Marathon Review - Endless Runner

Review Code Provided by PlayStation

A copy of Marathon's Deluxe Edition (MSRP $59.99) was provided for review. While I am grateful and humbled, this opportunity did not influence my review of Marathon. Bungie and PlayStation did not see this review before going live or offer any input or guidelines beyond a standard embargo. Thank you for understanding. Ya boy's budget was stretched.

"We create unmatched entertainment experiences designed to inspire friendship and lifelong memories."

You'd be forgiven for not recognizing that quote. It is from the top of Bungie's Careers page.¹ When I peel back the corporate hiring layer, the core of the statement stands. If you are of a certain age, titles like Halo and Destiny elicit formative memories with friends.² And if you are of another certain age, you might be taken back to playing 1994's Marathon "at the Drexel student newspaper on Power Macs."

Thirty years later, Marathon is back as an extraction shooter set on the planet of Tau Ceti IV where players select a specialized synthetic body dubbed "Runners" to get in, grab loot, and exfiltrate. This incarnation of Marathon is Bungie's first new game since Destiny 2 in 2017 and their first under Sony's tutelage.³

Over the years, I have grown cold toward both Destiny 2 and Bungie as they failed to draw me back, forgot its own lore, and were rumored to have swung the axe on The Last of Us Online. I felt like the studio had lost its touch chasing the stars with Guardians. I fell away. Friends fell away. I became even a smidge snarky. Not unlike a certain Dickensian miser soured on Christmas, when Bungie's name came up, I would grumble.

Yet, the flame of my youthful affection was fanned when Marathon was announced...or my dormant Destiny-pilled dopamine receptors were crying out for a fix. I was open to the possibility of a new game from the legendary studio not bogged down by years of expansions, systems, and a shortage of friends playing. I saw it as an opportunity for a fresh start for both Bungie and myself.

As I have been playing Marathon for the last two months as much as possible, I kept coming back to my own stories with Bungie titles: The late nights running a raid for the first time ; all-nighter LANs fueled by combat and caffeine; the midnight launch parties; the pop of finally snagging a legendary or going flawless. I see the threads of them all woven into the cybernetic shell that is Marathon's modern form. It is these stories—my stories—alongside a striking FPS package that makes Marathon the best game Bungie has ever made.⁴

Extracting Lore

Christmas Manuals

It was the Christmas of '04. I didn't have an Xbox, but my cousin did and that year Santa brought Halo 2. He brought that eco-green powerhouse to my grandparents' basement and we played for hours. He left behind the game manual and I took it home (sorry Jake). I poured over those pages for ages.⁵ I was reading about Covenant Carbines, Jackals, and the ensuing conflict that I knew nothing about. When thinking about it, I don't know if I've ever beaten Halo 2 front to back, but I do know that manual from cover to cover.

There is, unfortunately, no manual for Marathon—there’s not even a physical release. The closest you'll get are these starter tips on Bungie's site. Even the tutorial fails at presenting the world of Tau Ceti IV and the mechanics beyond the basics of "bad robots don't want you here" and "use vents."

For the uninitiated—like I was—an extraction shooter is when players load into a map, either as a part of a team or as a solo player, to scavenge the environment for better loot, fight other players and the world itself, and rush to an extraction point to get out with the bag. If you die or miss exfil, you lose not only the loot, but everything on your person. To me, it's a bit like a battle royale, a stealth game, a heist game, and a roguelite (or is it roguelike?) all in one. When it leaked and was eventually announced that Bungie was tackling the genre, I decided that I'd just wait to play their version instead of trying the likes of Escape from Tarkov or ARC Raiders.

Marathon has a steep learning curve. There are layers upon layers of mechanics and systems. It's obtuse. Unclear. It sort of feels like the goal was to shock and overwhelm. It is not inherently “fun” to overcome that overwhelm. I could see the argument for it being "intentional" and aligned with the narrative of being thrust onto a desolate, deadly planet. Just because I see it though, doesn't mean I agree with it. Your initial hours with Marathon will be filled with trials and tribulations.

