Bungie is set to unveil Marathon gameplay for the first time this weekend on Saturday 12th April 2025 following a complex ARG with the community. Today I’m going to recap all the latest events with Marathon as we look forward to the weekend, and seeing gameplay for the first time.
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Bungie revealed a teaser trailer for their upcoming reboot of Marathon, with the trailer ending saying the global gameplay reveal will take place this Saturday 12th April at 6pm BST.
The teaser showed a character running through a bright jungle, and it sounds like they are being chased. The Runner gets shot, and blue liquid seeps out into the surrounding water, then a pink cat (which could be a bot) then curls around the dying person.
ARG explainer
We haven’t heard much from the Marathon team until last week things kicked into gear from Sony and Bungie, plus some new websites and twitter accounts appeared. PlayStation updated their Twitter account banners with reference to Marathon. Joseph Cross, Marathon Art Director then released some new artwork, then we had a reveal of a number of weapons from the game, 16 in total, along with their names. Then a new MIDA Twitter account appeared. The MIDA Multi-tool is a Destiny weapon, however, MIDA originates in Marathon, with the Destiny weapon being a nod to Bungie’s earlier franchise.
The Marathon Community, which is largely made up of Destiny community members got to work on solving the ARG. This included a new website appearing to show orienttation of satellites, plus another website with a terminal, where you could enter commands and browse through files and folder structures. MrRoflWaffles, Skarrow and other community members got to work trying to solve the ARG.
Players discovered a website with a hidden image and a link to something with Twitch credentials. Symbols were decrypted, plus a Traxus Global website featuring what appears to be a planetary system. MrRoflWaffles has a great video explaining the whole ARG, and I’ll link to that in the description for those who want the full details. Solving all this was a massive effort, and it’s a great video breaking everything down, highly recommended viewing. A simple way of explaining it would be finding hexadecimal codes by listening to audio tracks hidden within a website.
The Marathon puzzle solvers are largely made up from Destiny Community members, however, many Destiny players have said they aren’t interested in Marathon. An Extraction Shooter is very different from what we have in Destiny 2 today, which is looter-shooter across PVE and PVP game modes, however over the last few years the PVP has felt in decline. This is largely where the negaitive feedback from the Destiny 2 community comes from, the perseption that Marathon is ‘taking resources’ from Destiny 2, with many of the PVP team moving to develop Marathon. Personally, I don’t buy into this. Bungie have proved themselves time and time again developing massive franchises, and I hope they do the same with Marathon. I for one, am looking forward to the game releasing.
Bungie first announced Marathon back in May 2023 with a reveal trailer, however, since then few details have leaked related to the reboot of Bungie’s Marathon franchise. The original Marathon was a first person shooter released in 1994 and it was followed up with two sequels. This franchise was before Halo, and before Destiny. Bungie is hoping to revive Marathon as a “PVP extraction shooter” featuring “evolving, persistent zones” set in the same universe as the original games.
Marathon is set to be the first new project since the success of Halo and Destiny, and is due for release on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox.
Since the game was revealed in May 2023 the game has had a troubled development. Former project lead Chris Barrett left Bungie following alleged ‘disturbing communications’ with female subordinates.
Jason Schreier appeared on the Friends Per Second Podcast in 2024, and SkillUp asked what the “temperature check” was on Marathon.
“Not great, from what I’ve heard,” Schreier replied.
“There’s a reason that it was planned for this year and slipped a whole year, and people that I’ve talked to are a little pessimistic about it even hitting its current planned deadline. But we’ll see. I don’t know exactly when that is, sometime in 2025, I’m not sure.
Current Game Director Joe Ziegler then came out in October 2024 to give a brief update on Marathon, although this was filmed direct to camera with no gameplay and only a few pieces of concept artwork.
This was one of the best ARG’s I’ve seen, and I’m looking forward to the gameplay reveal. Whether an Extraction Shooter is going to be my thing for the long term, we’ll have to wait and see, but judging on the amount of hours I’ve sunk into Halo and Destiny over the years I think it’s a fair assumption to say I’m going to enjoy it.
It’s also worth noting creators and influencers have said they have been playtesting Marathon, so we’re likely to get impressions shortly after the gameplay reveal, so for those looking forward to Marathon content, I think we’re going to have a lot to dive into over the next few weeks.
After the gameplay reveal I hope we get a date for a public Alpha or Beta Test. I don’t know if its too soon for a release date, but plenty of people have been playing this game, so we’ll have to wait and see. I hope it’s good, and I would love to hear what you think about it in the comments below.