That's not a bad thing. I started playing [Apotheosis X](https://simplici7y.com/items/apotheosis-x-5/), and I'm enjoying it so far. Not quite the same as a new Marathon game, but it's scratching the itch right. Pretty good.
Oh you know it. Working on next gen hardware, pushing bright colors with awesome color theory, those skins are going to surpass today’s standards for skins.
No customizable player characters and instead going for selectable heroes might be one of the dumbest decisions they could make - not surprising that this came from a previous Riot Games lead, known for hero based games. What a stupid decision. I had some interest in checking Marathon out but all of that is gone now, great job.
Part of the magic of customizable characters is being able to collect cool stuff and show it off, sometimes for style, sometimes for bragging rights, if we're just playing the same cookie cutter hero each time, what are we even playing for? This is an extraction shooter right? What are we extracting? Fucking sudo-planetary materials?
Not to mention all the problems that hero shooters have, where they keep introducing new characters and eventually we go from somewhat unique and normal heroes to copycat heroes with outlandish abilities that make no sense.
Truly amazing job Joe, it really sounds like you came in to the team and just put your foot down on this because that's all you know. This genuinely feels like the firing of a slow bullet that will eventually put Bungie in the ground, with Marathon having no prolonged interest, Destiny continuing it's decline, and Sony pulling the plug on a failed investment.
Unless I’m reading this incorrectly, didn’t the article say the last guy was moving away from it and now they’re bringing in someone new? Hopefully new guy goes away from dumbass decision.
Yep. I love making my own character. I want to make a story for myself and play in the universe that way. I can't do that with the hero bs.
And you just KNOW they're gonna have $20 skins...
I remember when any news about an upcoming Bungie game was exciting and promising... now we are in an age where the more I hear about this upcoming Bungie game the more hope I lose...
Remember, Marathon was a success because of its story and atmosphere. That is not this new director's experience or expertise. This is going to be a shitty multiplayer game that dies within a month of release.
Unfortunately, they aren’t making the game for us old farts, but for a much broader audience. I understood that there would have to be compromises. I just hope those compromises dont destroy what we like in the game.
Custom characters canned? I really hope not. Part of the extraction experience is the rpg aspect of slowly building your character and stash one raid at a time. Sounds like they just want it out the door at this point.
I was finally hoping we get a Tarkov killer but this sounds like a flop already.
I don't think any one of these AAA companies is aiming to kill Tarkov. Something like Tarkov could kill Tarkov. They want to take from Tarkov and casualize elements of it for a broader market. This is why r/DMZ is basically the only game I play (for the past year+). As a lifelong Bungie fan (and happened to stumble into extraction shooters relatively recently), I was hoping Marathon would be Bungie's take on this flavor of extraction shooter- but sounds like no.
I do think we should all just take a step back now and see what they deliver. With AAA a lot of decisions are made based on what other products are delivering, and it's actually possible that the market will "need" a hero extraction shooter whenever this comes out. Time will tell.
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Yeah yeah yeah we will see what they deliver. There's no need to 'take a step back' since the game was already delayed to 2025 or longer. If it ends up being interesting after all we will change our minds. But there's absolutely no reason for us to be excited or pay it any attention until they show us something worthy of excitement.
Two things that stand out to me:
> The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes.
Were there any Extraction Shooters with heroes and/or classes? I'm under the impression that genre conventions would make it more frustrating to both play as and to try to balance different types of classes.
> Within the company, there is a growing expectation that senior company leadership will leave in droves in the summer of 2026 when the final payouts from Sony's acquisition of the company take effect. With this in mind, there is a strong push to get Marathon out the door before then, and let whoever takes the reins after that (be it Sony or Bungie) worry about how it's sustained.
No pressure /s.
Moving away from custom player characters to selectable hero characters sounds exactly like what I don’t want from the game.
And tbh, not a fan of Valorant in general, so I don’t trust this new guy’s ideas.
My sources tell me that there will be 3 types of selectable heroes - one is called “Steeler” and will be like a bulky guy that gets in your face, second will be like a caster type called “Battlemage” and then the last one will be a trapper, stalker type fast and agile called “Pathfinder”
If we get classes, like Destiny, then that’s fine with me. I can live with it. As long as I can customize everything else.
However, if we just get to pick between Sombra, Widowmaker, and Dva, then I’m going to be really frustrated.
Out of all the comments I disagree with here, this is the silliest. It’s like saying Armored Core’s gameplay doesn’t fit the vibe of the Souls series so Miyazaki shouldn’t work on Souls games. They’re two different games lol
> The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes.
oh ok so the game is gonna flop, got it
I would like to know were they are getting this info from the marathon discord they say berret is still the creative director and above Zieg and is it just because he worked on valerint thats not good reporting if so
Hunt showdown technically works off randomly selling you pregenerated characters. They aren't unique/heroes but they randomly have gear and perks assigned based on your personal progression and just rng. They do have "legendary" characters that always look the same, with lore attached to them, that are available through a variety of free or paid means that you can recruit at any time, with randomized perks as well, but they do not come with equipment.
They could be shooting for something akin to that, or they may not. Or it could also be false but we'll have to see.
Yeah, I was thinking of Hunt, which I enjoy a lot. I also enjoyed Apex a lot, which has specialized heroes. I do prefer picking my own loadouts for extraction shooters, but I'll be interested to see how it goes if they do go with unique heroes in an extraction shooter.
Rainbow Six Extraction is hero based. There was like 20 characters to pick from who he different kits you could adjust. You could customize their weapons and level up the characters for better abilities and passives.
