Destiny maker Bungie is working on Marathon, a PvP extraction shooter that was announced in 2023. The studio has now provided an update on the game, saying that development on it was “on track”. Bungie, however, did not reveal any Marathon gameplay, choosing instead to share concept art images from the shooter and provide sparse details on the development.
Marathon Developer Update
In a Developer Update video posted on YouTube Monday, Marathon game director Joe Ziegler broke Bungie's silence on the sci-fi extraction shooter. In the video Ziegler shared a development update on the game and said that Bungie was not quite ready to show gameplay yet. But the game director said that different aspects of development were “on track”.
“For the past couple of years, we've been doing a lot of aggressive change to the game, and we've been iterating pretty heavily. And during that time, we've been testing with a lot of players,” Ziegler said.
“Where the game is at right now, there are a variety of different things at different states inside of the game. Some things are a little bit more complete, like our environments are starting to come together in a really, really beautiful way. Some of the character models we've been iterating through, so they're coming together, but they're not fully there yet. Our enemy models are skill kind of a little bit in an early state,” he added.
The developer said that while it was a little early to show gameplay to players, development on “all of these things are on track.”
“They're not all together. But when they all do come together, we really, really are looking forward to showing you what that looks like, especially in play,” Ziegler said.
Hey everyone! We made a "little" video where I chat about what we're making on the Marathon team and what we've been up to in the dark all this time. It's not a gameplay reveal or anything, but if you're interested in hearing the latest, check it out below.
— Ziegler (@Ziegler_Dev) October 28, 2024
Much ♥ pic.twitter.com/WaHgCADed3
New Concept Art
In the Developer Update video, Bungie also shared a couple of new concept art images from Marathon. The first screenshot was that of a “Runner” from the game, codenamed “Thief”, while the second was of another character, codenamed “Stealth”, a Runner with a focus on stealth gameplay.
Bungie said it would reveal more content from the game in 2025, which is when they plan to expand Marathon playtests as well. “We're looking to add a significant amount of players to each of our milestones as we're going forward,” Ziegler said.
The Destiny developer had not provided any update on Marathon in 17 months since it was revealed with a teaser trailer at PlayStation Showcase in May 2023. Before Monday's updates, the Marathon X handle's last post was on May 27, 2023, when the game was first announced. “Now we're going dark to focus on the game... and when we come back – we'll have gameplay to show!” the post had said.
In August, Bungie announced that it was laying off 220 employees making structural changes to the studio and its functioning as part of cost-cutting measures. Studio CEO Pete Parsons claimed at the time that the company needed to make “substantial changes” to its cost structure and “focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon.”
Marathon does not yet have a release date, but the game is available to wishlist on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox storefronts.
