After saying goodbye to the incredible Halo franchise, developer Bungie moved on to break new ground in the live-service space with btwo Destinytitles. It has been supporting these two games for nearly a decade now, but we have finally seen what else has been in the works.
To the surprise of many, it is actually a return to the studio’s earliest franchise, Marathon. Those original titles were made in the same style as the original Doom games, but this new reboot of sorts is going in a very different direction. Bungie has proven that they’re the masters of sci-fi shooters, so let’s go the distance and cover everything we know about Marathon.
Release date speculation
Marathon has no firm release window currently, but after some recent layoffs at Bungie, we do know the game’s target has shifted to 2025.
Platforms
Despite being purchased by PlayStation, Bungie would always continue to put their titles on any platforms they wished. This remains true with Marathon, which is currently announced for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
Trailers
The teaser trailer for Marathon has no gameplay, and gives a look at the sci-fi world of the game. The main focus is a character running with a timer counting down on their back on a ship that appears to have crashed straight through a moon. We get some quick cuts of possible enemies and creatures before our runner is taken down by a sniper that looks robotic in nature. They pull something from the corpse as two others stand guard.
In that same blog post, Taylor explained that a big focus for Marathon would be “player-based storytelling” in which player choices and actions will have some impact on the story itself rather than it being ridged. It will not have a single-player campaign, so all story and lore will be delivered through the PvP mode. They give an example of players potentially discovering something during a run that opens up a brand new area of the map that all players could then explore.
The team does state that they intend to remain faithful to the original lore and universe of Marathon without being a direct sequel.
Gameplay
If Marathon looks and sounds a lot like Destiny, you’re not completely wrong. It will be another sci-fi, persistent world, first-person shooter where you can play alone or in teams in a PvPvE-style environment. The differences are that in Marathon you are a Runner who travels down to the planet called Tau Ceti IV to plunder loot that you then need to escape with to upgrade your character. You can go alone or in groups of up to three looking for these alien artifacts, new guns, and other types of gear yet to be revealed. This genre is sometimes referred to as an extraction shooter, which games like Escape from Tarkov fall into. Beyond those basic ideas, we’ll need to wait for actual gameplay footage to see how it will really play.
Preorder
Marathon is still a long way off from crossing the finish line. As soon as a release date is set and preorder details are made available, we will update this post so you can extract the version best for you.
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