Bungie's first non-Destiny release in over a decade finally has a release window. Marathon, a PvPvE extraction shooter set in the hostile world of Tau Ceti IV, launches in March 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
The game reimagines Bungie's earliest sci-fi franchise from the 1990s Mac OS era. Players take on the role of cybernetic mercenaries fighting for survival, loot, and answers to a colony-wide mystery. After a turbulent development period marked by delays and controversy, Bungie has pulled back the curtain through an extensive ViDoc presentation.
Release Information
Marathon arrives in March 2026, though Bungie hasn't locked in an exact date. The game carries a target price of $39.99 in the US, €39.99 in Europe, and £34.99 in the UK. Additional regional pricing will be announced closer to launch.
PlayStation 5 players will need a Bungie.net account, internet connection, and paid PlayStation Plus membership.
Purchase Inclusions
The base purchase provides full game access along with a roadmap of free gameplay updates throughout the year. New maps, Runner shells, and events will roll out starting with the UESC Marathon's Cryo Archive in Season 1.
Reward Passes won't expire. Players can purchase and unlock prior passes at any time, eliminating the pressure to grind through content before arbitrary deadlines. Bungie has also confirmed there will be no pay-to-win mechanics despite the presence of microtransactions.
The Mystery of Tau Ceti IV
Marathon takes place in 2893, long after humanity's attempt to settle Tau Ceti IV collapsed. The colony ship UESC Marathon was sent from an overpopulated Earth to explore and colonize a distant star system. The mission failed catastrophically. By the time the game begins, 30,000 colonists have mysteriously vanished, leaving behind a desolate world picked over by scavengers.
Bungie's Narrative Leader Jonathan Goff explained that the modern rush to Tau Ceti began when a mysterious signal came through the galaxy. The resulting turmoil gave rise to corporations scrambling to understand what happened and recoup their investments. Greed and corruption now fuel the conflict between factions, corporations, and revolutionary groups.
What actually happened to the colonists remains deliberately unclear. Scattered messages and poorly covered-up reports suggest the UESC isn't telling the whole story.
Bungie is carrying forward the storytelling philosophy that defined the original Marathon trilogy. Goff noted that the original games' strength came from layered, discoverable stories rather than direct exposition. The new Marathon embraces this approach, letting players engage with narrative at their own pace.
There's no traditional campaign. Instead, the story evolves through seasonal storytelling, gradually expanding the world and deepening the mystery surrounding the colony's disappearance.
Runners: Cybernetic Mercenaries
Players become Runners, described as "cybernetic mercenaries who've given up their human form for biosynthetic shells." These aren't heroic figures. As the developers put it: "You are a mercenary. A disposable mercenary. You will live. You will die."
The Runner shells aren't people. The player is the person. Players transfer their consciousness into shells equipped with personality matrices designed for specific tasks. Runners have traveled light-years, leaving their original bodies behind, all for access to what Bungie calls "the ultimate payday."
Runner Shells
Marathon launches with seven Runner shells, each representing a distinct gameplay archetype. Six are standard options, plus one special prototype:
- Destroyer - The frontline tank archetype. One customization option allows the riot barricade to convert incoming damage back into shield energy.
- Thief - A stealth-focused "rat character" built for sneaking. Cores and implants offer options like a second grapple.
- Rook - A special prototype shell for solo scavenging. Rook lets players drop into matches already in progress with a limited loadout but no risk to existing gear. It's designed for quick runs where grabbing loot and extracting matters more than bringing valuable equipment.
- Blackbird, Glitch, Void, and Lifeline round out the launch roster, though Bungie hasn't detailed their specific archetypes yet.
Shells define base archetypes, but Cores and Implants shape each kit into specific playstyles. These items can combine to meaningfully shift how a Runner shell performs, suggesting meaningful build diversity at launch.
Four Launch Maps Plus Endgame
Marathon launches with four distinct zones across Tau Ceti IV. Each features its own level design philosophy and player challenges. The developers have emphasized that learning each zone's personality becomes its own form of storytelling.
Perimeter
Perimeter serves as the starting zone on the colony's outskirts. The map is more spread out with additional safe areas for sneaking, making it somewhat more approachable for new Runners. Death still happens frequently here. Bungie stressed it's a "more friendly zone to new Runners," but players should expect to die regularly.
In the game's fiction, Perimeter sits as an expansion site on the edges of the original settlement. UESC forces patrol the area, attempting to understand what happened.
Dire Marsh
Dire Marsh raises the difficulty and reveals signs of catastrophe. The zone features the Anomaly, a strange alien entity that erupted from the ground. Players will notice signs suggesting this area is closer to where things went wrong.
