As a huge Bungie fan, its upcoming extraction shooter Marathon has sat right near the top of my most-anticipated games list for a while. Aside from a couple of brief namedrop mentions from the Destiny 2 developer, we haven’t actually had any blogs, trailers, dev diaries, or even social media posts from official Marathon channels for well over a year. Well, that just changed, as game director Joe Ziegler has provided some new details about the game, and that includes confirmation that there is a class-based system that will see you pick from a lineup of characters called Runners.
Bungie has had something of a tumultuous time as of late, and buried within all of that were reports that Marathon was in a “not great” spot. We know for a fact that there’s also been a change of game director midway through the FPS game’s development, with ex-Valorant lead Ziegler taking the helm. Nevertheless, given its track record, I’m still feeling somewhat optimistic about Marathon – if anyone can pull off a great-feeling space shooter, it’s Bungie.
After well over a year of radio silence, a new video diary has now appeared in which Ziegler says some “aggressive changes” have been made to the game over the last couple of years. Let’s set expectations early here – Bungie is still not sharing any gameplay screenshots or clips. “It’s a little early to show you all of it as one piece,” Ziegler says.
However, the main bit of gameplay info we do get is the confirmation of a light class-based system, whereby you choose from a lineup of Runners. While each class has a “small subset of abilities,” Ziegler stresses that there will still be opportunities for customization through the use of equipment that you can find and bolt onto your Runner’s loadout.
We also get an early reveal of two of Marathon’s Runners – codenamed Thief and Stealth. Based on Ziegler’s ambiguous descriptions, I’d say the Thief is able to sneak around the battlefield and have some kind of loot-stealing ability, while Stealth is all about “deception” and being “hard to pin down.”
As for what state the game is currently in, Ziegler says that many elements are at various stages. While the game’s environments are coming along very nicely, aspects like the enemies you’ll encounter are still a way off being completed.
That means that we’ll have to wait until we’re “in the midst of 2025” to hear and see more of Marathon. Given that 2025 is meant to be when the full Marathon release date arrives, and that we’ve been waiting such a long time for some news from the development team, today’s announcement does feel pretty underwhelming.
So, as you join me in hunkering down until 2025 to learn more about Marathon, here are some of the best co-op games and space games that you can dive into right now.
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