Bungie will be showcasing their upcoming PvP extraction shooter Marathon, announcing a Livestream event that will showcase all-new gameplay for Saturday, April 12th. This follows a series of bizarre and mysterious tweets that the company dropped last week, including a 15-second video that kicked off an “extensive alternative reality game,” as players realized buried with the ASCII art of it was “a snippet of footage from the initial trailer,” that featured the runner sprinting down featured in that trailer.
Another tweet gave an error message that seemed to imply an announcement for the game was imminent. It stated:
WHEN WILL HE RETURN ERROR ERROR ERROR HAS OCCURRED THE ENEMY RETURNED SYSTEM WARNING: PROTOCOL BREACH EVACUATE THE BASE IMMEDIATELY ALL UNITS REPORT TO STATION INITIATE EMERGENCY PROTOCOL 7 DATA LOSS IMMINENT GOOD LUCK, COMMANDER.
The video released for the announcement showcases the vibrant art style of the game, with one of the characters getting shot with blue blood spurting out, but very little else. A robotic cat arrives to snuggle up to the character’s corpse on the date of the stream, as well as a timeframe of 10 AM PDT.
The company went on to give more information, stating:
Thousands of community members across the world worked together to unlock the gameplay reveal date for Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter Marathon,” Bungie said in a statement, before revealing this weekend’s livestream is set for 10 am PDT (San Francisco) / 1 pm EDT (New York) / 6 pm BST (London) / 7 pm CEST (Berlin/Paris) / 9 pm GST (Dubai) pr Sunday, April 13 at 2 am JST (Tokyo) / 3 am AEST (Sydney) / 5 pm NZST (Auckland).
Originally revealed in 2023, Marathon is a reboot of a classic Bungie franchise that predated Halo, though done in a different for to the classic series. Set on the mysterious planet of Tau Ceti IV, Marathon will feature players jumping into cybernetic bodies known as runners, mercenaries who were designed to survive the planet’s harsh realities. While exploring the planet, players will be able to find new gear and weapons in a typical looter shooter style.
Since then, Bungie has been relatively quiet on the project. Announced during Sony‘s push into Live-Service titles (one reason cited for the acquisition of Bungie by Sony), this approach changed dramatically following the financial failure of their live-service title Concord, which was pulled from the market only two weeks after release. This signaled a scaling back on these titles, with two unannounced live-service games being cancelled, and bigger titles like The Last of Us Multiplayer being cancelled as well.
Bungie itself has had its own troubles since the announcement of the title. A total of 220 members of its staff, 17 percent, were terminated in July of 2024, a year after 100 employees were previously laid off from the studio. Following this former Marathon director Chris Barrett was suggested to have been laid off following allegations of misconduct that led to an internal investigation. Barrett turned around and announced a wrongful termination suit for 200M against Sony. This in itself led to a series of disturbing texts allegedly sent by Barrett being made public.
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