Bungie provides details on Marathon's imminent Recon buff 'by popular demand', revealing an improved Echo Pulse and a 'more aggressive' tracker drone
Recon is my favourite Shell to play as in Marathon, so I was surprised to learn that she is considered one of the weaker characters in Bungie's extraction shooter. This is true both for the PC Gamer team and, apparently, Bungie themselves. Yesterday, game director Joe Ziegler revealed that Marathon's intelligence-focussed Shell would be getting "more oomph", alongside other changes like similar buffs for Vandal and a nerf to Marathon's knife.
Ziegler didn't reveal the specifics behind the Shell tweaks, intending to save them for when their respective patches arrive. But in the spirit of Recon, players' desire for knowledge was simply too strong for Bungie to resist, as the developer has offered a sneak peek at the changes coming to the shooter's weakest shell.
"As part of our mid-season update planned for April 14, we've got some notable changes and updates on the way," the Marathon Development Team wrote on X. "But by popular demand we wanted to share just a few early—specifically, a preview of some of the Recon changes that are incoming."
Bungie revealed two changes coming to Recon, the first of which is a significant tweak to her Echo Pulse ability. This power lets Recon briefly scan the environment for hostiles, identifying their approximate positions via little red diamonds on the HUD. But with the changes coming on April 14, Recon's Echo Pulse will now identify whether that hostile is an AI controlled UESC robot or a human runner.
As part of this change, Bungie is making Echo Pulse less visible to enemies, making it tougher for enemy Runners "to gauge if they're in range." Depending on the extent of the adjustment, this could be a bigger deal than human/AI delineation. You can often tell the difference between UESC and human players as Recon anyway by watching how they move, but there's not much you can do about the big yellow-green wave that emanates from your position.
Enemy Runners do have a potential counter to this power boost, though. Using the Signal Jammer before being hit by Echo Pulse will make them show up as UESC, letting them potentially turn the tables on Recon. The other major adjustment is to Recon's tracker drone, which Bungie says is "about to get a bit more aggressive". Specifically, Bungie is changing it so that it can select a new target if it cannot reach its current target.
This should help alleviate frustrating moments when Recon's spider buddy gets stuck on a random piece of nearby geometry, resulting in it often blowing up uselessly and, occasionally, causing damage to yourself. I can see this change, having issues of its own if there are lots of potential targets in an area, though hopefully Bungie have already taken this into account.
All of this should put Recon on a more even standing with other Shells, and is obviously exciting for me personally. As for the changes Bungie has in store for Vandal and elsewhere, I'm sure we'll find out about those soon enough.
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