Look I know it’s easy to assume that Destiny is getting killed in favor of Marathon (I mean it’s a pretty logical assumption to make tbh), and while I’m not happy about the decision in any capacity, I personally think it’s unfair to hate on Marathon itself.
And like… I get it. We’re looking for someone to blame, and Marathon is a much more visible target than the nameless executives that were responsible for this decision. And it is so, so easy to blame, to hate, to want someone or something to pay for taking away something that has meant so much for our lives. I mean this was literally the plot of the Forsaken campaign.
But I think we’re casting blame on the wrong thing, or at least, we’re putting too much blame on it. I say this because I’ve been seeing a lot of hate online specifically for Marathon, as if it’s The Problem! Case closed! Insert something about player counts!
Honestly I want Marathon to be successful, in the same way I wanted Destiny to be successful. Because I see the same love from Bungie as a studio put into Marathon as they did Destiny, the same way they approach these games as a form of art. I see the details that were put into their environments, their music, their weapons, their abilities, their wider universes, and the hundreds and thousands of hours it must have took in order to make it so.
I don’t see that same love from Bungie as a business. Instead, I see them layoff the employees, the artists, the people who poured those hundreds and thousands of hours into these games. I see them ignoring pleas from the people they had informed about the end of Destiny months ago, as everyone else continues to work on stories, on art, on Destiny, who won’t know that this work will never see the light of day until it’s too late.
For a moment, I’ll try to spell out the thought process of Bungie as a business, instead of as a studio. As much as I absolutely fucking hate to say it, Destiny was already on its way out; the number of people playing had dropped to record lows, and the game is very difficult for new players to pick up and get into. It’s also been 9 years at this point, and keeping a game going for that long while still maintaining the playerbase is obviously going to be difficult. Now, while Marathon may not have as big of an audience as Destiny, it’s not even been a year; there’s still time for it to find a bigger audience. The choice was probably to kill Destiny off before they were forced to do so otherwise, and try to support Marathon as much as possible.
Again, this makes sense from a business perspective. From a perspective purely interested in making money, this is a logical conclusion. From this perspective, the art doesn’t matter. The stories don’t matter.
From this perspective, it doesn’t matter that I spend hours combing over a destination for secrets and environmental details. It doesn’t matter that I return to the final resting place of Captain Jacobson on Nessus to pay respects, years after Failsafe had me follow a Vex signal to him.
From this perspective, it doesn’t matter that I listen to the audio files from the museum on Outpost, at risk of being overheard by potentially hostile Runners, to learn what the colonists would have learned. It doesn’t matter that I almost grieve a child I know nothing about, just because I found their plushie in a crate or cabinet.
From this perspective, it doesn’t matter that I slaughter the Scorn by the dozens out of revenge. It doesn’t matter that I still felt a tinge of guilt when I heard Fikrul ask “who will save my children?” after I fought him for the last time.
It doesn’t matter that I’m listening for the extraction beacon to finally finish spinning up, hoping that another Runner doesn’t come and kill me before then. It doesn’t matter that I exchange valuable resources for the collectibles I need in order to piece together what happened on Tau Ceti IV.
It doesn’t matter that I band together with my friends to run a dungeon, working together to ensure that everyone gets all the secret chests and collectables. It doesn’t matter how we feel when the last Guardian standing nails the final boss with a Golden Gun at the last possible second.
It doesn’t matter that a few of those same friends run halfway across Dire Marsh to unlock a building we found a key to. It doesn’t matter how we feel when we manage to extract with all of our loot just before another team can finish us off.
All this is to say that Marathon itself shouldn’t be to blame for what happened to Destiny. I think it’s a really cool game, and I’m finding myself falling in love with another world that Bungie as a studio has created. Marathon deserves better than to just be blamed for the end of Destiny.
Unfortunately, because of Bungie as a business, Marathon has become set up (intentionally or not) as a replacement for Destiny. And I think we all know that there is nothing that can replace Destiny.
Destiny and Marathon deserve better. Bungie as a studio deserves better.
They deserve better than Bungie as a business, which is the only thing that actually deserves our blame.
Blame the players, not the games.
