Bungie’s Marathon is now on Steam, with a new dev vlog

Though it has been inevitable from the get-go, nobody really knew when Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, would make an appearance on Steam. Happily, it’s just happened, and to celebrate the occasion, game director Joe Ziegler chimed in on how the development is going and what Marathon is.

Ziegler’s vlog comes in at just under 10 minutes’ worth of runtime and I recommend it for anyone even remotely interested in Marathon. On top of the obvious boon that is an honest-to-goodness explanation of Marathon‘s core gameplay loop, Ziegler also said that Bungie’s been executing some “aggressive [changes]” on Marathon over the past couple of years. Promising news? Perhaps, but Ziegler also essentially confirmed that Marathon‘s Runners will be pre-existing character archetypes instead of fully customizable blank slates.

Marathon Game Director provides a new production update, and it’s looking good

“There’s a variety of different things at different states inside of the game,” Ziegler said when discussing the current state of Marathon‘s development. “Some things are a little more complete, like our environments [which are] starting to come together in a really, really beautiful way.” Enemy models, items, and Runners themselves are progressing well too, Ziegler claims, adding that “it’s [still] a little early to show you all of it as one piece.”

In other words: no gameplay yet, whatsoever. Ziegler did provide a bit of valuable context on the how and why of some of Marathon‘s admittedly striking new artworks. If nothing else, we’ve seen the Thief and Stealth Runners’ respective character art, and those are pretty darn sweet in a way that kind of makes me think of Craig Mullins’ classic Marathon artwork.

Perhaps most importantly, Ziegler has promised that Bungie will expand Marathon playtesting substantially in 2025. By then, I expect, we should have a better idea of how the game actually plays and perhaps even get to see a crumb of actual gameplay.

Full disclosure, though, is that I am not happy about the direction Bungie’s taking Marathon in. Though the franchise has always had a pronounced multiplayer component, that’s always been an aside to the game’s ridiculously complex campaign narrative. To get a sense of how that worked back in the day, I suggest playing Classic Marathon on Steam, which was released for free by the awesome Aleph One community.

It was always a given that Bungie would turn Marathon into a live-service offering if it was ever to be revived. That’s modern Bungie’s entire schtick, after all, given how successful Destiny has been from day one. Yet, I can’t help but feel disappointed that it’s being remade into an extraction shooter, of all things. Target audiences and all that, I suppose.