It’s hard to believe we’ve only hit the halfway point in Marathon‘s first season. Just when my attention was beginning to wane, Bungie has pulled me back in with a surprisingly big update that does everything from tweaking weapons to adding completely new social dynamics.
Marathon update 1.0.5.2 goes live today and brings with it a laundry list of fixes, improvements, and new ideas. The biggest change is something called the CyberAcme Runner Reinforcement Initiative. It’s a new set of bonus rewards that players get for completing contracts or exfiling from maps with other players who aren’t part of their current crew.
Bungie is essentially giving players free loot if they decide to play nice together instead of shooting first and asking questions later. Another part of that push is a new item called the Mercy Kit. It allows players to revive strangers that they’ve downed, letting them use proximity chat to try and smooth things over and maybe even team up for an exfil.
Marathon gives peace a chance
“We wanted the new Mercy Kit to provide ways for players to bring back enemy players without spending a self-revive,” Bungie writes. “Sometimes the de-escalation happens after the fight is over, we get it. Now you can make up for that quick trigger finger.”
We’ll see how much these tweaks can chip away at Tau Ceti IV’s reputation for life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But Bungie is also taking steps to try to make Marathon more welcoming to new players. The game’s Perimeter (Beginner) map is now solo-only until level 12, with a lower frequency of running into other players overall. Newcomers might be able to get a taste of the loot loop before rage-quitting.
Marathon is getting more generous across the board, too. Solo players will now earn more runner XP and faction reputation, with standard contracts giving more reputation rewards regardless of team composition. Fresh rewards have also been added to the free and premium battle pass tracks, alongside some new store items.
This comes alongside a new match type experiment that Bungie is running later this week. It’s called Dire Marsh Sponsored and is only available to players who enter with free kits. The goal is to balance the playing field. Anyone who loads into the map will know they’re only going up against opponents with similar, limited kits. No yellow shields or getting sniped from across the map.
Recon buffed, snipers nerfed
For experienced runners, this week’s patch will finally make the Recon class useful by letting her radar ping out enemy players specifically. Thermal scopes have been nerfed, meanwhile. Deluxe rarity thermal optics no longer spawn, and the effectiveness of the other thermal optics has been slightly reduced. Shotguns, grenade spam, and the Vandal class remain untouched. It’s unclear if Bungie plans to tweak those pain points by the end of the month.
While Marathon fans continue to have fun actually playing the game, everyone else is still left wondering whether Bungie’s extraction loot shooter can finally start building back up some momentum or if the niche GOTY contender’s fate is sealed, regardless of what new content or modes get added.
Nothing in this patch hints at a battle royale-style shakeup of the sort that saved Epic’s original version of Fortnite, but it definitely has me itching to get back to playing as soon as I can.