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Marathon Releases March 5 '26 - $39.99

Pro tip: add to ignore and report to mods.

Guy needs a timeout. The rage bait posts, trolling, and well being what his username states is out of hand at this point.

Any discussion of the game good or bad just spirals into giving him attention.

Block and move on.
 
Woah I didn't know you can get banned from a specific thread. Is that newer feature?

Man that's cool!
 
Arsic said:
Woah I didn't know you can get banned from a specific thread. Is that newer feature?

Man that's cool!
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I've never seen that before. I'm genuinely surprised they didn't just outright ban him. The whole soap box "progressive" nonsense sure was something, lol. At least there's some peace in this thread now.

It's been an eventful couple of days. I'm expecting this week to pick up quite a bit before the slam.
 
How are we feeling about this launch a week out? I'll play the beta but won't be getting it even if it's good due to family commitments. Don't have the time for another multi game. Hope it succeeds though. Is the release coming at a good time? I feel like Arc hype is dying down. Could be a lot of people looking for a new fix.
 
Kerotan said:
How are we feeling about this launch a week out? I'll play the beta but won't be getting it even if it's good due to family commitments. Don't have the time for another multi game. Hope it succeeds though. Is the release coming at a good time? I feel like Arc hype is dying down. Could be a lot of people looking for a new fix.
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A lot of folks in here are hyped. I feel like it's dropping at a good time personally, I mean, people are already kind of shuffling off of Arc and on other games. So, it could be very helpful. But we'll see. I hope it lands well too.
 
Unpopular Opinion: All gameplay videos released for marketing should be played on controller. KBM is too herky jerky for the eyes.

Kerotan Kerotan , my hype is both dropping and rising. I'm over most of the promotional videos now, just want to play it.
 
ContrarianAsshole said:
We feel this way because wokeness is being normalized to such a scale that it just blends in with the culture until people don't think of it as woke, after all, if the cultural shift is this overpowering then fussing over these things must feel futile. Case in point, the last couple of posts in this thread. That's exactly why we point all this shit out, because we don't want it to be normalized to such an extent that it's not even a topic of discussion anywhere.
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MzhoydKEMefb399e.jpg
 
Less than a week. Sadly i will be at work on thursday night, so i cant play until friday, but i will be here reading your impressions and watching streams all night :)

This is the last weekend without marathon
 
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Also thank god for the auto consumable use button. You dont need to select what you want in the current situation, game will select it for you
 
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As someone who has been following this thread for a while now and is somewhat curious to see how this one pans out but has no skin in the game/argument....

Regarding the wokeness of it; I will 100% say I'm not down for "the message" that for the past handful of years has been non-stop in our gaming media to the point where I won't buy things promoting it, and when I first saw the original trailer of Marathon when it first came out I immediately dubbed it another Concord and completely wrote it off.

Fast forward to the last couple of months and I have to agree with the general sentiment in here that this really isn't woke. Another person said it's more science-fiction "weird" than it is woke and I think they hit the nail on the head. The difference between the original reveal and now seems miles apart. Things are looking really polished now, and the gameplay is really giving me that awesome "Bungie FPS" feeling. To this day I still think they have the absolute best feeling FPS mechanics out there.

And again, I'm not even an extraction shooter guy but I've been paying more and more attention to this thread because as time has gone on Marathon does feel like it could stand out in a good way. It really looks like they're going to come out swinging and give Arc and Helldivers a run for the money.
 
Luipadre said:
alpha vs final build


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I think they removed that dark blue pretty much from all environmental art to reserve it for the runner's blood.

But yea, I think I played it in October, which already was a big improvement from the alpha and looking at the latest footage it looks like they made a similar step towards release.
 
Gudji said:
Doesn't even look like the same place day and night difference. Pretty awesome! Can't wait to try it out just a couple more days.
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Can't tell if this was unfinished or just terrible art direction. Because the reveal trailer was not this desaturated.
 
