Yesterday, Bungie gave us our first look at gameplay for their upcoming extraction shooter Marathon and confirmed that it will be released in a few months on September 23 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam.
During a 1-hour livestream event, Bungie showed off plenty of gameplay for the highly anticipated title and offered a better idea of the type of experience the team is aiming to give us with Marathon. For those unfamiliar with extraction shooters, your goal in them is simple: arrive on the map, get whatever loot you can, complete any objectives you may have set for yourself, and get out alive. Die during a match and you lose everything you had. Succeed and everything you earned gets added to your overall collection and can be used in future matches. It’s a hardcore genre with high-risk, high-reward gameplay.
Set on the planet Tau Ceti IV, Marathon follows the same basic template. There will be three maps at launch, with a fourth planned to be released soon after. Maps will range in player size, with the maximum being 18 players. The map that was shown the most during the event was an 18-player map called Dire Marsh. As its name indicates, it’s set across a large marshland that’s home to different industrial buildings.
Each map will have multiple points of interest to investigate and scavenge. Aside from finding weapons and other equipment to use in combat, you’ll also pick up backpacks that provide more space for loot, keys to unlock locations around each map, and items for building up your character such as implants, cores, and materials.
Speaking of the characters, they’re called Runners. They’re mercenaries who gave up their human bodies for these slick, biosynthetic forms that they transfer their consciousness into. Six will be available when Marathon launches, however, the stream focused on four of them: Locus, who is all about being aggressive in battle and pushing forward; Blackbird, who specializes in locating enemies; Glitch, a character the team described as being an agile disruptor; and Void, your resident stealth-centric assassin archetype. Each Runner also has abilities that are unique to them and shape their playstyle. Locus, for example, has an energy shield they can use to block attacks, whereas Void can activate active camo that briefly makes them invisible.
Marathon is designed as a team-based game, with teams consisting of three players each. With six Runners available at launch, that doesn’t provide too many options for who you can play as, but Bungie did confirm that there is no limit to your team composition. If you want to have a team with three Blackbirds, you can do that. Although being in a team is the intended way to play Marathon, you can instead opt to go into a match solo and take on enemies by yourself. As of now, it’s unknown if there will be a solo-only mode, but I think it would be a nice addition.
Runners aren’t just static archetypes. Using the loot that’s gathered during a match, you’ll be able to customize your runner in a variety of ways, such as by increasing their agility, improving their shields, adding more passive abilities, and increasing your resistance to different status effects. Building up your Runner will be important for not just fighting other human players in Marathon, but also the AI enemies that are littered across each map. Some of them are your standard fodder-type enemies, but others will pose a much greater challenge, so you’ll need to be well-prepared to take them on.
Aside from improving your character, your loot can also be used to improve your standing with the various factions in Marathon‘s world or to help you purchase things from the game’s in-game store called the Black Market. The factions in particular seem to be important to the story of Marathon too, as Bungie has teased that there is some sort of narrative to be discovered with them, but didn’t give any further details about this.
Yes, there is a story to Marathon, but much of it is shrouded in mystery right now. Bungie has said that there are secrets to find across each map that will reveal parts of the story and what happened on the planet of Tau Ceti IV, but didn’t speak to how substantial or numerous these story drops will be. As a live service game, Marathon will be using a seasonal model for content releases and storytelling, so the narrative Bungie has in mind will likely be one that evolves over time.
Bungie has confirmed that while Marathon is not free-to-play, it won’t be a full-price game either. The company didn’t specify what the actual price would be, only saying that it would give more information this summer. If I were to guess, I would assume it would cost either $40 or $50. A closed Alpha is planned for later this month, with sign-ups happening in the official Marathon Discord channel.
After this look at gameplay for Marathon, I’m feeling pretty positive about the game and am looking forward to its September release, but I do have a few concerns. My primary concern is its approachability. Like I said before, the extraction shooter genre is pretty intense with its high stakes, and those are games that I generally stay away from. I know I’m not alone in this, so I wonder what Bungie is going to do to try and make Marathon a game that can draw in players like myself and provide an experience that’s still enjoyable. The team did say they are working to make it an approachable game, with one aspect being the sponsored kit system that gives you a set of gear if you’re running low on stuff due to a bad string of matches, allowing you to at least get into a match with the bare minimum of what you need to survive. Beyond that though, I wonder what more is being done to cater to fresh players and casuals alike.
There’s also the specter of recent live-service failures that can’t be ignored. Marathon will almost certainly be successful to some degree purely because of Bungie’s pedigree. That said, the live-service space is ruthless and Marathon is going to be competing for people’s time and money. Games like Escape from Tarkov, Fortnite, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, and many others already have their entrenched communities. Will Marathon be able to draw in any of those players and encourage them to split their time with it, especially with a fairly sparse selection of content at launch? Who knows?
What I do know is that Bungie is no stranger to sticking with games and building up communities. Destiny has had its ups and downs over the course of its 11-year lifespan, but it didn’t get to where it is today without the dedication of the development team and the community that supported it. That alone gives me reason to believe that Marathon will be around for the long haul and won’t be shut down within a year like other live-service games have been. I want to see Marathon succeed. The game has a striking art direction and gameplay that looks like it could be plenty of fun. The potential is there for something great, I just hope it can live up to it.
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