Marathon's creative director says Bungie 'wanted to push the boundaries of what an extraction shooter can do with its story' as it goes head to head with Arc Raiders' evolving world

A Runner from the next Marathon game reveal looking at the screen, her eyes are covered, possibly replaced by biosynthetics .

In the time since Marathon's controversial public alpha, Bungie returned to the drawing board to make major changes and even introduce new features like proximity chat, solos, and Rook, effectively a free loadout option. At this point, the changes seem to be having a positive effect on fans who were previously not too impressed with what Bungie was showing.

While it's much more subtle and nebulous than these changes, Bungie has also claimed it's "doubling down on the dark, gritty, and grounded sci-fi world" through an updated visual style, "deepened environmental storytelling", and the narrative-tracking Codex.