Bungie held their official gameplay reveal on April 12, 2025 and we even got a reveal of the release date! Marathon will launch on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S with full cross play and cross save on September 23, 2025!
In addition to gameplay, the showcase featured a host of some of the lead personnel involved in the development of Marathon. To offer their insight into what was shown, the hosting panel consisted of:
Social Media | Andy Salisbury
Marathon Game Director | Joe Ziegler
Marathon Franchise Art Director | Joe Cross
Gameplay Director | Andrew Wittz
Senior Design Lead | Lars Bakken
Each of these men were introduced and gave a brief explanation of their positions. Each gave context to how their work related to building the overall universe of Marathon’s rebirth. This was reinforced with a roughly two minute teaser trailer.
Marathon takes place in a sci-fi future where mercenaries have been able to trade their mortal coil for a cybernetic body. These “Runners” are immune to death and simply re-transfer themselves to another synthetic cyber body.
These Runners are dropping down onto the abandoned colony of Tau Ceti IV to loot the ruins of the society that vanished. The ultimate goal is to fight off other Runners and a robotic defence force known as the UESC, and extract with the loot. Eventually, when the player has a comfortable set of skills and good loot, they can raid the Marathon ship that looms above Tau Ceti IV.
The PVP + PVE elements of the game offer a pretty challenging loop of high-stakes. The drive to fight further and deeper into harder enemies will eventually give in to a fear of death, and losing all of your precious loot. Personally based on the visuals, I can’t help but see the influence of Tarkov meets Apex Legends.
A second teaser trailer begins that gives a brief glimpse of cinematic action before showing the release date of September 23, 2025.
Some of the take-aways I have from the trailer and the following panel discussion are that the game is very colourful, it has very sci-fi characters + weaponry and the complexity of the environments.
Visually, the developers have aimed for a concept of “graphic realism” on top of the futuristic lore. I find this appears to work very well in the curved character designs and oversaturated colours. As nice as the trailers and gameplay look- I can’t help but wonder if this is an indicator that the overall tone of the game will be whimsical and a departure from the previous Marathon: Durandal visuals.
Regardless, this is conducive to the new brighter trend of video games. As a veteran of the PS3/XB360 era, I can tell you this is nicer on the eyes.
The game’s visual design sits upon the framework of futuristic cyborg combat, and systems that will decide the fate of this fresh Extraction Shooter. As Gameplay Director Andrew Wittz explains, the player takes control of their Runner’s “build” by finding loot that changes their attributes and playstyles. He highlights how some items can be used to throw enemies off of the map for example. Another important consideration is your cyborg-body’s traversal abilities. Each item, module, weapon and choice will have a “cost” meaning that there will be many different builds available to players that will maintain a meta balance. Again, this is critical to the longevity of Marathon as it grows as a live-service game.
Lastly, the complexity of the map designs are promised to be a standout aspect of gameplay. In conjunction with the advanced builds and loot acquired by the player, the map will factor into how a great player executes their play. Not only are the UESC robots going to be formidable and a nuisance, but some players might elect to use the environment to ambush other Runners. The example that Senior Design Lead Lars Bakken made was smoke + claymores. The humble claymore can do a lot of work on an unsuspecting and blinded enemy!
There are set to be several maps at launch, with more as the game ages. It is worth noting that the total number of players on the map is not standard across the different maps. Some may be larger and therefore can accommodate more players.
There was quite a good amount of gameplay shown from their Creator Alpha Gameplay session! The curated reel of action was fun to watch and I am now much more interested in the game. I have to admit that I was surprised by the speed of gameplay. The gunfights looked solid and the movement mechanics like double jump were fast, but otherwise it can resemble a slowed-down Apex Legends.
If you are interested in seeing for yourself, Bungie will be running a Closed Alpha Test in the future and the signup is live now.
Signup at discord.gg/marathonthegame
