We know Marathon‘s new Cryo Archive map is coming but we don’t exactly know when. The end-game “pinnacle” activity is supposed to be way more brutal and challenging than anything players have faced on Tau Ceti IV up to this point so far, and unlocking it isn’t as simple as selecting it from a menu. The new location is currently locked until players solve an ARG, which seemingly includes killing a cumulative 500 million UESC security forces across all runs.
There is in fact a very cool website that’s tracking players’ progress so far. The “kill count” is currently at 315,093,135, leaving just under 185 million toasters left to pull the plug on. That’s the total progress made since the game launched on March 5, which would suggest that actually meeting the goal could take several more days, blowing past the weekend timeline during which fans had otherwise expected Cryo Archive to go live.
A conservative estimate would suggest that at the current kill rate, the eventual update could take another week to trigger. It’s possible the community event was calibrated for many more players at launch, or maybe Bungie has a few more wrinkles to throw at players as the weekend approaches.
Could UESC forces ramp up their presence across maps so players are forced to kill more of them? Or maybe new contracts might incentivize a more aggressive bot bloodbath. Since players are the deadliest enemies in Marathon, engagements with UESC forces are usually kept brief to avoid drawing unwanted attention.
If this is all sounding a little reminiscent of Helldivers 2‘s evolving galactic warfare, well, yes. Logging on and being asked to kill millions of bugs or automatons to take back a planet at a key inflection point has become old hat for that extraction shooter’s community.
While the developers say they let things play out organically, Helldivers‘ quasi-Dungeon Master has also been known to put a thumb or three on the scale. We’ll see if Marathon ends up doing something similar. Either way, I know what I’m doing tonight.