The map centers on a complex with overlapping areas where encounters can bleed into one another. The developers describe it as a good farming location for players who want action.
Outpost
Outpost represents an active UESC facility with significantly heightened danger. Scan drones fly overhead, UESC forces patrol everywhere, and tripwires and weather hazards threaten from the start.
The map is smaller but considerably more vertical. It's built around a structure called "the pinwheel," which the developers describe as a "meat grinder" of a building. Corkscrewed hallways with nooks and crannies create chaotic close-quarters combat.
The pinwheel hosts some of the best loot in the game, but accessing it is noisy. Other players will know when someone is making a run for it.
Cryo Archive
The fourth zone sits aboard the UESC Marathon ship hanging in the sky above Tau Ceti IV. The ship remains visible from the surface, a constant reminder of why the planet exists and that something went catastrophically wrong.
Cryo Archive is Marathon's hardest content. Bungie describes it as a heist, requiring players to bring their best gear with no guarantee of survival. The zone is cold, hostile, and tests every aspect of the survival loop.
Player encounters happen more frequently here than on surface zones. Every type of environmental threat from the rest of the game appears, along with the highest tier of UESC units in concentrations not seen elsewhere.
Cryo Archive is structured around seven vaults, each more challenging than the last. Players must solve raid-like security measures to unseal frozen vaults and pillage the artifacts within. Cramped corridors force conflict with fully-geared enemy crews racing for the same prizes.
The seventh vault holds what Bungie calls the "coolest" reward in the game, along with significant story revelations. The developers have also hinted at the presence of the Pfhor, suggesting Marathon's larger narrative may shift meaningfully in this endgame content.
Core Gameplay Loop
Marathon follows the extraction shooter formula: drop into a zone, scavenge for valuable items and weapons while surviving AI enemies and other players, then extract before time runs out or death claims everything.
The defining tension is that death means losing everything brought into a run. Successful extractions let players keep their haul, cash it in, and retain any weapons and gear found during the run. Stakes escalate with each subsequent run as players risk more valuable loadouts.
The developers describe being good at Marathon as "like playing poker with guns." Success requires knowing when to engage, when to extract, and when to eliminate other players.
Solo and Team Play
Marathon supports multiple play configurations. Players can queue solo against other solo players, team up with friends, or use crew fill to match with two others for teams of up to three.
Solo play raises stakes since players have only themselves to rely on. Proximity chat remains available, allowing solo players to call out to others and form temporary alliances. Whether those alliances hold depends entirely on the other players.
One feature added since the alpha playtest is proximity chat, enabling on-the-fly alliances in the field. The developers emphasize this creates tense dynamics where honoring or betraying temporary partnerships becomes part of the gameplay.
Dynamic Events
Each zone has different weather systems and dynamic events that don't occur every session but significantly impact runs when they do. These events shake up gameplay and force players to decide what risks they're willing to take.
Weapons and Loot
Marathon features an extensive loot system. The game includes numerous implants across every rarity tier, Runner Cores for each shell, and over 400 weapon mods. The sheer volume of collectible items creates a discovery period where players figure out what's available, how to get it, and how to combine pieces effectively.
Weapon mods increase certain stats on guns, but some modifications fundamentally transform how weapons function. Bungie provided specific examples:
- The Battery SMG with its gold-tier mod "full blown turns it into the Needler," referencing the iconic weapon from Bungie's Halo franchise.
- The Sidearm works best in close quarters but struggles at range. Its gold mod adds a suppressor and grants invisibility upon killing an enemy, opening up entirely different stealth-focused playstyles. Players can stack into maximizing invisibility uptime through additional build choices.
Some weapon mods also improve Runner shell capabilities, providing multiple avenues to boost baseline effectiveness across runs.
Factions and Progression
Six factions operate in Marathon: Traxus, Arachne, MIDA, Cyberacme, Nucaloric, and Sekiguchi. Bungie has detailed three of them so far.
Traxus is the most powerful corporation in human history, with long arms and deep pockets. Their contracts typically ask players to find specific weapons or mods.
Arachne is explicitly a "death cult" catering to PvP-focused players. Their contracts require killing other Runners, framed as "the sacred thermodynamics of violence."
MIDA focuses on destruction, providing grenades, claymores, and opportunities for chaos. The developers describe them as "irreverent and dangerous." Example contracts include uploading malware into a UESC dropship, causing it to explode mid-flight.
Each faction has an upgrade tree that unlocks progressively as players gain reputation. Capstone rewards provide access to the best items in the market, including gold-tier gear. Faction upgrades can also permanently increase Runner base stats for the rest of the season. Bungie has hinted that faction progress may reset with each new season.
