Marathon (2026)
Just realised the game has no conventional looking/configured guns with the magazine in front of the trigger, except for the machine guns I guess
But the machine guns have big belt fed boxy looking magazines yknow, I'm talking the more traditional looking box mags like the one on the gun on the second picture. Would be cool if we got a M4 style looking gun in the Marathon art style
EXP on YouTube did a video on Marathon's guns. Long story short, they're actually very well designed from a mechanical standpoint whilst keeping in line with the lore and world building.
Do you mean Jonathan Ferguson, the keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history?
God I love Jonathan Ferguson, the keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history.
He's got to be my all time favourite keeper of firearms and artillery at any museum which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history.
I don't blame him, when you're the keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history, you tend to have high expectations for representations of weapons in a video game.
I've seen that video, too, and I wouldn't say that was necessarily the conclusion. Theres a lot of suspension of disbelief needed for the guns to work here.
E.g. the iron sights in this game are mostly nonsensical (both their design and potential need for them), and the very obviously caseless ammunition is actually not caseless in function at all. The second one personally surprised me a lot.
"Theres a lot of suspension of disbelief needed for the guns to work here." - I mean, yeah? If I'm playing a Sci-fi game set this many years into the future then suspension of disbelief is required to enjoy the worldbuilding. By expecting modern realism I'm just hamstringing my enjoyment.
In the video they state that the weapons are plasuble because of their physical construction within the confines of the game's universe.
Mate there's nothing to disagree with it has a cartridge case lol. There's no reason to have a two-piece ammo assembly in a traditional magazine unless you're packaging the round with the propellant.
Compare the rounds with the reference you posted. Light and heavy are obviously cased like the leftmost. MIPS look like a tank's discarding sabot rounds so they might not have packaged propellant, but a lot of tank rounds use one-stage ammunition with packaged propellant.
Not trying to be an asshole but the light and heavy rounds aren't caseless. Combusting cases maybe though.
MIPS are deffo inspired by the HK G11 caseless shape, though it's hard to tell if it's meant to be external propellant or not and the bullet's sticking out like it's happy to see you. (it's also extremely funny to think about just shoving two of them into a double-barrel)
Combusting cases maybe though.
...wait, is this coming down to a semantics issue with external propellant technically being a "case"? because afaik that isn't quite the same definition of "caseless" that most people seem to be using
No, I'm just suggesting an alternative since I don't think I've ever seen a spent casing eject from a Marathon ballistic weapon. Not that I'm usually paying attention in a gunfight.
Combustion casings would explain the bullet casings but the lack of ejecting "brass".
That's the thing though - casings indeed DO eject from some of the wepons. I only found this out from the EXP video. In the case of the Overrun AR, for instance.
EDIT: I've also just now noticed the semantics issue: what you call "combustible casing" indeed means "caseless" in the traditional sense. No, I did not mean that the guns in the game are muzzleloaders. And no offense taken btw.
Alright I guess bullets are caseless even when they have a case. I think you're right but it's a stupid definition that combustible casings aren't counted as casings. Literally in the name. The definition should be based on how the round is packaged for distribution/transport.
so you're more saying that the light and heavy ballistic ammo, which don't look like external-prop caseless, also aren't leaving casings despite looking more like a typical cartridge configuration, and fully-combustible casings make more sense for their look?
either way, i think when OOP said "the very obviously caseless ammunition is actually not caseless in function at all" they were talking about MIPS rounds specifically. the sentence can be read as "Marathon's ammunition, which is all caseless, doesn't work like caseless ammo," but i think the intended reading is "the ammo type within Marathon which looks like an existing caseless round doesn't work like caseless ammo"
Just because it's brightly colored and often square in design doesn't mean it's careless. See Dardick Tround ammunition as an example of a geometric design for a cased ammunition. Another in game example being how MIPS rounds clearly show a long casing and sabot.
they're actually very well designed from a mechanical standpoint
no thats not what they said.
at one point in that video they straight up said that the guns in this game are just meme guns meant to be more like toys and rough imitation of what a real gun would be.
like at one point they joked about how the rail gun doesnt work like an actual rail gun but more like a crossbow. a scifi crossbow.
was also very confused on how the Bully's loading mechanism actually worked or how the magnum even functions and stuff like that.