And yet, I have found cresting that curve worth every step. I think this is a core element all those From Software fans are blabbering about all the time. Those players dive into complex, rote, brutal experiences to overcome the hand-crafted challenge again and again and again. I am finding satisfaction in every lesson learned. Every run, I either pick up a new bit of knowledge (did you know L2 is used for a heavy knife attack?) or expand upon what came before. I feel myself getting better.

Even more rewarding than learning the sheer mechanics and raw how-to of Tau Ceti IV, are the lessons in how my play style fits within this extraction shooter sandbox that Bungie has built. My approach in solo is different than trios. Where do my years of stealth gameplay fit? Can I learn to push and be aggressive with the best? Where is my hesitation holding me back?

I think RamenStyle's video "I Tried Learning Marathon for 7 Days… Then Something Changed" is a prime example of this internal arc. They showcase a genuine adaptation to the world in a way that matches their style. It's not some strict adherence to old shooters or some online meta, but a legitimate answer to meeting the game where it is at and adapting to the world for your own success. It also ends with him doing duos in Cryo Archive which is just insane.

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Bungie stitches Marathon's narrative together through environmental storytelling, Factions cutscenes, and text and audio logs. There's no traditional single player campaign or big narrative quests with cutscenes, like I praised Destiny's Rise of Iron for bringing to fruition a decade ago. The current implementation is intriguing, especially the presentation, but I can't help but wish there was some little six-hour campaign like Titanfall 2 or other FPS games.

But as I think about it – as I try to imagine how it would fit into the game, how it would reinforce the loop, mechanics, etc. — I don't think it would work. I suspect Bungie came to the same conclusion.

Marathon is defined by its marriage of player versus player versus environment (PvPvE). If you drop one of those letters—presumably the other "player" element—the game loses a crucial piece. The "Soulsborne" games have a PvP element, but as far as I know it is opt-in, not enabled all the time. It doesn't inherently shape the world and story, just the gameplay.

The Factions offer the most direct presentation of the narrative. Completing the priority contracts offers up little interstitial scenes with sick animated characters. It's a shame that these scenes are in opposition to the whole "let's start a new run" experience you might be having with your party. There's no way to replay them, so while your mates chatter in your ear, you can try to mute them (but who knows how many button presses that takes), skim the subtitles, or just mash the square button to skip the scene. It's a shame—but certainly a step up from "learn more at bungie.net."

I find the environmental storytelling much more compelling. All across the maps are small details that tell the larger story. Graffiti inside a vent tells me someone once hid from unknown dangers. Broken machinery reinforces the failed mission of the UESC Marathon and its colonization mission. Lab equipment filled with animals, floating corpses inside an ethereal anomaly, and patrolling robots all tell the story in a natural, revelatory way.

Baggage Free

A core design in Destiny was segmentation. You could patrol planets for materials and gear. Social events would happen in fixed locations (maybe even on fixed clocks) in these instances. If you wanted to do a Strike, you'd go to orbit, queue it up, and load back in. It's been a while, but I think it was the same for raids too. If you wanted PvP, you needed to go to orbit and select the Crucible. Want to manage your items and go shopping? Go to orbit and pick the tower. This was clear even in the alpha. As I write this, it reminds me a lot of collecting a star in Super Mario 64—pick the star, load in, grab the star, go back to the hub. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Where Destiny was divided, Marathon is unified. There is "one" queue and many modes within. You don't have to pick a PvP mode or a quest mode or a raid mode. It's all happening at the same time. Every action feeds into each system giving players unprecedented freedom.

Okay, technically there are three queues—trios, solos, and a special solo mode for a class dubbed "Rook." These queues and which map you want to play on are the only decisions you have to make from a menu and load-in perspective. The rest are player-motivated and conditional. If you want to complete a contract, you'll kit up for that contract and play accordingly. If you want to go hunting, you'll make a different loadout. Wanna sneak around and slurp up the loot? You'll probably go Rook, you filthy animal.

