Marathon Reboot Will Reveal First Gameplay Trailer This Saturday

Summary

Marathon fans solved a cryptic ARG over the weekend.
As a reward, Bungie revealed that it will be showcasing the first gameplay reveal on April 12, this Saturday.
You can watch it at 10am PDT, ie 6pm BST.

Over the weekend, Marathon fans rallied together to solve a cryptic ARG spread out across PlayStation’s socials, with different studios adorning themselves in neon green while the game itself sent out emergency reports on Twitter.

The community pieced together all of these threads (and also just read the date on packages sent to content creators, which sort of gave the game away), to discover that Halo and Destiny creator Bungie is hosting a gameplay reveal on April 12, 10am PDT/6pm BST.

Marathon will also launch on Xbox Series X/S and PC.

The “Save the Date” trailer shows a pink cat wandering around in the middle of a gunfight before planting itself on the player’s corpse, snuggling beside their gun (and all the splattered blue blood). We don’t get many details here about the game or how it’ll play, but it’s a cute teaser that does well at highlighting the striking art style.

What We Know About Marathon So Far

Marathon takes place on Tau Ceti IV in the far-flung future of 2850 after a settlement of 30,000 suddenly disappears without a trace. “Strange signals” hinting at mysterious artifacts, treasure, and “long-dormant AI” lure Runners to the planet, thrill seekers hoping to make a name for themselves among the stars. That’s where we come in, utilising new technologies to inhabit synthetic bodies and cheat death.

It’s a reboot of the 1994 game of the same name, which follows a security officer aboard the titular Marathon as they fight back an alien invasion. While very reminiscent of FPS pioneers of its era, namely Doom (which it was even likened to as the Mac equivalent of), it was in fact one of the first games to feature free look, beating Quake to the punch by two years. It was so successful that it spawned an entire trilogy, though the series has lain dormant for nearly three decades now.

However, the long-awaited return hasn’t been without its troubles. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier claimed last year that the sentiment around Marathon is “not great”, which is hardly surprising considering that Bungie laid off roughly 40 percent of its total workforce within the last two years, with several of its unannounced projects being moved to other PlayStation studios. Marathon director Chris Barrett was even fired following a misconduct investigation.

Many assumed Bungie’s foray into the extraction shooter genre was doomed to be cancelled, but with a reveal taking place just this Saturday, that clearly isn’t the case. Time will tell how the game shapes up.