Marathon developer update teases “a lot more” to come in 2025

Bungie has released a 10-minute developer update for science-fiction player-versus-player extraction shooter Marathon, including new images and a promise of “a lot more” to come in 2025, including expanded playtests.

Here is the full transcript of the developer update:

Yo, how’s it going?

My name is Joe Ziegler. I am a game director here at Bungie and I am working currently on a little game that we like to call Marathon and I’m here today to talk to you a little bit about that game and talk to you about what we’ve been up to, where we’re going with that game, where we’re going was talking to you as an audience and, maybe sneak peek a little bit of some of the stuff we’ve been working on.

Just a warning though, we won’t be showing any gameplay footage today but we will be showing a little bit of a sneak peek on some of the stuff that we’ve been working on. Yeah. So stick around. If you are interested in learning a little bit more about Marathon. And, let’s get to it.

Awesome. So a lot of you might be asking the question, “What is Marathon?” Well, Marathon is our take on essentially an extraction shooter. And if you don’t know what an extraction shooter is, it’s a game type where you essentially go into a dangerous world, a world filled with essentially hostile mobs and players alike that are all sort of existing in that environment and a huge threat to you and challenge your ability to survive and get out alive.

The goal of every session is to get out alive and along the way you’re going to be completing quests, you’re going to be finding loot. Loot that will either help you upgrade yourself or things that you can equip do yourself to make yourself stronger. If you get alive, all that loot is yours to keep. If you don’t, you will be losing all of that and someone else will be able to take that from you.

It’s an intense game. So in that sense, we like to say it’s a game that’s not for everybody but if you are interested in sort of having that intense survival experience and having a game where the stakes really matter and you feel like that you’re challenged to survive in a really, really, harsh and interesting world, then Marathon is just right up your alley. So, yeah, hopefully that sounds appealing to you.

And the other thing to note about Marathon as a game is that we give you a lot of different tools to do a lot of different things inside the game. There’s a ton of loot that you can find, There is weapons. There’s equipment that you can equip to yourself that changes your stats or gives you, sort of tweaks some of the things that you can do inside of the game. There is utility consumables that are sort of like items that you can use inside of the world like like things that are like mines or like grenades. There’s also consumables that help you sort of heal yourself and give you utility in that sort of way.

But beyond that, there’s also this other layer that is, what we like to call our Runners, which is sort of the template by which you equip all that stuff to. So, each Runner has like a small subset of abilities and on top of that, you get to customize however you want, thinking about sort of what you want to accomplish inside of the game. You might equip different types of gear to your character, to your Runner, and then go on those runs with that gear in mind.

Yeah. So there’s a lot of different ways run can unfold inside of our game with all those different pieces. There’s also a lot of different sort of objectives and things like that that exists inside of the game. But of course, every single one of them comes with its own risk. And the risk is always present that if you don’t get out alive, you will lose the things that you have on you.

Talking a little bit about the world of Marathon, our games obviously set in and the IP of Marathon which is one of Bungie’s classic IPs. I think the first game released in 1994 so it was quite a while ago. But what we’re doing with that world is we’re taking a lot of the familiar elements, especially a lot of the things around the mysteries and the kind of eeriness and sort of like the, how do I put it, like the psychological kind of creepiness of the entire, IP as it exists before.

But we’re layering on some elements that we think really help modernize it and also bring it to a new story that we can sort of and new world that we can sort of like continue to update and and delight all of you with over the course of time. Where are we at right now in terms of making this game?

Well, 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, a lot of players like yourself also with creators. And so it’s sort of insanely awesome. And I’m filled with gratitude when I think about it, because there’s so many people who’ve just contributed by telling us, “Hey, this thing sucks,” or “This thing is great,” in a way that really has helped us, diagnose, analyze, and shape and shift the game and great ways.

Where the game is out right now, there’s 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 still kind of a little bit in an early state. So we’re still iterating through and making those things land in a strong way and a few of the items are still kind of coming online.

So it’s a little early to show you all of it as one piece but as you’ve noticed, like as many of you are familiar with, if you’ve been or if you’re familiar with game development, 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.

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Having said that, let me give you a sneak peek of a couple of the images you might have been staring at that kind of exist in the background behind me. One of the images that going to be showing up on this screen is of a Runner that we have in our game. It’s codename is currently Thief which might give you an indication to how it plays inside of the game.

If you notice the character sort of creepily peeking around the corner in sort of that quiet moment before she makes her move. This is like, sort of like the theme of that character in a lot of ways, and should give you a hint as to what kind of gameplay, that character is going to be driving from. I’m trying to avoid giving away too many of the details but there’s a lot of exciting ones and we’ve been testing this character recently and I will say there’s a lot of hilarious stories that come from it but also very, very crazy moments that this character contributes to the game.

Then the other image we’re going to show you right now, which you’re going to see on the screen, is that of a character we codenamed Stealth. This Runner is obviously a stealthy type of Runner and they sort of are in that space where, what we talked about deception as a Runner, as a Runner utility trait, they really embody it and they’re really hard to pin down.

And you can see that they have the tools to stalk the battlefield and show up in ways that allow them to kind of take advantage. So, I play this character actually a pretty decent amount. Can’t say that I want it to be stronger because it’s probably a little strong right now but by the time we get it to all of you, I’m sure it’ll be in a in a good place.

Yeah, so that’s it for some of the previews we have. Hopefully it’s just a little bit of a taste and amuse-bouche, if you will, of content that we have before we reveal a lot more for you and in sort of the midst of 2025. Speaking of 2025 as well, like we said before, we’ve been really iterating with our players and so in 2025, we’re going to be expanding our playtests a little bit wider and wider.

We’re looking to add a significant amount of players to each of our milestones as we’re going forward and some of these, big inflections are opportunities for you all to join us. We’ll definitely let you know when that happens but if you are interested in following us or learning more or sort of keeping up to date with all the updates that we have, definitely one of the ways you can do that is wishlist us on the storefronts that exist, whether it be Steam on Xbox or on PSN. All of them have wishlist buttons. If you click that, it will help us know that you want to learn more about the game and we can sort of send the information your way.

Well, thank you all. I just want to say a lot of different thanks actually. I have so much gratitude right now that I don’t know if I could fit it all in this video but what I will say is that thanks to the team. The team has done an amazing job and they continue to advocate incessantly for all of you to make sure that the decisions we’re making aren’t holding back what you all care about. And every day there’s endless debates focusing on what is the right way to continue to proceed to engage this game with you.

Our goal is ultimately to make a game that all of you feel like is worth spending your time and, because time is so precious, like spending your time on and really, really finding the fun and finding that storytelling space where you create the memories that you want to.

Second of all, thank you all for actually following us. We do this all for you. And so the interest that you show and sort of engaging with all of the content that we’ve created, with sort of wanting to learn more about Marathon is really, really important to us and it means the world to us.

And finally, thanks to our partners. Our partners have been amazing and supportive. Every step of the way we’ve been very fortunate to have them continue to work with us in order to help make this game a reality.

And with that, all I have to say is I hope we can bring you into the game and show you something soon. But until then, take care and thanks for listening to me today. Peace out!

Marathon will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam. A release date has yet to be announced.

Watch the developer update below. View a new set of images at the gallery.

Developer Update: October 2024