It's almost surreal to say, but Marathon comes out in just a few weeks. Anticipation is high for Bungie's first non-Destiny release in over a decade, and since it's coming out on multiple platforms, some attention has been given to making sure players get a balanced experience across PC and console.
In an interview with Ali213, Joe Ziegler, game director on Marathon, revealed that players can actually disable cross-platform matchmaking. It's mentioned that PS5 and Xbox Series X/S players can make sure they don't get placed against PC users, though presumably there'll be an option to do the same the other way around as well.
According to a machine translation of the conversation, Ziegler says the team has gone to great lengths to ensure that using a controller or a keyboard and mouse will give you the same smoothness and fair gameplay. However, there are often disparities between them that are hard to accommodate.
In particular, PC players can tend to be quicker on the trigger, though it varies game to game by how much and to what extent. This is an argument that's burned for as long as first-person shooters have been available on home consoles and personal computers. What's important to remember is the possibility is always there, and it's good to see Bungie keeping that in mind on launch.
Being an extraction shooter, there'll be PvP, PvE, and indeed, PvPvE, but speaking of matchmaking, Marathon isn't going down the route of Arc Raiders and sorting runs based on the likelihood of people blasting each other versus the in-game enemies. There will, however, still be accommodations for wanting to focus on PvE.
The latest State of Play revealed a server slam is happening on February 26, opening the possibility of getting a preview before Marathon goes on wide release on March 5. It's been a long-time coming, but a new Bungie shooter will be in our grasp soon, what a time to be alive.
