: I want to be excited, but... a squad-based extraction shooter carrying the
: stench of "live service" would not be my ideal Marathon revival.
I'm 100% with you on that.
Sadly, I think the era of epic, long form single player campaigns are over - they're just not financially viable from a studios perspective.
Developing a MP game costs less, takes far less time to make, and keeps eyeballs on screens for much longer than any SP campaign. Drop some new maps and cosmetics in an online store to keep things fresh, and maybe even charge for network access as well, and - tada - they've got a steady cash flow going.
Bungie has been doing the "live service" thing since Halo 2/bungie.net days, I don't think they'll ever go back at this point.