Image: Bungie
Bungie is reviving its long-dormant Marathon franchise as a new PvP game.
Bungie has finally revealed its first new game since Destiny 2: a PvP extraction shooter called Marathon. The game will also act as a soft-reboot of its old Marathon shooters from the 90s, but reimagined as a multiplayer game for modern platforms. The Halo creator showed its first trailer off during today’s lengthy PlayStation showcase.
Here’s a trailer:
This cinematic trailer doesn’t show off any gameplay whatsoever, but it does offer an early look at Bungie’s vibrant reimagining of Marathon’s sci-fi world. Everything here looks distinctly alien, but in a minimalistic way that favours bright splashes of colour and foreboding imagery (like sealed-up corpses) over the busier and more populated locales seen in Destiny 2. The trailer follows a simple enough storyline: an individual with a gun runs through alien environments, gets shot down by a squad, and dies. Such is life.
Marathon’s official website offers more details on the game, such as the fact that it’s a team-based extraction shooter game launching on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC with cross-play and cross-save enabled. Here’s a synopsis for the game:
A massive ghost ship hangs in low orbit over a lost colony on Tau Ceti IV. The 30,000 souls who call this place home have disappeared without a trace. Strange signals hint at mysterious artifacts, long-dormant AI, and troves of untold riches. You are a Runner, venturing into the unknown in a fight for fame… and infamy. Who among you will write their names across the stars?
Bungie has confirmed that the game will not launch with a story campaign. Instead, players will dig up lore during PvP matches that take place in, “evolving, persistent zones, where any run can lead to greatness.” The game takes place in the year 2850, at which point society has developed the ability to move an individual's consciousness back and forth between their real bodies and synthetic ones.
Bungie’s first Marathon game launched on Macintosh PCs all the way back in 1994, and its creation later influenced the developer’s work on the original Halo trilogy. Game director Christopher Barrett told the PlayStation Blog that the new game is, “not a direct sequel to the originals, but something that certainly belongs in the same universe,” and there will be, “references and deep cuts,” fans of the original games will recognise.
Bungie didn’t reveal a release date for Marathon, but Barrett promises that, “The next time you hear from us about Marathon, we’ll be able to show you the gameplay and will be much closer to launch.” Marathon will not be a PlayStation-exclusive game, despite Sony having acquired Bungie in 2022.
Check out all of the games revealed during today's PlayStation Showcase today here.
