If you wanted an indication that Bungie’s Marathon is going to lean more and more heavily into PvE content instead of purely its PvPvE extraction core game, look no further than what’s been happening the past few weeks.

Marathon launched an “experimental” PvE mode, Vault Breaker, when its midseason update hit, the first of its kind. Those experimental modes are only supposed to run for two weeks, which was going to be the case with Vault Breaker, but now that has been extended to August 18, meaning it will be here until about a month before season 3 starts. If it’s not extended again, that is.

Season 3, as we’ve learned, will come with the launch of a new, full PvE mode, one not labeled temporary or experimental. All of this is something of a surprise, given that ahead of Marathon’s release, questions about PvE in Marathon were hand-waved away by the team, who said they were, as expected, focused on the core PvPvE extraction experience. But things have changed quickly, and investing heavily in PvE content has become a priority just a season and a half into release, with a big addition in season 3. Season 2 alone will have its PvE mode running for a full month, in addition to a previous Night Marsh mode which was often a borderline PvE experience itself.

Vault Breaker has certainly been an interesting addition. It takes Marathon’s endgame map, Cryo Archive, and removes all other teams, creating a sort of FPS roguelike where you take in nothing and leave with nothing but currency to upgrade your capabilities and starter kits for the next run. You get further and further, earn more and more, and ultimately try to kill the final boss, The Compiler, that most players probably have never even seen before, given how hard the normal extraction mode of Cryo Archive is.

It’s a bit of a dichotomy, as PvE is “easier” than PvPvE, certainly, but also Cryo is not exactly forgiving and uncomplicated. It’s not really anything like an onboard ramp to the game as a whole, which it was not meant to be. Maybe it is to that map specifically, but it’s absolutely a branch-off, not some sort of tutorial for Marathon just because other teams are gone.

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One of the most significant things about Vault Breaker is just how far removed it is from the main game, practically siloed. The only real connection is the ability to spend earned currency from the mode on gear you can use in the “core” game, but you cannot bring any earned loot in, and you cannot bring any extracted loot out. Very much…not how extraction shooters usually work.

The growing idea here is that Marathon feels like it’s going to start separating into different kinds of genres with the extraction format as a base, but only bits and pieces integrated into these other modes. Right now, we’re playing an FPS roguelike (which is quite fun, and something Bungie was likely to be good at), and that may be true for the season 3 PvE addition as well, perhaps a more refined version of this. But past that, Bungie has already spoken about future modes that are PvP only, no “E.” That could be a variation of the extraction mode, or some believe Bungie may go so far as doing something like a Team Deathmatch or Battle Royale. Indications are that Marathon may become some sort of “platform” for all manner of shooter stylings in the future.

There are many hurdles here, of course. The main one is that all of this takes time. In the limited previews of what’s to come, (now ex) Game Director Joe Ziegler indicated it would probably be a year before this vision came together, whatever it ends up being. While Sony has publicly backed Marathon recently, we don’t know how much runway the game actually has. There’s also the issue that if you start splitting attention to all these different modes, what about the people who signed up for…an extraction shooter? Some are already starting to be annoyed at the pivot, and worry the original portion of the game could grow stagnant.

Finally, just…will anyone play? At this point it’s common knowledge that Marathon’s numbers are somewhat dire. The recent PvE release caused a surge, but that has already settled down to where things were before the midseason update, indicating a fast drop-off. Would a permanent mode change that? Would PvP modes? We don’t know yet, but something needs to stick for Bungie one of these days here, or else larger, more ominous questions loom.

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