Expanded Playtests of Bungie's Shooter Marathon Scheduled in 2025

Following the earlier hint found by data miner that Bungie's extraction shooter Marathon will open its preorder in February 2025, which is an unofficial update in a long period when official updates are absent, comes a developer update about the title. Despite some concerns over the game’s future caused by layoffs in the developer Bungie, Game Director Joe Ziegler assures fans the project is still alive and brings some updates on the game development status and future plans. 

In a 9-minute video, there are a few noticeable pieces of information that might make fans a bit excited despite no gameplay footage being offered.

Firstly, the developers plan to expand the playtest "a little bit wider and wider" in 2025. By wider, Ziegler means expanding the playtest to the community from internal tests that they’ve been doing over the past few years. A lot of feedback and suggestions have been given, which helps shape the game and also makes it undergo some "aggressive changes." 

Meanwhile, the concept art of two characters, a thief and a stealth, has been shared, along with some other posters hanging on the wall behind him. He also reveals that recently, there has been a lot of testing around the characters, and developers hope they will deliver the proper features of the role and help shape the story. 

What's more, the environment has "come in a really, really beautiful way," while the enemy model is still in an early stage. That's to say, some parts are comparatively complete while others are not, so it might be a bit early to show them as one piece. But he promised to share more once things are in good shape. 

The director has been thankful for many and concluded that "our goal is ultimately to make a game that all of you feel like is worth spending your time … and really really finding the fun and finding that storytelling space where you create the memories that you want to." 

What we already know about Marathon, which the team works "all for you," is that Bungie aims for Marathon to be the "ultimate live service" with "cosmetic shop/battle pass stuff," which can be obtained at the cost of $40. The gear and guns you find can be customized. Moreover, some gameplay buffs you earn from XP apply to all characters in different changeable skill trees.

You can watch the full Developer Update video here to check out everything the studio has to share. The Classic Marathon game has been offered for free on Steam. If you’re interested in giving it a try while waiting for the reboot, don't hesitate to try it out.