Marathon, a Game Releasing in 2025, Won’t Have a Feature Used by Multiplayer Games Decades Ago

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Following yesterday’s reveal of Marathon, Bungie is releasing more information about the extraction shooter, though not all of it might be well received by the gaming community.

Chief among the things confirmed is something that seems like an odd(for lack of a better word) gameplay design decision for a team-based online-focused game.

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Marathon Wants to Combat Toxicity But Might Be Going About It the Wrong Way

For those who use proximity chat in team-based shooters, Bungie has confirmed Marathon will not feature proximity chat. If you’re unfamiliar with the communication feature, it’s something many shooters use today. It lets people speak to other players once they’re within the vicinity of the player. Once they’re near enough, players can say anything they want—good or bad—and the only way to stop it is by blocking the targeted player.

It looks like Bungie isn’t taking any chances with Marathon, as it’s disabling the feature right away.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Game Director Joe Ziegler discussed the rationale for removing proximity chat from the equation: “When it comes to prox chat, I don’t think we’re against the experience of it, to be fair. I think the challenge is how to make sure we’re creating a safe environment for players inside of that space.”

Ziegler doesn’t think voice proximity chat is something any dev has figured out, adding,”I don’t think anyone really has a good solution to that just yet. Because we’re so dedicated to making sure that we’re creating a safe space where we don’t have players just flaming each other or doing terrible things to one another, I think we’re not ready to invest in prox chat until we have a solution.”

While I understand why Bungie is doing it, it’s still a baffling move for a game that’s supposed to focused on team-based activities. Note that team chat will be available, but wouldn’t joking with an enemy or coming up near them unaware provide added entertainment too? Will players be OK with it? We’ll know for sure once the game releases on September 23.

Even if there’s no proximity chat, at least players won’t be required to create a PlayStation account on Xbox and PC in order to play it.

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