If anything about Marathon’s big reveal from last week had your interest piqued, then you probably already know all about Bungie’s neon-coated PvPvE extraction shooter entering into closed alpha testing earlier this week, which started off with an announcement over the last weekend about what Bungie’s definition of testing was all about.
The closed alpha first started this past Wednesday, April 23rd, for NA players with a confirmed lifted NDA in the spirit of “community feedback and dialog,” while testing focus is centered on technical capabilities and moment-to-moment gameplay in a “curated, limited slice of systems and content.” In order to sign up, players had to be signed up to the game’s Discord.
Incidentally that Discord is where further information was shared such as an end date of May 4th for testing and further confirmation of a “fairly small” tester pool. Information was further spread in a Twitter thread that explained closed alpha is “a limited technical test with a restricted number of participants and a low CCU cap across all platforms: Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.”
As of right now, the Marathon Twitter account has been more than eager to spread effusive impressions and influencer livestreams and moments, but actual player response can be found in a recent tweet about the end of testing’s first day, where many replies bemoan the fact that they never got an invitation code, while those who did get in are immediately pointing out an overly sticky autoaim feature for keyboard and mouse players. Most of those similar complaints are also repeated on Reddit, though there are some quality memes and a couple of first impressions.
