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Unrolling another stretch of red carpet in front of the red carpet already rolled out for the long-delayed Marathon, Bungie released a new deep dive on the "Runner Shells," or playable classes, that its sci-fi extraction shooter will launch with. Compared to the early build we played at the studio, several significant changes and additions have been made, but I'm still worried that two profoundly powerful ability types threaten to swallow the sandbox Bungie's created.
Interestingly, the more hero shooter-like names once applied to these shells, like Blackbird and Glitch, have been dropped in favor of more descriptive terms. But these shells are still the "bio-printed bodies" you control when you jump down to the central planet Tau Ceti IV.
They each have a distinct look (with cosmetics) and a set of cooldown-based abilities that define their play style. Those abilities are grouped by traits (passive bonuses), tactical abilities (short cooldown), and prime abilities (ultimate, long cooldown). Bungie describes them as a foundation for buildcrafting, enlivened through equipable items like "cores" that can bring powerful passive bonuses to your loadout.
"Equip cores that turn your double jump into a triple jump, and implants that increase your base movement speed, jump height, and improve your heat capacity [stamina bar]," Bungie adds in a blog post. Cores are "generally designed for one Runner shell," whereas "implants" are universal and provide bonus stats and random perks. "The highest-tier implants also have a bonus fixed perk, such the implant Ping+ V5, where your pings remain attached to enemies for a short period of time after breaking line of sight," Bungie explains.
One example core reads: "Knockback no longer deals self-damage, instead propelling you away from the blast." Another says: "Deal damage to nearby hostiles after long fall." Depending on the availability of these cores, and how deterministic that loot process is, I could see this type of buildcrafting distinguishing Marathon from other extraction shooters, which tend to find variance mostly in what weapons you equip. "They have hooks that go out into the other systems so you can create this crazy Rube Goldberg machine," says senior designer Mike Humbolt.
Here are all of the shells coming at launch, with more planned alongside other future content.
- Destroyer - A tanky, Destiny 2 Titan-like soldier with a riot barricade that you can carry while sprinting or rocket-thrusting around. Can fire a shoulder-mounted missile volley.
- Assassin - "Built for players who like to play slow and quiet." Has a dive to negate all fall damage and can deploy a veil to become invisible. You can sprint or climb without breaking the veil, but the faster you move, the more semi-visible you become. Healing, shooting, or getting shot will reveal you, but only briefly. Prime ability deploys a large smokescreen cloud that also grants invisibility.
- Recon - Called "fun police" internally. A deployable tracker drone seeks out players and explodes, dealing damage and overheating their shells to slow them and deal burn damage. Prime Scanner reveals nearby enemies, both AI and players. Dealing enough damage to break a player's shield causes them to leave footprints that reveal their movements, As a Recon, you are notified when you've been pinged – pings work similarly to Arc Raiders, Apex Legends, and others – by an enemy player.
- Vandal - A highly mobile shell with a double-jump and a longer slide. Prime ability overloads movement for enhanced agility. Arm cannon fires an AoE projectile that knocks enemies back.
- Thief - The "loot goblin" class. Can reveal nearby loot containers through walls and highlight enemies within line of sight. Deployable flying drone can be remote controlled and used to mark players or, using a whip-like wire, knock loot out of "both players and AI" and then collect it. Can fire a grappling hook, with a built-in hovering anchor to latch onto, for mobility. The more loot you're carrying in your bag, the shorter your grapple cooldown and the higher your base stats become.
- Triage - The healer class. Electric gauntlets can instantly revive downed allies. Deployable buddy drones follow allies and grant health and shields. Can overcharge gauntlets to amp up weapons, and cause energy weapons to trigger EMP bursts when you break a shield. When you use an item like a health shot, allies with healing drones attached to them will also receive that item's effects.
- Rook - A unique shell with more limited abilities. Can only play solo, and can only join matches in-progress with a free "starting kit" of basic gear. You cannot bring anything in with you. A new game mode on legs, designed for no-risk scavenging. Can make AI enemies non-hostile by equipping a camouflage face mask. "Get in, grab a little bit of loot, and then bail," says Humbolt.
A lot of these shells sound compelling on paper; I'm especially drawn to the Triage and Thief shells which weren't available in my test session. Rook is an interesting spin on free loadouts, too. But Assassin's invisibility and Recon's wall hacks sound tough to beat.
These two classes completely warped many of my (again, old) sessions. Invisibility seems especially powerful in solo mode, which has now been added to Marathon alongside proximity chat, while Recon sounds borderline essential for squad play. There are ways to balance around this, like giving these shells weaker neutral game or lower health, or just making the other shells that much stronger in their own combat niche, but the information war – I can see you, you can't see me – feels like a change in kind for an extraction shooter that's really pressing the PvP pedal. It's a new and exclusive axis of play. That was certainly the vibe I got back when Recon was called Blackbird. But I stand ready to be proven wrong by the healer, tank, or more aggressive shells.