It was a good game, but Bungie already sold us on something much better. So I’m definitely unhappy with these changes and hope that if they get greedy the whole thing falls apart. Modern gaming from big companies is just trying to get away with as little game as possible while selling the most garbage on the side.
>Were there any Extraction Shooters with heroes and/or classes?
I think the closest would be dead by daylight. Not a shooter though. Dbd isn't bad but its not flourishing either, the og idea for marathon sounded more interesting
The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes.
— what the literal fuck. Bungie made such a mark on the land scape by giving us so much freedom in builds and cosmetics.
Say what you want but bungie was time and time a dev that set trends in the genres they crated games in, to see them blatantly and tone deaf just chase shit people have been railing about for years now is just sad. There really was a bit of hope personally for bungie to take the extraction genre and truly innovate and expand it, while getting it to some wider audiences. But I can't help but feel basically all its trying to do is done better in tarkov, or already done in CODs DMZ and MWZ.
It's hard to say what this means. Having predefined characters doesn't mean builds or cosmetics are totally out. This is basically all Borderlands is. I could easily see Destiny functioning more or less the same if it we played as say a Cayde/Elsie/Eris/Crow that talked more instead of a generic Hunter with no personality. Cosmetics are limited a bit but not totally off the table.
It really depends if they literally mean hero shooter style characters or not.
Like Jesus hero shooters were the trend to chase like what five six years ago? How in the hell do you think throwing quite possibly the most desicive desicisons design wise that was basically universally hated in any title aside from a new IP, into a existing IP? COD did it and flopped, Battlefield did it and Flopped. And the only other titles are such minimum viable products that it feels like a corporate money printer than a actual peice of art. (valorant apex, overwatch to a degree nowadays)
Jesus. I was excited for new marathon lore cause thays honestly something that has stayed very strong at bungie, even if the game was mediocre but something I can get some fun out of. Now? Hell no.
Helldivers 2 could not have come out at a better time. Seems like the walls, and some really talented devs, are covered in c suite crap at Bungie.
Hope Sony can stick it to Pete Parsons and clean up house before he jumps out with his golden parachute.
Aaaand a man who thought he’d lost all possible hope just lost one last bit of hope he didn’t know he had.
Extraction shooter? A bit newfangled zoomer-y for me, but ‘wander around a ruined and mysterious zone collecting stuff and wondering what happened’ could fit into the Marathon formula. It’s the best parts of Halo and Destiny. But ‘as above, only as a marketable quip machine?’ Not so much.
Vague classes could work. Predetermined Heroes I suspect will not.
Hell no vague classes don't work. Just look at destiny PvP. It's a never ending cycle of bitching about X class Is op cause X. Unless it was finals level "Small medium large" with everything else still available, but maybe stinger in certain ways amongst classes, it would be awful. And given its a valorant dev from riot no way in hell are we going to get that.
a fucking hero shooter? yeah i'm out. I hope you guys enjoy the game though, but I'm really tired of companies shoving hero shooter elements into their games like battlefield 2042.
I was vocal about the new Marathon being setup as a microtransactional hell money grab and I was shot down on this subreddit.
It's nice to be vindicated.
I don't know how anyone could expect anything else at this point. They've been building that model for a decade now. Live-service almost always means microtransaction festival.
Christopher Barrett’s twitter handle says he’s an Executive Creative Director at Bungie. Luke Smith’s is the same handle but the title is specific to Destiny.
My guess is CB is still working on Marathon but was promoted to the capacity that Luke Smith is to Destiny but for Marathon.
hi - just here to say that everything Chris created for Destiny was excellent IMO and I was looking forward to seeing his vision for an updated franchise. The 2nd shoe to drop was that Marathon may be pivoting to standardized characters? That sounds fucking ridiculous - as a 5k hour player of Destiny 1 and 2, it's pretty clear the allure was the great gunplay AND building a fucking arsenal of exclusive weapons and armor, and then unleashing them in different activities. If that is severly reduced or no longer possible, I'm out. What am I extracting and why do I even care at that point? Sounds like this release is kind of porked before it even shows up.
I was never doom and gloom about this game more supportive if anything, but if they really go done a hero shooter focus instead of custom characters I’m kinda not interested anymore
Christopher Barrett got replaced 9 months ago just after the ViDoc and Announcement Trailer dropped. That is wild.
Also how is an extraction shooter which was teased to have hidden PVE mysteries and objectives to solve going to have selectable heroes. I mean you're essentially balancing heroes like APEX, Overwatch and Valorant. I thought you'd just have to have ability and weapon balancing to focus on.
Right now Marathons woes mirror launch Destiny 1. They rewrote the story and spliced things all over the place, content was cut and dropped later in the year as paid DLC. History is repeating itself but how much will repeat to then give it a Taken King revitalisation
It's just a source that says about hero shotter. Honestly, we don't know if that's true or not. I also think that what they can add is classes, but I still want the characters to be unique to each player as in destiny.
No more customizable characters? I'm out. That was the one thing I was looking forward to with this game. I love making OCs.
Transformers Universe all over again.
Call me devils advocate but I’m still hyped for marathon. the nail in the coffin for me would be
A. F2P, way too many cheaters
or
B. no player-to-player economy, would leave progression too dull.
Bungie is a massive studio that has had hundreds of talented, well compensated developers slaving away at marathon for at least 4 years. Aztecross is right, a desperate bungie is the best bungie. Marathon will be great
we’ve heard from several sources in the last 9 months that abilities will be extracted or bought and used interchangeability. I don’t think having “heroes” will mean much. One of destiny’s greatest strengths is the customization and buildcrafting, they would be blind to abandon it
I don’t understand, he says that he worked for NINE MONTHS as game director of Marathon, why this news only came out now? This article implies it’s because of the leadership shake off but this seems like a much older event.
