Bungie's Marathon is okay, I guess

This weekend is the "server slam" for Bungie's new game, Marathon. Meaning everyone gets to hop and play for free, while Bungie get's to stress test it's infrastructure.

I've been following Marathon's development for a while. Through the changes in leadership, plagiarism scandal, and less than stellar play tests.

After a couple of days playing it's kinda, meh. I'm not mad at it, or mad for it.

The TLDR is I won't be laying out the $40 for it, and I still don't like extraction shooters. See my Arc Raiders post.

If anyone reads this and wants to know why, here's my pro's & cons.

Pro's

The story & lore is very interesting. Based upon Bungie's (I think) first video game. A sci-fi story of colony ships, alien races, and a race of corporate dominance.

The environment looks really good. Shifting weather patters, and a design aesthetic they call "graphic realism". The buildings are weather-beaten yet glossy.

I love the music. It's really good and helps with the other-wordly atmosphere.

It feels very quick to get into another run, even if you lost all your gear in the last. If you do extract, the game will auto sell items you don't need and auto vault others you don't have to take with you.

Con's

The story & lore - Yes I had this as a pro, but the problem for me was there was no immediate hook. Why am I there? No clue. What's the history of these objects I'm collecting, or factions I'm taking contracts for? Read a wall of text. If you're lucky there's a v/o reading it for you.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing is pulling me along to want to find out more.

The UI and controls are not great. At least for me on a console. They scream "designed for a PC user with a ton of keyboard shortcuts"!

Loot. There's tons of it. I maxed out my vault in a few hours. I have zero idea what's good or not. This is even with me losing loadouts during runs.

Proxy chat. During development there was no proxy chat and Bungie kinda said they didn't want it. But the feedback was so strong for it during testing, it's in. I have no idea why. Only one run of the 20-30 I've done did I have team mates with mic's who used them. That was a fun run. Apart from that dead silence. And I never heard any chat from the other teams killing us.

Who is this for?

I think it was Paul Tassi who said something along the lines it's too hard for casuals, and not tough enough for the hardcore. And I tend to agree. Possibly there's a very interesting PvE game there, but who knows.

I wish it luck.