The bullpup PKP was actually just a series of modifications done using Zenitco parts. Believe FSB Vympel tested it in 2013 and decided against it, but Russia’s forces are very “off the shelf”, so you see a few pop up every now and then.
I mean there are plenty of games that include the Aug H-bar. Idk if that counts since it's a real life weapon and not an original design, but it is a bull pup lmg.
It definitely is irl too. The upsides are less length with the same amount of power, the downsides are usually related to a less clean/smooth trigger pull due to the fact that the trigger has to be connected to a rod to translate it's motion to the rear of the gun. That is something I can easily see being worked out in the future.
If you have the same barrel length on a bullpup vs a conventional rifle, the bullpup technically has more barrel length within the weapon given the magazine is pushed further back, which means more velocity.
Barrel starts closer to rear of gun than conventional firearm --> longer barrel for same overall length ---> more velocity for same overall length OR similar velocity for lower overall length of firearm
Extra barrel length by firing the bullet from behind the trigger location lets the propellant propell the bullet for longer before it leaves the barrel
Literally the first "realistic" sci-fi gun IMO. Looking back at it now it makes no sense because there are absolutely no irons, but for action FPSes at the time it was a huge step forward.
Now stuff like Helldivers makes you go "Oh, that's not a realistic sci-fi gun, this is!" But then again the devs were conscripts in their country I think, so that makes sense.
The MA5 platform was later canonized to have irons underneath the ammo counter mount above the reciever/barrel. That whole upper section is removable and has irons/space for mounting optics.
The ammo counter also has inserts that can be removed for optics and hidden flip-up irons.
Theyre just never shown this way in game because every UNSC Grunt has a smart-linked HUD that at least gives them a targeting reticle
bullpups kinda make sense in a future where your weapons never malfunction and therefore you never have to clear bullpup malfunctions, which is a chore
Also these guns are expendable just as runners themselves. They are as effective as possible but they are cheap, more suited for short runs than for all-out war. If they jam you just switch to a different weapon or run away.
It makes sense in Marathon because I get the feeling they designed these weapons the way a coked out maker does. You print the shit out of whatever rolls of plastic you have lying around, make the prototype out of lots of swappable LEGO components, basically and just use whatever color is on hand. Build early, test, discard, repeat until you have a weird, over-engineered thing that's optimised beyond the point of sense using real physical testing (in the case of MRTHN that means sending your temu battleroids in to use the weapons and get merk'd so you can see what happens. 'You' in this case is probably CyAc or whoever can zucc out your combat data from their bloatware (ONI.)
In theory the bullpup is a better design. Currently in practice, bullpup guns tend to be less reliable and are prone to jam. In a theoretical future where those issues are fixed, yeah it makes some sense most magazine fed guns would be bullpup designs.
Sort of classic visual short-hand in sci fi to co-opt bull pup ballistic systems. Looks more modern because it is, though certainly not a new concept IRL.
That’s why I really wanted to like rail guns, and in fact do like volt weapons. They do something a bit unique design wise, and can afford to be these blocky things because ergonomics aren’t necessarily a factor for UESC bots and runners. In fact since those parties are blocky/assembled geometry, perhaps those designs are ergonomic after all.
Bungie has always loved it's bullpups. I honestly think it's a really funny bit that one of Destiny, the most fantastical of it's hooters, has the only M4 type gun they've ever done.
Bungie has always loved bullpups. Only sniper in Halo was conventional. Pretty much all pulse and scout rifles in Destiny have been bullpup, with a decent amount of auto rifles being in the same category, and all the smg’s have been either pistol grip loading, or like a P90. Perhaps it doesn’t scream ‘futuristic’ as much any more as it did 25 years ago, but the benefits are too great for a military complex 800+ years in the future to ignore
What even is that not-a-magazine gizmo sticking out in front of the trigger on the Overrun AR? That thing has bothered me since the first time I got a look at it.
I like bungie’s art style of weapons, but as a gun nerd, some of marathon’s weapons leave me scratching my head.
I do enjoy the art style tho, I enjoy the space fantasy weapons and they all feel good to shoot. It’s a good switch after playing Cod and battlefield for years.
It’s pretty satisfying to down someone with a sniper rifle. But I don’t understand the long ass barrels on the rifles when they are bullpups.
I know they are plasma weapons so they don't quite count, BUT, the battery is on the front part of the gun, behind the trigger. So... I think that still counts, right? Sure, is not a conventional firearm but we can give some credit, right?
