Marathon

Written by Jason Dailey on 3/29/2026 for PS5  

The extraction shooter genre has enjoyed a bit of a craze lately, particularly on console, and thanks in no small part to mainstream proliferation of ARC Raiders. Entering the extraction fray, from the makers of Destiny and Halo, is Marathon, a hardcore extraction hero shooter that carves out its own niche in the market, for better and for worse.

Marathon is one of the toughest games that I’ve played, but it’s also one of the most exhilarating, oftentimes in the same play session. It is certainly not a game for everyone, and I imagine that lots of players have and will continue to bounce off of it quickly. But in bucking mainstream appeal, Bungie has created a uniquely enthralling experience that, at times, is brutally punishing, and other times is pure dopamine.

Besides gunplay, the story and lore of Marathon is my favorite aspect of the game. Yes, an extraction shooter has a good story, and a surprisingly deep one at that. Marathon is the name of a United Earth Security Council (UESC) colony ship that was sent to a planet called Tau Ceti IV when humanity was looking for a suitable home beyond Earth and Mars. The Marathon was seemingly successful in establishing the New Cascadia Colony on Tau Ceti IV, but eventually all communication is lost between home and the colony, along with all 30,000 of its people. After 100 years, a mysterious distress call originates from the Marathon colony ship: “Somewhere in the heavens, they await.”

Its story reminds me of the Roanoke Colony, which was founded in 1587 in North Carolina by John White. When White returned from England in 1590, the Roanoke Colony was abandoned, structures were dismantled, and strange writing was found carved into wood. 

The void left by the disappearance of the New Cascadia Colony has created a power vacuum of various factions. Each faction has different motivations to scavenge Tau Ceti IV. Some are looking to recover data, some want raw resources, and others just want to watch the world burn. These factions offer contracts across the game’s four maps, and in return you receive not only gear and resources, but bits of story as well.

It didn’t take long for me to discover that the colony and Tau Ceti IV was subject to an accelerated mutation of life, and a cognitive decline of the colony’s support AI system, which is probably something we should be talking about in the real world as AI is becoming so ingrained in everyday life. Bungie’s world building in Marathon is an unexpected treat for an extraction shooter, and depending on your appetite for reading lore in the Codex, narratively speaking there is a lot to unpack.

Art informs the story of Marathon immensely, with remarkable art direction and style that create an astounding sci-fi horror vibe. The understated horror theme of Marathon is an aspect of the game that I don’t see a lot of folks talking about, but it’s clear that something when horribly wrong on Tau Ceti IV. Strange messages are scrawled onto office walls, disheveled structures show signs of struggle, and disembodied sounds can be heard emanating from what feels like the walls of some buildings.

What’s interesting about Marathon’s spooky sci-fi vibes is its boisterous color palette. It feels like the art team at Bungie asked leadership what colors they would like to see in the game and the answer was simply: Yes. The result is visually striking maps and points of interest, as well as excellent weapon design that combines color with the blockiness of 3D printing, a technology heavily relied upon when establishing a colony, as you might imagine.

I find the interiors of structures to be more visually striking than some of the environments, with some rough textures present outdoors, even on PS5 Pro. Being indoors is also a more tense atmosphere in general than roaming outside because a crew of human runners may be around any corner. With that said, my one criticism of the art is that the UI feels a bit like color and font porn, making it hard to read at times, which can be especially cumbersome for a game that is so menu and inventory-centric, though I do dig the floppy disk-era vibe of it.

Speaking of 3D printing, Runner Shells are biosynthetic printed bodies (think WestWorld) that are the characters that you inhabit during each run. Your subject psyche exists outside the shell, presumably off-planet, and is then transferred to the shell each time. This is another fascinating piece of lore that has kept me hooked on Marathon. Where are the people controlling Runners? And perhaps more importantly, who are they? Time will most certainly tell as the lore reveals itself to me via faction contracts and Codex unlocks.

Currently, there are seven Runners to choose from, each with different tactical, passive, and prime abilities. Destroyer is a tank-like shell, with a defensive shield ability as well as a prime ability that targets and launches shoulder-mounted rockets at enemies. Vandal is focused on quick movement and disruption with power slide and concussive blast ability that not only damages but can knock enemies out of cover. Recon is great for locating enemies before and during battle with a tracker drone that locates an enemy before exploding on them, in addition to an echo pulse prime ability that sonar pulses all nearby bogies. Triage is my main and, as you might imagine, is the combat medic class that heals shields and health with his med drone, and capacitive gauntlets that instantly revive teammates or harm enemies. Triage is slept on for his offensive abilities, in my opinion. Up next is Thief, which has an x-ray visor that lets you see loot and enemies through walls, as well as a pickpocket drone that causes human enemies to drop a random piece of loot. Thief also has a handy grapple that can quickly get you out of a sticky situation. Assassin focuses on sneaking and close-range kills with the ability to go temporarily invisible and throw down smoke screens.

