<\/em>. But it still feels like it\u2019s going to be too punishing to attract casual Destiny <\/em>players and battle royale fans.<\/p>\n

I saw someone, can\u2019t remember who, tweet that the game is like Apex Legends: But Now You Lose Everything When You Die Edition<\/em> and that\u2019s not completely fair, but not that far off either.<\/p>\n

EG:<\/strong> The pitch for this game is something like, \u201cWhat if the extraction mode from a free-to-play Call of Duty<\/em> game played like Destiny 2<\/em> and was priced somewhere in the middle?\u201d And when you say it like that it\u2019s hard to get excited, but moment-to-moment the gunplay is on point and the art direction and world itself have me very intrigued.<\/p>\n

ZZ: <\/strong>On paper that pitch is really a hard sell. And trying to convince some friends to play this has been a struggle. <\/p>\n

But yeah, the gunplay feels really, really <\/em>good. At one point I was fighting some NPC bots in a trippy sci-fi warehouse with weird lights and it was awesome. Then I had to rummage through their loot for some items and got killed by a player seconds later and lost everything.<\/p>\n

The problem was that I ended up just thinking, \u201cMan, I wish this wasn\u2019t an extraction shooter that forced me to play with randos to survive!\u201d Which I doubt is what Bungie was going for with the alpha. <\/p>\n

EG:<\/strong> Tell me more about why losing loot is such a buzzkill for you. It\u2019s definitely something I think will be polarizing for certain types of Bungie fans but it doesn\u2019t bother me personally.<\/p>\n

ZZ: <\/strong>I think the problem is that, as you mentioned, there\u2019s not enough (in the Alpha at least) other STUFF to work toward. <\/p>\n

So if you drop in with a cool gun you successfully extracted with but you get insta-killed by some rando with a sniper, it feels bad. I made no progress on in-game challenges, because they aren\u2019t a thing (and don\u2019t seem to be a thing in the full game) and I didn\u2019t complete any contracts. And that cool gun and everything else is gone. And if that happens a few too many times, it feels really punishing.<\/p>\n

And like, in Fortnite<\/em>, even bad matches don\u2019t really punish me that much. I don\u2019t lose anything and I\u2019m always making progress on like 200 different challenges and my battle passes.<\/p>\n

But with Marathon <\/em>(and other extraction shooters) you can have a run of bad matches that just feels awful. And I\u2019m not sure, without some big changes, that Bungie is going to get a Destiny<\/em>-size community to support Marathon<\/em>. <\/p>\n

EG:<\/strong> For a game about grabbing loot, that part was definitely the least exciting to me. I think that\u2019s partly about the narrow scope of what\u2019s available in the alpha but also partly an issue with how anti-climactic the flow and drama of matches feel.<\/p>\n

Showdowns with other players were very few and far between, and usually ended before both sides could fully engage. The loot caches all sort of run together in my mind, and there was a surprising lack of interesting enemies. <\/p>\n

Occasionally there\u2019d be an invisible security unit or beefier elite but I experienced very little in the way of big moments like, \u201coh, we found great loot!\u201d or \u201coh, we\u2019re in a mini-boss fight!\u201d or \u201cnow we\u2019re in a shootout to get to the extraction point.\u201d None of that really \u201cpopped\u201d for me.<\/p>\n

ZZ:<\/strong> Matches tended to blend together for me. I don\u2019t really have many \u201cCOOL STORY\u201d moments to share. And yeah, combat with other players is pretty rare and tends to be the worst part of this game. <\/p>\n

I feel like the time-to-kill is so short in this that I could drop people with anything and they, in turn, could do the same to me. So fights weren\u2019t about who had found some cool gear or had a smart spot, but just \u201cWho spotted who first and pulled the trigger?\u201d<\/p>\n

It led to a situation where I started to get annoyed and bored with NPC bot fights and would just get a few cool items\/guns and extract. But then, I started to wonder why I was even looting guns if I was mostly avoiding or dreading combat with NPCS and rarely saw other players or felt like my guns mattered.<\/p>\n

EG:<\/strong> I was, frankly, shocked how little we ran into human opponents while playing. The max map capacity is currently 18 teams of three players. I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s a tech limitation or calibrated to limit chaos but something is off about the density of \u201cthings to do\u201d on the map right now.<\/p>\n

It feels like there needs to be a lot more AI enemies, or the matches need to be shorter and that threat needs to ramp up more quickly. I can imagine much more exciting scenarios where players are too busy trying to survive to really stab one another in the back at the end of a round, but as it stands the matches didn\u2019t follow any memorable arcs.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say they\u2019re boring moment-to-moment, because you are constantly on the lookout for threats and optimal routes, high ground, good cover, loot, etc. But there\u2019s a glaring hole at the center of what\u2019s in the alpha right now.<\/p>\n