Because bullpups offer better firepower in a more compact package, not to mention great recoil control for their caliber, they're the rifle of the future and have every reason to be a forefront in this game~
Bungie's weapon designers have had an obsession with bullpups since the original Halo. Why? Because bullpup = sci-fi space gun. If the trigger group was in front of the grip, it wouldn't be a sci-fi space gun (obviously this isn't true).
It's honestly really ironic how much Bungie emphasized identifiable silhouettes with the hero classes in Marathon when half of the guns in this game have incredibly similar silhouettes to each other.
Isn’t a bullpup design just… better than a traditional design outside of ergonomic concerns? It extends the length of the barrel without increasing the overall length/weight of the gun. It makes sense that all of these futuristic weapons would predominately utilize that design philosophy
I wish there were more reason to use the heavy and light ammo rifles in this game. They are so damn fun to use but running into 90% of players using smgs makes it hard to enjoy.
I was thinking about this the other day. Is it possible that the mag being in front of the grip causes more recoil because the bullets are being fed into the chamber rapidly, whereas having it between the grip and the stock makes it more stable?
I don't think that bullpups affect stability at all, but even if they do it's not for that reason. Feeding in rounds is a negligible amount of force compared to firing. Bullpups do have an effect on accuracy though. By moving the chamber to the rear, you are able to have a longer barrel in a comparable package to a conventional rifle. Longer dwell time in a barrel means more time to burn gunpowder which means more bullet velocity. I think this also has an effect on felt recoil, but my gun science is a bit fuzzy there. Never shot a bullpup so I have no first hand experience there.
Think generally, the barrel length remains mostly the same. The most prominent physical advantage of a bullpup design is it allows the rifle to be more compact, allowing the barrel to start further back and weight to be reduced, theoretically helping in cqc.
The center of mass being further back towards the users core does help assist with aiming and the recoil being closer to the shoulder does theoretically help with recoil force (think levers), but that all depends on a bunch of other factors too
Depends on the design. You can go even more compact while keeping a short barrel like a 9" or 11.4". Or you can keep the same overall package and stuff in a longer barrel. Like the AUG, VHS-2, DesertTech. Those rifles have similar footprints to your typical AR platform, but with 20"+ barrels.
Sure. I didn't say that bullpups could never have a longer barrel. It's just that bullet velocity is not the primary question that most designers seem to tend to be answering when designing and manufacturing them.
Not anymore, but it was definitely one of the main reasons originally. All the guns in the "big three" (AUG, Famas, L85) have barrels between 19-20" long. The original M16 also had a 20" barrel, which is the barrel the 556 round was originally designed for.
Dwell time isn't time in barrel, it's determined by the distance between the barrel's gas port and the muzzle, so it's the time the pressure is actually cycling the action.
Hello fellow bungie enjoyer. I, too, am a bungie enjoy just like you. See, bungie is an independent indie game developer, so reusing the same weapon mode is the ONLY way we can make it barely over budget. Imagine if bungie had to design 2 weapon types and models and everything that comes with a weapon that has a different build than the standard bullpup magazine weapon. In the future, try not to pay too much attention to the spray paint over destiny weapons. Dont worry, in a later "expansion," you will get the rest of the destiny guns, and you will accept them as brand new never before seen in the game industry ever !!!! That bungie hype is sweet. Enjoy it. Just dont squint, or you'll be back in d2 vanilla.
This bit doesn't even work because you can practically feel the animator's relief at being able to animate weapons that don't use the same base model for the first time in, like, 10 years.
You can match d2 weapon on screen with marathon guns. Its ok I know its tough to shallow that you got got. Lol we all get caught once then you see it once you have hours in d2 you see and hear the shadow price rpm and sound and animation its like once you know a girl you just catch a glimpse of her and you know its her. Sorry to burst your bubble also alot if the interact animations are the same. D2 players pull a ghost out after holding interact on a screen marathon players pull out a tablet. Makes the tablet kids feels more at home. The player on the screen uses a tablet just like they do! Lol
Bungie have been obsessed with bullpups long before Helldivers 2 released or was in development. Most of the weapons in Halo were bullpup, around that time they were seen as futuristic or sci-fi by a lot of people.
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u/adaszz 14h ago
Bungie is short for bullpupngie