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	Message: : So...I'm up to about 80 hours in to the New Marathon and I thought I would : take the time to write down some of my thoughts on it here, for anyone who : may be interested or maybe is also playing it. This isn't meant to be an : exhaustive contrast between NuMarathon and the OT, because I don't have : the time or inclination for that. : I have to say that for the most part I'm really liking Marathon 2026, but it : took me a long time to get to that point. This is the first extraction : shooter I've ever played and the learning curve is quite steep; I ended up : getting killed A LOT until my skills improved and I found a playing style : that works for me. Bungie really did a phenomenal job on the art and : environment in this game, and the experience of playing is quite : immersive. The audio design is insane and how well you listen is a large : function of how long you survive in any given run. Granted, I hardly even : play multi-player FPS anymore but this is the most visceral game I've ever : played. It really is quite beautifully crafted. : That said, the environments are as unforgiving as they are stunning. The ship : and colony are derelict, and most of the things there are trying to kill : you. And they succeed. A lot. Bots, ticks, falls, toxic spore thingies, : lighting, heat cascades, other runners, etc. You are pretty much expected : to die, and welcome death, and death is how you learn. I came really close : to rage quitting after dying so many times but the thrill of the : hunt/being hunted and the ways it tickled my limbic system kept me coming : back. In that, it's a fun game. I play to achieve the contracts and unlock : bits of the story. To this end, I play as a solo runner and try to use : stealth. I don't thirst for PvP or team dynamics, and I don't enjoy : downing other runners because I know re-kitting and getting back into a : match is kind of a pain in the ass. And although the gunplay in this game : is also quite impressive, I was never a team-firefight kind of guy. : Granted, I am a man now in his mid-40's, so I probably skew older than the : player base for this game. But I had to try it. I haven't played a Bungie : game since Halo 3. Being able to immerse myself in the fictional worlds : Bungie created was the bulk of the joy for me, and I miss the single : player experiences and methods of storytelling that came with that. In the : OT the story was integral to the playing experience as you couldn't : progress without accessing the terminals; in the new Marathon the story is : revealed in a codex kept separate from the gameplay, or given as trickles : of information from the faction AI who issue your contracts. It can be : largely ignored. : It's more of a piecemeal picture of what happened to the colony and the ship : that is revealed over time, and is dependent on which priority contracts : you play when. And in 80 hours of playing over the past four months (I'm a : busy guy) I still haven't even made it back on board the Marathon, because : the Cryo Archive map looks like a nightmare to try to play (team play : only). However, the story as I understand it so far is pretty interesting : from a sci-fi perspective and I don't want to take it for granted that 30 : years after the OT came out I actually get to run around on the surface of : Tau Ceti. The pieces of the piecemeal story are often text and audio : snippets left over from the colonial era, while the colony was dying, or : communiques from the "present", from the UESC forces trying to : stop you. Those, along with what your employers share with you about what : your runs uncover give this story a rather documentary feel, which to me : fits well with the more realistic environment. : The OT however was not so much documentary (though snippets it had in : abundance) as it was literary, in style and spirit. That's not to say the : NuMarathon does not have well written and indeed moving aspects to it, it : does, but there's a depth of the abstract it doesn't and can't quite : achieve because of how immediate, raw, and shared the gameplay is. The OT : could pull this off because, with few exceptions, there was no limit to : how long you played, there was no 25-minute timer that would execute you : if you didn't teleport from the map. The OT let you soak in the : environment and prose and poetry you read within it...indeed, the OT were : games of a prior age. : But the Original Trilogy had something that NuMarathon doesn't really seem to : achieve and that is the feeling of, I suppose, uncanniness. There was a : sense of existential exploration in playing the game, especially while in : the odd, dark maps that made no practical sense and would never be part of : a spaceship design. Granted, Bungie in 1994 were in the business of : designing a sci-fi puzzle game and not an actual colony ship, but I always : thought that geometric strangeness together with the dreamlike and : contemplative is what made the Original Trilogy and indeed so many of the : subsequent scenarios so engaging. Here you are being compared to a rat, : only to find yourself in mazes; there you stand accused of being a : thoughtless killing machine having to kill to forward the game; here you : are, forced to ponder the nature of free will, having only one direction : to truly go, onward. Because the OT was a solo gaming experience it was : also more of a psychological experience, individualized by one's own : cognitive zeitgeist. : This isn't so much a lament as it is to highlight what to me most : characterizes the difference between the feel of these two games. : NuMarathon can be really freaking frustrating at times. It kind of sucks : spending time purchasing weapons, accessorizing them, creating an entire : build and loadout with consumables, cores, mods, and equipment tailored : for the contact you're running, waiting five minutes to get matched and : then losing it all within the first few minutes of gameplay. That part : gets tedious. On the other hand, it is quite nice to exfil from a map with : a ton of great loot. But this speaks to the larger tragedy of NuMarathon : to me and that is this niche game style - the extraction shooter. It : really seems like it can only appeal to certain percentage of gamers, and : it's a shame that this game and all its assets couldn't have been rendered : into a format that would have been much more widely accessible and : enjoyable to play, making use of an amazing story that touches on insanely : contemporary issues like what it means to retain your humanity in the age : of unrestrained corporate greed, technological advancement, the dawn of : AI, and the commercialization of space. No one is playing an extraction : shooter because the world has great lore. Okay, so I guess this IS kind of : a lament. It sucks that NuMarathon doesn't and likely won't have a strong : single-player component. : I do also miss the OG Bungie tendency to give people the tools to tweak the : games. Back in the day if you wanted to adjust the theta error on the AR : or the magazine size, or the gravity and so on you could change the : physics model. Or make your own maps. Or hell, practically your own game. : As much as you were stuck as the player while playing you had Manus Dei : behind the scenes. : In conclusion, I have to say it's been a lot of fun revisiting this world and : playing a game I never expected to play. I am very grateful for this. : Bungie have been really responsive to the community so I hope more : interesting game modes come out in the future. New Marathon is a daring, : frustrating, beautiful, intelligent, atmospheric, and visceral : game...though probably not a timeless one. Alas, most of the online : discussion that I see focuses on the minutia of which weapons are or : should be buffed or nerfed by tiny percentages as opposed to the : implications of what we learn in the story. I will always have a nostalgic : attachment to the OT, and that puts the NuMarathon at a natural : disadvantage in such a retrospective comparison. I appreciate that it's : forced me to learn and enjoy a new game type, and I'm glad more people are : getting exposed to the lore of this wonderful universe. : Okay that's it. That's all I got for now. : Thanks for reading if you got this far. ;) : -Yossarian
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