[STEAM] Marathon’s Cryo Archive ARG has entered its final step, and now its up to players to go on a killing spree

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The long battle to unlock Marathon's fourth and toughest map yet is nearing its end, but not before the community gets its hands dirty.

After days of puzzle-solving, it appears the final step of

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has arrived, and it involves every player of Marathon, not just those who are brave and/or smart enough to attempt to crack the codes that Bungie has been feeding the community.

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Screenshot by Destructoid via

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500 million UESC kills. That's what it will take to give everyone access to the new map, apparently. Thankfully, the goal is over halfway to completion

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, but that still is a tough pace to get this new location in the hands of everybody.

Fortunately, we may not have to wait the five-plus days the pace is telling us it will take, because Bungie will be hosting some sort of event on Thursday at its HQ in Washington. The most interesting development happened yesterday as Bungie devs hopped on a call with streamers MrRoflWaffles and Skarrow9, who've been the public-facing spearhead of the ARG solving movement.

In a very neat trick, Bungie remotely opened some special UESC briefcases that the streamers received, and inside lay a note inviting them to the devs' HQ for something on March 19, which is tomorrow. And so it appears that, while gamers are at home hammering UESC bots, we may finally get some sort of official information or confirmation about Cryo Archive's launch. Whew.

This type of thing is nothing new for Bungie, which has been running ARGs like this for a while, notably in Destiny 2, but also most recently to even reveal Marathon. In truth, the studio has been doing this for decades, going as far back as

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years ahead of Halo: Combat Evolved's launch.

The hype is high, and Bungie devs are also talking up the hardcore difficulty of the endgame map, which has some seriously wild challenges already listed in-game. Game director Joe Ziegler said that Cryo Archive "will be a pinnacle challenge in more ways than one."

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"As we're getting closer and closer to seeing the doors open for the Cryo Deck of the Marathon Ship, please be advised when it does open: surviving will be a challenge for even the most prepared of crews," Ziegler

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. "Everyone will have something new to learn. But we believe for those of you who are brave enough, it'll be a journey that you'll remember."

500 million kills is a lot, and at the current pace it will take days to finish. Will Cryo Archive ONLY unlock once this goal is reached? That remains to be seen, but either way, we should know more tomorrow once the ARG-gamer streamers arrive at Bungie. Until then, get to killing those UESC, Runners.

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