What is Marathon? (Bungie's New Game)

The highlight of the PlayStation Showcase, for me, was the first party studio that will be releasing their game on almost every platform and that would be Bungie with their first non Destiny game since 2014. The game is Marathon and it isn’t technically a new IP, since its a reboot of the series that debuted in 1994 on the Mac and has been dormant since 1996 when the final game in the trilogy, Marathon Infinity released.

So what was Marathon, what is Marathon and when can we expect to play Marathon?

WHAT?

Marathon was a FPS in the style of Doom and was a Mac exclusive that released at the end of 1994. Keeping this top level as the lore of Marathon goes deep and that is way above my knowledge of the series as I wasn’t a Mac gamer in the 90’s. Marathon differentiated itself from Doom by being more about AI and aliens as opposed to demons and hell.

In 2012, Time magazine named Marathon as one of the top 100 games of all time.

WHAT NOW?

The reinvention of Marathon this time around is going to be a PVP extraction shooter, which is a good idea that games like Tarkov started and have a cult following but has yet to break through on a mass level. Bungie seems poised to deliver something incredible after seeing what they were able to do with PVPVE live service shooter, Destiny.

They said they are taking what they have learned from making titans including Halo and Destiny, which shows as they mentioned things that sound like raids as you find keys that unlock new zones for the community. You play as part of a trio, who purpose is drop into these persistent worlds that push back the right amount, which does hint towards possibly some PVE or just environmental dangers.

The goals of your squad are what you decide. Some groups might want to become hunters, some might just want to make it out alive and other might want to search for the most amount of artifacts possible. This sounds exactly like most extraction based games, but the benefit of the doubt goes to Bungie as they have shown the ability to disrupt the industry on numerous occasions. They weren’t the first to invent the FPS and the arent the first to invent the extraction shooter.

In following with Bungie’s tradition, Marathon looks stunning with a unique visual style featuring a bold Cyberpunk aesthetic that has plenty of inspiration from the work of Ridley Scott including Blade Runner all the way to Prometheus.

Marathon is being built from the ground up for a PVP experience, which would be a first for the studio as Halo was built PVE and Destiny was PvEvP. As veterans of connected universes, they understand that there are some staples that need to be included to ensure the best possible experince including dedicated servers and disconnect recovery. They also mentioned fog of war in the vidoc, which hasn’t really been described in a FPS before. It will be interesting to see what that means.

WHEN

As for when Marathon might release, the best way to try to get an idea is to look at the precedent and the more recent history of Bungie. The first indication that we are still some time away from the release of Marathon was in the vi-doc, they said they are going to go dark for a while. This seems accurate because Destiny was revealed and the first vi-doc happened on February 17, 2013. Destiny eventually released on September 9, 2014, which is 569 days after the official reveal.

If we extrapolate that data onto Marathon, we are looking at an official announcement on May 24, 2023 then 569 days from that is December 12, 2024. This does seem a little late for a premium game release, which would mean a more realistic release window would be late November or very early December 2024. The good news is that Marathon is being developed for PC, Xbox Series and PS5, which should led to a more expedient development as less time will be spent optimizing older consoles.