It seems as if some major Marathon news is on the horizon. A barrage of cryptic teasers and a community ARG have pushed Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter back into the spotlight once more, suggesting that new announcements, trailers, or maybe even a launch date reveal could be arriving soon. Players taking part in the ARG have also uncovered some small new pieces of information about Marathon, including the potential names of guns in the game, a screenshot of new characters, and more.
Bungie knows how to make excellent FPS games, but the silence around its upcoming extraction shooter Marathon (and the deaths of many of PlayStation’s live service projects) hasn’t exactly filled me with confidence. Judging by early concept art and teasers, it’ll feel aesthetically fresh, at least. But the extraction genre is a tough nut to crack, and there are several other competitors in development right now like Exodus and Arc Raiders. I already believe that the gunplay, the movement, and likely all the FPS fundamentals will be great in marathon, due to Bungie’s track record, but still, all I feel is anxiety.
Towards the end of last year, Marathon briefly reappeared by way of a developer diary with its game director, Joe Ziegler, who previously lent his talents to Riot Games’ Valorant. In it, he confirmed that it has shifted from a custom character-based experience to a hero-based one – again, a move that I’m really unsure about. But aside from that, there was very little else to go on about what kind of an experience Marathon will be, and still there was no gameplay footage.
In the months since, the silence has returned, but out of nowhere, a mountain of teasers have been released by Bungie, and PlayStation is making a big deal out of it too.
This all started with a very brief, uninformative 15-second clip of some corrupted data-style graphics posted by the official Marathon X account. However, this has spiraled into something much bigger. PlayStation has changed its social media banners, and the banner on its official blog site, to resemble the same green, corrupted graphic. Marathon’s Steam page has also now been updated to show this graphic as its main product image.
Then an X account called ‘we_are_mida’ (MIDA was a terrorist organization in the original Marathon games from the 1990s) began posting some very bizarre, cryptic messages and an audio log mentioning the UESC, the main government body in Marathon’s universe.
This all led to a community ARG, in which fans have uncovered potential details about the game from an online ‘UESC terminal.’ These include more audio logs tied to the UESC, what seem to be audio files from the game’s soundtrack, a screenshot showing three of the game’s characters, and a list of weapons that are likely to be included in the game. Some of these weapons share or closely resemble names of guns found in the original Marathon trilogy. To see everything that was revealed, ‘Marathon Bulletin’ on X has a thorough paper trail of info.
All of this is to say that more Marathon news – and hopefully some gameplay after all this time too – is just around the corner. If PlayStation is tricking out its blog and socials in Marathon colors, I feel like new information is imminent. I pray that it will inspire some confidence in me.
For more, check out some multiplayer games that you can jump into right now, or see what else Marathon will be up against in the future with our upcoming PC games list.
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