Marathon thoughts (Destiny)

by squidnh3, Wednesday, July 15, 2026, 11:07 (5 hours, 40 minutes ago) @ Avateur

Sorry, I got your invite Sunday morning but couldn't play beyond the one round.

In fact, that's mostly how I've been playing Marathon, just a few rounds a week, rarely ever more than one per session. That doesn't seem to be how most people play it, and if this game had come out 5 years ago, I would probably be binge-playing it too.

So, I've mostly been playing just Perimeter and Dire Marsh, with a little bit of Outpost and some free kit Cryo runs at the end of last season. I finally got through the NuCaloric questline a few days ago, which was nice to complete. Some of those quests are quite helpful for learning the game better! I've also been mostly playing solos, as I haven't really felt like chatting and squading up as much lately. For that reason, my experience with the game is a lot less PvP centric, but the threat of PvP dictates much of my playstyle. It's sort of like a survival game where the enemies are occasionally extremely dangerous or totally unaware. When I do run into other players, usually I'm the aware one and often win the engagement - there's definitely some fun to be had in stalking other players, which I've found Thief to be my favorite shell for.

I'm planning on trying to get at least some more Outpost runs in soon, and then maybe some more tries at Cryo - without a lot of communication extraction doesn't seem likely on that map. I think there are also still a lot of mechanics to this game that I don't fully understand, but am slowly figuring out as I go along.

As far as big picture stuff, I would say Marathon is an excellent game that came out at the wrong time, aimed at the wrong audience. If Marathon had been released in 2014 instead of Destiny, I think things would be playing out very differently. It's already been documented that Destiny's audience skews older, probably 30s to 40s now, as it's been 12 years since that game was released. Some of those people jumped to Marathon, but it's pretty typical that age range of people tend to have a lot less available leisure time in their lives, either due to work or family. It doesn't seem like Marathon appeals broadly to a younger cohort (and nor does this forum, so it's hard to gage why that might be).