With every gameplay scenario possible in a single run, the opportunity to be reactive is always present. Is there a lockdown happening on Dire Marsh? Maybe you feel kitted enough to take down a Warden? Maybe the loot is too good and you need to get the heck out of dodge? Plan all you want, but the world of Tau Ceti IV will often give you the choice to buck the plan and go for glory...or succumb to greed.

A shining example of this cohesion is the contracts. Completing them gives you experience points for the assigned faction. When in trios, your teammates contribute to your contract completion and you to theirs. If you open a certain chest, you'll get EXP for that faction. Pop an area scanner and CyberAcme gives you a little EXP. Use a delicious finisher on an enemy Runner and Arachne will bless you with 50 EXP. Almost all your actions contribute to overall progression, making no run feel like a waste of time.⁶

Leveling up a faction will allow you to upgrade their perks. These are not exclusive. You don't need to pledge faction loyalty for the entire season. All of these perks are thematically tailored to the faction and your play style. NuCaloric is going to give you health and shields. Mida is going to let you blow more stuff up. Sekiguchi Genetics is gonna make your Runner Shell all shiny and slick. There is an abundance of choice in how you decide to play Marathon, both in a team or solo setting.

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At launch there are just four maps available: Perimeter, a more traditional planet development site divided roughly in two; Dire Marsh, a goopy, bubbling swamp with facilities erected out of the fog; Outpost, an aggressive military outpost with fire rain; Cryo Archive, an icy labyrinth inside the abandoned and ever present UESC Marathon.

These are some of the best maps Bungie has ever crafted. Yes. Put 'em up there with Zanzibar, Beaver Creek, Coagulation, Vault of Glass, The Burnout, etc. etc. etc.. Go ahead and call me blasphemous if you must, but I will not waver.

What's so striking about these maps is the balance Bungie has achieved. Each one has to accommodate the variety of play, trios and solos, plus offer unique FPS opportunities. The hot zones of each map could almost be chunked out and made their own standalone maps in another shooter.

As you play these maps over and over, they reveal more of themselves to you. Lanes and routes become apparent. You learn what to run on, climb up, and jump off. I saw a comment on an excellent Outpost routing video that said "We got the next Mirror's Edge installment without realizing it." A deft comparison I wish I could have come up with on my own. You develop your own "Runner Vision" as you explore, fight, and (try to) conquer these locations. It is a necessary skill for survival and winning fights.

I have not loved a map like Outpost in ages. There is a looming sealed command center called Pinwheel at the heart of the map. You find three levels of clearance keys around the points of interest that will unlock Pinwheel and give your team (and everyone else) the opportunity to chase top-tier loot.⁷ As you start a match, you might push toward a red key spawn and encounter another squad doing the same. There are high- and low-ground engagements, hallways and sniping lanes. After you wipe out the team (or retreat), maybe you find the special elevator key into Pinwheel, so you shift the plan and go for that instead. Once inside Pinwheel, you better check corners and watch your back; Rooks might already be inside. The wings of Pinwheel hold loot guarded by brutal bots and harbor escape routes back outside for a quick exfil.

A recent run I did there was a dream scenario. My team pushed our way toward a red key beneath the Drone Wing and encountered another squad. We took the high ground in the building and exchanged shots before a Heat Cascade rained down keeping the two teams in their structures. One teammate snuck out and positioned for the flank. I sniped an opponent bold enough to peek. Then my teammates pushed. I kept overwatch and we finished them.

We grabbed the red key and the keys that the enemy Runners grabbed. We opened Pinwheel and began the looting. With three red keys, we prioritized the coveted Red Key Room and filled our bags. Then we pushed Drone and Destroyed Wing, which let us unlock the ultra-secure Command Wing for all the loot. We were unstoppable. We exfilled with under a minute to go, all of Pinwheel on our backs.

This is just one (good) example of the arc and rush a single run can have. We adapted, communicated, and leveraged our map knowledge to conquer. The run before, greed got us and bots wiped our team right after I got a Copperhead machine gun for the first time. Being the most kitted players on the map does not guarantee victory. You have to be and play smarter than your rivals too.

