There’s been a lot of discussion about Marathon, a large portion of it bizarrely from those who aren’t actively playing it. Throughout all of the online chatter about Bungie’s game, one thing is clear: those who love Bungie’s new extraction shooter really love it.
I’m one of them. From the intensity of Rook runs to the exhilaration of sneaking through the Pinwheel on Outpost, Marathon is one of the best multiplayer games I’ve played in years. Hell, unless Wolverine is a massive improvement on Spider-Man 2, Bungie’s shooter will likely be my Game of the Year.
Despite this, there’s one part of Marathon that I feel has been undersold by many online, and even critics discussing the game—its quests. Extraction shooter quests are largely naff. Escape from Tarkov is the progenitor of the genre, but its quests are as cookie-cutter as they come. As much as I find myself enjoying the world of Arc Raiders, that game’s quests leave me feeling nothing at all.
Out of every extraction shooter around right now, Marathon certainly handles quests the best, and that’s simply due to the fact that every actual contract feels designed. The main reason why Marathon’s quests feel better to complete compared to other games in the genre is because narrative and discovery are core to your purpose on Tau Ceti IV. Just like how the original Marathon largely introduced narratives to first-person shooters, the reboot is doing the same to its new sub-genre.
Every contract in Marathon is given to you by a handler with their own distinct personality, their own goals, and their own brilliantly delivered voice lines. MIDA’s often-meme’d anarchy against the UESC feeds into their quests; NuCaloric’s investment in both the planet colony’s existing food and potential new avenues for product informs their quests. There’s intent behind even the simplest priority contracts that make you invested in them, and that’s more than most multiplayer games ever give you.
That’s not to say that actually doing Marathon’s quests are particularly deep, and some can get annoying if you’re trying to beeline a single-run quest-line in the midst of a PvP heavy zone. However, they do feel designed with every terminal you interact with having its permanent place in the world. That building on Perimeter always needs its power turned back on, and that terminal in the lab feels like it belongs. There’s nothing that’s really out of place, and everything has its place in the sometimes off-feeling sci-fi world.
Really, the reason why Marathon’s quests feel so satisfying to complete isn’t just due to the fact you’re rewarded quite heartily after completing them, but because the intrigue of the game’s narrative and the gorgeous setting Bungie has designed is so strong. I want to know what happened to the UESC Marathon, I need to know what happened to the colonists, and the clearest through-point is through these quests.
For as much as people may malign Bungie’s game for coming mere months after Arc Raiders, it’s a game that definitely feels more designed around the idea of questing in comparison. In Marathon, grabbing the next quest is often an event within itself; you’re rewarded with the prospect of a new story thread to follow, and that’s a reward that I enjoy. You’ll also often be taken to places where you can find items that fill up your codex which unlocks additional story, voice logs, and even skins for weapons.
Quests in Marathon are also communal: in a trios match, every active player is helping to complete a quest and gets bonus XP from that quests completion. I’ve run many early quests with friends and randoms multiple times, and I’m still getting something from helping them complete the quest with my knowledge of the area. Additionally, each map funnels you into a high-population zone, encouraging skirmishes with other players—while sometimes annoying for long quests, it’s also exhilarating.
I’m not sitting here and writing that Marathon quests are as good as a Cyberpunk 2077 main story mission or anything, but I do believe that Bungie has designed the best quests in this particular genre of game. Every extraction shooter, I believe, suffers from the fact that its quests aren’t deep, but I also believe that Marathon does have the most fulfilling quests in comparison.
The biggest worry is whether or not these quests will actually evolve as Marathon does. By the time Season 2 rolls around, what will the game’s new quests be? Will I simply have to walk around Overflow again and play around with some panels, or will I be engaging with newly opened areas, more types of enemies, and some interference from the game’s rogue AI characters?
Bungie’s penchant for storytelling definitely hasn’t diminished with Marathon, even if some of those Destiny 2 storylines have been pants, and with Marathon it certainly works overtime to separate its quests from its contemporaries, but if they fail to evolve as the game evolves with new runners, maps, etc, then they will start to disappoint. As with anything in this live-service populated genre, only time will tell, and I really hope Bungie leans into its quest design as time goes on. While not the game’s biggest strength, it’s certainly one of them.
