Marathon season 2 kicks off today, acting as a fresh start for every single person who's played so far with its complete wipe of all gear. For this first week of the season, it's also going to be free-to-play for anyone, clearly a big plea for those that haven't yet tried it out to give it a fair shake. To do that, Bungie will be doing their first test that eases up on the challenge by offering a "PvP-lite" mode called Sponsored Survival.

Here's how it works: you and your crew infil onto Night Marsh, the newer, creepier version of the game's Dire Marsh map. The big difference is that you will be the only crew in the entire zone, at least to start. In the meantime, UESC drones will still be there to give you (or maybe just me) a bad time, as well as "some new enemies that lurk in the shadows." Then, after a certain period of time - the blog post detailing this new mode doesn't specify how long - backfilled Rooks will start showing up on the map and do their usual thing of mopping up any loot left on the floor.

There are a couple of other notable differences too. For one, at the start of a run, an 18 minute long timer starts ticking down, and as soon as it hits zero, the final and only exfil will appear on the map. "Everyone will have a limited amount of time to book it over and prepare to make their exit," the blog explains. "Once there, the decision is yours: Will you negotiate a temporary truce and exfil as one, or turn your weapons on each other in the dead of night?" This isn't a mode that has to be played in a full crew, you can do it in duos or solo. Rooks will also only be placed into Sponsored Survival for the duration of the experiment, so keep that in mind if you like to scavenge.

Right now, this sounds like a mode that potentially works well as an introduction to Marathon's take on PvPvE, it just also sounds like it could come with a few problems. Bungie are already conscious of splitting people across too many queues, so I worry a dedicated mode like this would have a negative impact there.

It also doesn't sound satisfying as a half-PvE option either; I only play the game solo, and have had plenty of matches where I don't run into a single other person. Sponsored Survival sounds like more of that, even if it is technically less risky overall, so I'm not sure why anyone would choose it over a regular match. Bungie do also say in this blog that they're testing an actual PvE mode "in the latter half of Season 2," so maybe that will be more promising. I'm just not so sure that the game's current narrative structure would be all that satisfying if PvE is just business as usual, minus other live people. Here's hoping Bungie have an ace up their sleeve!