One thing that sets Marathon apart from other extraction shooters is its Runner Shells—AKA heroes—each with unique abilities and passives. While loot and a well-aimed shot are still often the deciding factor in a fight, being able to amp up your speed as Vandal, throw a spider drone with Recon, or turn invisible as the Assassin is certainly not an advantage to ignore.
I’ll admit, I overlooked the power of the Thief class in particular. As its name hints, the Thief is all about stealing people’s loot via a remote control drone and being able to dash away with it using a grappling hook. On paper, this character lacks combat tools in the same vein as Vandal’s literal grenade launcher arm, instead focusing on utility. But then I saw people turning the Pickpocket Drone into a bomb and I’ve realised I’m just not devious enough. Nay, evil enough.
marathon from r/Marathon/comments/1ronsar/i_cant_believe_it
This manually controlled drone is usually only designed to zap enemies and nab their loot—it’s a nuisance, like a mosquito, but not really a weapon of mass destruction. Park it on the ground and place a claymore on it, though? Now you’ve got one of the strongest weapons in the game.
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By attaching them to Thief’s drone, you can launch these landmines into other players at full force, killing anyone not adequately shielded enough to survive the blast. It’s not like the tripwire range or blast radius is particularly small, either. It’s Battlefield’s claymore-laden jeeps and recon drones all over again.
Claymores are already a lethal gadget in the right hands, with some creative Runners using them to bait other players into one-hit traps. That’s not helped by MIDA’s Castling capstone faction upgrade which gives Rook a full stack for free. There could be an army of landmines hiding anywhere, but at least they were relegated to, y’know, the ground. I think this tech could genuinely make Thief one of, if not the best, Runner to pick if you know what you’re doing.
With that said, I hope Bungie doesn’t stop players from doing this, despite how annoying it is to be on the receiving end of it. A simple fix would just be to make the drone louder, so you could at least hear the landmine sneaking up on you.
I’m sure delivering landmines via drones is only the beginning of players’ creativity, especially given how many potential interactions there are between all the guns, gadgets, and characters. After all, Marathon has a full larder of build items, with yellow-quality attachments and character-specific Cores that behave like Exotics from Destiny and other looters. There’s bound to be even more demonic combinations waiting to be uncovered.
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