Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[Swine Schwein]

and by that I mean Jason Jones

I always thought he was just an autistic recluse for the last zillion years who didn't actually drive anything at the company anymore.

 

[Thomas Talus]

I talked about it over in the Destiny thread, and yeah, it's clear that Bungie (and by that I mean Jason Jones) wanted to move on from Destiny and were simply waiting for the right opportunity. They figured Marathon would do well enough to give them an excuse to drop Destiny for good and planned everything out in that direction, even moving huge amounts of staff over to Marathon to get it out the door.

There was a right time to do that, it was called The Final Shape.

 

[creaturestorm]

I talked about it over in the Destiny thread, and yeah, it's clear that Bungie (and by that I mean Jason Jones) wanted to move on from Destiny and were simply waiting for the right opportunity. They figured Marathon would do well enough to give them an excuse to drop Destiny for good and planned everything out in that direction, even moving huge amounts of staff over to Marathon to get it out the door.

It's crazy how no one saw this coming, but at the same time how apparent it became after the fact.

 

[moocow]

It's crazy how no one saw this coming, but at the same time how apparent it became after the fact.

Rich, coming from you.

But also lolno, literally everybody saw this coming, predicted it, openly cheered for it, and thinks is bloody hilarious to be proven right. Marathon's still dying next, with one hell of a friendly-fire casualty under its belt when it goes.

 

[King Dead]

I always thought he was just an autistic recluse for the last zillion years who didn't actually drive anything at the company anymore.

There was a long video posted over in the Destiny thread that goes into the history of Bungie, and it shows that while Jason maintains the illusion that he's not really responsible for anything going on, the fact is that he's still basically running the show, and what he wants to do is what the company does. Bungie has a long running trend of starting a project, getting it out despite gross mismanagement, then immediately spinning up a bunch of other projects because Jason hates working on the same thing for too long and wants to do something else. Instead of putting their resources where they should (or even where they're contractually obligated to), they fart around with whatever the fuck else they feel like doing until someone finally tardwrangles them into getting back to work.

It's long and kind of spastically edited, but the guy did his research and it shows. He even accidentally predicted Destiny's death long before it happened, though I doubt he could have seen it play out like this because it's just so stupid.

Post in thread 'Destiny 2'

Today at 5:41 AM

Thank you for the correction on the Halo contract. I knew ODST was thrown in there to get out of it faster somehow, but it's fucking insane that even with that updated agreement, he still wanted to bail early and potentially bankrupt the studio. If anyone needs to be jettisoned out of the company for its own good, it's Jason.

And if you have a link to that documentary, I'd love to see it.

Here ya are, nigga. Dark side is a bit cringe but he’s a certified D2 hater so it’s chill. https://youtube.com/watch?v=6sHvRgBRl00

• Steven Chapman

Reactions: x 2 x 1 x 1

If you don't want to devote a couple hours to this, here's the "short" version:

Spoiler: a long history of incompetence

• Bungie makes Marathon 1 and 2, Jason wants to move on. Ex-Bungie devs that want to keep working on Marathon form Double Aught and produce Infinity.
• Bungie makes Myth I and II, Jason wants to move on. Myth III is produced by an entirely different studio.
• Bungie starts working on Halo, while some other teams are also working on other projects. Jason bounces between teams. Everything is mismanaged. Halo barely manages to launch due to all these other projects.
• Bungie farts around for a while working on various things until Microsoft is like "hey uh about that Halo 2 thing." They barely manage to scrape together the E3 2003 demo, Microsoft gives them a whole extra year to complete it, and Bungie still has teams working on other projects. Jason does not want to do Halo anymore. Halo 2 only has multiplayer because of a small team putting it together while the rest of the multiplayer worked on a massive 32-player mode that got scrapped. Halo 2 barely manages to launch.
• Halo 3 development starts off with power jockeying behind the scenes while Jason fucks off to God knows where. Bungie is still working on other projects during this time. Halo 3 barely manages to launch. Jason wants to be done with Halo altogether but they're still under contract with Microsoft for more games. Bungie works out a deal where ODST and Reach will satisfy their partnership with Microsoft, but they still try to fuck around and not deliver. Jason continues to be AFK working on other stuff, including what will eventually become Destiny. ODST and Reach barely manage to launch, Bungie goes independent again.
• Bungie spends years developing Destiny, including signing a contract with Activision for multiple games and expansions, despite their track record of Jason getting bored with an idea quickly and not wanting to develop sequels. Destiny has a turbulent development during which the entire story gets jettisoned and rebooted, and there was probably some power jockeying going on behind the scenes to eject Joe Staten. Bungie still fucks around with other projects while they're supposed to be working on Destiny. Destiny barely manages to launch.
• Bungie continues to devote company resources to side projects because Jason is already getting bored, despite the fact that they are under contract to produce more Destiny games. Bungie complains to Activision that it's too much work, so Activision gives them extra time and more studios to work on the game. Destiny 2 has another tumultuous development cycle with the whole thing getting rebooted in the eleventh hour, more power jockeying, more mismanagement, the same ol'. Jason has already checked out of Destiny by this point and continues to waste senior talent's time on more side projects. Destiny 2 barely manages to launch.
• Bungie keeps having issues with pumping out content for Destiny 2, but despite this, they break out of their Activision contract early and go independent again. More incubation projects keep getting spun up and canceled, Jason keeps looking for something new to do, they finally settle on rebooting Marathon as an extraction shooter. Marathon has another development shitshow, with the lead getting shitcanned for misconduct (and promptly suing because that cost him his vested stock options), the whole thing getting delayed and rebooted, and Destiny suffering for it. And all the while, they're still putting devs on side projects like Matter that don't go anywhere. Marathon barely manages to launch.

And now we're in the present day, where Jason is almost assuredly about to get bored with Marathon, if he isn't already, and will be wanting to pivot to something new very soon. All those blast havers are going to be in for a rude awakening when there are no more blasts to have.