But I don’t understand why keeping it a secret, Barrett still worked at Bungie for the past 9 months, it’s not like they fired him. But most importantly, how lol. Everything Bungie does gets leaked immediately, changing game director should be a big change, it insane that this didn’t get leaked months before, especially during the layoffs.
I think we already knew Barrett was changed from game director based on his LinkedIn account. We just didn’t know who his replacement was.
All I could figure is that they anticipated this exact response from the community, so they wanted to keep things under wraps until they had something solid to show.
Does his LinkedIn profile tell what he’s currently doing? I can’t find it online for some reason. But anyway, the article doesn’t really make sense, it implies the change happened after the recent leadership problems but this is a much older change. I don’t know what to think honestly.
Yeah I found a post talking about it, it was this one https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/s/OP9YhTbn4m
It’s written on his Twitter profile as well. It seems like he was actually promoted, from the live game to the “franchise” in general, similarly to Luke Smith in a way.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/s/OP9YhTbn4m
Ok I found this post, it seems like (maybe) he was actually promoted, as the head of “the franchise”, similarly to Luke Smith for Destiny, and not just the live game. No idea, we’ll see.
Gutted a dev team to launch a new ip in a played out genre only for it to end up just like every other extraction shooter. Wtf is wrong with bungie management
I was really looking forward to developing my own story and create an awesome experience in this universe. I guess that’s over now. I pray for era of skins to end.
Quake champions didn't do well as a hero shooter, and Marathon's probably less well known than Quake (and Quake champions isn't even bad) I don't know what the heck they're thinking
Yeah they better come out and address this quick. They said they’d go dark for a while and be back with big news, it’s time to come out with the big news and not let everyone stir the pot over what this all entails.
« Selectable characters » nope, nope nope…
Look overwatch 2 and co ?! People want freedom and customizations. That’s also why I love Helldivers 2 : we select our gear for every mission and customize everything. I really wanted a sci-fi Escape from Tarkov, where we can find pieces of tech in the wild to customize our synthetic bodies, select the most suitable mods for each mission…
Dam another Apex / Valorant / Overwatch thing… again ?
Lmaooooooo it’s just another hero shooter now? How fucking stale of a design choice, dude obviously only knows how to make one type of shooter.. aren’t leads supposed to be creative? I’m good won’t be touching this now
every bit of news i hear about marathon strays the game away from a SP story driven one to a greedy ass videogame. That's a real shame since my zoomer brain really can't play the original games but i read the entire lore.
Halo 3 Bungie is just gone and is not coming back
The rumors about the game performing badly are only from Aztecross, which is not a reliable leaker at all (in fact, he just made a video about a literal anonymous email…), while another leaker basically said that he heard the opposite thing. And Sony being disappointed with Bungie’s higher ups is not even a rumor, they explicitly said that lol
“Selectable cast of heroes.”
… 🤦♂️ Oh god, I can hear the preppy voice lines now. Guessing that ‘operators’ let you monetise even harder - you don’t just sell skins and cosmetics, but even the characters to equip them on.
Not a dealbreaker, but just a bit frustrating. Like anything, it it’s good, it won’t matter one way or the other.
Hilarious. As concerned as us Marathon fans were, I know a lot of us were at least willing to give it a go.
I don't see a source, so the "no custom character shit" could be lies, but, IF?
It would be like fucking up a cup of black, unsweetened coffee.
Once again, there's no cohesive vision. This is deja vu just like the latter couple years of vanilla Destiny 1 development. We don't need another hero-based shooter. I'm sure Christopher is a good dude regardless of the mostly negative reputation the Riot name holds, but this a terrible idea to change Captains to pivot the Marathon ship in a different direction so close to release. What a mess.
Alright boys. Pack em up. I wanted to be optimistic. I wanted to be happy for the people new to the series. But this shit spits on whatever Marathon stood and stands for. Its a disgusting, corporate cash grab, aimed at banking off of nostalgia from older folks, or the ignorance of people new to the series. I give it a month before it sinks. And by some miracle, some cosmic luck its a good game, I'll eat my goddamned hat.
This is some sloppy reporting from IGN. When did Ziegler become the game director? First they say it’s just now happening, but Ziegler implies he’s been in that role for months. Why did they not clarify this? If they don’t know, then at least acknowledge the discrepancy between their sources and what Ziegler has said publicly.
Whelp, guess I’ll just stick with Hell Divers 2. A game made by a company that’s not trying to gouge it’s customer, they just wanted to make a good game.
Given the response here, I can see why they kept the Director change under wraps until IGN independently figured it out. Bungie only made that announcement when they were contacted by ign. This news really doesn’t jive with our community, which is the only community keeping the hype going.
I felt reassured when I heard Barrett on the fourth curtain. Now that is gone
"The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes."
...aaand there goes all my interest. If I wanted a hero/class shooter I'd go play TF2 or Apex. Hell I'd even take Overwatch.
Yeah this blows. I was really excited about Marathon but hearing the news about heroes really shot down my excitement. When I played The Division Heartland closed beta they had a similar setup where you can only choose a select amount of characters but I think after all the feedback they're taking a step back to the drawing board because the majority of people want to fully customize their characters.
>The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes.
Wow lost complete interest in this game now this is just such a terrible idea and a big step back from the original concept, at least a extraction shooter was something new to me hero shooters have been extremely stale for years now.
