Marathon Review
MARATHON REVIEW
(IN PROGRESS)
To say that Bungie's Marathon has enormous pressure would be a massive understatement. It’s their first non Destiny title in over a decade as they try to follow up a game that created its own genre and was commercially very successful. It’s another live service attempt in a post Concord and High Guard world. It’s trying to make a second impression after the lukewarm reception of their open beta in 2025. It’s trying to measure up to the internal expectations of PlayStation, who have mostly abandoned their live service initiative from a few years ago. Finally, and for whatever reason, it’s trying to succeed as an extraction shooter after numerous industry failures, but also in the wake of Arc Raiders. It’s not out of the question to suspect that the fate of the entire company might hang in the balance of Marathon.
As expected, Marathon features immaculate gameplay, style, atmosphere and world building as Bungie DNA has been passed down from generation to generation. It’s incredibly easy to see how Marathon could have been a massive success as a single player game or even as a single player game, but with a multiplayer aspect like the Dark Zone from The Division. There is a lot of lore within this current build of Marathon and the IP has a rich background to pull from.
Since it’s a live service extraction shooter, the concern is that unlike 2014, where Destiny was given the room to succeed and even produce a sequel, shareholder and internal expectations move at the speed of light. Destiny actually launched without one of its defining features, the Vault of Glass raid. It released a week later, but devoted players devoured most of the content in the first day.
The trendy thing to do in 2026 would be to proclaim Marathon a dead game, just like people did in the comments of Arc Raiders prior to it’s release, but after playing plenty of matches in its new iteration, there is something here, especially if you were a fan of Destiny or the extraction genre. The world is interesting with plenty of lore hidden beneath, there is a lot of gear slots that allow you to augment your shell during matches. It was a unique feature that the loot needed to load when you open a searchable item, and finding shell upgrades to speed this process up can be found.
The big issue is that similar to Destiny or other extraction shooters, Marathon features a steep learning curve. You need to understand the gameplay loop, shell abilities, value of items within the world, contracts. In most cases, learning what everything does typically happens through a dedicated community or hours of practice with trial and error. There is plenty of room for growth and improvements including the UI and polish. Even something like the process of being extracted looks janky as you don’t fully disappear.
The entire premise is that the Marathon spaceship disappeared and hundreds of years later it has reappeared, but since the game is set in the distant future, you will “avatar” your conciseness into these shells. This also serves as a simple enough reason as to why you can die over and over in Marathon. Each shell will have different perks, my early front runner was the assassin, who had an invisibility cloak.
When you first start the game, Marathon will give you the most basic tutorial about the simple core gameplay including movements, how to loot, and how to extract. After that you will learn about contracts that you can try to complete, which are great and give the player a sense of direction. You will be able to select between the different shells, which are just fancy words for classes.
Marathon Single Player Review
In single player or dedicated solo queues, the learning curve is a bit steeper since there is little to no room for error. You can quickly become overwhelmed with UESC bots or you could accidentally enter a room with poison gas, both of which can down you and without a teammate, you have no option but to give up. There is a lack of clarity overall on the UI, because it should be clear what bar is your health, which bar is your shield, when you are taking damage and how to quickly heal each one.
As a solo player, only being able to take one contract seems to be counter intuitive to the entire ethos of the extraction genre, which is risk vs reward. Taking in more than one contract and then completing one would present itself with the interesting dilemma of whether to attempt for more or to exfill.
Unlike some of the viral clips of Arc Raiders where the game provided that friend or foe scenario, the early indications is that the current state of Marathon is shoot first ask questions later, which removes a lot of the emergent gameplay, however, this was a server slam, but it might change when the barrier to entry rises when the game releases for around 40 bucks.
After the server slam, there wont be any more chances to play, and when combined with the endgame section Cryo Archive that will launch post game, we will have to wait to give our full thoughts. I can see Marathon growing here if it’s given the chance to evolve into something like Destiny did, but that’s a big if.
