Bungie Tempts New Players With Free Period as PvE Mode and PvP Arena Battles Come to Marathon

PvE is coming to Marathon and Bungie is hoping new players will give it a shot with a free-to-play period at the start of the next Season. It’s called Symbiosis and is landing on December 8.

One of the big new changes is an update to Perimeter, giving the early game region a much-needed shake up. Previously, there was no in-between on the map, with matches either a constant meat grinder against other players or completely dead.

The zone update sees the playable zone expanded as alien trees sprout from the landscape. Now there are dark caves leading to a new POI called Reservoir, which features a large main room and catwalks for nasty ambushes. Oh, and there’s a giant crab boss now.

If you bounced off Marathon because of those aforementioned ambushes, Bungie is introducing a new mode just for you: PvE Expeditions. These let you test yourself against the tougher challenges Marathon has to offer (like big crabs) without the added threat of a team murdering you and stealing your stuff as soon as you pull it off.

Rather than taking the Arc Raiders approach and letting players play the normal extraction loop without the threat of other players, it’s seemingly a standalone mode Bungie is calling a “co-op PvE roguelite.” That means metaprogression, in-match upgrades, no two matches the same. From Bungie, it should be good stuff.

The upgrades in the new mode are called Flash Boosts and should let you become a god in an entirely new way each run. Challenges escalate with each layer you break through and scale with your power. Check out the trailer:

Bungie also introduces a new social space for Symbiosis. It’s called Limbo, and it’ll let you hang with your friends and test out kits.

It should be a good place to train with Bishop, the game’s new high-jumping and sword-slashing new Runner Shell. The trailer shows Bishop cutting through a whole gang of bots with his Ultimate.

On top of all this, there are new weapons and gadgets, as well as a new PvP deathmatch mode for people who want to get better at not being murdered in the normal extraction loop. Marathon will be free December 8-15, giving new players a chance to check it out when Symbiosis lands.