Bungie has learned its lesson about vaulting content in Destiny 2 and won't be so cruel with Marathon: 'It doesn't matter when you join'
These days, it's hard to talk about Destiny without inevitably touching on its hated content vault. Whole chunks of the game, including the base story, some expansions, and seasonal content, were wiped from Destiny 2 and thrown into the abyss, lovingly called the Destiny Content Vault. The Final Shape's story wrapped up a decade-long story better than I ever expected it could, but you can't really recommend it to someone when you can't access the majority of the story. And no, telling someone to watch lore videos on YouTube just doesn't cut it.
Thankfully, it doesn't look like we'll be getting a Marathon Content Vault situation. In an interview with Space.com, creative director Julia Nardin touches on the lessons the studio has learned from Destiny's tumultuous first saga.
"We want Marathon to be an additive experience in the sense that all priority contracts and story content aims to be evergreen," Nardin explains. "It doesn't matter when you join, you'll still be able to play through the established questlines and fill out your Codex with achievements and collections that allow you to uncover additional layers of the world."
"We'll be adding to this foundation over time in the live service environment, depending on our players' response and at a cadence we can support, but we know what direction we want to go in and what we want to create for the community to uncover next."
Of course, Marathon isn't a narrative-driven adventure with a traditional campaign in the way that Destiny is. There are no elaborate story cutscenes, campaign missions, or areas made exclusively for storytelling. Everything is baked into its PvPvE maps.
But Bungie has shown its dedication to Marathon's lore and world-building so far. There's a shockingly strong voice cast, cool faction representatives handing out contracts, and even an elaborate community ARG to unlock the next map, Cryo Archives. In other words, there is a story and lore to sink your teeth into if you want to, and it won't be going anywhere.
However, this does leave an elephant in the room: I'm curious how Bungie will handle a potentially ever-growing catalogue of content while balancing seasonal wipes. In case you're unaware, every season in the Marathon roadmap lasts about three months and will reset all of your faction and gear progress (Codex unlocks and cosmetics remain, though). And yes, it's mandatory.
Assuming Bungie's desire to build on Marathon's foundations in a live-service sense includes adding new contracts every now and then, does this mean we'll end up with an even larger mountain to climb each season? Retreading old contracts has already proved divisive since the announcement, but if you're required to do it to access any future quests, then that's a ticking time bomb.
In fact, it's an issue that's cropped up in Arc Raiders, which also wipes out your quest progression. However, at least it's optional in Embark's extraction shooter. Here, you've got no choice.
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