Extraction shooters have historically been grounded in gritty realism, but I’ve always longed for a compelling entry that incorporates hero-shooter elements like traits and abilities. Marathon, an extraction shooter developed by Bungie and published by SIE, tackles exactly that.
It features an addictive loot grind, a unique and visually captivating art style, a diverse selection of character classes with interesting abilities that make for dynamic encounters, and a high-stakes competitive PvP environment that will leave you wanting to start another run as soon as possible. Weave yourself a new runner shell, download your consciousness into it, and journey with me into this examination of a somewhat niche and flawed, but quite compelling game.
The Struggle for New Cascadia
After humanity loses contact with the UESC colony ship, a distress call from Tau Ceti IV is broadcast through space. A number of corporations respond by planting their flags in this new, unknown frontier. As a runner, you must progress through corporate faction contracts while navigating their proxy war, facing off against competing runners, gathering loot, and uncovering the mysterious story behind New Cascadia.
New story elements are offered through the progression of corporate faction contracts, which serve as this game’s implementation of quests. I was surprised by the depth of lore offered, and it kept me invested in leveling up corporate factions and excited to hear the next bit of the story. Once a faction is unlocked, you can progress through the available faction contracts in whatever order you’d like. Lore is unlocked by completing Codex challenges, where you’ll find a wealth of information about everything from how and why specific abilities work to backstory on the universe. You can delve as deep into it as you want, or skip it entirely and get back to your next run right away.
As you progress, cutscenes and voice-recorded dialogue provide insights into the various factions and their distinct qualities and motivations. For example, NuCaloric Agricultural is a major food production company that seeks to understand how the Marathon mission failed, so its contracts focus on gathering data and samples to support this endeavor. The visual aesthetic of these cut-scenes was interesting and, at times, unnerving, with abstract, woven and flowing designs featuring bold, vibrant colors.
Dynamic Combat
After selecting a faction quest, you can customize your class and loadout before each run. A wide variety of classes, known as “runners,” are available, including options for players who prefer a support role (Triage), close-quarters combat and high mobility (Vandal), or a stealth-focused approach (Assassin), along with several others.
I usually gravitate toward the stealthy Assassin, using invisibility to slip behind enemy lines and catch teams off guard. This time, though, I spent most of my hours as Triage, the game’s medic. Their prime ability, Reboot+, lets you revive downed teammates from a distance, turning every fight into a positioning game. Hanging just outside the chaos, I could wait for the right moment, bring multiple teammates back at once, and instantly flip a losing battle in our favor.
Teams comprised of one or more Vandals were a real challenge. With enhanced movement mechanics like double jump, boosted speed, and increased weapon dexterity, they’d dive into close-range combat, dump high amounts of damage, and slip away before you could respond. Then came their hand cannon ability that inflicted damage and a blowback effect that would throw teams apart, knocking players off rooftops or straight into environmental hazards and causing general chaos on the battlefield. I even saw their ability used to push players out of cover, allowing other enemy players to quickly take them down once exposed.
Throw a thief into the mix, and things get even more messy and dynamic. Their grapple lets them zip in any direction, constantly flanking or repositioning across high ground like rooftops. More than once, I’d get blindsided by gunfire from a new angle, only to realize they’d already relocated while I was focused elsewhere. Running Recon helped, since their pings keep enemies tracked, but even then, the constant movement makes fights feel unpredictable. All these abilities collide to create fast, chaotic encounters that rarely play out the same way twice. Every PvP fight played out differently depending on the runner compositions of the teams.
Extraction is Your Only Option
After choosing a runner archetype, you can either build a custom loadout with gear from your vault or equip paid or free “sponsored kits,” which disallow bringing in other custom gear, but provide a solid foundation for those looking to go into a run without substantial risks. Interesting perks can be equipped using “implant” and “core” slots that have significant impacts on playstyle, such as providing a second charge of Thief’s grapple hook ability or causing Assassin to become invisible after aiming down sights for an extended time. A scavenger-specific character class called Rook is also available, which enters existing matches solo at any point prior to the 10-minute-remaining timer, but this class cannot bring in any custom gear and cannot progress contracts.
Before entering a match in other extraction shooters, I’d often struggled with fear of losing loot to failed runs. This mentality can significantly hinder one’s ability to succeed against competing teams. Marathon somehow managed to quell these concerns, allowing me to feel comfortable going in with some of my most coveted gear, and not feel too heartbroken when the loot is inevitably lost in an unsuccessful run. I’ve struggled to narrow down exactly why this is, but part of it has to do with how rewarding I found the loot grind. Guns have three or four attachment slots that change significant aspects of it. This includes expected attributes like handling and magazine size, but also interesting perks or abilities, such as one that temporarily cloaks the player and causes them to appear as a blur for a period of time after successful eliminations.
The benefit of entering a run with good gear ended up far outweighing my fear of losing it, and the loot grind was compelling enough for me to enjoy engaging with it to find new, rare gear combinations to fill my vault. The variety of builds that can be created is extremely. The choice to reset all players seasonally also helps alleviate any anxiety around losing loot, as everyone is reset at the start of each season, providing an equal footing for the whole player base whenever this occurs.
