Marathon game director Joe Ziegler just published the kind of 'state of the game' letter that Destiny 2 players would actually kill for right now. Three months in, the silver bullet has officially been chambered: a PvE-only mode is coming to Marathon, and so is a lot more.

Season 2 of Marathon will introduce two more experimental game modes. One, coming at the start of the season, has "a touch of PvP" but focuses on PvE. The other is "a PvE-only mode that's focused on crews being tasked with completing objectives together and making some progress across matches."

Some Marathon players might call this heresy. Marathon avoiders might call it salvation – a way into the game's incredible gunplay, art, and audio that doesn't involve the stress and frustration of PvP.

Ziegler calls it an experiment, and says Bungie will continue experimental queues in the future, "such as perhaps a more purely PvP-focused mode," with "potential for these to become part of the core game loop or permanent new ways to play."

As a response to an intimidating game whose active population quickly shrank after launch – Ziegler focuses on the "strong core community" Marathon's developed – it's about as silver as bullets get.

Oh, and the max size of our vault will be increased in Season 2, letting us store more stuff. That's nice, too.

Ziegler examines three months of feedback in his lengthy post – the highlights, the pain points, and the lessons to bring forward. I'll let our Marathon review tell you what the game does well. Let's focus on what, as Ziegler says, didn't go so well, and what Bungie wants to improve.

First, a Bungie classic: "Marathon is overwhelming to learn." Ziegler recognizes that the onboarding experience is heady, and from there it's "easy to hit a wall if you're not spending lots of time, don't have a consistent crew, or are not super skilled."

"Matches can feel like a death spiral for some players," he continues. "You kit up, you go in, you die to a spawn rush, or someone gets the jump on you as you're looting. Faction progress can feel like a slog, and you struggle to get mats and credits out to upgrade." Playing solo, of course, makes it all worse.

Endgame fights are often flooded with "bubbles, ‘nade spam, and snipers," Ziegler adds, and "sometimes you don't want to sweat." And in this mix, "matchmaking can be a blessing or a curse."

Season 2 of Marathon will start to tackle these problems, and Bungie's also got plans all the way up to at least Season 5, from new runners and weapons to new-player improvements and world-building ambitions. Bungie is working on new ways to extract with varying risks, an updated matchmaking system with "different dimensions" to better align players, UX improvements to "help make setting goals and getting into a match smoother," and changes to the contract system that will elevate progression.

Season 4 will focus on "building more depth into the existing extraction loop," Ziegler adds, while Season 5 will look at ways to bring "the whole ecosystem of (PV(P)VE) play together and evolving our weird sci-fi world in new ways."

Season 2 starts June 2, bringing the game's first wipe. The farther ahead we look, the more abstract plans become, but it certainly seems like Bungie is swinging for the fences. With these future plans, Ziegler speaks over the understandable unrest circulating among Marathon (and also Destiny 2) fans following new owner Sony's latest staggering write-down on the studio. Marathon was not an Arc Raiders or Apex Legends-sized instant-hit, but it's got more in the tank.

"Big things coming down the line!" Ziegler says.

I played Marathon and its 1994 predecessor to see how Bungie has evolved over the years.

Scottish actor Alec Newman has inhabited countless incredible universes both on and off screen, having once played Dune protagonist Paul Atreides in Syfy's Emmy-winning 2000 miniseries before becoming a video game pro with roles in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk 2077, and Elden Ring, among many other major titles. But none of it compares to playing tough guy Kliff in open-world adventure Crimson Desert, he says.

Newman describes his time working with developer Pearl Abyss on Crimson Desert in a new interview with Fall Damage, providing interesting insight to why the notoriously stoic Kliff is so much like a piece of wood that occasionally deigns to speak. He says he thinks Pearl Abyss initially cast him for the character, who was originally named Macduff, mostly because the developer wanted "a Scottish lilt to Kliff's voice."

But even when the stone-faced Greymane was voiceless, Newman could tell just by "the render of Kliff's face and the way that he walked, [...] that he had to be a Scot." That led Newman to the sweet realization that Kliff looked a bit like his wife's recently passed stepfather, and so the actor decided that "Kliff's voice is basically his voice."

It's ultimately a lovely tribute. On one hand, Crimson Desert players often bring up its superficial story when criticizing the otherwise wildly successful game, and as part of this complaint, they wish Pearl Abyss had given Kliff a more original narrative than a strong man with a square forehead who stomps around the woods with a sword. But, most people agree, Kliff is also obviously softhearted, and they like that.

In a popular Reddit thread with over 1,000 comments debating why "Kliff is one of the worst AAA MCs in gaming history," for example (ouch), one highly-upvoted reply disagrees and says, "I like the dude. He's over here giving coins to beggars when he had zero to start with. And saving cats. What a nice dude."

"The game is beautiful," concludes Newman during his interview. "It's unlike anything I've ever been involved in, that's for sure." He later says, "If they asked me, I'd happily record Cliff forever." But, he admits, "there's a kind of irony in a character that's a little bit reserved recording for that amount of time."

Crimson Desert DLC teased as Pearl Abyss looks to "broaden the game to the next level" following record quarterly revenue of around $180 million.