This game will fill a niche that does not currently exist. I cannot wait to be complaining about the year 3 season pass and shotgun balance changes.

Let me start off by saying the game and art style looked really cool from the teasers and I was actually really excited to play this. Unfortunately, the alpha couldn’t live up to that initial hype.

Art Direction & Performance
The teasers had a simple-yet-realistic (PBR) shading style. Instead, we got cel-shading that feels straight out of a children’s cartoon. It strips away every bit of the moody atmosphere and makes the whole thing look like a generic indie game. What’s worse, the performance is abysmal for a title that looks this underwhelming.

Aim Assist as a “Core” Mechanic?
I get the impulse to lure players away from Tarkov’s steep learning curve, but implementing aim assist on mouse and keyboard feels like a crutch. It shouldn’t be the “core” hook of your extraction shooter. It cheapens every firefight, turning what should be tense duels into point-and-click spectacles.
And it's clear that they wanted this as a mechanic considering there are items in the game that buff your aim assist.

Where’s the Tactics?
If you’re going to make headshots as easy as breathing and recoil practically non-existent, I’d hope you’d at least bank on sound and positioning to reward smarter play. Instead, player footsteps can only rarely be heard and in a very small radius because of all the background noise, UESC ships dropping in, distant gunfire, random sounds I can't identify, so it devolves into a glorified run-and-gun arena with none of the flank-and-clear strategy I was looking forward to.

Broken Voice Chat & Random Squads
Voice chat either fails outright or nobody bothers using it, so you’re thrown into 3-man teams of strangers who ignore callouts and don’t coordinate.

Day-One Access, But Only for Streamers?
I was “lucky” enough to snag a code on day 1 of the alpha, but it feels downright insulting that only streamers got friend invites. If you’re forcing 3-player squads, let people actually team up with their buddies! Instead, you funnel non-streamers into random squads and hope for the best. No wonder so many alpha players are fed up being forced to play with randoms. Their discord does not even have a LFG (Looking for Group) channel, seems like they legit only care about the streamers in this alpha.

Bottom Line
Marathon had real promise unique art, potential for good firefights, a fresh take on extraction shooters but every design choice so far drags it toward mediocrity. I really wanted to like this.

The best TL;DR I can write is this: Marathon is a beginner-friendly extraction shooter and I'm excited to see where it goes.

I know full well my ass would NEVER be able to exfil ONCE in Tarkov, but here I'm not only building up my vault, but having a GOOD TIME doing it. with RANDOM SQUAD FILLS. How do you manage that in an extraction shooter? An unusual approach. And the Runners are certainly that - with unique abilities keeping things fresh and lively in combat, and helping introduce me to a genre that's usually too hardcore for someone like me.

I'm much more comfortable in PvE in most games, and to get me to branch into something much more unforgiving, like this genre, means you've done something particularly engaging with that experience. It's the reason I was so excited to give this a shot the moment the Gameplay Reveal dropped - The specific way they approached extraction shooters as a genre is such a standout that I think it's going to help Bungie bring in audience members you wouldn't typically expect.

I don't understand the hate, personally. It's great for an alpha, and I'm only excited to watch it grow into something more.