Marathon Hands-on Preview: Can Bungie Do to Escape From Tarkov, What Fortnite Did to PUBG?

If, like me, you bemoaned the quiet, undignified death of PvP’s relevance in Destiny 2, then you might share my eagerness to see Bungie focused squarely on a competitive experience here, and everything I played so far indicates they’ve still more than got what it takes to pull it off. Weapons and movement feels crisp, fluid, and incredibly satisfying in that rarified way that few studios can achieve, and the added element of hero shooter-like abilities, like one that lets you blast enemies with kinetic energy, sending them flying away, gives that extra kick you need to feel like a supernaturally powered badass. Marathon almost immediately feels fantastic to play, and as soon as I took out a robot who took a potshot at me from the window of a nearby building and tried out his weapon for myself on a nearby enemy, it was love at first snipe.

This gets even better once you start to familiarize yourself with the class-based Runners available to you (four of which I got to play extensively, out of the six that will be available at launch). Glitch is all about mobility and controlling positioning, and has abilities that help her move fast, jump up to areas others can’t reach, and push enemies away with a blast of kinetic energy. Locus is a tanky soldier who can pull up a shield to block incoming fire and launch a flurry of homing missiles at enemies, while Blackbird is all about intel and using her gadgets to ping any enemies within an area for the whole team, and sending out little robotic drones to seek and destroy nearby enemies. My personal favorite though, was Void: a deft ninja who can turn invisible for a time and deploy massive clouds of smoke to lose and confuse the enemy within. Each of these characters offers a completely different way to play Marathon, and by coordinating with my teammates, we were able to put together a balanced team of Runners who complemented one another’s strengths and helped make up for any weaknesses.

That came in handy as we explored dark and forgotten places throughout Marathon’s maps, which were filled with deadly creatures, like a species of giant ticks who ran at me frantically, and surprisingly accurate robots who were much, much better at surrounding and overwhelming players than the vast majority of AI enemies found in other games. Fighting these foes was no joke, but the loot was well worth it, whether it was finding a backpack that allowed for more storage space, a weapon that gave me better odds against a rival crew, or just some consumable healing items I could rely upon in a pinch. Some of the extremely rare and powerful items, of which my team only found a handful during our matches, changed things up quite significantly, like a backpack that turned the user invisible whenever they interacted with a container while wearing it – extremely useful in a game where you’re being hunted by everyone else on the map.

Marathon’s tensest moments, though, happen when you encounter enemy crews and inevitably clash in a bid to claim one another’s loot. Maybe we’d spot a crew in the distance and stealthily follow them – waiting for the right moment to stage an ambush – or sometimes we’d hear other players in the distance fighting off security forces and decide to go catch them when their guard was down, scooping up whatever goodies they were about to claim. And, of course, sometimes we found ourselves on the receiving end of that ruthless equation and had to scramble as one of us was downed by sudden gunfire from a rival team. These moments are when the PvP magic really shines and leaves you with stories to tell your friends, like the time my group got entangled in a nine-player free-for-all and came out unscathed thanks to some well-timed smoke grenades, or another time where both of my teammates were killed, but we came back to win it thanks to a clutch revive the other team didn’t see coming. Just like the most epic, heart-pounding moments of a battle royale match, Marathon provided me with tons of memorable moments of elation after a narrow victory and the occasionally sour taste of defeat.

Once we’d gotten our spoils or completed an objective or two, it was time to haul ass to the exfiltration beacon and stand near it long enough to be pulled out of the firefight and returned safely back to our base in outer space with our bloody bounty. But lighting that beacon also lets everyone else on the map know you’re trying to make off with your goods, via a giant blue light that shoots up into the sky for a prolonged period of time. This makes your last moments in the area pretty intense, or, if you’re like me, offers some exciting opportunities to kill a group right as they’re preparing to leave and benefit from all of their hard work.

Wishlist

The downside of Marathon’s “to the victors go the spoils” reward system is that in a pretty short amount of time, those with skill will enter fresh matches with gear that easily outmatches less skilled players, making them even less likely to be able to pull off a victory. Bungie’s gone out of its way to try and make it so a poorly geared squad still stands a chance against those with better loot if they play well, and you can always simply employ the strategy of avoiding other players until you’ve got a few extractions and some at least decent loot under your belt, but even so, it seems like it could get pretty demoralizing in short order if you run into a bout of bad luck and start to feel like you’ll never catch a break.

I was lucky enough to win the vast majority of my matches, and after the initial hump of stockpiling some basic equipment in my vault and unlocking a few permanent upgrades to make the going easier, I felt like even if I fell in battle and lost all my best stuff, at least I’d have some adequate backup gear to recover with. But that won’t be the case for everyone, and I wonder how big the chunk of players will be who simply run into a brick wall in their first few hours, log off, and never return. At least in Escape from Tarkov you’ve got your Kappa case to hold your most valuable items and protect them from being lost on the battlefield – Marathon has none of those safety measures, instead opting for a system where you’re given a sort of pity loadout, called a sponsored package, which sets you up with some basic gear after you’ve been quite literally bled dry. This definitely helps ice the wound of a string of bad luck, but might not exactly be the most comforting consolation prize.

To be clear, it very well might be a good thing that Marathon seemingly refuses to compromise on its dedication to ensuring each match has real, keenly felt stakes, even if it turns some folks off from it – I certainly count myself among those who enjoy a bit of sweatiness and quite liked how invested I was forced to be every single time I deployed onto a new map. But they definitely risk a situation where it feels like the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, to the detriment of those who are on the unfortunate side of that brutal equation. Time will tell before we know how that will shake out, but even in my short time with it, I already felt a bit of friction emanating from those on the server who kept dying repeatedly and felt like they were getting outclassed by those with quality loadouts.

Marathon PlayStation Showcase 2023 Trailer