Stand by, Runners, because Marathon is about to get even more challenging. March 20 marks the launch of Cryo Archive, the game’s fourth map, and one that will include endgame activities and loot.
Since Marathon launched on March 5, players have been working to solve an alternate-reality game that has sent them looking for clues, solving messages, and scouring the game for terminals and information. The ARG has finally been solved, which revealed a countdown timer for the release of Cryo Archive. Developer Bungie dropped a trailer and blog post with lots of details about the map, including what you can find there and what it takes to get inside.
Cryo Archive is set aboard the Marathon, the massive colony ship for which the game is named and which is the setting of Bungie’s original Marathon games from the 1990s. In the story of the series, the Marathon set out from Earth some 300 years before the events of the gam, and then went dark. Contact from the Tau Ceti IV colony the Marathon was sent to establish was lost not long after–the latest game is about various forces and interests from Earth finally making the journey to Tau Ceti to find out what happened.
The original Marathon games were all about onboard AI systems becoming evil and fighting off an alien invasion, and from the gameplay trailer Bungie dropped, we can expect to find some new threats aboard the Marathon. Particularly, expect to see those big red cloaked guys, the S’pht, known colloquially as Compilers.
But that’s something to worry about once you’re already in Cryo Archive, and getting there won’t be easy. First, you’ll need to be Level 25 and have all six factions unlocked, which means completing a number of Marathon’s story-focused contracts. You’ll also need a loadout value of 5,000 credits for a run, so don’t expect to take trash weapons and gear into this endgame map. On that front, Bungie wrote in its blog that for your first Cryo Archive run, you’ll get a free Cryo Archive sponsored kit of gear, so you won’t have to risk your favorite stuff on your first-ever visit to the Marathon ship.
Bungie has described Cryo Archive as including “raid-style” puzzles and activities, which can be taken as a reference to its Destiny games, so expect those to be significant challenges requiring teammates to work together in order to clear them. Your main goal in Cryo Archive is to access its seven vaults, which all contain extremely good gear, including what sounds like some unique weapons you can’t get anywhere else. Getting into those vaults will include special Vault Keys you can get in the other maps in high-quality loot locations, as well as in Cryo Archive, or from the bodies of other players.
To get around in Cryo Archive, you’ll have to interact with the ship’s systems to raise your Security Clearance. That sounds similar to the systems we’ve seen in the Outpost map, where color-coded keycards are required to unlock certain doors or even to access exfil locations. The more important the system or area, the higher your clearance will need to be.
As for making your escape, it doesn’t sound like it’ll be simple. Bungie says that making an exfil from Cryo Archive is different from those seen on the planetary maps, and it’ll be something teams will have to figure out on their own once they’re in the game.
Cryo Archive drops on March 19, and from then on, it’ll only be available on the weekends. It’ll also come with its own specific pool of seven contracts to complete. Your team will all work on the same contract at once, from the sounds of things, and once you complete a contract, it’ll disappear from the pool for that weekend. The contract pool refills with each new weekend.
More than anything, it sounds like players will need to be prepared for a significant challenge with Marathon’s new map–it’ll be a confusing maze with lots of new systems players will need to learn over multiple runs, and it’ll be filled with high-level players. But it’ll also come with the best weapons and gear in the game, and if it’s anything like Destiny 2’s raids, it should pack some of the best, most exciting gameplay situations and challenges Marathon has to offer.
