Marathon's secret sauce has a special ingredient: the team behind masterful indie roguelike Caves of Qud

The definitive word on Bungie's Marathon won't be laid down for quite some time yet, but everyone who plays it can agree on one thing: it's got that special sauce. The otherworldly sci-fi energy of Tau Ceti IV has clearly had a huge amount of care and thought put into every piece of the puzzle, from its gleaming environments to its sinister megacorporations, the dark hostility of its world, and the deliberately expendable nature of its runners. But the method behind the magic clicks into place with the reveal of one unexpected detail: the involvement of Caves of Qud developers Freehold Games.

"Ah, we can finally say that Jason Grinblat and I had the real privilege of working on narrative preproduction for several years on Marathon," Freehold co-founder Brian Bucklew writes via Bluesky. "It has an incredible narrative team, and is a very special game that takes its narrative very seriously, in a fresh way that honors its unique past." Listed alongside the pair as a fellow 'narrative consultant' on the FPS game is Rob McLees, who was previously best known as Bungie's 'Keeper of the Halo Story Bible.'

If you haven't touched Caves of Qud, I wouldn't really blame you, given its notoriously complex nature, but you're missing something special. The roguelike hit 1.0 in 2024, a full 14 years on from its first public beta, and boasts the illustrious 'overwhelmingly positive' Steam review rating with 95% of players recommending it. It even won a Hugo Award. Caves of Qud can be held up as a shining example of deep, intricate systems coming together to make something truly special. It's a game you could spend thousands of hours mastering and still feel like you haven't seen it all.

Given the lovingly built science-fantasy world that Freehold Games has constructed, it makes sense that Bungie picked up the phone to call them in for Marathon. Caves of Qud draws you into a labyrinthine web of intertwined storytelling and lore that tells the tale of a planet that might be tipping over the verge of dying, or right upon the cusp of rebirth. It layers its more procedural, emergent parts over a handwritten core that was built up over more than a decade, and it shows.

"It's so fun to sit in a room with incredible writers like Jason and Jon [Goff, Marathon design lead], and then also me who can code a little and is there too," Bucklew remarks of his work on the shooter. Responding to comments congratulating him on the project, he notes that the work was "remote and a pretty light pace, just over a long time," and adds that he's "really so, so happy with what their production team made happen."

"It's almost all the production narrative team, not us," Bucklew says, "we were just pitching crazy ideas. As a player I think the production team did an amazing job." Nevertheless, it's a reveal that's making me swing towards giving Marathon more time, because it helps to underscore how focused Bungie were on delivering worldbuilding worthy of the Marathon legacy.

If you're tempted to try Caves of Qud as a result of this, Freehold is planning at least three expansion packs to arrive in the coming years, so now's a good time to start.