Destiny is Bungie’s bread and butter, of course, but the developer has other irons in the fire as well. We’ve known for a while that Bungie has additional projects in the works that won’t be Destiny games (though, unsurprisingly, new Destiny projects are in the pipeline as well), and it seems like new details have emerged on one of them.
As per a report published by Tom Henderson on Insider-Gaming, Bungie is working on a revival of the Marathon franchise, which was a trilogy of first person shooters developed by the studio between 1994 and 1996. The revival will take the form of an extraction-based first person shooter.
As per the report, Marathon will put players together in squads of three. Players will be tasked with accepting missions, gathering loot, completing objectives, and extracting safely. Fail the latter, and you lose all the loot you’ve gathered. The game is allegedly set on a planet where a human colony vanished in the past, with the survivors now using “highly-customizable cyborgs” called Runners to aid them on their extraction missions.
The report also claims that Marathon will be a live service title similar to Destiny, with Bungie planning to heavily emphasize seasonal rewards and progression. Though the title is currently said to be in a pre-alpha state, it’s claimed that it could be announced “at any point” to help drive recruitment for the developer.
Bungie was acquired by PlayStation earlier this year, but the studio has firmly said that all of its future releases will continue to be multi-platform. Presumably that means Marathon – if this report is accurate – will launch for PC and Xbox as well.
Interestingly, in 2019, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons said that the company planned on releasing a new game in a non-Destiny IP by 2025. Read more on that through here.