Marathon is about to wrap up its first season. It’s a brilliant game with a dwindling player base. But Bungie has some ambitious ideas for turning that around. Game director Joe Ziegler outlined what the team has learned from the past two months and how that is informing where Marathon is headed in the future. The plan includes experiments with PVE-only modes as well as more casual PVP-lite experiences. But these are just the tip of the iceberg.
“With the first season of Marathon we’ve created a strong core community,” Ziegler wrote in a new blog post on May 14. “We’re embarking on a multi-season journey built around growing from the seed of this strong community.” He said the team is looking to solve various pain points like making the extraction shooter more rewarding and less grindy, improving new player onboarding, and deepening the endgame meta.
But Bungie is also planning entirely new experiences for Marathon. Ziegler hinted at “fun and mind-bending content” that includes updated maps, new runner classes, and different gear, but also “more survival experiences for different moods. This means “exploring more pure PVP, PVE, and PVP-lite experiences.” That’s the biggest hint we’ve gotten so far that Marathon might eventually expand beyond its excellent but very punishing high-stakes PVP core.
In terms of what’s actually guaranteed for Marathon season 2, which goes live on June 2, Ziegler confirmed that a rotating Duos queue is returning, along with “testing some experiments” PVE and PVP-Lite modes. Players’ max vault size will also be expanding, which is music to my ears as someone constantly playing inventory Tetris in between matches. There’s also the previously revealed Night Marsh map, Cradle progression system, and new Sentinel character, all of which players will get more details on closer to the season 2 start date.
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