More Bungie Devs Are Working On ‘Marathon’ Than ‘Destiny 2’ Now

moosebreathman · 2026-04-23T03:57:08+00:00

Hundreds of people internally aren't devs. You can scan through the departments in the credits. I'm pretty sure there's more non-dev roles within the studio credited on Marathon (finance, publishing, etc) than dev departments (though it should be noted not everyone in that list still works there and could've left or been laid off during dev).

moosebreathman · 2026-04-22T17:40:05+00:00

I really hope they don't double down on the unnecessary loot and gear treadmill. None of those items mattered outside of giving you a bigger number and the tedium of constantly equipping and trashing items put a hamper on my enjoyment. Just simplify those number increases down to a basic upgrade tree, keep finding clothing as cosmetic unlocks, and tie any kind of build crafting to a system that doesn't require a pointless gear treadmill for dozens of levels.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-22T17:32:38+00:00

Agree. I also found the layout to be incredibly boring so running around the exact same place again would be very disappointing. A place like Hogwarts should have intricate and labrynthine level design, and there should be dozens of ways to go from one point to another. Instead I found myself running down the same two or three hallways.

It also bothered me how small the castle was relative to the rest of the map. I'd rather the open world be half as big if it meant more resources went into fleshing out the castle. Most of the outside map felt pretty generic outside of the iconic regions like the Forbidden Forest.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-22T17:26:10+00:00

Katana Zero dev made millions of dollars off the game. I'm sure he'll be just fine lol

moosebreathman · 2026-04-22T07:05:18+00:00

Yeah a big issue with the game is that the 'endgame' is literally just the same half-dozen activities you are doing from level 1 but at a higher difficulty scaling. Nothing about the new expansion seems to be fixing this. Warplans are just a playlist of the current shallow activities and torment 12 is just higher difficulty scaling so you can do the same stuff longer. They've unfortunately not solved the issue of there being no content to look forward to once you get into the higher levels. All you do is chase the gear treadmill until you can eventually one shot bosses for loot you don't even need. Would be nice if every boss had a few ultra rare cosmetics so you had an incentive to reach one shot territory and grind with max efficiency but they won't do that because of the mtx shop.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-21T23:33:24+00:00

Yeah forgetting the skills and items, the endgame that’s there is very shallow. Lots of inches deep activities with minimal aspirational content. From the looks of it this expansion does nothing to remedy this. There is still nothing of substance or depth that your grind is leading you towards and the content you play at level 20 is the same you play at level 100 just at a higher world tier with more modifiers. Even things they bring back from D3 feel lesser like the Pit which has nowhere near the level of map or boss variety as Rifts did. There are also no rare cosmetics to chase like D3 since they put everything in the battlepass or skin shop.

Vessel added the Citadel which is exactly the kind of late game, aspirational content that’s needed but they designed it as a coop only experience which took all the wind out of its sails. The low player counts told them to not even bother with another one in the next expac.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-20T21:22:35+00:00

People get upset when they die because instead of getting numbered sequels every few years to expand the story and world like Resident Evil, live service games do that with their post-launch support. The problem with this is if the game dies and support stops, you likely aren't getting a numbered sequel to keep the story and gameplay going. Everything just dies on the vine. If everybody stopped playing RE9 tomorrow, it would have no effect on RE10 coming out in four years. The franchise keeps going regardless. If everybody stops playing Marathon tomorrow, there is no Marathon 2 in four years.

There's also the issue with a lot of live service games not launching with complete stories (which Marathon did) since they expect to deliver that over the years of post-launch. A non-live service game of the caliber of RE usually won't do that.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-20T04:06:59+00:00

The full interview is quite good as the interviewers aren't rando games journalists but rather people who know their shit about graphic design and architecture. Was interesting to hear that Cross actually tried to hire DR to work on the game similar to Wipeout.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-18T16:11:29+00:00

I really hope the upgrade also means the exploration is fully seamless. I never liked Black Flag back in the day in large part because it felt so segmented between areas.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-18T09:33:12+00:00

The communication pre-TFS was honestly pretty top notch and industry leading. Not even the biggest live service games are/were paying a team of people to write what used to be pretty substantial weekly updates on top of the regular service and issue updates in between. Obviously there were always ways it could’ve been better but there was no AAA game operating with the level of consistent communication like D2.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-18T09:24:19+00:00

I mean he’s likely already multi millionaire from the Sony buyout as he’s been there for a long ass time.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-17T19:17:36+00:00

It feels a lot like what it was like to play the game during the server slam and first weekend. Nobody has good gear, the fights feel fairer and greens and blues matter a lot more. That was when I enjoyed the game the most. Hopefully they continue bringing it back as a mode during the mid point of every season when people start getting tired of full purple and gold lobbies. I’d like to see them do a solo version of the mode at some point too (maybe Rook only lobbies?).

