If I were working in Bungie's marketing team right now, I think I'd be feeling the strain. Marathon's debut trailer made a powerful first impression back in May 2023. The art style was bold. The colour palette was sizzling. The soundtrack was classical-meets-Casio in the best way possible. But since then, the mood around Marathon has trended relentlessly downward, the vibes soured first by an art plagiarism scandal and then by an alpha playtest that prompted Bungie to indefinitely delay the game. At this point, the challenge facing Bungie is no longer just to release a great game. It also needs to entirely reset the narrative around its first new title in more than eight years.
So, let's momentarily put aside some of the setbacks and stumbles and look at Marathon with fresh eyes. It's an extraction shooter – one of those multiplayer pressure cookers in which you and your team of fellow Runners spawn into a map and scrounge as much loot as you can before heading for an extraction point. Safely skedaddle, and you get to keep everything you found. But if you're killed before reaching an exit (perforated by a rival squad, perhaps, or mulched by the robotic security forces that roam the surface of Tau Ceti IV) you lose everything, including the guns and gear you brought into the game with you. It's a genre that delivers ecstatic highs and crushing lows, all of which play out against a backbeat of relentless tension. And they were all on show throughout our Marathon hands-on session earlier in the year.