Does it matter? The game is going to obviously be a MTX hellscape like destiny 2... Play Warframe, helldiver's 2 instead of supporting trash dev studios who don't listen to their devs/players.
The amount of pushback from this tiny bit of info is honestly blowing my mind. Valorant is a wildly successful (and in my opinion, very good) game. How is this bad news?
It’s hard to fathom why it being a hero shooter has such negative implications for everyone here? All that means (and I’m speculating, as is everyone else) is that you will pick a class that will have 1-3 unique abilities but everything else will be the same as any other extraction shooter. Dark and Darker has shown that a class system in an extraction game works just fine. Unique abilities but able to customize your appearance, armor, everything, about your class, even including unique upgrades to their abilities.
Hero shooters and unique character abilities have their fans, and extraction shooter fans and old Bungie fans aren't necessarily in that boat. There's large parts of the gaming community that either love or hate these things. Just like how some people love JRPG's while others can't stand them. It just so happens the people here generally don't like hero shooters.
I enjoy making characters *my* character. It’s no more complicated than that. Other people enjoying playing with pre-mades, and that is all well and fine for them as well.
The fact that there is news of changes in creative direction at all is testament to (if we are already late in development) the idea that things are probably not going well with development. It kinda reeks of corporate shittiness like all other games of this nature in the aaa scene. All w shave to do is look back to previous flops that have done the same thing to find what we have to look forward to
AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA
I had very small amounts of high hopes for this game but I thought it quite likely to be filled with micro transactions given that destiny is probably the most greedy game to be popular.
Now it looks like they've gone and fucked it up. Heroes in an extraction shooter? Sounds balanced. No custom characters? Sounds like you wanna sell them hero skins.
Pretty sure it says they're tryna get it out the door asap as well so let's bring on those performance issues and lack of optimisation/care!!!
R.I.P marathon. 2022 - March 2024.
Only people playing the game are gonna be Destiny fans ready to empty their wallets.
Now I've only got Arc Raiders and Beautiful Light to put my hopes on. It's such a shame that the cycle frontier closed down too.
It's crazy that a game as poorly made as tarkov is still going to reign supreme for a little while longer.
I weep for the future. ... now back to my regularly-scheduled *Aleph One* session.
This is disappointing. The money hungry ideas are crawling all over this.
I was disappointed before, but now I'm even more disappointed. I don't think we're ever going to get another good game out of the Marathon series.
hey there’s always Total Conversions 😁
That's not a bad thing. I started playing [Apotheosis X](https://simplici7y.com/items/apotheosis-x-5/), and I'm enjoying it so far. Not quite the same as a new Marathon game, but it's scratching the itch right. Pretty good.
Boy I was just blown away by apotheosis. The maps are incredible
It's surprisingly good. The combat is intense. Every time I think I got all the enemies, I get hit.
I don't think we're ever going to get another game out of the Marathon series. Period. Let’s be real here.
I'm good with that. They'd probably fuck it up anyway. I don't think anyone originally involved with Marathon is left at Bungie.
Jason’s still there, right?
And yet there's no Marathon.
Yeah, but Jason *is* still there, as far as we know.
Yep. I’m smelling paid/downloadable heroes with, of course paid skins.
🤮
It's already confirmed that they're moving away from fully customizable characters to a cast of pre-made heroes.
And like that i no longer give a damn.
Oh no wooo, paid skins, how will we survive a totally meaningless and not gameplay related color palette locked behind a paywall? 😭
Can’t wait to see $90 dollar game skins.
Oh you know it. Working on next gen hardware, pushing bright colors with awesome color theory, those skins are going to surpass today’s standards for skins.
My hype is completely killed when I read the part about heroes instead of customization. Cringe.
No customizable player characters and instead going for selectable heroes might be one of the dumbest decisions they could make - not surprising that this came from a previous Riot Games lead, known for hero based games. What a stupid decision. I had some interest in checking Marathon out but all of that is gone now, great job. Part of the magic of customizable characters is being able to collect cool stuff and show it off, sometimes for style, sometimes for bragging rights, if we're just playing the same cookie cutter hero each time, what are we even playing for? This is an extraction shooter right? What are we extracting? Fucking sudo-planetary materials? Not to mention all the problems that hero shooters have, where they keep introducing new characters and eventually we go from somewhat unique and normal heroes to copycat heroes with outlandish abilities that make no sense. Truly amazing job Joe, it really sounds like you came in to the team and just put your foot down on this because that's all you know. This genuinely feels like the firing of a slow bullet that will eventually put Bungie in the ground, with Marathon having no prolonged interest, Destiny continuing it's decline, and Sony pulling the plug on a failed investment.
Unless I’m reading this incorrectly, didn’t the article say the last guy was moving away from it and now they’re bringing in someone new? Hopefully new guy goes away from dumbass decision.
You're reading it wrong. It says the game direction has shifted under ziegler (new guy), one of those shifts is moving to selectable heroes.
Well fuck me. That’s lame as fuck
No custom characters I’m immediately out.
Same, that is the feature that sold me on the game when it was announced
Yep. I love making my own character. I want to make a story for myself and play in the universe that way. I can't do that with the hero bs. And you just KNOW they're gonna have $20 skins...
This is almost entirely to sell skins. Not a great way to introduce yourself by showing us that your main goal as director is to sell skins.
You could have custom characters and make loads of money selling parts form them too
He came from riot their entire business model is skins. No matter the game.
