After years of little official news, Bungie has shared a small but intimate update on their upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon.
As best as we can tell, the last official update we had reported on the game was that Joe Ziegler had taken over the position of game director last March. Ziegler had previously designed Riot Games’ tactical shooter, Valorant.
In the past year we had been reporting on a ton of negative rumors, and it had created this situation where the rumors were being taken as real news and was forming a negative sentiment around the project.
So, we thought it was noteworthy when several content creators who were invited to help playtest Marathon came out of it with positive impressions. It seems that we were proven right on that account.
In a new video on the official Marathon YouTube, Ziegler himself came on camera to address fans directly.
Ziegler says some parts of the game are further along than others but didn’t use any known industry terms like alpha state or vertical slice. The game was just announced last year, so it stands to reason that they are far from close to release, but at best we can say it’s past the pre-visualization and conception stage and is in the middle of proper game development.
Ziegler also said that Bungie intends to bring in ‘significantly more players’ in from the public to playtest the game, as they reach significant milestones. Ziegler implies that could start as early as next year.
Since we already know they had closed playtests with the aforementioned content creators, this doesn’t seem like an empty promise. So, before Marathon officially launches, some gamers will already be playing the game. And gamers outside of Bungie and Sony will be able to help shape this game to something they do want to play.
Ziegler also shared previews of two of the ‘Runners’ that will be playable characters in Marathon. Thief, who is the cover image for this article, is shown skulking in the shadows, and Ziegler says that defines her gameplay style as well as character type.
In contrast, Stealth is shown looking down from the rooftops, and also seems to have just deactivated her cloaking device. Ziegler says her character trait is deception, and she is designed to be hard to pin down.
Last September, we reported rumors that Ziegler’s character and gameplay design in Valorant were carried over in Marathon, but he didn’t quite make the game into a hero shooter. Ziegler seems to have corroborated that rumor from Paul Tassi, as these character names are not given names, but seem to describe character types.
We thought it was interesting that both Thief and Stealth are female characters as well. It makes one wonder if each character type will have a designated SOGIE, or if players will get to customize them in terms of gender and other traits.
Tassi’s rumor suggests that game design will still be focused on the gear collection side of the extraction shooter genre. If that’s true, and these characters are not hero types, then these details don’t have to be pinned down, and that means they can be open to customization.
So, there isn’t a lot of information shared here, but Bungie has already accomplished a lot by dispelling a lot of rumors. If Marathon was still in a dismal state, Ziegler would not be able to go public and promise playtests as early as next year.
You can watch Ziegler’s official update video below.
