Bungie shares a Marathon ViDoc after fans solve an ARG

Another dive into Bungie’s new shooter

During yesterday’s PlayStation Showcase, Bungie revealed it was reviving the Marathon franchise for a new sci-fi extraction shooter. And through an ARG hidden inside the reveal trailer, fans unlocked another look at Marathon though a Bungie ViDoc.

A QR code was hidden in the Marathon teaser from yesterday. And the internet sleuths who found it were quick to work and uncover just what it meant. This spun out into what’s usually known as an Alternate Reality Game, or ARG; a series of clues and puzzles that weave in and out of the web, usually leading to some secret information. Destiny YouTuber Skarrow9 has a video up, detailing how the community worked together to solve it.

The result was a new ViDoc, Bungie’s term for a behind-the-scenes making-of video short. Bungie’s created a number of them for Destiny, and it looks like Marathon is getting its own as well, starting with the uncovered video “What is Marathon? | Somewhere In The Heavens.”

Space cowboy

Much of the ViDoc covers material from the PlayStation Blog interview. Bungie plans to incorporate every within this PvP, extraction shooter playstyle. If you’re unaware, extraction shooters are a handy catch-all for a genre of FPS that’s been popularized by games like Escape From Tarkov. You enter an area, collect good loot, tussle with other teams, and try to “extract” the loot before getting wiped out.

For Bungie, it looks like they’re trying to kindle much of that tension and use it for storytelling. Marathon will be PvP, but the team teases world events too. The idea of being the “world’s first” to uncover a new area, opening it up for other players. It’s intriguing, though I wonder how well it would work on a grander sccale.

What really catches my eye in the ViDoc is the art. The Marathon teaser had an incredible style to it, and that carries through the art here. The colors and contrast, between future tech and alien flora, is gorgeous.

We’ll see more of how Marathon stacks up to its legacy as Bungie shares more details. Otherwise, you can catch up with all the news from yesterday’s PlayStation Showcase here.