LOOT GREMLIN; or, 'Marathon is the only Big Map Shooter that loves me back.'
As the title implies, 'Big Map Shooters' fucking hate me with a passion. We're talking battle royales, extraction looter shooters, whatever the fuck you wanna call 'em. You and two, maybe three other people drop into a map with a bunch of other squads and try to come out alive. It sounds like a fun ordeal, and I know a lot of people who say it's fun. For some reason, however, most games like that just keep trying to reach through the screen and kill me.
I have an anxiety disorder of some kind - can't remember which one - and this genre of shooter keeps pushing me into panic attacks that take over an hour to resolve. When Apex Legends first came out, I could only play it for about two weeks before I had to call it quits for my sanity and my physical health. My heart rate would race well beyond 140, my vision would blur and my body would feel as hot as the sun as my fingers turned into icicles. I tried to love these genres, but they hated me back.
Marathon's different. It kisses me on the mouth, squeezes my asscheek a little bit and says "good game, sis."
I can't really tell you why, but Marathon doesn't give me insane panic attacks like other games of its kind do. I can maybe take a few guesses at it though, because I feel like Marathon deserves it. If it can somehow let my cowardly ass play this genre of video games, it's earned at least a bit of a closer look at why it does that. So, here's my guesses.
1. Maturity and emotional regulation
Just to get it out of the way quickly, there's a chance that it has nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with me just managing my anxiety better as I've aged. It's been seven years since I played Apex, and a lot has happened in that time. I helped build a queer community in a part of Canada that is known to contain multiple active militant white supremacist groups, I moved away from an abusive home life, and over those seven years I've done a lot of work on myself. So, chances are kinda high I just grew a spine. There's still a part of me that thinks there's more to it than that, but it could always be placebo. But hey, if it is just me getting less scared in general, then that's a positive. We take those.
2. Desperation to love the game
This is... maybe a weird one? Maybe it isn't weird at all, I dunno, but there's just something about Marathon that makes me want really badly to love the game. Its visual flair and strong creative direction pulls hard at my personal tastes; they call it 'graphic retro-futurism.' Stark neutrals against highly saturated accents, monospace sans-serif fonts throughout with the occasional traditional serif font for some spice... it just makes my eyes drool. I love it. I've spoken numerous times about just how much I value strong creative choices in video games, and Marathon's is about as strong as it gets.
Beyond that, I also really want to love the game because a few of my friends and a couple of my partners are playing it. To be more specific, friends whose taste in games don't often line up with mine are playing it. Marathon caught my eye with its style, but seeing my friends have fun with it made me want to have fun with them. I know Bungie is pretty damn good at making shooters - I used to play Destiny 2 before it, too, scorched me like other shooters - so if I could figure out a way to enjoy myself, I might finally be able to play a fun Bungie shooter with people I wanna spend time with.
3. The lore though
Come on. This is Marathon we're talking about here. Starting from a trilogy of 90's games that we now lovingly call "boomer shooters," we now have a brand new look into that world. We might find out what exactly went wrong on Tau Ceti! Was it all just the work of the W'rkncacnter when it was released by the Phor? Or was this the planet itself rebelling against colonization efforts? Did Durandal doom us all in his rampancy, or is this part of his plan? What role do we, as runners, play in all of this? Are we making things worse by helping all these different factions rob the ruins of the Tau Ceti colony, or will we learn how to stop whatever is going on? Which timeline are we on? I WANNA FUCKING KNOW!
4. Bungie's just that good
Maybe Bungie's figured out the exact balance between tension and release that I need so I can enjoy the game. Bungie themselves constantly bring up the word 'tension' in interviews as if it was an obsession. However, any creative individual worth their weight in salt knows how important contrasts are. "Dark looks darkest against bright" is a common idiom in various spaces, and it can reference anything - subject matter, colour, lighting, shape, camerawork, and the list goes on. You can't just have tension if you want your game to feel tense - you need to feel a relief from that tension, too.
Perhaps Bungie's cocktail of tension and release just hits my brain right. Playing Rook makes this seem more obvious to me. I play Rook as if I were in a horror movie, sneaking around the Big Scary Monsters lurking just beyond the corner to grab some kind of Maguffin and get out alive. The only "jumpscare" I really have to be afraid of is getting intercepted by a squad, and when I compare Human Contact to Scary Monster That Will Give You Traumatic Nightmares, suddenly the squad of people shooting me to death doesn't look so bad.
Conclusion
Overall, this game is just a lot of fun. Typically, I'm a total coward who gets panic attacks from games like this. Even so, I'm finding enough to enjoy about Marathon to allow me to keep playing without risking a heart attack. The game looks gorgeous, it sounds gorgeous (in its sound design and especially its music, holy shit) and it feels amazing to play. THEY EVEN HAVE A LEVER-ACTION PRECISION RIFLE, as if the developers were actively trying to seduce me in particular. I'm not so delusional to think they ACTUALLY tried to seduce specifically me, but hey, if the shoe fits, ya know?
I'm not exactly a noob to this genre, but a lot of my experiences have bordered on traumatic until now. I dunno if I can recommend this game to everybody, though. Aurahack mentioned in her own blog that the opposite has happened to her; while she enjoys competitive shooters, Marathon has brought her to tears. I feel for her, strongly. I know how it feels to want to enjoy a game in the way others do and just not be allowed to. So I can't really say whether you, the reader, would enjoy this game or not. Maybe having a combative, bordering-on-self-harm, "fuck you, come here and kill me yourself" attitude when facing down adversity has helped. Who knows.
But to summarize how I feel about Marathon, "game's got its tongue shoved down my throat and I'm fuckin swooning about it."