Bungie showed off its extraction shooter Marathon at the weekend and finally give it a release date – September 23. Naturally, folks had thoughts about what they saw, and a fair few immediately started comparing it to last year’s big Sony live-service shooter, Concord. Spurred by that, a former Firewalk dev has taken to Reddit urging people to give Bungie a chance.
If you need a quick refresher, Concord fell flat in unprecedented time following its release last August, being pulled from sale in less than two weeks after bombing pretty hard out of the gate. There was some debate as to whether Sony might opt to bring it back with a fresh coat of paint further down the line, but that ship sailed when the console maker instead decided to shutter developer Firewalk Studios.
Fast forward to now, and a post on the Marathon subreddit by Stephan Williams – a former Concord developer who’s currently working as a senior VFX artist at Warframe studio Digital Extremes – under the username ‘-MrSpug-‘.
“I have been a long time lurker for many years, and rarely post to reddit/any social in regards to what is going on with my life as a developer/artist,” reads his post, “After reading the comments about Marathon being Concord 2.0 on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitch, I just wanted to share a little insight into what a forty year old man is feeling after dedicating a large portion of his life to making videogames.”
Outlining that it was “gut wrenching” to watch Concord suffer the fate it did, and being pretty open about the aspects of the game that might have contributed to what happened, Williams wrote that: “No one feels as bad as the people who put their time on the line, hoping it will entertain the masses of gamers across the globe.”
“Seeing the faces of the developers on the Bungie stream gave me hope, and excitement for what is to come for Marathon,” he continued, “I commend them for taking a chance, trying something foreign to them, that isn’t proven, nor guaranteed to succeed. It takes a lot of courage.”
“I really didn’t want to be ‘that’ dev, calling attention to myself as if I have a horse in this fight,” Williams added in a reply, “But to call this game a failure before it’s even out is wild to me.”
What did you think of what you saw of Marathon during the reveal? Do you think Concord comparisons are fair before it’s even arrived? Let us know below!
