After saying goodbye to the incredible Halo franchise, developer Bungie moved on to break new ground in the live-service space with two Destiny titles (and there’s a mobile installment in Destiny: Rising on the way). It has been supporting these two games for nearly a decade now, but we have finally seen what else has been in the works.
To the surprise of many, it is actually a return to the studio’s earliest franchise, Marathon. Those original titles were made in the same style as the original Doom games, but this new reboot of sorts is going in a very different direction. And don’t forget, Bungie has proven that they’re the masters of sci-fi shooters, so let’s go the distance and cover everything we know about Marathon.
Marathon is surely one of the best upcoming video games to get ready for in 2025. If you’re on the lookout for new games on your favorite platform, don’t forget to visit our articles on upcoming PS5 games, upcoming Switch games, upcoming Xbox Series X games and upcoming PC games.
Release date
Marathon will release on September 23, 2025.
Platforms
Despite being purchased by PlayStation, Bungie would always continue to put their titles on any platforms they wished. This remains true with Marathon, which is currently announced for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
Trailers
The teaser trailer for Marathon has no gameplay, and gives a look at the sci-fi world of the game. The main focus is a character running with a timer counting down on their back on a ship that appears to have crashed straight through a moon. We get some quick cuts of possible enemies and creatures before our runner is taken down by a sniper that looks robotic in nature. They pull something from the corpse as two others stand guard.
In that same blog post, Taylor explained that a big focus for Marathon would be “player-based storytelling” in which player choices and actions will have some impact on the story itself rather than it being ridged. It will not have a single-player campaign, so all story and lore will be delivered through the PvP mode. They give an example of players potentially discovering something during a run that opens up a brand new area of the map that all players could then explore.
The team does state that they intend to remain faithful to the original lore and universe of Marathon without being a direct sequel.
Technically this isn’t a trailer, but Marathon director joe Ziegler did release an update video on the state of the game. There were no new details or footage, but we did see two pieces of concept art for a pair of Runners who go by Stealth and Thief.
The Marathon gameplay showcase also came with a new cinematic short, although calling it short is a bit of an understatement. The trailer sets the date at 7-3-2794 and zooms in on a buggy riding across an alien world when an orbiting space station is hit by metors that come crashing down onto the planet. We cut to an astronaut farmer in 2812 keels over with some sort of illness. As the dates keep jumping, we see worse fates befall these characters.
We watch a scavenger collecting roaming around the previous locations grabbing what they can as a VO speaks in cryptic riddles.
There is a strong sense of repetition, which makes sense for the genre. The apparent main character, Glitch, is having her memory tested by identifying items close to her.
It isn’t just tone setting and story here, but some high-octane action as well spliced in.
The characters we know of so far and their VO are:
- Erica Lindbeck – Glitch
- Elias Toufexis – Void
- Nika Futterman – Blackbird
- Donnla Hughes – ONI
- Ben Starr – Narrator
Gameplay
If Marathon looks and sounds a lot like Destiny, you’re not completely wrong. It will be another sci-fi, persistent world, first-person shooter where you can play alone or in teams in a PvPvE-style environment. The differences are that in Marathon you are a Runner who travels down to the planet called Tau Ceti IV to plunder loot that you then need to escape with to upgrade your character. You can go alone or in groups of up to three looking for these alien artifacts, new guns, and other types of gear yet to be revealed. This genre is sometimes referred to as an extraction shooter, which games like Escape from Tarkov fall into.
The Gameplay Reveal trailer is very quick but finally gives us our first taste of the game. It shows off a montage of shooting with several standard weapons, a few interesting powers, and creeping through indoor and outdoor locations. Mobility looks like a big focus, with boosters and ways to parkour around the environment shown off.
Thankfully, we also got an extended trailer to really show off the gameplay in more detail. The narrator details the basic setup of jumping into conflict with your squad of up to three members against up to 18 players alongside the environmental dangers while trying to scavenge as much loot as possible.
Death means losing all your loot, while escaping allows you to use it on your next run or save it in a vault. But even if you have nothing to your name, different factions will be able to sponsor you with additional gear to keep you from falling into a perpetual losing cycle.
Crews will have randomized objectives on each run beyond just hunting for loot and can use contextual pings for easy communication.
Different Runners have their own skills to support the team, such as stealth and healing. We know there will be six at launch, but the four we know of so far are Locus, Blackbird, Glitch, and Void.
If you want to hear the devs go in-depth on the more nitty-gritty details, check out the full livestream where they break down a lot of mechanics.
Preorder
Marathon is coming soon on September 23, but it cannot be preordered quite yet. You can, however, wishlist the game now on Steam.
