Marathon Has Been Delayed, Bungie Explains What Will Change
Marathon failed to convince the public, and Bungie has decided to delay its release date. The FPS will be delayed for several months at least, but the team has already outlined what improvements will be made to the game.
Bungie has officially confirmed that Marathon, the extraction shooter in development at the Destiny team, has been delayed. At the moment, no new release date has been confirmed, but it will be revealed this fall.
The company communicated this via an update on its official website.
Bungie’s Statement About the Delay
Bungie explains: “Thank you not only for your passionate feedback around the Marathon reveal and Alpha playtest, but also for your patience while we took the time to listen closely and chart our next steps.”
“Through every comment and real-time conversation on social media and Discord, your voice has been strong and clear. We’ve taken this to heart, and we know we need more time to craft Marathon into the game that truly reflects your passion. After much discussion within our Dev team, we’ve made the decision to delay the September 23rd release.”
“The Alpha test created an opportunity for us to calibrate and focus the game on what will make it uniquely compelling—survival under pressure, mystery and lore around every corner, raid-like endgame challenges, and Bungie’s genre-defining FPS combat.”
“We’re using this time to empower the team to create the intense, high-stakes experience that a title like Marathon is built around. This means deepening the relationship between the developers and the game’s most important voices: our players. Over the next few months, we’ll continue closed testing(including participants from the Alpha) to deploy gameplay updates and test new features as they come online.”
Key Areas of Improvement for Marathon
Bungie explains that they want to improve the FPS in three key areas:
- Upping the Survival Game
- Doubling down on the Marathon Universe
- Adding more social experiences
Specifically, they want to make the AI encounters more interesting and difficult, introduce more types of loot and dynamic events, and provide a general improvement to the gameplay to make it more intense and strategic.
Additionally, they aim to enhance visual fidelity, making the game darker like the original trilogy, while also introducing more narrative elements to discover and interact with.
Lastly, for the social aspect, they want to improve the experience for players whether playing solo or in pairs, including the addition of proximity chat.