I installed Marathon's Server Crush last week and, having loved all of its fancy trailers and soundtrack reveals to date, really enjoyed my brief introduction to the game's universe via a moody intro sequence before whipping through a guided tutorial against AI opponents while Marathon's basics were explained to me.
Trudging through some trailers and buildings while an alien storm erupted outside, I started clicking through its incredible menus, soaking up its stunningly vibrant art direction and just generally getting very into a world that's one of the most unique and interesting that AAA gaming has managed to serve up in years. And as soon as that tutorial was over, I quickly realised the same thing loads of you probably realised over the weekend as well: I wish this wasn't an extraction shooter.
We all know why it is. Developers Bungie have always excelled at multiplayer shooters, and a few years back their owners at Sony went so hard on live-service video games that it's now costing people (and entire studios) their jobs. And it's not like my "waahh I wish this was singleplayer" complaint is new; with its dense lore and memorable design, Marathon's predecessor Destiny could also have had a proper singleplayer element to it, but didn't and has turned out just fine.
Just because there's a logical explanation doesn't stop it being a huge bummer though. All that work that's gone into building such a detailed world, to construct all this backstory, the weather, the colours, the soundtrack, the vibes, all of it is just begging for some kind of singleplayer experience. Even if it's just a campaign, it’d be a way for me to get to know all these parts of the map at my own pace. I could poke my head into corners, rummage through drawers looking for audio logs, and get caught up in all kinds of cool, scripted shootouts.
For all Bungie's multiplayer pedigree--and I don't want to see Destiny's success or Halo's place in couch gaming folklore cut short here--I think the thing the studio has always done best has been singleplayer experiences. From Halo's epic original trilogy to the tension and surprise of ODST to the wonders of Reach and its iconic ending–it's getting tougher to remember as the years go by, but Halo and its sci-fi universe used to be so beloved and successful that it could have been, if not the next Star Wars, then at least something more interesting than Avatar. Halo 3's launch event was a moment in culture, touted as the "biggest entertainment launch in history"! Peter Jackson was going to make a Halo movie! Those games, and the singleplayer storylines underpinning them, were that good.
After years of non-Bungie Halo games failing to land a punch, and of Destiny catering only to a multiplayer crowd, I just want to feel that joy again. To play a Bungie game where a world is opened up in front of me like a box of toys, full of surprises and challenges and memorable moments, and which I can shoot my way through on my terms. Instead, Marathon is an extraction shooter. And it's fine? I played it for a bit and it's an extraction shooter alright. A type of game I simply have zero interest in, and even if I did, don't have the time for.
Like I said, I get why from a business sense this decision has been made, to the extent that there isn't even a singleplayer campaign. I just think that business sense is a bummer.
