The developers behind Destiny 2 are now working on Marathon, a new shooter, but they are already making it clear before its release that players of Destiny should consider purchasing the game. Apparently, they are only addressing a small portion of the existing players of Destiny 2, those who enjoy PvP.
This is the situation: Bungie has been working on the Destiny shooter series for 18 years. Part 1 was released in 2014, Part 2 in the fall of 2017, actually, Part 3 was supposed to be released years ago, but Bungie separated from Activision Blizzard instead of developing Part 3 and is now releasing Marathon.
Many players only know Bungie from Destiny, so it is now likely that Destiny players will be interested in Marathon.
The Game Director of Marathon, Joe Ziegler, is now commenting on what players can expect when transitioning from Destiny 2 to Marathon.
Marathon is not meant to be Destiny 3
This is what Bungie says to players coming from Destiny: Ziegler states that there are some differences between Destiny and Marathon, there are also “hurdles”. With some hurdles, the developers can help overcome them. But with other things, they cannot. They want to be 100% honest about that (via gamesradar).
I think part of it is that we do not expect Marathon to become Destiny 3. Our goal is not to develop a new product that replaces Destiny 2. We believe that Destiny 2 has a future, and the team working on it has really worked hard to understand the needs of the players. But if you like Destiny and happen to enjoy a lot of PvP sandbox experiences […] then we think Marathon could be something very exciting for you.
What is similar? Ziegler says that the weapon system of Marathon is similar to Destiny.
Marathon is for Destiny players who enjoy PvP – so only for 15%?
Whom does Ziegler warn? He says: Destiny players who have no interest in PvP will likely notice that Marathon is not the right game for them.
I think if you are only looking for PvE experiences, Marathon is definitely not the right game for you. […] We feel very comfortable saying, yes, this is not a game for everyone.
Who is Bungie actually developing Marathon for?
This is the problem: The question is how many players in Destiny actually enjoy PvP and the sandbox experience. Bungie released a statistic in 2015 showing the areas where players of Destiny 1 spent their time. The 4 PvE activities Story, Patrols, Strikes, and Raids took up the vast majority of time, while PvP activities accounted for perhaps 10-15%. The time distribution is likely to look similar in Destiny 2.
This is exactly the problem that is emerging with Marathon. Destiny had a unique feature with its strong focus on PvE. However, there are countless pure PvP shooters. It is still not entirely clear how Bungie intends to stand out here.
For more on Marathon, Bungie’s new shooter, read our article about the reveal: Destiny 2 is known for great gunplay – with their new shooter Marathon, Bungie shows whether they still got it.
