Former Marathon art director says 'what I could control, I feel really good about' in the face of pre-release animosity: 'You can't take that away from me'
"All great art—commercial art anyways—it’s doubted and there’s a level of skepticism. Until there’s not."
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Bungie's upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, has experienced a good deal of pre-release turbulence. It only just got a release date after a lengthy delay following rough playtest feedback, and after a fiasco involving some stolen art assets, studio morale took a nose dive.
Former art director Joseph Cross left the studio in Dec. 2025 after six years, and last Tuesday, he unpacked his thoughts on the online discourse around Marathon in an interview with Mikhail Klimentov of ReaderGrev.
Cross told Klimentov the team felt distinct "spells" where talk around the game was positive at first, and then became negative. "Personally, I'm able to compartmentalize a lot of that," he said in the interview.
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