Marathon is looking very much like a colorful cybernetic riff on Escape from Tarkov, but with Bungie’s unique spin-on the extraction shooter genre and hopefully some big surprises along the way. The studio behind Halo and Destiny pulled back the curtain today to reveal a bunch of new information about its next big game, including that it’s out later this year. Will be it be Destiny PvP reskinned into an even more hardcore mode, or something that feels both more fresh and more approachable? Here’s everything we’ve learned.
A Bungie livestream on April 12 offered a deep dive into Marathon including a new gameplay trailer, extended overview of how the shooter works, and a cinematic short (directed by Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Alberto Mielgo) that poked at the promise, possibilities, and nightmare of a game that’s fundamentally about corporations cloning gig workers and subjecting them to repeated carnage in order to eke out marginal gains. It was all narrated with incredible gravitas by Balatro clown Ben Starr and culminated in a September 23 release date on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC with full cross-play. (Yes, Marathon is going head-to-head with Borderlands 4).
The top-level pitch is this: You play as a cybernetic mercenary called a runner who takes contracts to scavenge the remains of a lost colony on Tau Ceti IV. It’s PvPvE, so players will have to fight one another as well as AI-controlled UESC security forces and “otherworldly threats” to loot facilities and complete their objectives. If they successfully extract, they grow in power and new gear gets added to a vault to be taken out and used on the next mission, but if they get wiped on the surface everything gets left behind. There’s also a tease for higher-stakes gameplay aboard the derelict Marathon ship orbiting the planet, potential endgame content that calls back to Bungie’s original trilogy by the same name that suggests linkages that long-time fans will have fun unraveling.
The overall structure of Marathon sounds like it will be familiar to Escape from Tarkov players and fans of other extraction shooters, with some unique wrinkles. By default players will be grouped into squads of three but can also play solo, with up to 18 total appearing on a given map at once. Every match has its own time limit forcing players into action, and dynamic weather and other random events will add extra chaos to the proceedings. Any loot you extract with gets added to a vault to be used in future runs, though if it’s ever lost in a team wipe, it’s lost for good.
What about the moment-to-moment gameplay? The core of Marathon will be Bungie’s snappy and crunchy gunplay, which if it’s anything like Destiny 2's will be top-shelf when it comes to first-person shooters, but with a bunch of new tactical and strategic elements to take into consideration given the battle-royale nature of the showdowns. Players are downed instead of immediately killed, and a revive system means death isn’t the end of a run. Bungie also said that “sponsored packages” from various corporate factions will give players a baseline loadout needed to stay competitive.
And of course there will be custom builds and abilities. We saw four different runner characters—Locus, Blackbird, Glitch, and Void—each with unique looks, playstyles, and abilities that can offer an extra edge. There will be unique stats for different characters, as well as customization when it comes to implants, cores, weapons, weapon attachments. A toxin upgrade by poison opponents, or players could equip something to boost their resistance to it. And Marathon will have it’s own version of Destiny’s rarest Exotics loot that offers the “best” version of a particular archetype.
The gameplay footage shows one sniper character turning invisible, similar to Hunters from Destiny 2, while equipment like grenades, shields, and medkits offer other characters different support roles. “You’re always free to experiment with team compositions, and the only limit to how you want to play your runner is your loot and imagination,” Starr’s narrator voice promises. It sounds like a lot to balance, and the proof will be in whether player experimentation proves to be truly viable, or if Marathon quickly coalesces around a narrow range of try-hard build-crafting metas.
Player progression will be another interesting test. Most of it will be account-wide rather than class-dependent, with faction ranks unlocking access to different upgrades and black market merchandise (all purchased with in-game currency) and completed contracts expanding vault space. Beyond the matches themselves, there are endgame challenges, ranked play, community events, and seasonal storytelling. Perhaps the most dramatic thing about Marathon is that it will largely reset players’ vaults at the end of each season to provide a more level playing field going into the next. It’s the logical thing to do for fairer play but might also be exactly the type of thing to turn off more casual fans.
Marathon will be Bungie’s first new project in over a decade and its first new game as part of PlayStation, where the reported underperformance of Destiny 2 led to multiple rounds of deep cuts in the last two years. (The previous game director was also fired in early 2024). Marathon is facing an uphill climb for sure, especially a year after Sony’s other big live-service push, Concord, proved how brutal the multiplayer space is these days. But maybe Bungie’s extraction shooter will be more like Helldivers 2—infectious in its uncompromising focus on one hardcore gameplay loop. Marathon certainly looks like it has the juice. Hopefully, it ends up playing like it does too. A closed alpha test is set to begin on April 23.
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