Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[Sigg Kyle]

I mean we literally had a movie like almost two decades ago about the earths immune system making people commit suicide because "humans are the real monsters" or some shit.

I'm pretty sure planetary immune systems and consciousness has been some leftist scifi bullshit for a while

AIs might be trained on reddit a ton but I’ve literally only ever seen the concept used by them and pathologic.
As far as I can tell, LLMs seem to think that this cliche is perfect for high stakes and heckin moral quanderinos, and from a purely mechanical sense they’re somewhat right. It’s just that it tends to be soulless if it’s not pathologic. Maybe it’s because pathologic is considered an extremely well written video game and LLMs echo that?

EDIT: I’ve never played SMAC but I’m gonna hold on that one since I’ve never even seen people talking about what even HAPPENS in that game.

 

[Professor Donger]

AIs might be trained on reddit a ton but I’ve literally only ever seen the concept used by them and pathologic.
As far as I can tell, LLMs seem to think that this cliche is perfect for high stakes and heckin moral quanderinos, and from a purely mechanical sense they’re somewhat right. It’s just that it tends to be soulless if it’s not pathologic. Maybe it’s because pathologic is considered an extremely well written video game and LLMs echo that?

EDIT: I’ve never played SMAC but I’m gonna hold on that one since I’ve never even seen people talking about what even HAPPENS in that game.

Gaias Vegence is the trope the whole planetary immune system thing falls under and it's been a thing for a while.

Off the top of my head, Captain Planet was an example for kids. Eywa in Avatar is this for Pandora. Birdemic implies that the birds are doing the planets bidding by killing people for causing global catastrophes. Some later Godzilla stories has him being a quasi guardian creature for the planet, with Godzilla Earth having him as the avatar of the planet, which is why he tries to eliminate humanity for the destruction it causes.

The happening was the movie I was thinking about earlier.

So yes AI was probably trained with some of it in mind but it's still not a strange concept for scifi or fiction

 

[creaturestorm]

Late but ‘planetary immune system’ is a thing that ONLY AIs will write. I call out the hacks at bungo as I type this in my führerbunker.

I think it's actually Wrkncacnter, a lot of the clues were getting are from the perspective of people that are entirely clueless about the rest of the marathon universe and are making their best guess to understand it. Me calling it a planetary immune system was just my description of it, I couldnt think of a better way to say "A massive mycelial network has activated it's immune response and its causing people to kill themselves" with out it sounding like the actual plot. Some how multiple people have really latched on to it.

Durandal has shown up and is now encouraging us to break the cycle of our existence by boarding the marathon.

Why would Durandal show back up after all this time? Something on the planet has to threaten his existence, surely? fungus planet or not it doesn't explain why he'd be so interested helping us help him. We need more info, but its slow to gather.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

Funny how Digital Extremes tries to chime in on this, since compared to Blizzard or Bungie at the time they were in a very bad spot (had Warframe not succeeded they would have closed up shop. I'm pretty sure I didn't see that much dooming and glooming on whatever projects the other two companies were working on in 2013).

That shitty article does Warframe dev disservice, "unemployed behavior" is something the Blizzard cunt said.
Warframe creative director, Rebecca Ford, was simply musing on competition then vs now, essentially saying it's much harder to find audience today. Whether that's right or wrong is one thing, but it's a completely different attitude compared to Snyder's (Overwatch). I have no issue with the former, but the latter is the same sort of condescending, holier than thou bullshit you'd expect from AAA developers today that I'm sure we all hate.

 

[creaturestorm]

essentially saying it's much harder to find audience today.

I'm sure its a lot harder than it used to be.

Consumers have options now and there is decades worth of great games that none of us will play in our life time, we just dont have the time for it. Why make time for some new shit that's got mixed reviews or doesnt completely excite you?

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

I'm sure its a lot harder than it used to be.

Consumers have options now and there is decades worth of great games that none of us will play in our life time, we just dont have the time for it. Why make time for some new shit that's got mixed reviews or doesnt completely excite you?

Back when I had to get physical discs with no money to buy games, I cherished every game I could get my hands on, regardless of how shitty it might've be considered today.
And while that's certainly true that we're drowning in slop and even genuinely decent games nowadays, word of mouth still holds a lot of power. There's probably dozens of very successful games at this point that had no marketing, becoming widely popular solely through player recommendations.

Warframe succeeded because it offered something no one else did. And Digital Extremes is also careful about managing their resources, something Bungie seems to be just about the worst at.
Former Warframe creative director, now CEO Steve Sinclair. at some point shared how while working on projects for publishers, they would hire more and more people to get shit done, eventually leading to bloat and having to fire people because it was unsustainable. After nearly closing down, they've learned their lesson. But that appears to be an exception rather than a rule in this industry.
Bungie had it too good for too long.