On the weekends, Cryo Archive unlocks its doors for the bold and daring to enter. I've run inside its frigid walls somewhere in the double digits. This is the culmination of Bungie's raid, PvP, and map design. Cryo is filled with puzzles, combat, and a brutal challenge. Being exclusive to the weekend, it lets you plan and prep all week for the 5K loadout value minimum required to run it. It makes each weekend feel like an event. And that hyper-focused event feel can unite the right team of players to keep the runs and fun going. I was having an unsuccessful Thursday set of runs and come Friday night, my vault was looking skimpy for the demands of Cryo.⁸ That didn't deter this group I found. They kept bringing me shields and health to keep the runs going because the team chemistry was there and we were hitting our stride. Before the night was over, we cracked two vaults and survived last second exfils.

I am eager to see what future seasons add to the UESC Marathon. I'm not sure if I'll ever actually beat "The Compiler" there, but I do love getting better one run at a time.

Competitive Community

LANdmark Nights

I don't remember how I was invited, but I was to a middle/high-school LAN party within my church while I was somewhere between 10-12 years old. I remember us loading up a car with spare tube TVs and Xbox consoles from the church, driving them to the hosts' house, and setting up the whole LAN. Ethernet cables were strewn up and down the halls. Each TV was in its own room and each TV was its own team of four—no screen cheating allowed. We'd stay up all night drinking Mountain Dew and playing Slayer on Ascension to 200 kills. Our own rule to control the tower was layered on top and made way for all-timer matches. I only went to two of these, but they are memories I've cherished for the last 20 odd years.

Marathon is a game of community and competition. There are the obvious angles, like running a squad with your friends or the fact every match has other players gunning you down for your gear. These are traditional and expected from the likes of a studio with Bungie's pedigree.

Then there are the other angles that crop up given the genre and its mechanics. You've got proximity chat, which feels like it is having a full-blown moment in the video game industry with titles like Lethal Company, Peak, and the upcoming Big Walk; not to mention the other extraction shooters that utilize the mechanic too. The idea is voice chat that reacts to your proximity to other players. When nearby, you can hear or talk to others with ease. Far away and you might hear the chatter on the digital wind.

Prox chat shines in Rook runs. Rooks are solo runners that have a pre-made kit and spawn late into trios matches. Rooks can decide to form their own team—or shoot each other in the face. I remember one game I loaded in where I heard footsteps near my spawn and then, as if from the rafters, I heard a voice call out "Hey Rook? Wanna team up? Rooks together strong." Knowing I was well and truly cooked if I said no—I technically had no choice—but I wanted to team up. It was this organic social moment. We didn't survive, but still the candid moment of "RookMan" hiding in the shadows calling out for a teammate is etched into my brain.

Just because prox/team chat is integrated into the game does not mean that everyone can or will use it. Using crew fill to make a trio, in my experience, often makes a silent trio. I offer up a hello to be met with silence. Now, perhaps these players don't have a mic or are sitting in a quiet house unable to speak, but man oh man is it frustrating to not have the level of coordination that talking provides. Perhaps this is something that Bungie can fix across the game with focused matchmaking.

That doesn't mean you can't communicate—there is a robust ping system. And just because I can't hear them does not mean they can't hear me. I remember one run, two of us made the exfil, but our third was a few steps short. I hung back and gave words of encouragement and offered what advice/perspective I could from the observation camera. They made it out and I celebrated. And thanks to patch 1.0.6, if you like the randoms you paired up with, you can keep the gang together with "Stay Together."

All that silence in crew fill though has pushed me into finding groups, just like my friend Kevin did for me all those years ago. Nowadays it is all done on Discord and I have found a good community in SeraphMax's Discord. Seraph makes excellent, no-fluff Marathon guides and has a pretty active Discord where I can almost always find a team to run with. Of course this has its own risks of running with a stranger you don't jive with or whose play style is not compatible or is way too serious or makes gross "jokes" to fill the silent void. That's the cost of online voice chat and is present in a Discord or natively in the game. Those risks are worth the teammates I have found; the kind folk willing to teach Cryo or the Pinwheel pushers or those dedicated to getting a stranger's contract completed, no matter the cost.

