Solo Marathon Rook players are teaming up, Arc Raiders-style

’All you have to lose are your chains’

Most extraction games have a mechanic where you can enter a game with equipment that isn't yours. The gear is basic: low-level armor, a weapon without any attachments, a couple of healing items. In Escape From Tarkov, this is known as a "scav run." In Arc Raiders, it's a "free loadout." Marathon has two versions of this mechanic.

One is by using a sponsored kit, which is pretty much identical to how other games do it. However, you can also play as a Rook, which has a few differences. Rook players are granted the ability to temporarily disguise themselves from UESC (PvE, essentially) enemies, they can only be played by solo players, and they can only join matches that are already in progress. Finally, Rooks can also only play in matches populated by trios and other Rooks. In other words, no solo lobbies.

In a Reddit post titled "What is going on with Rooks on Outpost?" user soaero explained that on multiple runs, their team was "suddenly swamped by four or five Rooks who all entered at the same time and just laid siege. It seems like there have been a few running about, collecting other Rooks, and forming gangs."

Speaking to Polygon in a Reddit direct message, soaero said the Rooks essentially orchestrated an ambush, complete with bait.

"My friends and I could hear two Rooks talking," soaero said. "We killed one, then the other started trash talking, goading us into coming for them. Sure enough, there were other Rooks hiding nearby who killed us. A few days later, we were in the center room of Pinwheel, and a team of Rooks using proximity chat descended upon us again."

Marathon is, by and large, a shoot-on-sight game. This emergent meta, where Rook players are using proximity chat to work together, is unprecedented. The user behind the Reddit post explained they wanted to see this phenomenon for themselves, so they entered Outpost as a Rook.

A couple of runs in, they were approached by another Rook who encouraged them to work together by saying "all you have to lose are your chains," which is inspired by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ quote from The Communist Manifesto, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” "I would follow that Rook anywhere," replied one comment. "This is maybe the hardest quote from a player in-game I've ever seen," replied another.

"I mainly do Rook runs on Outpost right now and my entire gameplay style has become very collaborative," soaero continued in the private message. "If I hear someone sneaking about I'll call out to them and explain how close I am towards opening the Pinwheel or Command Wing, and see how they respond.

"The role-playing has been surprisingly fun and silly. I've had a team recruit me as 'New Steve,' their pet Rook, and showed them how to get into the Command Wing. I've heard impressive voice acting performances, including a Rook downed by a proximity mine who begged me for death, letting a second Rook knife me as I finished him. I don't know if that was intentional, but goddamn."

They also have an interesting take on the game's behavioral meta as a whole: "The game is structured to create a prisoner's dilemma. If no one shoots, you both come away with something, but whoever shoots first will probably come away with everything. However, two fresh Rooks have nothing to lose — and nothing to gain — from killing each other. Since there's such an abundance of loot to gain, the game really favors working together."

Even Bungie has started to take notice of these moments, although they took a while to start happening. But that's also how it went with Arc Raiders; until players knew PvE lobbies were a thing, it was still a tense, twitchy environment. Marathon may be on a similar path.

"Rooks didn't develop a strong identity early on, on maps like Perimeter and Dire Marsh, but once people graduated to Outpost…we started seeing that emergent behavior of these bands of roving Rooks coming together and raiding the Pinwheel," Emanuel Rosu, principal producer on Marathon, told Polygon in a remote meeting. "So from a game perspective, we're watching how players are engaging with them and how different types of challenges we create help foster these different behaviors." Nick Clifford, principal marketing manager, added that "when the community does create an identity around Rooks being stronger together or the bovine god, we really want to jump on that, celebrate it, and share it with the community as well."

It's unlikely Marathon will ever sport entirely PvE lobbies, because the game doesn't appear to have aggression-based matchmaking like Arc Raiders does, but a little less immediate hostility is a welcome sight, especially when it comes to the tougher zones, such as Outpost and Cryo Archive. Fighting fellow players isn't mandatory whatsoever, even if the game encourages it.

Additional reporting by Corey Plante.