Marathon's future includes duo queues, more PvE modes and better onboarding

Since the release of Marathon on March 5, a lot has been written and said about Bungie's latest shooter. Much of the discourse has been negative, predicting the imminent death of the game due to declining player counts. During that time, Bungie has said precious little about its plans for Marathon, other than to reiterate its commitment to the game for the long haul. That changed this week when the studio published a lengthy blog from Game Director Joe Ziegler. The post details Bungie's overarching strategy for Marathon, starting with an acknowledgement of the areas where the game falls short.

"Marathon is overwhelming to learn," Ziegler begins. "After a short tutorial, you're often thrown into the fire to learn a lot of concepts, navigate a lot of screens, filter through a ton of loot, and build muscle memory with a lot of mechanics fairly quickly in a hostile environment where other players can bring you down and take your stuff."

As someone who now has close to 50 hours in Marathon, I can attest that the first five to 10 were bewildering and not much fun. But as Ziegler notes, there are other problems, including matchmaking, the end-game combat sandbox, and the fact that Marathon doesn't really accommodate players who just want to play a chill match or two. To address those shortcomings and more, Ziegler says Bungie will pursue a twofold strategy.

Let's start with the second part of that strategy since it's the one designed to address the game's biggest problems currently. "We want to evolve Marathon as a whole to be an experience where you can find more novel ways to play when you're stressed out from a nail-biting run and just need to cool off or have fun without the stress," Ziegler explains. To that end, Bungie plans to introduce two new experimental game modes in season two. The first will "focus more" on PVE, "with a light touch of PVP." The second will pit players exclusively against environmental threats like the UESC, and will see you and your buddies working together with other players to complete objectives. 

Beyond that, Bungie plans to bring a rotating Duos zone queue, so that when you just want to play with one friend, you're not forced to take on teams of three. Sometime in season three, the studio hopes to improve Marathon's onboarding "to make it less overwhelming for new players."

As for the other part of the studio's strategy, Bungie will double down on the things that are already working in Marathon. That includes its compelling sci-fi setting. Of note, Bungie is working on a new zone "that leans into more alien elements and mind warping debuffs." It's also working on a new exfil mechanic that will offer a players a tradeoff between how much loot they can carry out of zone and how safe they are while in match. One of the coolest things about Marathon are all the little mysteries Bungie has hidden in the game's environments and Codex entries. The fact the studio plans to further explore those aspects of the game is promising.

Some of the changes Bungie has planned will roll out during Marathon's upcoming second season, which starts on June 2. Other tweaks will take longer for the studio to deliver, but the blog makes clear that it has a roadmap that will see active development on the game continue into 2027. There's no denying Marathon has a tough road ahead. Sony recently recorded a $560 million impairment cost against Bungie's assets. While the console-maker has yet to release sales figures for Marathon, it has said it remains committed to the game. Here's hoping Bungie is given enough time to build on Marathon's promising base.