Elias Toufexis, the voice of Marathon's Assassin character, has pushed back against what he describes as relentless online negativity directed at the extraction shooter since Bungie announced it would stop supporting Destiny 2 to focus on the new project.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Toufexis acknowledged legitimate fan frustration over Bungie's resource shift. "I understand Bungie made a game, Destiny 2, that people loved, and then they kind of were like, 'We're gonna put that on hold and we're gonna work on Marathon,'" he said. "People got upset about that. Cool, don't play Marathon. That's fine, speak with your wallet, that's fine."
But the veteran actor drew a line between criticism and what he sees as pointless antagonism. He took aim at social media users who spend hours posting negative memes and rooting for the game to fail, comparing the behavior to the Concord situation, the ill-fated PlayStation live-service shooter that Sony yanked after a few weeks in 2024.
"Life is so short, man. Just stop tweeting memes under things for six hours," Toufexis said. "Critique the game? Critique my work? Totally acceptable. But there's people that go on Twitter and post memes: 'This is Concord 2, this is Concord 2.' Why are you spending hours doing this... How do you hope something fails?"
The actor, best known for voicing Adam Jensen in Deus Ex, also addressed accusations that Marathon suffers from what critics call "woke" ideology. He found the charge baffling given the team composition he's worked with on the project.
"I was working on Marathon yesterday, and I was like, 'Guys, tell me to stop engaging on X,' because I keep engaging and I really shouldn't," Toufexis recalled. "I saw some guy, I don't want to get into specifics, but they're just like, 'I hope Bungie fails because of the woke leftist ideology.' And I'm like, 'I'm working with four white guys and two white women. I don't understand this. Where are you getting this?'"
Toufexis summed up his broader take on the backlash with a simple observation: "People just want to hate. I don't really understand it. It's sad more than anything."
Bungie's announcement last week that Destiny 2 support would end triggered a wave of reaction across the gaming community. Reports surfaced that most Bungie staff weren't even informed of the decision before the public announcement. Since then, fans have left negative reviews on Marathon's Steam page, spawned a rival positive review campaign, and created an online petition for Sony to greenlight Destiny 3, which has already surpassed 200,000 signatures.
Author Emily Chen: "Toufexis makes a fair point, but the real issue here isn't the online grumbling, it's that Bungie sidelined a beloved franchise without giving its own team a heads-up first."
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