Marathon is a different kind of extraction shooter, and it won’t be for everyone

There’s an awful lot of schadenfreude in the video game industry at the moment. Players have long been skeptical of live-service titles, and one only needs to take a peek at Highguard to see just how bizarre the culture has become, as some beg for a title to fail.

Whether it wanted to or not, developer Bungie certainly got that ball rolling with the original Destiny and its lofty (if somewhat misguided) plan for a decade of support. Destiny 2 followed not long after, but Marathon marks the studio’s first non-Destiny game since Halo: Reach in 2010. It’s also a return to a franchise not seen since 1996, yet another live-service title, a punishing extraction shooter, and the first game to come out since the studio’s acquisition by Sony.

That’s a lot of Swords of Damocles loitering in the air, but ...