I need to rant about the Shell System
Let me start by saying that after 20 hours of playing, I am really enjoying Marathon. As long as Bungie continues to support the story the way they are now, I will continue to enjoy the Extraction Shooter concept. It feels like I’m playing a campaign hunting for objectives, while it’s actively trying to kill me, with Halo/Destiny gunplay and an additional variety of equipment.
The one thing that I don’t like about it is one of Marathon’s original selling points - the Shell System, Bungie’s spin on the Extraction Shooter genre, by also making it a Hero Shooter, where you choose from premade characters with specialized abilities. In fact, I hate it so much that I have to rant on Reddit about it.
NOTHING justifies the shell system’s existence to me, story-wise, gameplay-wise, or cosmetic-wise.
The shells have no history, no goal outside of our will to explore Tau Ceti IV, the Loot/Kill/Exfil mantra or whatever contract a company has given us, meaning there is no future for them. They are copy-pasted by the same company to fill in “archetypes of gameplay”, as Bungie put it, with complementary visuals and voicelines. What happens when more characters are added, and these “archetypes”, what makes each shell different, becomes a little too vague? This puts them leagues behind other hero shooters already, with characters with rich history, justifying their roles and suggesting their actions in the present may actually change the future of the story.
I am also just not a fan of Hero Shooters at all. If one of my teammates is lacking in a role, I can’t pick up the slack, because I can’t change abilities until I’m dead or exfilled. You could argue I need to decide a composition with my team, but I don't like how we begin thinking of the collective rather than the individual. You could make the abilities not dominate the gameplay, but how far back would that put them? Traits can't have any more prominence than the abilities, so they hardly exist either. Restricting abilities to certain roles stops some potential nuance. Imagine being able to combine any abilities together, and every new ability added will account for every existing one. How will we justify shells in the future that are just a different combination of existing abilities because we couldn’t just make them modular to begin with?
One of Bungie’s arguments for archetypes is that they have easily identifiable silhouettes. This had to have been the weakest argument I ever heard. Identifying enemies works when not everything is humanoid, far away, the same colour and/or in a dark space. It also doesn't work when you sell cosmetics that change that silhouette.
This is not Halo. I could not tell you how many times I thought I saw a player, only to ping a UESC unit’s legs. This whole thing takes away the chance of a full-on character customization system that has existed in previous Bungie games, to make characters that better represented us and not some premade robots. This is such a step back.
I asked some questions on the Marathon Discord about the whole system, and one member told me something interesting (Could be false, but it explains a lot, so bare with me): Once upon a time, the abilities in the game were modular, but after a Valorant dev joined the game, it became a traditional Hero Shooter. When the shells were first announced, they didn’t have the subtitle of Shells - just Runners, which is what we, the player, are supposed to be. They also had different names. I believe Bungie was planning for a story built on the runners’ backgrounds, something separate from us, until the Alpha was shown off, but after that was received negatively, they changed direction to explore more of Tau Ceti IV’s dark mysterious world, which is far more interesting than anything I could imagine they would do with runners. So, what we have now are mere shells of their former selves, existing purely because of a last-minute change in direction and an avenue for monetization
It’s no secret that Hero Shooters are lucrative in the game industry, especially when your characters are conventionally attractive, and you can sell entire skins rather than individual items for a personal customization system. Players will feel like they’re getting more bang for their buck, when they’re paying the highest price anyway. Make these characters appeal to them too, personality wise, playstyle wise, and you have a major seller.
The Thief shell is where I particularly want to pick at this. She has the most human design, with Asian features, and an Asian accent. Here is a good video that explains how Asian characters in media have been fetishized to shit while I continue my point. Characters like Ada Wong, DVa, Kiriko and Sage have been attracting players to their games for years, particularly the latter two because of e-couples buying skins for each other. I am confident this will happen with Thief because it's already happening. I am in before Triage and Thief e-couples because of that cinematic trailer. Thief also wears a rich-looking jacket, Canada Goose or (Seki)Gucci, appealing to a hypebeast fanbase that will gatekeep the conversation of money because I just can’t admit I’m broke. Lastly, Thief has released unbalanced, her drone especially, which has allowed for an evasive playstyle to get the most out of the game at little risk, so players will invest in her and maybe her skins. That is my conspiracy theory.
While I have just vented about how the industry-wide tactics Bungie has pulled to sell cosmetics, they haven’t even been doing well. On top of the game being 40 bucks at base, it has battle pass, which sells one shell skin, for Vandal, who some players just might not play. They have to issue out new skins for the next update (Although they might have just been trying to see how much they could squeeze us).
I don't believe a single argument Bungie has made for the Shell System. The people it benefits in the end is Bungie and that is because it will make them money. Barely. End of rant.
Posted Mar 14, 2026, 6:21 AM UTC