Marathon gets proof-of-life update from Bungie, play tests coming in 2025
Over a year after the announcement of a sci-fi extraction shooter Marathondeveloper Bungie revealed a few new details about the next game on Monday, including a look at two character classes and confirmation of planned playtests coming in 2025. The latest update about Marathon was atypical of Bungie’s style – instead of a slickly produced ‘ViDoc’, as the developer likes to call them, the new video is a no-nonsense, talk-to-the-camera infodump from game director Joe Zeigler. In some ways, it looks like a proof-of-life video from Destiny’s beleaguered developer.
After Bungie announced it Marathon it was there in May 2023 planned to “go dark to focus on the game” and promised to show gameplay the next time it talked about his extraction shooter. Zeigler acknowledged this promise and said the studio isn’t ready to show gameplay yet. Instead, Zeigler pitches the concept of Marathon as an “intense” extraction shooter where players fight for loot, then try to survive and escape with their loot. The developer also showed off two types of Runners: Marathon‘s cybernetic mercenaries – with the Thief and Stealth types.
While showing off the concept art for The Thief, Zeigler said, “Seeing the character creepily peek around the corner in that quiet moment before she makes her move is in many ways similar to that character’s theme, and would that should also be the case. giving you a hint of what kind of gameplay that character will be driving. There are a lot of hilarious stories that come from (the thief), but also very, very crazy moments that this character contributes to the game.”
Referring to the Stealth Runner, Zeigler said it will use deception as a utility feature. “They are very difficult to pin down,” he said, “and you can see that they have the means to sneak onto the battlefield and show up in a way that allows them to gain some advantage.”
When discussing the condition of MarathonZeigler said Bungie is “on track” and has “made 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 thing is awesome’ in a way that really helped us diagnose and analyze and shape and change the game in amazing ways ,” he said.
Players may be able to roll up their sleeves Marathon Sometime in 2025, when Bungie will start expanding its playtests “wider and broader,” Zeigler said. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Marathon shall launch in 2025, but it looks like Bungie is getting closer to showing gameplay and letting a larger group of players go hands-on with the sequel to Lot 2.
Zeigler, former game director of Riot Games’ shooter Valorant, announced in March for which he had taken over the position of game director Marathon. He replaced Bungie veteran Christopher Barrett, who Bloomberg reported had been dismissed for misconduct.
Marathon will be released on PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series