The Codex
The Codex tracks achievements, collectibles, and audio logs found during runs. Discovering items unlocks additional story content explaining their roles in the world, who cared about them, and why they're valuable.
The Codex contains unlockable Runner skins, weapon skins, weapon charms, stickers, emblems, profile backgrounds, and titles. Progression spans from first steps on Tau Ceti IV through becoming a "vidmaster" by completing the most extreme challenges.
UESC Forces
UESC security forces serve as Marathon's primary AI threat. These enemies aren't trivial to fight. Runners are outlaws trespassing in secured areas, and UESC forces treat them accordingly.
UESC units carry a haunted quality. They feature floating locomotion, sparks, and sigils over their faces. Their behavior sometimes seems almost possessed, suggesting they may be receiving commands from remote AI.
UESC forces come in distinct tiers indicated by color. Elite tier units appear in dark blue. Miniboss tier units appear in lilac. Boss tier units are marked in red. Higher-tier enemies possess tendrils that latch onto players and drain consciousness.
Visual and Audio Design
Bungie has significantly overhauled Marathon's visuals since the alpha playtest. Community feedback indicated the world didn't feel dangerous or lived-in enough, and the studio responded with substantial changes.
The developers added groundedness, grit, and darkness to create atmosphere appropriate for an extraction shooter. Material responses now react accurately to light, showing appropriate gloss, crud, and mud effects. Environmental elements respond to players as things part and water cools. These layered details make the world feel more alive.
Weather states now feel meaningfully different. Sunny conditions create a bleaching effect that feels bright and warm. The distinction between weather states is now clearly apparent, unlike the alpha where sunny and rainy conditions were difficult to tell apart.
Dead Runners now drop as corpses that decay over time. If players enter a room and see carnage with one body still pristine, the killer is likely nearby. If all bodies have decayed, the area is probably safer. This visual storytelling provides tactical information about recent activity.
Audio functions as a major gameplay component. Every sound has a purpose, with footsteps providing critical threat information: what type, where they are, whether above, far away, or close. Players familiar with maps can identify specific locations based on footstep sounds on different materials.
Composer Ryan Lott designed the score to heighten tension rather than simply provide background music. He focused on unconventional instrumentation to make the survival experience more nervous, terrifying, or thrilling depending on circumstances.
Development History
Marathon's development has been rocky. The game's original director was fired amid allegations of misconduct. Studio layoffs contributed to delays. A plagiarism scandal involving assets required resolution and pushed back the release timeline.
The game originally targeted September 2025 before slipping to March 2026. Bungie cited the need for additional time to refine and test.
In December, Bungie veteran and Marathon Art Director Joseph Cross unexpectedly left the studio just months before release. Cross confirmed he wasn't fired and called it his own conscious decision. He stated he was "very proud of the project and what the team has achieved over the past six years." Cross was one of the key developers who defined Marathon's visual style.
Despite NDA requirements for closed playtests, Marathon has experienced multiple gameplay leaks. Approximately 27 minutes of footage from recent technical tests appeared online, showing the intro mission, puzzle mechanics, a previously unseen sniper rifle, and PvP gameplay.
Community Reception
Some players have expressed immediate commitment to pre-ordering, including collector's editions. Others point to extraction shooters gaining momentum, with ARC Raiders also generating interest. Supporters note that Bungie's gunplay expertise combined with high-stakes extraction could create intense experiences.
Players from closed playtests have reported positive experiences, with some calling Marathon their most anticipated multiplayer game of 2026.
A significant portion of the community remains cautious. Losing all loot upon death is a fundamental barrier for players who can't enjoy that mechanic. Technical concerns have emerged from leaked footage. Some players criticized what they perceive as very fast time-to-kill where whoever shoots first wins encounters without meaningful counterplay. The presence of invisibility mechanics has also drawn criticism from players who consider such abilities problematic in extraction shooters.
Many players plan to wait for hands-on experience before committing. Bungie has indicated public testing opportunities will be available before release. The $40 price point represents a lower barrier than many full-price releases, but concerns about Bungie's recent track record with Destiny 2 have tempered automatic purchases from longtime fans.
Similar Games
Players wanting to explore the extraction shooter genre before Marathon releases have several options. Delta Force offers a faster, more arcade-style experience. Arena Breakout and ARC Raiders provide extraction-focused gameplay. Escape from Tarkov and Apex Legends are cited as two of Marathon's biggest influences.
What's Next
Bungie has promised additional gameplay footage and "other surprises" as March 2026 approaches. The studio plans to communicate more frequently with the community during this final development stretch.
Details about seasonal content plans, a roadmap, and public testing opportunities will be announced closer to launch.