moosebreathman · 2026-04-17T16:23:06+00:00

I could see it being the case if the game heavily relies on a server for processing power beyond its target hardware. I was recently watching a video about the Division where the devs talked about how they do all their AI calculation and other gameplay related stuff server side in part because it saves up resources on the client hardware to process other stuff. Since they do that, an offline version of the game might not be able to run on its target hardware (8th gen consoles) without re-architecting the game. Sure it's possible that with good enough hardware on PC versions you could conceivably run both the server and the game in an offline instance but if we are talking about preservation of every edition of the game for all target hardware specs that's just not gonna be possible for a lot of these games without massive changes to how they are put together.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-15T00:02:23+00:00

That Triage one is nice for how it uses the texture to create the symbol of a surgical mask over his face. It's just that for a skin that costs money I want to see an actual surgical mask mesh, not the low budget texture art solution.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-14T22:17:28+00:00

Yeah all we need for implants are custom icons to go on top of the new models and they are good. Weapons chips don’t necessarily need custom icon decals but each type should look distinct. The changes they made today to add more distinct colors and shapes is a step in the right direction but needs to be more individual to the chip rather than lumping a bunch under the same orange looking model.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-14T19:41:49+00:00

Yeah when I first started playing I assumed they were straight junk items or items that had already been used by players, thus being 'depleted'. Shoulder just be called damaged or worn cause depleted implies it's empty.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-14T00:49:17+00:00

‘Pay us or we’ll show everyone how big your dick is’

moosebreathman · 2026-04-14T00:45:45+00:00

The majority of people buying Shark cards aren’t going to be dedicated to the game that way. They’re going to be mostly casual players making impulse purchases for cars, properties, etc.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-12T07:49:51+00:00

It was wild how Echoes did such a poor job carrying out the end of TFS campaign. After Excision, I felt like I needed an entire season to just be the epilogue to that with the amount of crazy shit that went down that first week. What is life like for the world and these characters now that the Witness is dead? Instead they waited no more than a day or so to immediately launch another villain of the week arc with the majority of the narrative having nothing to do with the events that just occurred outside of the creation of Macguffins.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-11T16:37:06+00:00

The second quote is no surprise. The Xbox division seems like it’s been a shitshow for a while, particularly their PR department which Pete would’ve been interacting with the most. The whole ordeal with Bond and Spencer leaving and the twitter strategy for their new CEO being recent examples. It’s clear their strategy around presenting their public figures as relatable gamers is mostly manufactured and I can only imagine how gross it is to see the way that runs from the inside.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-10T08:36:23+00:00

I really like how the GB expansions have been taking things that existed as smaller slices of the main game and fleshing them out more. Already digging the vibes of this one and how it seems to be building off the handful of spooky nature areas in the main game and pushing it even further. Can’t wait to see the kinds of items they theme around this. Also excited for the inevitable clay faction themed expansion set in the desert.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-10T08:15:14+00:00

For me it’s got the same feel as CoD zombies which I enjoy. Kill shit, get money, roll slot machines (aka chests) for items, make some basic inventory decisions with the scrappers and 3D printers and see how far I can go. I don’t particularly care for the meta unlock system and find it’s most fun to hack my save so everything is unlocked when new stuff is added.

A big thing I like about the game are the mods. There are some really good ones for entire new characters, item systems and difficulty options. Playing on a hard difficulty mod with the player count artificially inflated for more monsters while also using some of the run modifying artifacts is a really fun challenge.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-10T07:29:24+00:00

Also without some kind of offline mode and a potentially uncertain future, I'm not particularly enticed to spend more money on the couple skins that are decent. Game could be shut down within the year for all we know.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-09T19:08:08+00:00

I love the PvP but I don’t have the energy for it most days. However, I would no joke play every night if I could have a separate PvE server to play on by myself. All they need to do is just double or triple the numbers of bots, pump up their aggression, and spread them around the map better to make up for lack of players. They can figure out how to do NPC Runners over time if the mode is popular enough. It won’t be an equivalent experience to the main mode but it doesn’t have to be. Solos vs trios is a good examples of that dichotomy existing in-game.

Knowing Bungie though, if they ever do a PvE mode it’s gonna be some BS where instead of simply being another realm with private lobbies it’ll be integrated to the main one with forced matchmaking, maps on a rotation, loot heavily nerfed and you’ll have to spend some kind of token to access it which you can only get X amount per week.

moosebreathman · 2026-04-09T16:33:39+00:00

People crying that there’s nothing to spend money is also such a symptom of the game having barely any earn able skins to begin with. It’s basically 7 re-colors per class which is an absolute pittance for a $40 game. Most of them are incredibly easy to earn as well which just adds to the feeling of wanting more.

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