Looping Legacy

Hawky

You never forget your first exotic in Destiny and mine was Hawkmoon. My friends and I affectionately referred to it as "Hawky." I rarely went without it somewhere nearby and available. Given my time with Marathon, I decided to redownload Destiny 2 just to see what my character and vault looked like all these years later.

But Hawkmoon wasn't in my vault anymore. Apparently, it exists in something called "collections" and requires materials to reassemble? While semi-expected, this revelation broke my little guardian heart a bit.

As the years have gone on, Destiny has been cursed with legacy. Anytime the studio would make a move to push the game and gear forward, the community seemed to cry out. Then the gear would come back. Heck, they even did it to the Vault of Glass. Perhaps it was all genius marketing to make the game forever sticky. Perhaps it was just reactive development to appease the loyal if not over-dedicated player base. Either way, Destiny has been carrying the weight of its years of expansions and content from the very first alpha.

Marathon has none of that—yet. And I don't think it ever will.

Sure, the patch nerfing the instantly iconic WSTR double barrel shotgun has some already waxing nostalgic, but not like years of guns, armor, and loot being altered beyond recognition or outright being gone one day. The key lies in the genre of "extraction shooter" and being a live service game with three month long seasons. Every match starts with the same warning or reminder, depending on how you look at it:

YOUR GEAR IS AT RISK; YOU WILL LOSE ALL EQUIPPED GEAR IF YOU EXIT OR DISCONNECT FROM THE GAME.

EXFIL TO RETAIN YOUR GEAR.

And this isn't just a match-based notice, but the required mindset for the entire game as it enters new seasons. Before launch, Bungie laid out their initial approach to Marathon's live service structure.

"Each season of Marathon brings a clean slate for the whole community with progression resets. These resets include everyone’s gear, contract progression, faction progression, and player level."

A new-to-me term I've discovered during my immersion into Marathon is "gear fear." The idea is that you think your gear is so precious that you are afraid to use it and lose it. The risk is too high. Honestly, it's not unlike the third servant in the parable of the talents found in Matthew 25. We can be so scared of the risk of losing the investment that we stagnate, throwing away opportunity and progress. The consequences of that fear and hesitation are more dire than the initial fear was to begin with.

A more apt gamer comparison would be consumable items, like health potions or stat boosts, and saving them for when you really need them—only that "really" never comes. Razbuten made a video about this very problem seven years ago. The difference between a health potion and a thermal-scoped sniper rifle may technically still be winning or losing, but one of those is way more fun to use.

It's the sniper. That's the fun one.

One night in Cryo Archive, we downed a team and I scored a purple Misriah pump-shotgun. It immediately went in the vault for safekeeping. But a handful of runs later, I needed to bolster my kit and decided to bring it in. I ended up "donating" it to the undoubtedly kind soul that downed us. That's the rhythm of Marathon. It gives and takes. You're always one run away from winning or losing it all. And if you hoard all your gear for when you "really" need it, you'll never enjoy the highs and lows the game's flow has to offer.

A piece of advice you might hear in the world of photography or filmmaking is "date the camera; marry the glass." This means you should pour more research, finances, and commitment into the lenses over the camera body itself. This notion applies to Marathon as well in slick fashion with Bungie's decision toward weapon power/rarity.

