[MARATHON 2026] One-week-in thoughts? (Gaming)

by Vortech , A Fourth Wheel, Friday, March 13, 2026, 08:05 (1 day, 8 hours, 20 min. ago) @ CyberKN

I don't have time to write a whole thing, and that same lack of time means I have not played enough for my position to be much changed from what I wrote here before. But, I am liking the game more over time.

As I disconnect my brain from thinking of gear and weapons like I do in Destiny and other games, (Gear Fear, seems to be the term in the subgenre) that's helping. Over the past year I had been playing a bunch of Apex again, and the idea that you die most games was a helpful grounding for getting in the Marathon-compatible mindset. Experience has created more familiarity with what is important for looting, and when it is important for looting. The UI is maybe the biggest delta between how terrible everyone thinks it is on first impression, and how well designed it actually is when I am using it to play the game now. It's a lot of Information, but how many times did I silently beg Bungie to put information I needed in the Destiny UI instead of needing to look something up online and then store it in my head?

I'd be curious how many people who are saying something similar to "I'm not a PVP person" played a lot of Halo competitive Multiplayer. I'm not trying to prove a point here, to be clear. Measured by hours played I did a lot more of that than solo story or co-op. It's not until D2 and the meat grinder of Trials that I started thinking of myself as more into PvE and I think that's because I was able to do well (or it felt like it anyway) at the endgame PvE (raids) but not at the endgame PvP (Trials). But I was never amazing at Halo multi, I just had fun with people messing around, even when we got our butts handed to us. Oh well, hop back in the queue and try again. Marathon is certainly designed to feel more "important" and "tense" in the moment of play than H3 Multi, but I don't think it should be thought of as any more durable. Rinse and repeat, it's just a fun thing to do, not a long-term goal to achieve. Or, at least more in that direction than Destiny. And you're never more than 3 months behind in progress because everything resets anyway - again a sort of in-between concept for investment.
This also means it neither needs nor rewards vast amounts of time being put into it. But I think it's probably good for it to not take over my whole free time like Destiny 2 did. I did that willingly, but I didn't always have the time to give, really.

Well, look at that. I guess I did have things to say. What's the old line? "I wrote you a long letter because I didn't have time to write you a short one."?