And finally, Rook is a unique class that can only be played as a solo player, and it will only matchmake you into runs that are already in progress. You cannot take a loadout in as Rook, or have any active faction contracts. You’re only objective is to grab loot and get out. Rook has only two abilities but they’re powerful — one allows you to disguise yourself as UESC robots, and the other heals you. Rook is actually one my favorite shells to play with, especially if I’ve had a bad string of runs. It is a great low risk/high reward way to gather some loot by skulking around the map and looting other dead players since you’re joining a match in progress. In fact, playing Rook runs as a single-player stealth game is lowkey one of the best ways to play Marathon in general.

It’s up to you whether you go into a run solo or with two other players, as you can turn crew fill off if you like. It honestly just depends on what kind of mood I’m in, and my tolerance for failure, as to what approach I take. Every run is a pure gamble, reliant on skill, map knowledge, and timing, but playing with randoms can run the gamut. There have been times when I’ve had more success playing with strangers than with my buddies, but there’s also been plenty of times that I’ve been paired with eggheads and died quickly, losing some decent loot in the process. That’s Marathon in a nutshell really. It’s like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to get.

Death’s sting can come particularly fast depending on which map you’re on. Perimeter is the lowest risk, followed by Dire Marsh, then Outpost, and finally, the endgame raid map, Cryo Archive. Each map feels like a proper evolution of the last, upping the ante with increased UESC presence and typically more skilled humans with better gear, as well as environmental puzzles. The first three maps are supposed to prepare you for Cryo Archive, in theory, but I honestly don’t know if anything can prepare you for Cryo Archive.

Only available on the weekends, Cryo Archive is designed to be the ultimate test of your abilities as a Runner (it most certainly is) and requires that your best gear be brought to the table. In fact, Cryo Archive cannot even be accessed unless you are season rank 25, have unlocked access to all factions, and have a gear loadout value of at least 5,000. I’ve played it a handful of times so far, and the only thing I’ve succeeded in doing is purging my gear vault of all the good stuff. Even though I knew it would be, I’ve found Cryo Archive to be a particularly frustrating experience, and one that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see through to the end.

Considering how much I like Marathon, it’s discouraging to know that I’ll likely never complete its endgame content, but honestly, I think Bungie is okay with that by design. This is anecdotal evidence, but I saw where it took one trio of streamers approximately 12 hours to complete a Cryo Archive run—a time commitment that likely isn’t realistic for 90 percent of the player base, if not more.

Honestly, I don’t know if or even how Bungie could address Cryo Archive’s challenge for most players without fundamentally breaking the game. I think it is a niche map in a niche game, in a niche genre, and they’re totally okay with that. Still, it touches on the biggest issue that keeps most extraction shooters out of the mainstream, which is their imperviousness. Make no mistake, Marathon is tough, and certainly tougher than something like Arc Raiders.

When I reviewed Arc Raiders, I would say that more often than not, I encountered friendly players willing to work together to survive, or at the very least, they were willing to look the other way. After dozens of hours of Marathon, I’ve not had a single encounter with a friendly player or squad. And truthfully, I’ve never thought about making a peace offering myself. It’s a kill or be killed sort of game, and pausing to offer an olive branch is an idiotically fast way to end your run.

Folks have and will absolutely continue to be turned off by Marathon’s gameplay loop, as it can be brutal getting wiped several runs in a row. But conversely, there is nothing quite like it when a run goes well. A friend that I’ve been playing with was ready to give up altogether, even telling me one night that he’d play, but he was going to delete the game afterwards. We had two miserable play sessions in a row, and he was at the end of his rope. A few tense and fruitful runs later and my friend decided to hold off on deleting the game. It’s the kind of game that back in the day might make you eject the disc, frisbee it across the room, only to feel remorse and try to buff the scratches out so you could give it another go. Come on, I know you remember those days like they were yesterday. Because maybe it was yesterday.

