Something interesting has been going on this week with Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter Marathon.
Sentiment around Marathon isn’t so good right now. That is partly because of the current state of Bungie and Destiny 2. But part of it is also from rumors and speculation.
We have Jason Schreier claiming that sentiment for the game at least a few months ago is not great. Paul Tassi, on the other hand, claims that Sony is expecting Bungie to deliver the game on time. The developers may not be optimistic about its prospects, either, as Tassi also claims Sony has already decided to still sell Marathon full price at $ 40.
But now it looks like we have reason to believe that things have already changed. Several content creators have revealed that they got to play Marathon over this week. In fact, they were all flown over to Bungie’s headquarters.
Okami13 first alerted fans about this yesterday, quoting a tweet from HiddenXperia.
HiddenXperia shared photos of his badge to playtest Marathon and a selfie, with this caption:
“I am VERY excited to announce that I’ve been at @Bungie all week playing Marathon 🙂
Can’t give any specifics yet, all I’ll say is man… what a surreal experience lol”
Skarrow9 then shared a selfie of himself, and a photo where he poses next to an impressive scaled model of a spaceship. He said this:
“I can now announce that I’ve been at Bungie playtesting and giving feedback about MARATHON, for the last few days!!!
It has been an amazing experience and I can’t thank them enough for having me <333”
He even got a reply from Bungie Community Manager Dylan Gafner.
Noko then shared a photo of his playtest badge, with this caption:
“So the reason I’ve been gone for 4 days is….
I’ve been playtesting @Bungie ’s new game Marathon!! I can’t say any specifics on the game but just know I am itching to play so bad right now”
AbneyDude shared a selfie with that impressive ship model and a photo of his badge, with this caption:
“Flew out to @Bungie studios to play Marathon for the week! It was an incredible experience! Thanks to everyone involved and it was such a pleasure to meet everyone!”
Finally, VarsityGamingTV shared a photo of his badge with this caption:
“Can finally mention that I was gone this week to try out Marathon, @Bungie ‘s new game!
Got to meet lots of cool creators and the awesome devs behind the game, overall wonderful time!
Normal life resumes tomorrow”
So, it’s transparent that all these tweets are part of Marathon’s marketing. Much like the content creators who professed they enjoyed Concord, you may be rightly skeptical about what these people are saying. For what it’s worth, it’s absolutely possible that some of these creators genuinely like the game they are promoting, but they haven’t checked for their bias, so that they wouldn’t be able to see how most other gamers would disagree with them.
Nonetheless, these are people who got to play the latest version of Marathon firsthand, and that puts them at a different level of credibility than even trusted journalists like Paul Tassi and Jason Schreier. Unless Tassi and Schreier were also part of the playtests, we have less reason to believe them and their anonymous sources now.
We don’t know if these creators were sworn to secrecy, but we suspect other creators who may be more well-known also joined those playtests. And they may share some minor details about what they have experienced, no real spoilers, but perhaps claiming that the game is much better now.
We won’t make this article a debating ground on the credibility of creators vs. journalists on video games, but if Marathon really is turning around, journalists should also be picking up new information to support this claim, at least if their sources are real. If you’re a longtime Bungie and Marathon fan, you will definitely want to keep your eyes and ears out as more news and rumors arrive in the future.
