Over a year after the sci-fi extraction shooter was announced Marathondeveloper Bungie revealed several modern details about its next game on Monday, including a look at two character classes and confirmation of planned playtesting to take place in 2025. Latest update on Marathon was atypical of Bungie’s style – instead of a slickly produced “ViDoc,” as the developer likes to call it, the modern video is a plain snapshot of information conveyed via on-camera chat from game director Joe Zeigler. In a way, it scans like a life-affirming video from the creator of Destiny.
After Bungie’s announcement Marathon in May 2023 – that’s what he said he planned to go to “darkness to focus on the game” and promised to show gameplay next time he talked about his extraction shooter. Zeigler confirmed this promise, saying that the studio is not ready to show gameplay yet. Instead, Zeigler presents a concept Marathon as an “intense” extraction shooter where players fight for loot and then try to survive and escape with their loot. The developer also showed off two types of Runners – Marathoncybernetic mercenaries – with Thief and Stealth types.
Regarding Stealth Runner, Zeigler said it will employ deception as a utility feature. “They’re really hard to identify,” he said, “and you can see that they have the tools to stalk the battlefield and show up in a way that allows them to kind of gain an advantage.”
Discussing the condition MarathonZeigler said Bungie is “on track” and is “making a lot of aggressive changes to the game” based on early testing with players and content creators. “There are so many people who contributed by telling us, ‘Hey, this sucks,’ or ‘This is great,’ in ways that really helped us diagnose, analyze, shape, and change the game in great ways.” he said.
Players can get their hands on it Marathon sometime in 2025, when Bungie begins to expand its playtesting “more and more widely,” Zeigler said. This doesn’t necessarily mean it Marathon will be beginning in 2025, but it looks like Bungie is getting closer to showing off gameplay and allowing more players to take part in hands-on follow-up activities Destiny 2.
Zeigler, who was previously the game director of Riot Games’ shooter Evaluation, announced in March for which he took over as game director Marathon. He replaced Bungie veteran Christopher Barrett, who Bloomberg he was reported to have been fired for misconduct.
Marathon will be released on PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X.