To be clear, I don’t mind the cutthroat nature of Marathon at all, particularly because Bungie’s gunplay is simply some of the best. As someone who enjoyed Destiny’s PvP Crucible mode more than the rest of the game, Marathon is kind of made for me. There is a perfect amount of weapon variety at launch, with something for everyone. It includes all of your standard fare: assault rifles, SMGs, LMGs, shotguns, battle rifles, sniper rifles, and multiple varieties of pistols. That’s on top of a litany of throwable weapons which includes everything from your standard frag grenades to decoy player loot bags that explode when opened. Each weapon has a unique feel and combined with a satisfying time-to-kill, taking out AI and human enemies is sublime. Honestly, because the gunplay is so good, that’s probably a big reason why players’ rules of engagement are “shoot on sight.” In fact, it would be cool down to the road to get a PvP only map that pulls out points of interest from the large maps and lets you go head-to-head against humans only.

Between runs, you’re going to spend a considerable amount of time managing your inventory and vault. Vault space is limited but can be expanded by upgrading your faction ranks and buying upgrade nodes with looted resources. Faction upgrades are essentially skill trees, and there are lots of them. Expand your vault space, unlock free armor kits every 24 hours, or make higher tier weapons available for purchase in the armory. These are just a few examples of how you can spend your hard-earned loot. Upgrading factions is your (sort of) long-term progression, though all upgrades, faction progress, vault contents, and loot will be wiped at the end of each season.

While I understand the necessity to perform this wipe in relation to the long-term integrity of the game long, as well as keeping players on level ground regardless of when they may jump into the game, this has been and will always be the toughest sell for the extraction genre. At the end of the day, your time commitment means very little from a tangible standpoint, and you have to be okay with just enjoying the gameplay loop of Marathon. My assumption is that if you’re willing to play an extraction shooter, then you’ve already come to terms with this.

Going back to loot for a moment, it of course increases in rarity and value from gray to green to blue to purple to gold. I’ve not yet had the pleasure (or the pain) of owning a gold weapon, but my time will come. Marathon’s rarity system is interesting in that all weapon variants have the same base stats regardless of their rarity. Improved stats (and rarity) comes from the mods attached to a weapon. So, for instance, I have been able to increase several guns from the gray common rarity all the way to purple just by attaching a variety of blue and purple mods to them. That’s actually one of my biggest tips for Marathon: if you’re backpack space is limited, load up on higher rarity weapon mods than weapons themselves. Then you can buy a gray weapon from the armory for cheap, slap some high-end mods on it, and voila—a blue or purple gun! There’s more than one way to skin a biosynthetic cat.

One final issue I still have with Marathon is that a lot of loot looks similar, which makes it especially difficult to decide what to grab in the heat of battle. This loot fog of war, if you will, does improve after many hours of play but that may be too late for some players given Marathon’s other complexities. To wit: It took me several hours to realize that the Codex was full of challenges that reward equipment and cosmetics for completing.

Still to this day, I oftentimes find myself confused between OS Debugs, Mechanic Kits, and Signal Jammers, as so many items are indiscernibly shaped like rectangular pouches or cards. With that said, if you can learn the intricacies of the plethora of weapons, mods, Runner implants, consumables, and items, the buildcrafting potential of Marathon is extremely deep when combined with the abilities of Runner shells.

I’ve characterized Marathon as “niche” many times in this review, and ultimately that’s what it is. It is not a game for everyone. Heck, it’s not even an extraction shooter for everyone that likes extraction shooters. Playing Marathon allows you to experience the lowest of lows and highest of highs that video games can possibly provide. At times maddening and brutally frustrating, while at other times exhilarating and adrenaline-inducing. I’ve been on both sides of that coin many times playing Marathon, sometimes just one run apart. This must be how fans of Souls-style games feel.

Bungie  has succeeded in crafting one of most intriguing, haunting, and deceptively deep sci-fi stories in recent history. They’ve also made one of the most beautifully striking sci-fi worlds in recent history. And, as is typical of Bungie, they’ve built one of the best first-person shooters in recent memory. They’ve done all of this under the structure of an extraction shooter, for better and for worse. A lot of people will never experience or enjoy one of Bungie’s best games, simply because of the genre it is in, but on the other hand, Marathon may not be half the game it is without the trappings of extraction shooter. As a video game developer, I would imagine that making Marathon—even for a studio as renowned as Bungie—has been a massive gamble. Just like every run on Tau Ceti IV.