Yes, ‘ARC Raiders' Makes ‘Marathon' Look Bad

Forbes

01-05-2025

Arc Raiders
It's an unproven trend at this point, but the new race toward live multiplayer games appears to be the genre of extraction shooters, and this week brought an unusual situation with two upcoming 2025 extraction games both running Closed Alphas and so far, eliciting different reactions.
Those two games, as you can guess, are Bungie's Marathon and Embark Studio's ARC Raiders, both entries in the extraction genre that are allegedly being released in 2025. Marathon has a date, September 23, but as of now ARC does not.
There's no getting around it. The reaction to the Marathon Alpha has mostly been mixed to underwhelming. The initial reaction to the ARC Raiders Alpha has visibly skewed more positive. So what's going on?
Simply put, ARC Raiders is a much more traditional extraction shooter in the vein of Tarkov, but at least somewhat more accessible and better-looking, given it's a 2025 release.
It's a Fallout-esque concept of scavenging a ruined wasteland populated by hostile robots and other players. At its core, you skulk around, harvest materials and weapons, and attempt to extract (by going down, not up), either avoiding or killing enemies along the way. Or being killed, of course.
It's got all the traditional extraction-y things. Custom characters, crafting, proximity chat, a home base of sorts, and it just…plays much more like a traditional extraction shooter with its grounded combat. Add in some great visuals and truly fantastic sound design, and it's not a mystery why this positive reception is occurring.
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Marathon
Marathon has ditched a lot of this in an attempt to be unique, but in many ways that doesn't feel like it's the case, taking out hardcore elements extraction players want, while also perhaps not being all that accessible to the wider playerbase they want to attract.
The opposite is true here. Hero characters, not custom ones. No proximity chat, no crafting and importantly, no Solos at launch, which is something ARC Raiders does have. Community conversations with Bungie are not terribly promising, saying they'll get around to things like proximity chat and Solos eventually, but not for launch, as neither are an urgent priority according to them.
The end result here is an odd mix of traditional extraction elements, slow moving looting and stamina roadblocks, but paired with often Apex-like firefights with less mobility. It often pairs uncomfortably.
The Marathon Alpha feels less polished and more feature-light. All the claims of 'it's early, it's a Closed Alpha' don't exactly match up with the fact that ARC is also doing a Closed Alpha which seems more substantive and finished, and is likely to be out a good bit after Marathon, if not pushed to 2026. But Marathon launches in six months.
Marathon
The expectations are also not comparable. Marathon has been in development for six years and this will be Sony's biggest upcoming live service game after a string of cancellations and failures. And of course its famed shooter-maker Bungie's new IP after massive hits Halo and Destiny spanning 20+ years.
ARC's Embark has the same amount of devs in the entire studio as are working on Marathon at Bungie, around 300, but a portion of those are managing The Finals, the studio's other multiplayer game that may not be the talk of the town these days, but boasts a consistent playercount, which many may not realize.
The reception here has almost been night and day. There's no telling if ARC will for sure be a hit or if Marathon will for sure be a failure. It's not that simple. But observing how this has gone, it's impossible not to compare the two and say this has been a much better week for ARC.
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