I was pretty excited when I read about Marathon’s Vault Breaker PvE mode in June: I like shooting things, and I love the Marathon aesthetic, but the grind of extraction shooters just isn’t my thing. In an update released today, ahead of next week’s mid-season update, Bungie revealed more about the upcoming “experimental” PvE mode, including that its initial iteration will only be available for two weeks.
Vault Breaker will go live alongside the mid-season update on July 21, and will be playable until August 4. The full rollout is currently set to happen in Marathon season 3, which begins on September 22—although that won’t necessarily be the date it goes live.
It’s understandable that Bungie would want to go slow with Vault Breaker, at least to start. As “a roguelite PvE experience inside Cryo Archive,” it makes significant changes to the Marathon formula: Players will access Vault Breaker with unique Sponsored Kits, and instead of extracting with the loot they’ve gathered, it will all be left behind. Instead, players will upgrade their equipment with a new kind of in-game currency collected during runs called Vault Data.
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One new detail revealed in today’s update is that there will be two tiers of Vault Data. Tier One Vault Data is found in vaults and must be exfilled in order to be collected, and will also be awarded for killing a UESC Commander regardless of whether or not you successfully extract; Tier Two Vault Data is only earned by successfully solving consecutive vaults on the same run, and then extracting. Bungie warned that “this will be especially tough for solo Runners,” although you’ll also be able to take the mode on in duos or trios, if you’re into that sort of thing.
There will also be two tiers of Vault Data items offered on a weekly rotation, as well as a “daily deluxe weapon,” Prestige weapons, and other items. However, while this equipment can be purchased with Vault Data, they’re only for use in standard Marathon modes, and won’t be available in Vault Breaker, which as mentioned is only accessible with Sponsored Kits.
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“At the start, the kit is at its weakest, offering only one standard weapon along with a small amount of equipment and consumables,” Bungie explained. “As you earn Vault Data, different upgrade paths will begin to open. You might want to focus on weapon quality. Others may want more survivability, or they may want to get started with a wider mix of implants and cores. The path is entirely up to you.”
It’s a long shot, but even so I hold out some small hope that Vault Breaker will be such an immediate success that Bungie decides to keep it around, rather than pulling it until season 3. PC Gamer Marathon man Rory Norris had similar thoughts about the new “PvP-lite” Sponsored Survival mode, an experimental queue that ran for a week in June: He said the mode is so good, “it should remain a permanent fixture and be expanded to the other maps once the test wraps up next week.”
Bungie is in a tough spot right now. Destiny 2 is dead, the studio has been gutted, and the only bullet it has in the chamber is Marathon, which has not been a blockbuster success. I don’t know how likely it is that the addition of a proper PvE mode will turn that around, but I’m eager to try it, and I hope that opening the door to players who want to engage with the setting but aren’t big fans of extraction shooters proves a successful strategy.