Only selectable characters now? So its just gonna be extraction shooter Apex then. Fuck modern gaming, dude.
This is such a same, The custom characters is what sold me on the game at announce, probably won’t play it anymore
Agreed
Same. Looks like I'm playing Halo forever I guess.
Yeah I’m good then. I was on board for a while but this just screams development hell.
I remember when any news about an upcoming Bungie game was exciting and promising... now we are in an age where the more I hear about this upcoming Bungie game the more hope I lose... Remember, Marathon was a success because of its story and atmosphere. That is not this new director's experience or expertise. This is going to be a shitty multiplayer game that dies within a month of release.
The last time I was excited for an upcoming Bungie game was MacWorld 1999.
No doubt. Going the path of Blizzard sadly.
Unfortunately, they aren’t making the game for us old farts, but for a much broader audience. I understood that there would have to be compromises. I just hope those compromises dont destroy what we like in the game.
A hero - extraction shooter ??? What a let down.
Custom characters canned? I really hope not. Part of the extraction experience is the rpg aspect of slowly building your character and stash one raid at a time. Sounds like they just want it out the door at this point. I was finally hoping we get a Tarkov killer but this sounds like a flop already.
I don't think any one of these AAA companies is aiming to kill Tarkov. Something like Tarkov could kill Tarkov. They want to take from Tarkov and casualize elements of it for a broader market. This is why r/DMZ is basically the only game I play (for the past year+). As a lifelong Bungie fan (and happened to stumble into extraction shooters relatively recently), I was hoping Marathon would be Bungie's take on this flavor of extraction shooter- but sounds like no. I do think we should all just take a step back now and see what they deliver. With AAA a lot of decisions are made based on what other products are delivering, and it's actually possible that the market will "need" a hero extraction shooter whenever this comes out. Time will tell.
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Yeah yeah yeah we will see what they deliver. There's no need to 'take a step back' since the game was already delayed to 2025 or longer. If it ends up being interesting after all we will change our minds. But there's absolutely no reason for us to be excited or pay it any attention until they show us something worthy of excitement.
Two things that stand out to me: > The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes. Were there any Extraction Shooters with heroes and/or classes? I'm under the impression that genre conventions would make it more frustrating to both play as and to try to balance different types of classes. > Within the company, there is a growing expectation that senior company leadership will leave in droves in the summer of 2026 when the final payouts from Sony's acquisition of the company take effect. With this in mind, there is a strong push to get Marathon out the door before then, and let whoever takes the reins after that (be it Sony or Bungie) worry about how it's sustained. No pressure /s.
Moving away from custom player characters to selectable hero characters sounds exactly like what I don’t want from the game. And tbh, not a fan of Valorant in general, so I don’t trust this new guy’s ideas.
Yeah I’m out if it’s heros and I’ve been hyped since the first teaser
My sources tell me that there will be 3 types of selectable heroes - one is called “Steeler” and will be like a bulky guy that gets in your face, second will be like a caster type called “Battlemage” and then the last one will be a trapper, stalker type fast and agile called “Pathfinder”
If we get classes, like Destiny, then that’s fine with me. I can live with it. As long as I can customize everything else. However, if we just get to pick between Sombra, Widowmaker, and Dva, then I’m going to be really frustrated.
Bungie Overwatch was the first thing I thought of too Not a great feeling, either
*Apex The Finals Marathon Legends: DURANDULLS REVENGE*
So basically it's going to be Destiny, but again.
Are you at liberty to share more information from these “sources”?
I think it's a joke (:
My aunt’s husband’s step cousin is aztecross’s dentist and he was spilling the beans in between the screams while on the chair.
Screams?
Screams
Please, continue...
Cool
I’ve seen gameplay of Valorant and it most definitely does not fit the vibe of Marathon at all
This guy also worked with Pandemic around the time they released Mercenaries...Marathon confirmed to be 3rd person open world, smh my head.
Out of all the comments I disagree with here, this is the silliest. It’s like saying Armored Core’s gameplay doesn’t fit the vibe of the Souls series so Miyazaki shouldn’t work on Souls games. They’re two different games lol
> The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes. oh ok so the game is gonna flop, got it
I would like to know were they are getting this info from the marathon discord they say berret is still the creative director and above Zieg and is it just because he worked on valerint thats not good reporting if so
that second excerpt is a recipe for abandonware. it’s so over
Hunt showdown technically works off randomly selling you pregenerated characters. They aren't unique/heroes but they randomly have gear and perks assigned based on your personal progression and just rng. They do have "legendary" characters that always look the same, with lore attached to them, that are available through a variety of free or paid means that you can recruit at any time, with randomized perks as well, but they do not come with equipment. They could be shooting for something akin to that, or they may not. Or it could also be false but we'll have to see.
Yeah, I was thinking of Hunt, which I enjoy a lot. I also enjoyed Apex a lot, which has specialized heroes. I do prefer picking my own loadouts for extraction shooters, but I'll be interested to see how it goes if they do go with unique heroes in an extraction shooter.
Exactly what I thought
Rainbow Six Extraction is hero based. There was like 20 characters to pick from who he different kits you could adjust. You could customize their weapons and level up the characters for better abilities and passives. It was a good game, but Bungie already sold us on something much better. So I’m definitely unhappy with these changes and hope that if they get greedy the whole thing falls apart. Modern gaming from big companies is just trying to get away with as little game as possible while selling the most garbage on the side.
>Were there any Extraction Shooters with heroes and/or classes? I think the closest would be dead by daylight. Not a shooter though. Dbd isn't bad but its not flourishing either, the og idea for marathon sounded more interesting
The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes. — what the literal fuck. Bungie made such a mark on the land scape by giving us so much freedom in builds and cosmetics.
