MARATHON, Bungie’s Sci-Fi PvP Extraction Shooter Announced

Bungie announces another game at the PlayStation Showcase. This time it’s a new one. The game’s called Marathon, and you can learn more about it at this website.

Take a look at the reveal trailer for MARATHON down below:

While Bungie has only released a teaser and a dedicated website for Marathon, it has already generated a lot of hype. The game is currently in development for PS5, Xbox Series S / X, and PC, offering full cross-play and cross-save functionality.

Marathon appears to be set in a futuristic sci-fi universe in the year 2850, featuring advanced technology such as clone technology with synthetic bodies and consciousness-shifting abilities. Players will assume the role of Runners, as shown off in the teaser trailer, having a full-body armor and making an array of weapons to eliminate opponents in an arena setting.

Christopher Barrett, the game director for Marathon, talked about the team’s dedication to honoring the original Marathon games in a recent blog post. While this game is not a direct sequel, it will contain references and pay homage to the mythology, story, and themes that made the original first-person shooter a classic upon its release on the Mac in 1994.

Barrett also highlighted the evolution of storytelling capabilities since the original Marathon games, talking about the team’s commitment to immerse players both in and out of the game. As a PvP-focused experience, Marathon will not feature a single-player campaign mode. Instead, Bungie is developing zones that stay the same and change over time to create a fun and engaging place to play.

The announcement also brought news of dedicated servers for Marathon, along with an anti-cheat system, which is a great change from Destiny 2’s reliance on peer-to-peer connectivity. Also, you don’t need to have ANY sort of prior knowledge to play this game.

It’s our aim to create something incredible both for players who are completely new to the Marathon world and for those that have been waiting years for more stories in the Marathon universe. You don’t need to know anything about Marathon to understand or play this game, but if you do, we’re making the experience with references and deep cuts you’ll recognize. 

Also, like some of the other titles now, the story will be affected by player’s choices in the game. This way, players will have some sort of a control over the storyline and will also help in immersing the player inside the world.

With Marathon, one of the areas that is a big focus for us is our player-based storytelling. The original Marathon games revealed story moments through terminals, all in text. But now we have so many more ways to immerse players in this world, both in and out of game. We’ll be carrying that through in the design of this game.

Our design philosophy here is to have players affect the story of the world through their choices and their actions. This approach also lets us shape the overall narrative direction of the game experience while giving players a direct sense of agency and power.

Also, don’t get your hopes up too high as the game is still in development and it could be a while before its released to the public. But, now that its announced, we can have an idea on what to expect.

There’s still a lot of work to do before launch or even before we’re ready to talk about the game in more detail. The team is hard at work, and we’ve got a great base to start from but there is still so much more to do, including continuing to grow our team. That’s one of the most challenging parts of game development: hiring when everything is still under wraps.

Now that we’re announced, I’m excited because we can be much more candid about the positions we are looking for and talk more openly to candidates about the work that’s going on and our vision for the game.

For the game, this is all we know for now, but rest assured that we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.