In Destiny (at least when I played it), a gun's rarity and power were often tied together. There's only one Hawkmoon or Gjallarhorn. It's gold and you want it. In Marathon, the guns are not tied to power and rarity—the mods are.⁹ Each gun has 3-4 mod slots that can slot in new scopes, magazines, handles, etc. to modify the gun's performance and up its value. Put enough green mods on and the gun goes from gray to green. The same applies to blue, purple, and gold. Find a purple sidearm on a run, but not really a pistol kind of runner? Take off the mod and apply it to your own gun or a favorite back in your vault. Wanna try a new gun, but not ready to risk that sweet gold mod? Pop it off and give that rail gun a test run first. Certain attachments only work with some guns or inside a certain weapon class, but there is a universal mod slot that you can hot swap any way you like. I think this might be the game's single best decision toward mitigating "gear fear" and allowing player expression without being chained to a singular gun and drop.

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While Marathon is a live-service game, it doesn't feel like one. The skins and shop are out of the way, never in your face. The "battle pass" is like those of Halo Infinite or Helldivers II, where you can purchase and complete them at any time. I am pleased to not have microtransactions thrust in my face.

Now, that does not mean it won't change. If Bungie and PlayStation want to keep making money off existing players, they'll have to promote cosmetics more and more. The only other way is to sell more copies, but industry analysts and online loudmouths are skeptical of the legs based on the data so far. That steep learning curve I mentioned could be a serious filter. Heck, it makes me hesitant to recommend to some friends, especially those I know are more into the likes of Fortnite or ARC Raiders.

I think the seasonal resets and a regular cadence will help adjust the curve though.

"Seasonal resets mean that the game stays dangerous, loot feels meaningful, and there’s always a good opportunity to get back into the game or bring a friend in without feeling behind the curve."

A big deterrent for ever returning to Destiny is all the stuff I have missed over the last seven years. Fresh starts, constant updates, tweaks, and lessons implemented will make Marathon better over time. It reminds me of how Epic uses FOMO as a powerful and inviting element of design to keep players on the island or lure them back. Each new season brings wacky new mechanics and all sorts of map changes. There always seems to be a fresh time to jump in and go for that victory royale.

I can't help but find these resets and gambling of gear to be a perfect analogy for the game and the live service field on the whole. This game will not exist forever. The seasons will come and go, fading into the digital ether. There's not even a physical version. It's all ones and zeroes, constantly under observation and change on the servers around the world. Like a Runner's Shell, it is ephemeral. I am the Runner. The matches are the shells. Jack me in.

Stories Amongst the Stars

Marathon is a game of stories.

Stories told by Bungie in its desolate, aggressive corpo-driven sci-fi world. Stories we make, facilitated by Bungie's design and mechanics. Stories told by players and the interactions where we collide. Stories of kindness and wrath, brutality and mercy. Stories where players teach one another through guided steps or the business end of a shotgun. Stories of practice turning into mastery, where exploration becomes conquering. The nights of one more bet against the house and winning it all.

It's a new chapter in the legacy of Bungie itself. The lessons over the 36 years have culminated in this game's arrival. The late nights, delays, plagiarism, alphas, acquisitions, and more all mashed together to make this neon-soaked shlootin' heist FPS crucible an unequivocal triumph in my mind.

Bungie has once again proven itself to craft an unmatched entertainment experience that is already inspiring friendships and giving me memories that will stick with me for the rest of my days. All that's left now is for me load up, run and see what memories can find scattered amongst the stars.

Footnotes

1. Which seems to be sorely in need of an update. ↩

2. I can't fit it in cleanly, but I still want to link to it, so here you go—who could forget seeing the "Believe" ad for the first time? ↩

3. It is also the first Bungie game I have played since Destiny 2's Forsaken expansion in 2018. ↩

4. From here on out when I say Marathon I will be referring to this 2026 version. If I am talking about the 1994 title, I'll let you know. ↩

5. And don't miss the version that shipped with the Limited Edition, which is written from the Covenant's point of view. What a slick touch. ↩

6. I suppose that makes it a "roguelite." ↩

7. Or you can sneak in with one of the two alternate methods. Goodness gracious, I love this map. ↩

8. Just like Hollywood, opening night is Thursday apparently. ↩

9. There are some special weapons deep in Cryo that are more like this classic approach to weapon rarity, but I haven't ventured deep enough to find out myself. ↩