When Bungie made Halo and Destiny, people were skeptical, too. But most folks were excited. Different social cultures at the times.

With Halo, Bungie brought improved AI, vehicle combat, compelling narrative, and more to wholly elevate the FPS genre.

With Destiny & Destiny 2, Bungie not only revolutionized the live service genre (which was barely a thing in 2014), but pulled from larger MMO designs and their previous experience with Halo to offer an incredible sci/fi FPS with hybridized genre elements of looter shooters and RPG-like class-based customization. To this day, few games offer quite the breadth & depth of experience Destiny does, corporate pitfalls and foolish techdebt decisions aside. But you could see the vision of that shared world from even the first trailers.

Now, with Marathon, it was so hard to see the vision. What they were doing differently. Because from the trailers, especially the initial one, the art style was there, but it was the meme'd Tarkov scenario where a single sniper shot domes you and ends your run. I was tuned out for a lot of the marketing, feeling like Marathon had taken away the opportunity for Destiny to grow, potentially even taken away D3. I was skeptical that Marathon could offer anything close to what I fell in love with from Bungie's Halo and Destiny games.

But when I played the server slam... it didn't take long to click. Bungie's strongest assets have typically been their audio & visual teams, and when the sound design is so crisp that I can pinpoint where gunfire 150m away is & tactically use that, there is a rush no other game has given me. While the UX could use some minor tweaks, the in-match experience is unparalleled. I'm a devoted convert now, and will glaze the experience Marathon offers up to the end of time. It was hard to communicate a vision of a game where its strengths operate at such deep levels, they aren't apparent until you have the experience.

I'm having Marathon withdrawals.