Marathon is (mostly) a game about various trios dropping into maps, attempting to find the best loot possible, and extracting safely from the map, killing any enemy AI or other players you might encounter along the way. There are new duo variants being tested in-game, and of course, you can always hop into the game solo as a Runner or as a Rook, the robotic shell who loads into a given map with the goal of scavenging. As you might expect, the trio nature of the game implies that you play with two friends. As much as I enjoy doing that, I equally enjoy playing solo, with Crew Fill on, so that I’m put into a trio with two random players.
Maybe it’s a sign of the times, but there’s something so interesting about hopping into a trio with two random players and seeing and feeling in real-time how we three strangers come together to complete a goal. I’m always shocked when the other two players are down to help me complete my objectives, ignoring their own, or vice versa. I love hearing the way others speak in a game like Marathon – I was dying the other night, laughing at the way this guy from Philadelphia was talking down to a Rook that wouldn’t get away from us; I enjoyed just as much a match I played last night with two players from Brazil who asked if they could practice speaking English with me.
I guess what I’m getting at here is that for as enjoyable as Marathon is as a video game – and it really, really is, and I’d echo the thoughts of Game Informer’s Marathon review – it is also a fantastic anthropological experiment in how players from all over the world interact in a ruthless, cutthroat sci-fi world where your only goal is to extract as much valuable loot as possible.