 

[Focken Kiwi]

Bungie must be desperate to get me to buy their shit game. They paid Valve to list it to me thrice.

 

[creaturestorm]

Bungie had it too good for too long.

That's my belief about the industry as a whole.

You cant just show up with your triple A game and expect profit anymore, I don't think this has been the way of things for nearly 20ish years now, but they keep doing it.

Bungie must be desperate to get me to buy their shit game. They paid Valve to list it to me thrice.

 

[Professor Donger]

That's my belief about the industry as a whole.

You cant just show up with your triple A game and expect profit anymore, I don't think this has been the way of things for nearly 20ish years now, but they keep doing it.

I think video games in general started falling into the same trap Post-Avengers Hollywood did where they expected a blockbuster every summer.

Video game companies fell into the same trap, which wasn't helped by a lot of these companies having successes after successes for the longest time.

Call of Duty sold like hot cakes until very recently as an example.

Bungies Halo games all sold well, even the spin offs like ODST and Reach.

Nintendo has been consistently selling well since the Switch became a thing.

Sony had smash hits like Helldiver's, Last of Us, Uncharted and so on.

In the minds of a lot of these game studios it's only recently that game sales have started being a problem, especially since budgets have skyrocketed.

Battlefield 6 was the best seller of 2025 and they still had to lay off people because their operating costs and budget were probably too damn high.

 

[Kane Lives]

I think video games in general started falling into the same trap Post-Avengers Hollywood did where they expected a blockbuster every summer.

Video game companies fell into the same trap, which wasn't helped by a lot of these companies having successes after successes for the longest time.

Call of Duty sold like hot cakes until very recently as an example.

Bungies Halo games all sold well, even the spin offs like ODST and Reach.

Nintendo has been consistently selling well since the Switch became a thing.

Sony had smash hits like Helldiver's, Last of Us, Uncharted and so on.

In the minds of a lot of these game studios it's only recently that game sales have started being a problem, especially since budgets have skyrocketed.

Battlefield 6 was the best seller of 2025 and they still had to lay off people because their operating costs and budget were probably too damn high.

GTA 6 will determine if these AAAA studios will continue or not, I reckon. If even Rockstar can't make it work, then nobody can.

 

[Professor Donger]

GTA 6 will determine if these AAAA studios will continue or not, I reckon. If even Rockstar can't make it work, then nobody can.

Unfortunately minorities will buy the shit out of it

 

[Leaf Wage Slave Jr]

In the minds of a lot of these game studios it's only recently that game sales have started being a problem, especially since budgets have skyrocketed.

Honestly, most of the fun of laughing at Concord-likes wouldn't be there if they all didn't have the budgets they did. Sure, they'd still be flops, but they'd be "reasonable flops" instead of "Industry Panic" levels that we seem to be hitting every time one of these games bombs.

It's why I'm waiting to see what happens with GTA6 - there's no way in hell they make up a $2B budget without Online considering how fucked this console generation has been, considering they usually delay the PC release to double dip, so I want to see just how egregious the MTX are. Seriously, why the fuck does vidya need the GDP of a small nation as a budget...

 

[Steven Chapman]

Honestly, most of the fun of laughing at Concord-likes wouldn't be there if they all didn't have the budgets they did. Sure, they'd still be flops, but they'd be "reasonable flops" instead of "Industry Panic" levels that we seem to be hitting every time one of these games bombs.

It's why I'm waiting to see what happens with GTA6 - there's no way in hell they make up a $2B budget without Online considering how fucked this console generation has been, considering they usually delay the PC release to double dip, so I want to see just how egregious the MTX are. Seriously, why the fuck does vidya need the GDP of a small nation as a budget...

A combination of shit. Bloated salaries, most of these studios are either in silicone valley, Seattle, or some other overly expensive leftist shithole, lefties are incompetent and inept, so real work like coding, engineering, gameplay design has to be outsourced which can be pricey as hell.

Seriously, Bungie has a studio of 800 people and this is AFTER several rounds of major layoffs. And those 800 people (yes I know, some of them are still working on Destiny) managed to create a shitty extraction shooter with four maps, only 23 guns, and 6 characters. For 800 fucking people, marathon should have had more content than the entirety of Tarkov and Arc combined.

Edit: I forgot! The map taking place on the Marathon ship itself comes out post release! It wasn’t even finished for launch! KEK. This is the map that Bungie was begging journos to wait on before reviewing the game.

Competency crisis is real, as dear feeder once informed us of.

In the minds of a lot of these game studios it's only recently that game sales have started being a problem, especially since budgets have skyrocketed.

