Bungie’s ‘Marathon’ Reboot Director Says Dev Team Is “Taking A Lot Of The Familiar” And “Layering On Some Elements That We Think Really Help Modernize It”
According to the director of Bungie’s upcoming reboot of their classic Marathon Joe Ziegler, the game’s dev team is purportedly working to take the franchise’s “familiar elements” and marry them with some new ones that will supposedly “help modernize it”.
A former Valorant dev who was tapped by Bungie to helm Marathon‘s development after the studio forcibly ousted previous game director Christopher Barrett (reportedly due to several allegations of ‘inappropriate behavior‘ being leveled against him by a number of female Bungie devs), Ziegler provided this update regarding the sci-fi extraction shooter via a new Developer Update, as published to the game’s official YouTube channel on October 28th.
Making a live appearance on camera, Ziegler opened his update by taking a moment to explain just what type of game the new Marathon was shaping up to be.
“Marathon is our take on essentially an extraction shooter,” explained the director. “And if you don’t know what an extraction shooter is, it’s a game type where you essentially go into a dangerous world, a world filled with essentially hostile mobs and players alike that are all sort of existing in that environment, and are a huge threat to you and challenge your ability to survive and get out alive.”
“The goal of every session is to get out alive and along the way you’re going to be completing quests, you’re going to be finding loot,” he continued. “Loot that will either help you upgrade yourself or things that you can equip do yourself to make yourself stronger. If you get alive, all that loot is yours to keep. If you don’t, you will be losing all of that and someone else will be able to take that from you.”
He further noted, “It’s an intense game. So in that sense, we like to say it’s a game that’s not for everybody, but if you are interested in having that intense survival experience and having a game where the stakes really matter and you feel like you’re challenged to survive in a really, really, harsh and interesting world, then Marathon is just right up your alley.”
Following a brief tease of the weapons and equipment players will be able to use in service of their survival, Zeigler turned to talk “a little bit about the world of Marathon“.
“Our game’s obviously set in the IP of Marathon, which is one of Bungie’s classic IPs,” recalled the director. “I think the first game released in 1994, so it was quite a while ago, but what we’re doing with that world is we’re taking a lot of the familiar elements, especially a lot of the things around the mysteries, and the kind of eeriness and – how do I put it – the psychological kind of creepiness of the entire IP, as it existed before. But we’re layering on some elements that we think really help modernize it and also bring it to a new story that we can continue to update and and delight all of you with over the course of time.”
From there, Ziegler proceeded to answer the question of “Where are we at right now in terms of making this game?”, telling players , “Well, for the past couple of years, we’ve been doing a lot of aggressive change to the game, and we’ve been iterating pretty heavily and during that time we’ve been testing with a lot of players, a lot of players like yourself also with creators.”
“And so it’s sort of insanely awesome,” he said. “And I’m filled with gratitude when I think about it, because there’s so many people who’ve just contributed by telling us, ‘Hey, this thing sucks’ or ‘This thing is great’ in a way that really has helped us, diagnose, analyze, and shape and shift the game and great ways.”
“Where the game is at right now, there’s a variety of different things at different states inside of the game,” the director added. “Some things are a little bit more complete, like our environments are starting to come together in a really, really beautiful way. Some of the character models we’ve been iterating through.”
“They’re coming together but they’re not fully there yet,” he further detailed. “Our enemy models are still kind of a little bit in an early state. We’re still iterating through and making those things land in a strong way, and a few of the items are still kind of coming online. So. it’s a little early to show you all of it as one piece but as you’ve noticed, as many of you are familiar with if you’ve been [a part of] or [are] familiar with game development, all of these things are on track. They’re not all together. But when they all do come together, we really, really are looking forward to showing you what that looks like especially in play.”
Ultimately closing out the update with a brief look at two of the game’s characters, as currently codenamed Thief and Stealth, at no point during his presentation did Ziegler provide any specific details as to what aspects of the original the Marathon team was looking to “modernize”.
As such, while it’s possible that he could have been referring to the game’s controls, graphics, and ‘quality of life’ elements – all things that a remake should update – there also exists the distinct possibility that the reboot process will also see some of Marathon‘s original story elements ‘ironed out’ for modern audiences (such as the recollection by the AI Durandal that one of his handlers, codenamed Charlemagne, used to call him a “fruitcake” for preferring “feminine” war making methods).
Ultimately, the truth will be revealed with Bungie’s new Marathon entry hits shelves sometimes in 2025.
NEXT: Sony Set For Another ‘Concord’ Debacle As ‘Marathon’ Will Reportedly Be A Pay-to-Play Game
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