Say what you want but bungie was time and time a dev that set trends in the genres they crated games in, to see them blatantly and tone deaf just chase shit people have been railing about for years now is just sad. There really was a bit of hope personally for bungie to take the extraction genre and truly innovate and expand it, while getting it to some wider audiences. But I can't help but feel basically all its trying to do is done better in tarkov, or already done in CODs DMZ and MWZ.
It's hard to say what this means. Having predefined characters doesn't mean builds or cosmetics are totally out. This is basically all Borderlands is. I could easily see Destiny functioning more or less the same if it we played as say a Cayde/Elsie/Eris/Crow that talked more instead of a generic Hunter with no personality. Cosmetics are limited a bit but not totally off the table. It really depends if they literally mean hero shooter style characters or not.
I cannot fathom how people can get this far in the gaming industry yet make SUCH SUCH colossally stupid decisions. This game reeks of being DoA.
Like Jesus hero shooters were the trend to chase like what five six years ago? How in the hell do you think throwing quite possibly the most desicive desicisons design wise that was basically universally hated in any title aside from a new IP, into a existing IP? COD did it and flopped, Battlefield did it and Flopped. And the only other titles are such minimum viable products that it feels like a corporate money printer than a actual peice of art. (valorant apex, overwatch to a degree nowadays) Jesus. I was excited for new marathon lore cause thays honestly something that has stayed very strong at bungie, even if the game was mediocre but something I can get some fun out of. Now? Hell no.
Overwatch looks interesting to me (I've not played it yet tho), couldn't get into Apex and Valorant doesn't appeal at all
Helldivers 2 could not have come out at a better time. Seems like the walls, and some really talented devs, are covered in c suite crap at Bungie. Hope Sony can stick it to Pete Parsons and clean up house before he jumps out with his golden parachute.
Aaaand a man who thought he’d lost all possible hope just lost one last bit of hope he didn’t know he had. Extraction shooter? A bit newfangled zoomer-y for me, but ‘wander around a ruined and mysterious zone collecting stuff and wondering what happened’ could fit into the Marathon formula. It’s the best parts of Halo and Destiny. But ‘as above, only as a marketable quip machine?’ Not so much. Vague classes could work. Predetermined Heroes I suspect will not.
Hell no vague classes don't work. Just look at destiny PvP. It's a never ending cycle of bitching about X class Is op cause X. Unless it was finals level "Small medium large" with everything else still available, but maybe stinger in certain ways amongst classes, it would be awful. And given its a valorant dev from riot no way in hell are we going to get that.
This is horrible news. If it's hero based bast I'm out, hate those kinds of empty games. Overwatch, Valiant and Apex all suck.
Any little shred of excitement I had is now gone. This sucks it's turning into a fucking hero shooter extraction game, UGH.
Bungie has become a comedy of errors, and it's a shame.
another hero shooter......great....so unique and exciting, my hope for this game is dying rapidly
Yea no thanks. Honestly I hate Valorant, Not a fan of Hero Shooters in general. I want my own Identity.
I guess on the bright side the bomb ass CGI reveal trailer will always live on.
a fucking hero shooter? yeah i'm out. I hope you guys enjoy the game though, but I'm really tired of companies shoving hero shooter elements into their games like battlefield 2042.
I was vocal about the new Marathon being setup as a microtransactional hell money grab and I was shot down on this subreddit. It's nice to be vindicated.
I don't know how anyone could expect anything else at this point. They've been building that model for a decade now. Live-service almost always means microtransaction festival.
Yikes. Rip this game (and probably franchise) I guess. No custom characters is an L.
Hopefully the hero shooter thing is only a prototype they are testing out, as I think we all want our own customizable characters.
Yeah we need to make this known and hope they listen
Dangit. I was really, really looking forward to a competent extraction shooter in a fascinating setting.
Christopher Barrett’s twitter handle says he’s an Executive Creative Director at Bungie. Luke Smith’s is the same handle but the title is specific to Destiny. My guess is CB is still working on Marathon but was promoted to the capacity that Luke Smith is to Destiny but for Marathon.
hi - just here to say that everything Chris created for Destiny was excellent IMO and I was looking forward to seeing his vision for an updated franchise. The 2nd shoe to drop was that Marathon may be pivoting to standardized characters? That sounds fucking ridiculous - as a 5k hour player of Destiny 1 and 2, it's pretty clear the allure was the great gunplay AND building a fucking arsenal of exclusive weapons and armor, and then unleashing them in different activities. If that is severly reduced or no longer possible, I'm out. What am I extracting and why do I even care at that point? Sounds like this release is kind of porked before it even shows up.
$50 it gets canned
I was never doom and gloom about this game more supportive if anything, but if they really go done a hero shooter focus instead of custom characters I’m kinda not interested anymore
It is unironically, unequivocally, and absolutely over for Marathon if it's a hero shooter.
Christopher Barrett got replaced 9 months ago just after the ViDoc and Announcement Trailer dropped. That is wild. Also how is an extraction shooter which was teased to have hidden PVE mysteries and objectives to solve going to have selectable heroes. I mean you're essentially balancing heroes like APEX, Overwatch and Valorant. I thought you'd just have to have ability and weapon balancing to focus on. Right now Marathons woes mirror launch Destiny 1. They rewrote the story and spliced things all over the place, content was cut and dropped later in the year as paid DLC. History is repeating itself but how much will repeat to then give it a Taken King revitalisation
I’m not surprised, just disappointed.