I think the problem is not just money, it’s also time. Between work, personal life, and shit like housework, errands, chores, etc. I only have a limited amount of time to play shit now. Luckily I work Saturdays from home, so inbetween work stuff coming in, I can play games basically all day. I assume this is a lot of people’s experience as well, this goes for all sorts of games, not just live service slop. I dropped everything, live service or not, to play RE9. The difference there is, when I finished the game, I can leave it, it’s a finished product. Why would I devote my very little free time to a game I know is unfinished, punishing, and not even guaranteed to stay online if the powers that be at Sony deem it to be a failure?

 

[Corette]

Sid Meier Alpha Centauri had this, though Brian Reynolds were competent enough to make it plausible

It was also an emerging plot on Earth 2 TV-series.

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

Unfortunately minorities will buy the shit out of it

They can’t pass up the opportunity to do hood shit. Hell I can’t pass up an opportunity to do hood shit in GTA. Just not GTAVI

 

[big pauper]

GTA 6 will determine if these AAAA studios will continue or not, I reckon. If even Rockstar can't make it work, then nobody can.

gta 6 is going to be a really really good game that will completely fail to live up to any of the hype people made for it. it's going to sell really well and be a commercial success but it won't live up to the cultural expectation that people have thrust onto it because gta 5 had everything in the right place to be the biggest knockout smash hit of an entire generation. It was a showpiece title for two console generations, it had one of the most popular and profitable online dollhouse multiplayer experiences with women and teenagers, and the storyline was an extremely fanservicey gratuitous Los Angeles/Hollywood faggot bullshit storyline that appealed to middle aged white dads and niggers during the sunsetting obama years.

they aren't going to be able to recreate any of those conditions because they were environmental and cultural. it was lightning in a bottle and it wasn't even all that good lightning. unless gta 6 manages to completely course correct and change their tone to be more like a cohen brothers movie or some shit and knock it out of the park on the merits of writing alone, then just doing another gta 5 in florida with a higher level of fidelity isn't enough to make a new cultural smash hit even if the game is very good

 

[ScurvyRat]

Bungie must be desperate to get me to buy their shit game. They paid Valve to list it to me thrice.

View attachment 8685443

I'm not someone who buys games on release.
Definitely not AAA games made by faggots like Bungie.
I'll usually wait a year or two for the price to drop and pick it up on a steep discount. Allow the devs to fix bugs, see how the game lasts long term. I was getting HOUNDED by friends to pick up Space Marine 2, but now its not even on my wishlist because none of those same friends had anything nice to say about it by the time it went on sale.

I was optimistic when this game was first announced, but now I'm excitedly watching its slow decline.
Now I'm thinking even 20$ is too much for this slop.

 

[Markorian]

gta 6 is going to be a really really good game that will completely fail to live up to any of the hype people made for it. it's going to sell really well and be a commercial success but it won't live up to the cultural expectation that people have thrust onto it because gta 5 had everything in the right place to be the biggest knockout smash hit of an entire generation. It was a showpiece title for two console generations, it had one of the most popular and profitable online dollhouse multiplayer experiences with women and teenagers, and the storyline was an extremely fanservicey gratuitous Los Angeles/Hollywood faggot bullshit storyline that appealed to middle aged white dads and niggers during the sunsetting obama years.

they aren't going to be able to recreate any of those conditions because they were environmental and cultural. it was lightning in a bottle and it wasn't even all that good lightning. unless gta 6 manages to completely course correct and change their tone to be more like a cohen brothers movie or some shit and knock it out of the park on the merits of writing alone, then just doing another gta 5 in florida with a higher level of fidelity isn't enough to make a new cultural smash hit even if the game is very good

Calling it, there's gonna be some super low hanging fruit with a disneyworld expy, and all the same retards who said you're a fascist for not giving disney your money for the past decade will crown it "the most brilliantest satire of all times".

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

gta 6 is going to be a really really good game that will completely fail to live up to any of the hype people made for it.

I agree. It’ll be safe edgy like we see in the GTO missions. I think it’ll be a fun game. But from what I have seen, not worth spending money for a new console just to play one game.

Will probably wait for a repack once it’s available.

 

[Snekposter]

Sid Meier Alpha Centauri had this, though Brian Reynolds were competent enough to make it plausible

Wasn't that less "planetary immune system" and more "planetary neural network that lashes out at things it doesn't recognize and causes total ecosystem death, including itself, whenever it finally achieves full sapience"? I never really got much into SMAC but IIRC at some point during the game you learn about the full lifecycle of the mind worms and all that shit as it spreads (reproduces and grows in quantity, becomes smarter, hits critical mass, chokes planet to death, dies back until things recover, repeat) and the many, many cycles the planet has undergone from it.