Bungie has just rolled out what might be Marathon’s biggest update yet. The mid-season update adds a whole new PvE mode called Vault Breaker, and even though it has significantly upped Marathon’s player count, it remains unclear if it has done enough to appease Bungie’s PlayStation overlords.
Vault Breaker is a new take on Marathon’s gameplay that removes the ever-present threat of other players. Instead, you can either head into the game’s Cryo map alone or with teammates (up to teams of three) and battle through vaults with a predetermined loadout. Other weapons can be found as you progress, but will be left behind if you extract. The only rewards that come with you if you beat the Vault Breaker are currency-based.
The aim of adding a PvE mode is, of course, to attract new players who might not be interested in Marathon’s standard PvPvE nature, lure lapsed players back, and keep regular players playing by giving them a new experience. In the short term, that has worked. Almost 15,000 people were playing at the same time on Steam alone when the update went live, tripling the base Marathon has fallen to on the platform.
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