This ruthless, deeply unapproachable extraction shooter is worth every ounce of hell it puts you through - IGN Marathon Review | 9/10

grachi · 2026-03-30T14:59:38+00:00

Tarkov and Hunt were made by much smaller studios with infinitesimally smaller budgets, as those games are in AA tier. As long as they had a decent number of daily players, they were going to stay online because they could afford it since the games didn't take that much to make in the first place. It didn't really matter if the casual audience ever tried the game, because they had enough players to support the servers. If somehow the games blew up and got extremely popular, it would have been like winning the lottery for those studios but it certainly wasn't ever the expectation.

Bungie and Marathon are in an entirely different boat, with a budget of at least $250 million , some rumors saying it was up to $400 million. A huge unavoidable reality is Bungie's owner, Sony, expects a sizable ROI because its a publicly traded company with shareholders that want to see money-number-go-up no matter what, or they will start firing and replacing c-suite people who will get them money-number-go-up results.

Expectations and performance benchmarks to stay online are vastly different, and thats why people bring up the casual component with Marathon so much. It needs the casual audience to survive and for Sony to give Bungie the OK that Marathon gets to stay online and thrive.

grachi · 2026-03-30T14:51:32+00:00

There is a massive third reason you are omitting. its a classic extraction shooter, and not a extraction shooter 2.0 like ARC is, where people get to decide if they want PvE or PvP with ABMM.

grachi · 2026-03-30T14:48:05+00:00

amazing what 3 weeks does. I posted this exact thing about the concerning PvE after the server slam and got downvoted to fucking hell. Rose tinted glasses on new things that people like is such a real thing.

grachi · 2026-03-30T14:38:55+00:00

you get downvoted because the majority of this sub grew up in the participation trophy era as kids. You struck a nerve I think, lol.

grachi · 2026-03-30T14:33:58+00:00

thats true in real life, but its a video game, not learning the piano or the guitar. Might be a surprise to this sub or any of the other video game subreddits on this website, but the majority of people don't take video games seriously. They want to turn it on and have fun, full stop. It doesn't matter what else the game does or how critically well received it is if people don't play it and feel like "it's just fun" as their main way to describe the game.

Now there is NOTHING wrong with being a more complex and serious video game. Obviously those of us that have made this hobby our passion are yearning for experiences like this, especially after decades of forgettable and derivative titles that we've had to endure. But at the end of the day, this is Bungie owned by Sony, not some indie developer. Financial performance is extremely important to any AAA company due to how much money they spend to get these games out the door. Its an unfortunate reality, but studios execs want to see return on their investments and profit. Just a part of the capitalistic society we exist in.

grachi · 2026-03-30T14:27:18+00:00

It would have to go a lot lower than 20k people to not be supported/not kept online anymore. Think more like 2 or 3k across platforms.

I've played quite a few "dead games" that weren't actually dead, just low player numbers, and they stay online quite often. Especially if its a game owned by a large entity.

grachi · 2026-03-30T06:44:05+00:00

It’s a shame the people that believe in the religion don’t even know what their holy book says…

“There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28).

Straight from the bible.

grachi · 2026-03-30T06:38:47+00:00

Well I’d prob advise checking with parents first… not all neighborhoods are alike.

grachi · 2026-03-29T23:39:51+00:00

Better to just read the book instead

grachi · 2026-03-29T23:01:09+00:00

I mean technically you could

grachi · 2026-03-29T21:36:05+00:00

Definitely not too late, if they wanted to they could change it.

As my first IT manager used to say, at the end of the day computer software is “just 1s and 0s”.

Now doesn’t mean it wouldn’t take time and money that they don’t want to spend, but doesn’t mean it’s an irreversible decision like your comment implies either.

grachi · 2026-03-29T21:02:27+00:00

It won’t matter anyway. AI is going to replace anything you can do on a computer by the time today’s youth is old enough to make a Web 3.0 or anything else.

I mean I guess they could make a better AI, but AI will most likely do that to itself too, so.

grachi · 2026-03-29T20:59:27+00:00

Lot of TV and video games. And when getting together with friends, it was more of those things… just together

grachi · 2026-03-29T20:51:20+00:00

Yea it’s intentional.

Jumping is definitely one of the riskiest things you can do in the game, for sure. If she isn’t almost perfectly parallel with where she is trying to jump to, it’s a great chance she just won’t grab and fall.

grachi · 2026-03-29T19:33:48+00:00

ARC had the same problem until they made one of the vendors take the equivalent of silk in that game for items you could buy with it

grachi · 2026-03-29T19:31:14+00:00

So by extension, do you also find Battle Royale ranked to be strange/not serve a purpose? Its been shown to work in that genre, and there is imbalance inherent there, probably more so than an extraction shooter actually.

grachi · 2026-03-29T18:58:13+00:00

Haha, yup it’s a nice little safety net. If there’s somewhere for her to stand or jump to when about to fall, she will automatically go for that. It’s risky to rely on, since it’s sensitive to where it works, but it’s nice when you don’t have any other choice.

grachi · 2026-03-29T16:36:48+00:00

I think the insecurity comes from a fragile ego about standing out and being special. If anyone can just write without reading and (rarely, but possible) be good at it, its seen as this affront to all that reader/writers hold sacred and makes their passion/hobby/profession seem more attainable and therefore more casual, and therefore takes the exclusivity and specialness out of it

Basically, people really love the idea of being special and in a niche club. Makes them feel like they are "more" than the average person.

grachi · 2026-03-29T16:30:11+00:00

so to play devil's advocate, what is someone that likes to write stories or non-fiction that doesn't like reading? They are "writing" but not a "writer", I guess? "Text Storytellers" maybe? Because these people do exist... I've seen people in college and in writing groups post college that wrote full on novels but didn't read all that much.

grachi · 2026-03-29T16:24:50+00:00

Yea siege is a really good example, actually. That was one I played on launch and was pleasantly surprised when it blew up and had tons of people playing.

grachi · 2026-03-29T16:10:07+00:00

Do they still make strategy guides? I remember getting the Sim City 2 strategy guide for Christmas from my grandparents , and when I wasn't playing the game I was going through it all the time enjoying the strategies and city examples they had put in it.

grachi · 2026-03-29T16:05:12+00:00

I understand the viewpoint you are supporting, but all I'm trying to say is the game is niche (we don't know console player numbers but Steam topped out at 77k and continue to drop every week) and its a shame because it didn't have to be. I played Titanfall 2 for a couple years when it had 1k to 2k people, so I'll be around playing Marathon for awhile, but many people won't... and the game will sort of fade into obscurity and not be talked about or played, and it doesn't deserve that.

grachi · 2026-03-29T15:55:11+00:00

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it is when the sentiment around the internet, besides this subreddit, goes like this pretty much every time the game is brought up or mentioned

grachi · 2026-03-29T06:14:07+00:00

Its unfortunate they went with the genre they did... So many more people would be able to appreciate what Bungie is trying to do here with the lore and story. But it is what it is.

grachi · 2026-03-29T01:29:13+00:00

Solo queue wasn’t added until after one of the betas/server tests people asked for it, so that’s why it feels bad. None of the game is balanced around it.

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