Paul Tassi has some new details on what’s going on behind the scenes at Bungie and their next game, Marathon.
Tassi shared that Bungie won’t be revealing anything new about Marathon until next year. However, that isn’t the only thing that he found out.
Tassi was told that Sony still wants to sell Marathon at $ 40. This lines up with a rumor that came from the Game Post. It’s also pretty troubling to think about.
So far, Sony has released Helldivers 2 and Concord as their live service offerings, both on PC and PlayStation 5, and both at $ 40. Sony has also literally experienced the zenith and nadir of their live service efforts, in a mere span of months.
Now, it may be too early to tell how successful Marathon will turn out, but Marathon doesn’t get to change that pricing model. Tassi was told that Sony made this decision, and they also expect Bungie to deliver the game in a timely manner.
One can imagine that mandate coming straight from PlayStation’s chairman Hiroki Totoki, and the CEO on the software side, Hermen Hulst. Tassi’s source tells him development is apparently too deep in for Bungie to change direction, but we have already seen the possible consequences of that line of thinking.
If there’s one thing that could make things different this time, it would be that Marathon is still slated to come to Xbox Series X|S, alongside PlayStation 5 and Steam. Will Sony find the live service players in Xbox that they didn’t find on their own platform? And given all the other things Sony decided to do recently, would they also consider expanding their game releases on Xbox? We will certainly see.
Tassi also got more explanation on the game design. While Ziegler did bring in the idea of making playable heroes, much of the game’s original design, such as the aesthetics and art direction, will remain intact. Bungie had trouble realizing other aspects of the original game designer’s vision, so even if Ziegler was not brought in, they were going to abandon it anyway.
So the new class / hero system is comparable to Apex Legends, but it won’t be the center of the game design. Heroes will have distinct personalities and different abilities, but as an extraction shooter, the guns and gear you pick up will still be a bigger part of the game.
There will be a bigger focus on customization, and the XP you earn can be applied towards gameplay buffs that all characters can use. Those buffs have different skill trees, but players can switch them around on the same character.
There will also be ‘universal implants’ which will allow for even more customization. Bungie may make some of those implants specific to some characters in the future.
With this bigger picture, it sounds like Marathon could be fun to play. But the question on if that’s worth $ 40 is ridiculous. You can look at free to play games now like The Finals and XDefiant and ask if it’s worthwhile to spend your time to play those games, even if you don’t have to pay a cent to play them.
While some of the detail from this rumor are concerning, but we’ll see if Bungie can surprise us next year.