BurningNad said:
Probably because it was in the alpha stage idk though
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Sure, Bungie and Sony called it an 'alpha'. But an alpha 5 months before release with no plans to hold a beta until release is a glorified demo. The game is what it is today because of feedback over the 4 or 5 play tests they did between April 2025 and December 2026.

What they showed in April last year is what they intended to launch in September.

Why would their big reveal and pitch for a game coming out in 5 months be an alpha that is not representative of the final product?
 
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Loomy said:
Sure, Bungie and Sony called it an 'alpha'. But an alpha 5 months before release with no plans to hold a beta until release is a glorified demo. The game is what it is today because of feedback over the 4 or 5 play tests they did between April 2025 and December 2026.

What they showed in April last year is what they intended to launch in September.

Why would their big reveal and pitch for a game coming out in 5 months be an alpha that is not representative of the final product?
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I'll agree than an alpha 5 months before release is not typical nor bolstering confidence in the product and yes it did look like dookie but in no way will I believe that what they showed in April was going to be the final look.

In the end I'm thankful they listened to the feedback that they got from it. Sure they had to delay by 6 months, but the artwork had turned around by the October tests. They obviously had worked on it after the alpha - there's no reason to think they wouldn't have even without the delay. But there's no way for any of us to know for sure unless we're Bungie employees or they open up about what happened internally after April (which I would really find interesting in a documentary sort of presentation... give us a vidoc!)
 
Loomy said:
Sure, Bungie and Sony called it an 'alpha'. But an alpha 5 months before release with no plans to hold a beta until release is a glorified demo. The game is what it is today because of feedback over the 4 or 5 play tests they did between April 2025 and December 2026.

What they showed in April last year is what they intended to launch in September.
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Nope. Not even close.

  • "This is a true closed technical test of Marathon. What that means is that you'll be playing an incomplete version of the game."
  • "Alpha is a curated, limited slice of systems and content."
  • "It's important to note the Alpha is NOT the complete game. It does not include: Final visuals and graphics, including animations and lighting [and] All zones, including the Marathon Ship" (among other exclusions like full UI, all weapons/items, endgame content, etc.)
 
BurningNad said:
But there's no way for any of us to know for sure unless we're Bungie employees or they open up about what happened internally after April (which I would really find interesting in a documentary sort of presentation... give us a vidoc!)
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Here's hoping for a NoClip documentary at some point.

Men_in_Boxes said:
Nope. Not even close.

  • "This is a true closed technical test of Marathon. What that means is that you'll be playing an incomplete version of the game."
  • "Alpha is a curated, limited slice of systems and content."
  • "It's important to note the Alpha is NOT the complete game. It does not include: Final visuals and graphics, including animations and lighting [and] All zones, including the Marathon Ship" (among other exclusions like full UI, all weapons/items, endgame content, etc.)
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You say that, but I am very close, actually.

This is Joseph Cross in an interview last April (timestamped, but relevant part is 1:12:45) where he calls the change from the reveal trailer(hyper realism) to what we saw last year(more stylized and simplified) "the biggest change and pivot in art direction".


That amount of change in graphics/art direction doesn't happen in the last 5 months because you were saving it for last. It happens because there's a strong reaction against it.

The decision to simplify it and the need to revert it back is probably what led to Cross leaving Bungie late last year.
 
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Loomy said:
Here's hoping for a NoClip documentary at some point.


You say that, but I am very close, actually.

This is Joseph Cross in an interview last April (timestamped, but relevant part is 1:12:45) where he calls the change from the reveal trailer(hyper realism) to what we saw last year(more stylized and simplified) "the biggest change and pivot in art direction".


That amount of change in graphics/art direction doesn't happen in the last 5 months because you were saving it for last. It happens because there's a strong reaction against it.

The decision to simplify it and the need to revert it back is probably what led to Cross leaving Bungie late last year.
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I don't think you're answer here addresses the point that the Marathon April alpha wasn't even close to the full, finished game.
 
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