Bungie has revealed that its upcoming extraction game, Marathon, is conceived as a long-term project. Creative director Julia Nardin confirmed that the studio already has the main narrative planned for the coming years, although it remains open to community influence. For Bungie, audience participation is an essential part of the magic of a game as a service, seeking a complex balance between a fixed plot and one that reacts to player decisions.
Fixed past, moldable future in Tau Ceti 🎮
The key to Marathon's design lies in separating the past from the present. While the history of the colony in Tau Ceti is already fully defined by the developers, current and future events may be affected by the collective actions of players. This approach seeks to avoid narrative contradictions and allow the base lore to serve as a solid pillar, while players feel that their matches have real consequences on the game's evolution.
The paradox of a living story (but with a script) 🤔
In other words, Bungie says the story will react to players, but the lore of the past is already written. So, you can decide the colony's future, but don't ask what happened yesterday because that was already decided by them. It's like having a decision tree where you can only choose from the branches they let you see. A very nice freedom, as long as you don't try to change the instruction manual that's already printed.