Marathon isn’t the kind of game you can simply slip back into after a few months. Now well into its second season, the crew at Bungie hasn’t stopped tinkering since the extraction shooter launched in March, working to improve the onboarding experience while also offering a beginner map that minimises the number of Runners, making it an ideal battleground to learn – or indeed relearn – the ropes. Now they’re shifting even further, adding the time-limited Vault Breaker PvE mode, though it’s not a cure-all solution for the game.
As we noted in our Marathon review, there’s a steep learning curve thanks to the sheer number of different resources players can loot during a run, all of which can help augment your Runner Shell, their weapons, and your chances of a successful extraction. Not only that, in order to progress your Marathon career, you’ll also need to scrounge for a shopping list of resources that can be exchanged for permanent upgrades to give you a leg up in the battles to come.
Even if you’re on board with this and revel in pre-match planning and inventory management, Marathon demands a quick trigger finger while deftly navigating its hazardous, maze-like maps. AI enemy patrols can be ruthless and, if caught unaware by a rival squad of Runners, you can get wiped out in a matter of seconds, kissing goodbye to your loot in the process. In short, Marathon is deliberately hardcore, but Bungie has tried to soften the edges in various ways to try and court a more casual FPS fan.
Before the game had even launched, it was speculated that some kind of PvE mode was in the pipeline, allowing us to immerse ourselves in Marathon’s slick sci-fi universe without the constant threat of other players. Bungie has announced that a full time dedicated PvE experience will arrive during Season 3, with the newly-added Vault Breaker giving us a little taster and helping them gather feedback.
For a limited time until 4th August, players can plunge into the depth of the Cryo Archive – a maze-like structure that could previously only be accessed by high-level players. Whether riding solo or teaming up with two other players, Vault Breaker tasks you with tracking down keys to open vaults to extract valuable data, all while fending off guard patrols.
The news that Marathon has received its first nugget of PvE content immediately led to a spike in active users but it’s fair to say that Vault Breaker isn’t really suitable for new players or those wanting to give Marathon a second shot. The Cryo Archive isn’t just a change of scenery, it’s an intricately layered labyrinth that needs to be mastered.
Each Vault Breaker run demands that you equip a designated Sponsored Kit which includes a handful of basic items. As in the main PvP mode, you’ll need to explore, fight, and scavenge while also accessing keys and terminals to boost your security clearance level and unlock new parts of the map. The big difference here is that if you manage to exfiltrate, everything gets left behind apart from any Vault Data you’ve managed to collect. This can then be exchanged to upgrade your Sponsored Kit, theoretically making the next run slightly easier.
Clearly, a great deal of effort went into building the Cryo Archive to act as an endgame map shortly after Marathon’s launch. It’s great that more of us get to see this map without the requirement to hit level 25 and spec up, but Vault Breaker isn’t a good showcase for Marathon’s potential PvE pivot. After several runs, the Cryo Archive felt less like an endless maze, but it is still difficult to get a grip on how to complete objectives, where to find keys, and how to successfully exfiltrate. Each half-hour run ended with my squad having pushed further into the map yet failing to understand what was really happening or where we needed to go next. The fact that progress made in Vault Breaker doesn’t transfer back into the core game severely limits its appeal too, given that it’s only live for several more days.
On the plus side, it did encourage me to thrust myself back into the game’s core PvP maps, which I did enjoy though matchmaking times are now fairly long regardless of which queue I jumped into, even with cross-play enabled.
If you didn’t know already, Marathon triggers a progression reset with each new season, effectively stripping away any top tier loot, upgrades, and faction ranks you’ve unlocked, ensuring there’s more of a level playing field. Initially, I thought this was going to be a dealbreaker and I imagine that if I’d seriously locked in for season 1 then I would have been more apprehensive about the reset. I actually appreciated having a clean slate going back, not having to remember which skill tree upgrades I had unlocked or having a hoarder’s stash of inventory items to sift through.
Marathon is still a great game with plenty of untapped potential. It hasn’t been the major breakout hit Bungie needed, especially after ending support for Destiny 2, with all eyes falling on Season 3 to secure Marathon’s future. Not only will we see the introduction of a proper PvE mode, which will hopefully be better tuned thanks to Vault Breaker, it will also rework a number of core elements such as how contracts work while improving Marathon’s onboarding and early-game experiences.