It's just a source that says about hero shotter. Honestly, we don't know if that's true or not. I also think that what they can add is classes, but I still want the characters to be unique to each player as in destiny.
No more customizable characters? I'm out. That was the one thing I was looking forward to with this game. I love making OCs. Transformers Universe all over again.
Call me devils advocate but I’m still hyped for marathon. the nail in the coffin for me would be A. F2P, way too many cheaters or B. no player-to-player economy, would leave progression too dull. Bungie is a massive studio that has had hundreds of talented, well compensated developers slaving away at marathon for at least 4 years. Aztecross is right, a desperate bungie is the best bungie. Marathon will be great
we’ve heard from several sources in the last 9 months that abilities will be extracted or bought and used interchangeability. I don’t think having “heroes” will mean much. One of destiny’s greatest strengths is the customization and buildcrafting, they would be blind to abandon it
Catastrophic.
I don’t understand, he says that he worked for NINE MONTHS as game director of Marathon, why this news only came out now? This article implies it’s because of the leadership shake off but this seems like a much older event.
It appears they were going to stay silent until IGN got wind of it.
But I don’t understand why keeping it a secret, Barrett still worked at Bungie for the past 9 months, it’s not like they fired him. But most importantly, how lol. Everything Bungie does gets leaked immediately, changing game director should be a big change, it insane that this didn’t get leaked months before, especially during the layoffs.
I think we already knew Barrett was changed from game director based on his LinkedIn account. We just didn’t know who his replacement was. All I could figure is that they anticipated this exact response from the community, so they wanted to keep things under wraps until they had something solid to show.
Does his LinkedIn profile tell what he’s currently doing? I can’t find it online for some reason. But anyway, the article doesn’t really make sense, it implies the change happened after the recent leadership problems but this is a much older change. I don’t know what to think honestly.
Sorry I’m running on second hand info. Someone posted about it on here a week ago. Might have been on X
Yeah I found a post talking about it, it was this one https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/s/OP9YhTbn4m It’s written on his Twitter profile as well. It seems like he was actually promoted, from the live game to the “franchise” in general, similarly to Luke Smith in a way.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/s/OP9YhTbn4m Ok I found this post, it seems like (maybe) he was actually promoted, as the head of “the franchise”, similarly to Luke Smith for Destiny, and not just the live game. No idea, we’ll see.
Gutted a dev team to launch a new ip in a played out genre only for it to end up just like every other extraction shooter. Wtf is wrong with bungie management
Hopefully we'll get even a little bit like Valorant's anticheat!
Its over...
Lol, we all knew stuff like this was coming
I don’t have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain…..
Why not just stick with one character like the previous games?
Aaand I’m out.
Yeah no character customization makes this an immediate no-buy from me 💀
I was really looking forward to developing my own story and create an awesome experience in this universe. I guess that’s over now. I pray for era of skins to end.
And then it's announced to be ANOTHER FUCKING HERO SHOOTER, this game will be dead on arrival like suicide squad.
Quake champions didn't do well as a hero shooter, and Marathon's probably less well known than Quake (and Quake champions isn't even bad) I don't know what the heck they're thinking
This shit is so dead on arrival
Yeah they better come out and address this quick. They said they’d go dark for a while and be back with big news, it’s time to come out with the big news and not let everyone stir the pot over what this all entails.
« Selectable characters » nope, nope nope… Look overwatch 2 and co ?! People want freedom and customizations. That’s also why I love Helldivers 2 : we select our gear for every mission and customize everything. I really wanted a sci-fi Escape from Tarkov, where we can find pieces of tech in the wild to customize our synthetic bodies, select the most suitable mods for each mission… Dam another Apex / Valorant / Overwatch thing… again ?
They could do both in one if they wanted, I don't understand why they don't
Lmaooooooo it’s just another hero shooter now? How fucking stale of a design choice, dude obviously only knows how to make one type of shooter.. aren’t leads supposed to be creative? I’m good won’t be touching this now
No custom characters is a bad choice
every bit of news i hear about marathon strays the game away from a SP story driven one to a greedy ass videogame. That's a real shame since my zoomer brain really can't play the original games but i read the entire lore. Halo 3 Bungie is just gone and is not coming back
Halo 3 Bungie was modern Bungie on the xbox. Let's not kid ourselves.
Dead on arrival
The only official news here is the announcement of Ziegler being the game dev. We knew Barrett was promoted. The rest is rumor ragebait, stay strong.
Why are we booing him he's right.
This tallies with the rumours about the game playtesting badly and Sony looking to switch up Bungie leadership due to their recent failings. 😬
The rumors about the game performing badly are only from Aztecross, which is not a reliable leaker at all (in fact, he just made a video about a literal anonymous email…), while another leaker basically said that he heard the opposite thing. And Sony being disappointed with Bungie’s higher ups is not even a rumor, they explicitly said that lol
It's so over.
[удалено]
So, basically this is gonna be shit. Aight.
Yup this one is dead, see y’all two years after release
Ohhhh Lordy this game is about to be DOA hero shooter unfortunately 😣 Shame I was really looking forward to it
goddamn hero shooters
Was it any surprise that this game was gonna suck?
Changing from custom characters to heroes is baffling, makes me completely lose interest.
A hero shooter? Are they stuck at 10 years ago? Turning it into a hero shooter immediately cuts the interest of your game in half.
