Bungie has begun ramping up towards the second season of its extraction shooter Marathon, but I don’t think I care all that much, unfortunately.
Season two, “Nightfall,” really needs to bring some heat to get players back in the game and keep its dedicated players invested, especially after a progress wipe that will empty inventories and reset Faction progress. But so far, it doesn’t sound like that will be the case, judging by a dev update today ahead of the launch on June 2.
The main additions to season two thus far will be a new Runner Shell and a nighttime variant of the Dire Marsh map called Night Marsh. The roadmap also teases a new system called The Cradle, along with new guns, mods, and enemies, but a full reveal of season two contents is coming the week of May 25, according to Bungie, so I hope there’s more exciting stuff to share. Sadly, I’m not feeling the hype at all yet.
The news of season two comes about a week after Sony said it was committed to continuing to support the game, despite its underperformance in sales and lackluster player numbers.
“Player reception to Marathon is strong, with the game receiving a Metacritic score of 82 and more than 90 percent of the player reviews on Steam being positive,” Sony CFO Lin Tao said last week. “Engagement metrics such as retention also remain at a high level.”
Tao remarked that Sony and PlayStation would “aim to improve the performance of the game by working to retain highly engaged core users through the introduction of additional content, further improvements in the gameplay experience and expansion of the user base.”
That additional content begins with season two, and I’m not feeling inspired yet. I hope I’m wrong. I haven’t played Marathon in a few weeks now, and I don’t really feel any need to go back. I was already one of the more dedicated players before tapering off, so if it can’t bring me back, then I genuinely worry about what this may mean going forward.
