Re: It's Marathon... but why?

On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:53:09 -0000 (UTC), ant@zimage.comANT (Ant)
wrote:

I couldn't get into that series.
>

No surprise.

Marathon-the-series were either games that came out too early, or too
late to really make a name for themselves (it didn't help, of course,
that it started on Mac either. ;-). Released in 1994, its story-rich
gameplay was a bit much for what the market wanted in an FPS at the
time; people wanted fast, non-stop, almost arcade-like action from
their 'Doom clones', and the slower pace of the Marathon games didn't
match people's expectations of the genre.

      [the original System Shock struggled with the same
       problem, although the fact that it was advertised as
       more of an RPG helped]

But by the time the genre had shifted enough with the advent of
Half-Life, its old-school map-design (not to mention its ancient
sprite-based models) also put people off.

Genuine interest (outside of the few Mac-heads who didn't have
anything else to play ;-) in the franchise didn't really start to grow
until after Bungie released "Halo", and people started looking into
their back catalog. But while there are some good ideas in the older
games, their aged design and visuals don't make for great gameplay. So
Marathon never really captured the market in any way; it's most
notable as a historical artifact. Which is why Bungie's use of the
license seems so unusual.

But Bungie is struggling, and has been for a while. Morale at the
company is low, and there are signs that the leadership are just
biding their time and waiting until they can sell their shares and
jump ship (Bungie was purchased by Sony a few years back, and
typically the c-levels are restricted from doing so for a few years
after acquisition). "Marathon" is quite possibly the company's last
chance to prove itself, so Bungie is playing it up as much as they
can, even to the point of paying streamers to play early access and
rave about it online.

Honestly, though, I think the use of the Marathon license will work
against them. The fact that it's an extraction shooter rather than a
single-player game will alienate all the Marathon fans, and the fact
that it's based on the Marathon license won't do anything to attract
extraction-shooter fans (and, given the IPs story-rich history, may in
fact turn them off too). Meanwhile, what we've seen of the game itself
doesn't really make it stand out from its competitors. The
overwhelming opinion seems to be, "Meh"; a game that isn't
mechanically bad but doesn't offer anything new or exciting enough to
draw people away from "Tarkov" or similar games.