Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, has skilled a great deal of pre-release turbulence. It solely simply obtained a launch date after a prolonged delay following tough playtest suggestions, and after a fiasco involving some stolen artwork belongings, studio morale took a nostril dive.
Former artwork director Joseph Cross left the studio in Dec. 2025 after six years, and final Tuesday, he unpacked his ideas on the net discourse round Marathon in an interview with Mikhail Klimentov of ReaderGrev.
Cross instructed Klimentov the crew felt distinct “spells” the place discuss across the recreation was optimistic at first, after which turned adverse. “Personally, I will compartmentalize a number of that,” he mentioned within the interview.
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“The artwork is basically an important factor to me right here. It is tough for me to take any of that stuff personally as a result of I consider within the artwork, as a result of I consider in what we have achieved. I believe we did one thing actually cool, and I believe it would pan out.” He added that he had no say over design or “the way in which the sport performs,” however “what I may management, I really feel actually good about.”
“You may’t take that away from me, as a lot because the haters strive on-line or wherever,” mentioned Cross. “And whether or not somebody does not occur to love the artwork route personally, whether or not they do not agree with some political factor Bungie did, or regardless of the animosity du jour is, you may’t take the factor I care about essentially the most away.
“It’s like once you drop the toast and it goes face down. It is like: Rattling, I want it will have gone face up once I dropped the toast. It appears like dropping a lottery ticket or being within the mistaken place on the mistaken time. And that stuff by no means feels private, ?”
That mentioned, Cross additionally felt “a accountability to the crew to climate that stuff,” which he described as “a complete different can of soup.” The legendarily fast failure of Harmony, one other recreation below the Sony umbrella that was shut down mere weeks after it launched, drew consideration to one thing that Cross admitted “form of weighed” on him.
“We felt like we have been form of getting away with one thing,” he mentioned. “The thought of studios funding unproven, unknown initiatives for six or eight years, for lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, form of on spec. How for much longer are issues like this going to exist?”
Cross mentioned it was simple to neglect that the crew was “making a product with a ticking clock that should launch into the world and make profound quantities of cash … the profundity of releasing these things into the wild actually might be form of a thoughts fuck.” That stress sometimes hampered creativity: “you’re feeling like you may’t impose something that appears like a danger.”
Whereas it is unimaginable to know for certain that Marathon will fare any higher than Harmony, Cross instructed Klimentov he is assured the crew’s work will repay. “That is the place you must form of placed on the armor of artwork and place confidence in your perspective and expertise as an artist. All nice artwork—industrial artwork in any case—it’s doubted and there’s a stage of skepticism. Till there’s not.”