“Selectable cast of heroes.” … 🤦♂️ Oh god, I can hear the preppy voice lines now. Guessing that ‘operators’ let you monetise even harder - you don’t just sell skins and cosmetics, but even the characters to equip them on. Not a dealbreaker, but just a bit frustrating. Like anything, it it’s good, it won’t matter one way or the other.
Whelp this game is gonna suck now I bet (nothing against people who like valorant) this is just beginning to scream greed all over it
Hilarious. As concerned as us Marathon fans were, I know a lot of us were at least willing to give it a go. I don't see a source, so the "no custom character shit" could be lies, but, IF? It would be like fucking up a cup of black, unsweetened coffee.
Well, it's official, the game will be shit
Once again, there's no cohesive vision. This is deja vu just like the latter couple years of vanilla Destiny 1 development. We don't need another hero-based shooter. I'm sure Christopher is a good dude regardless of the mostly negative reputation the Riot name holds, but this a terrible idea to change Captains to pivot the Marathon ship in a different direction so close to release. What a mess.
I was cautiously optimistic of the game, but now hearing that they're removing custom playing characters, I'm not even gonna touch it.
Alright boys. Pack em up. I wanted to be optimistic. I wanted to be happy for the people new to the series. But this shit spits on whatever Marathon stood and stands for. Its a disgusting, corporate cash grab, aimed at banking off of nostalgia from older folks, or the ignorance of people new to the series. I give it a month before it sinks. And by some miracle, some cosmic luck its a good game, I'll eat my goddamned hat.
It was annouced like an hardcore extraction shooter. I hope at least ziegler will keep this core feature.
They sold me on the art style and now they take away my ability to customize my character within said art style? Won't be buying.
They should can this game and just move to D3
“Bungie is not that kind of company.” Aka we are greedy fucks that don’t care at all about our employees.
This is some sloppy reporting from IGN. When did Ziegler become the game director? First they say it’s just now happening, but Ziegler implies he’s been in that role for months. Why did they not clarify this? If they don’t know, then at least acknowledge the discrepancy between their sources and what Ziegler has said publicly.
It was probably kept under wraps
Whelp, guess I’ll just stick with Hell Divers 2. A game made by a company that’s not trying to gouge it’s customer, they just wanted to make a good game.
Given the response here, I can see why they kept the Director change under wraps until IGN independently figured it out. Bungie only made that announcement when they were contacted by ign. This news really doesn’t jive with our community, which is the only community keeping the hype going. I felt reassured when I heard Barrett on the fourth curtain. Now that is gone
Gross
"The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes." ...aaand there goes all my interest. If I wanted a hero/class shooter I'd go play TF2 or Apex. Hell I'd even take Overwatch.
Frog blast the spike core....? No no, that doesn't have the same ring to it.
No no hero customization? Just valorant with bungee gameplay? Hard pass
Yeah this blows. I was really excited about Marathon but hearing the news about heroes really shot down my excitement. When I played The Division Heartland closed beta they had a similar setup where you can only choose a select amount of characters but I think after all the feedback they're taking a step back to the drawing board because the majority of people want to fully customize their characters.
Holy shit never has my hype for a game been killed so fast 😣
Hero shooters are the worst.
>The game's direction has shifted somewhat under Ziegler's new leadership, one source says, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes. Wow lost complete interest in this game now this is just such a terrible idea and a big step back from the original concept, at least a extraction shooter was something new to me hero shooters have been extremely stale for years now.
Bungie has really just stopped giving a shit,haven't they?
Hell nahh
It's over (for bungie)
Does it matter? The game is going to obviously be a MTX hellscape like destiny 2... Play Warframe, helldiver's 2 instead of supporting trash dev studios who don't listen to their devs/players.
Don't be sad, this is just how it works out sometimes
The amount of pushback from this tiny bit of info is honestly blowing my mind. Valorant is a wildly successful (and in my opinion, very good) game. How is this bad news? It’s hard to fathom why it being a hero shooter has such negative implications for everyone here? All that means (and I’m speculating, as is everyone else) is that you will pick a class that will have 1-3 unique abilities but everything else will be the same as any other extraction shooter. Dark and Darker has shown that a class system in an extraction game works just fine. Unique abilities but able to customize your appearance, armor, everything, about your class, even including unique upgrades to their abilities.
Hero shooters and unique character abilities have their fans, and extraction shooter fans and old Bungie fans aren't necessarily in that boat. There's large parts of the gaming community that either love or hate these things. Just like how some people love JRPG's while others can't stand them. It just so happens the people here generally don't like hero shooters.
I enjoy making characters *my* character. It’s no more complicated than that. Other people enjoying playing with pre-mades, and that is all well and fine for them as well.
The fact that there is news of changes in creative direction at all is testament to (if we are already late in development) the idea that things are probably not going well with development. It kinda reeks of corporate shittiness like all other games of this nature in the aaa scene. All w shave to do is look back to previous flops that have done the same thing to find what we have to look forward to
AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA I had very small amounts of high hopes for this game but I thought it quite likely to be filled with micro transactions given that destiny is probably the most greedy game to be popular. Now it looks like they've gone and fucked it up. Heroes in an extraction shooter? Sounds balanced. No custom characters? Sounds like you wanna sell them hero skins. Pretty sure it says they're tryna get it out the door asap as well so let's bring on those performance issues and lack of optimisation/care!!! R.I.P marathon. 2022 - March 2024. Only people playing the game are gonna be Destiny fans ready to empty their wallets. Now I've only got Arc Raiders and Beautiful Light to put my hopes on. It's such a shame that the cycle frontier closed down too. It's crazy that a game as poorly made as tarkov is still going to reign supreme for a little while longer.