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Bungie's Marathon reboot has been delayed from its original September 23 release date to an unknown date.
In a news update shared to Bungie's official website, the Marathon dev team suggests feedback from the extraction shooter's alpha playtest, which ended in early May, is at the heart of the delay. No new release date was revealed.
"The Alpha test created an opportunity for us to calibrate and focus the game on what will make it uniquely compelling—survival under pressure, mystery and lore around every corner, raid-like endgame challenges, and Bungie’s genre-defining FPS combat," reads the news release.
"We're using this time to empower the team to create the intense, high-stakes experience that a title like Marathon is built around. This means deepening the relationship between the developers and the game’s most important voices: our players."
Bungie says we'll learn the new Marathon release date "later this Fall" when it'll share an update on the progress it's made on addressing feedback from the alpha test.
Namely, the studio says it's "immediate focus" is on improving the game's survival elements by adding "more challenging and engaging AI encounters" and "more rewarding runs" with new loot and "dynamic events." It's also working on "making combat more tense and strategic." Which sort of sounds like the whole game, doesn't it?
Additionally, Bungie says it's "doubling down on the Marathon universe" by improving visual fidelity, adding "more narrative and environmental storytelling," and focusing on "a darker tone that delivers on the themes of the original trilogy."
Finally, and this one seems to address a very common pain point, Bungie says it's "adding more social experiences" to make for "a better experience for solo/duos." The only specific update we have right now in that regard is proximity chat, which will be added "so social stories can come to life."
Despite a very public scandal relating to its in-game art, a divisive alpha, and a report signaling all-time low morale at Bungie, just last week PlayStation reported "strong early engagement" in Marathon. This indefinite delay only makes it harder to reconcile PlayStation's messaging with the existing facts on the game, which has been positioned as a potentially genre-expanding release.
