A PvE-only mode is coming to Marathon as Bungie lays out plans for seasons 3, 4 and 5

Marathon director Joe Ziegler has laid out Bungie’s vision for the next few seasons of Marathon. If you’re looking for a statement that confronts all the doomerism around the extraction shooter’s Steam numbers or a followup on Sony’s writedown of the studio’s value, you won’t find in Ziegler’s latest communiqué. What you will find is a recap of how things are going in the game itself, including some big experiments in the works.

The studio’s working on a new map that “leans into alien elements and mind warping debuffs,” for instance, but that’s still way off. The next Runner shell is a defensive kit named Sentinel. But the most interesting of the reveals are undoubtedly two planned PvE-focused modes coming next season.

“We want to evolve Marathon as a whole to be an experience where you can find more novel ways to play when you’re stressed out from a nail-biting run and just need to cool off or have fun without the stress. Options where you can go full sweat or lean back and chill,” Ziegler wrote.

To that end, look out for the following sometime in season 2:

• In Season 2, we will be experimenting with two modes, one at the beginning of the season and one towards the middle/latter half of the season. The experimental mode at the beginning of the season will focus more on PvE, but with a light touch of PvP. The second experimental mode will be a PvE-only mode that’s focused on crews being tasked with completing objectives together and making some progress across matches.

I know Destiny diehards who will be excited to hear that, especially the purely PvE mode. Marathon does really only have one mental mode (stressed the heck out), so I see potential in PvE options that let rival squads lay down their swords.

But before you interpret that as Bungie waving the white flag and just making Destiny again, well, PvP is the big strength of Marathon, and Bungie wants to try new stuff in that arena as well.

• We’ll continue to run experimental queues beyond these two offerings for Season 2 and beyond, testing the waters around other mechanics (such as perhaps a more purely PvP-focused mode) with the potential for these to become part of the core game loop or permanent new ways to play.

From the outside looking in, I’m skeptical that Marathon’s existing maps will adapt nicely to a PvE format. There isn’t a huge variety of UESC enemies to fight, and even the meanest boss fights in the game are balanced around squads of three. My gut says a meaningful co-op mode would take a lot of dedicated design work to get right. But this is Bungie we’re talking about, so that might be exactly what it has in mind.

More will be shared on season 2-specific changes, like faster faction progression and new options to boost your runner stats, the week of May 25.