There’s a character called “Thief”
Ziegler begins the video by saying there’s no gameplay footage to show, and talks in some very general terms about what the game is going to be - a PvP-focused extraction shooter. Ollie has already rounded upeverything we know about Marathon, and this devlog sadly doesn’t tell us anything new about the game. If anything it makes it sound less defined than before. Ziegler makes vague mention of player abilities, loot, and “runner” loadouts, while re-explaining some extraction shooter basics many first-person shooter fans will already know. He does give some indication of where the studio is in terms of production, even if he doesn’t show anything.
“Some things are a little bit more complete, like our environments are starting to come together in a really, really beautiful way,” he says. “Some of the character models we’ve been iterating through. So they’re coming together but they’re not fully there yet… So it’s a little early to show you all of it as one piece.”
There are some insubstantial teases of characters. One is codenamed “Thief” and another is codenamed “Stealth” who is unsurprisingly described as “hard to pin down”. And Ziegler mentions that the studio will be recruiting more playtesters next year. He doesn’t mention anything about the release date, or give much indication about other elements of the game.
In BBC comedy The Thick Of It, a government minister is scheduled to go on a news show. But he has absolutely nothing to announce or say. His vicious PR man, Malcolm Tucker, tells him to come up with something. “It better not be too boring,” he commands. “And it better not be too interesting either, okay? And it better not cost too much. It can’t be an old thing, obviously, and don’t make it too new.”
I can’t help but suspect Ziegler’s non-announcement is the result of the same kind of PR frogmarching and “visibility first” thinking. Bungie’s silence around the game hasnot gone unnoticed, and it’s likely the studio wanted to simply say “our game is still alive” without actually showing any work-in-progress. Compare this to thebare-faced developmentofSkatefrom Full Circle, or the almost worringlyblasé treatmentofDeadlockby Valve. Both of whom are happy to show things in various states of unreadiness.