Still, at its core, Marathon is an aggressive extraction shooter. Many of its design choices cater to a more hardcore audience than its most notable modern competition, ARC Raiders. You’ll immediately notice your inventory offers no slots immune to loss if you fail to extract. Known as “safe slots,” this is a feature found in many other games of the genre, but not here. Everything you take into a run is at risk and lost if you do not successfully extract; there is no safety net when you fail. This will be seen as an asset to some players, and a difficult hurdle for others to overcome, but this design choice forced me to get over my fear of losing high level gear and helped me get the full experience of gain and loss central to every extraction shooter.
Download Into Your Shell
With a loadout fully configured, you are offered a selection of three core maps, with more to come in future seasonal content. New players can optionally enter the “Perimeter (Beginner)” map variation, which incorporates elements to help new players get comfortable in the world, such as less aggressive enemy AI and PvP matching with other new player teams.
The normal “Perimeter” map raises the enemy AI difficulty, introduces bosses, and allows players of all levels to enter, resulting in dynamic PvP fights. Some of the PvE elements can be somewhat irritating, such as large ticks that explode and damage the player on contact, but these can be easily avoided in most instances. The next map, “Dire Marsh,” raises the AI difficulty even further, and introduces more player teams on a larger, more expansive map. This level features far sight lines, making sniping a real threat. The final core map, “Outpost,” cannot be accessed until player level 12, and includes extremely hard-hitting enemies. This is a smaller, 4-team map, with tight corridors and a converging central area that forces PvP encounters for those looking to exfil with rare loot.
Beyond these maps is “Cryo Archive,” representing the end-game location with some of the toughest AI enemies and minimum requirements of player level 25 and 5,000 credit minimum loadout value. This level is located on the UESC Marathon ship and is even more expansive than “Dire Marsh,” but it incorporates the tight corridors and converging central area design philosophy of Outpost. It features 6 interconnected wings and several high-security vaults with exclusive rewards.
Robot enemies in Marathon hit hard. It’s easy to get downed by these NPCs if you aren’t paying close attention to your shield charge and health levels, or if you get yourself overwhelmed and surrounded. Enemy AI is also surprisingly smart and persistent. They strafe behind cover. They follow you if you try to flee. Some are more aggressive, pushing in on the player from multiple angles, while others take a more ranged approach, lobbing grenades from afar. I loved the variety of enemy AI behavior; it kept runs interesting and challenging, even when not encountering other player teams.
All levels also offer various types of puzzles, such as loot rooms filled with poisonous gas that needs to be cleared prior to entry, but “Outpost” and “Cryo Archive” feature some of the more advanced and interesting puzzles, and were my favorite to explore when I wasn’t getting gunned down by competing teams. To get to the central area of “Outpost” and acquire high-level loot, players must solve puzzles that expose different breach options. “Cryo Archive” notches this up further, requiring players to reach specific security clearance levels to even explore beyond a limited area.
These puzzles act as their own mini quests during runs and are quite engaging to solve, but are, not unexpectedly, often interrupted by PvP encounters. These fights can be quite demanding, and the TTK (time to kill) is relatively low, so one mistake can easily get you downed by an enemy team. Even with the character abilities offered, the standout feature during these fights is the signature Bungie gunplay. It feels sublime, and their years of experience developing FPS games shows. Whether it’s the kick of the recoil, the pop of the gunfire, or the sound effects of breaking a shield, Bungie has dialed in every aspect of gunplay to perfection. The combination of these elements create an unbelievably satisfying gunplay experience that holds its own against any other FPS on the market.
Furthermore, for those looking to lean into the PVP even more, Marathon features a ranked mode that should satisfy even the most competitive players. The ranked mode is designed around risk vs. reward as it requires you purchase a token before each run. The objective being, to loot as much as you can while killing other enemy teams and taking their tokens. It’s very detailed, and representative of Bungie’s approach with the entirety of Marathon; it’s a lot to learn but very rewarding once you take the time to do so.
The Future of New Cascadia
Whether Marathon succeeds against popular, established games like ARC Raiders will remain to be seen, but the two experiences are different enough for both to have a place in the market. Unlike ARC Raiders, there are few, if any, friendlies to be found in Marathon. It cultivates a kill-on-sight mentality, where looting is the primary motivator and making friends is not a high priority.
This differentiates Marathon and creates an exciting product with exceptional gunplay, fun abilities, addictive looting, interesting puzzles, and more. I regularly found myself wanting to boot it up between other work projects to squeeze in a run, and I’d daydream about strategies I wanted to implement once I got back on. Bungie has put together an addictive gameplay loop that feels challenging and fresh. Still, the difficulty might put off more casual players, something that has been borne out in the player count numbers. They targeted a relatively niche market with some of their design choices. Even so, they’ve been exceptionally responsive to player feedback and have quickly rolling out updates and experiments, like “duo” lobbies.
The success of any live service lives or dies on the quality of its seasonal content, and we have yet to experience a season release and level reset, but the existing content continued to impress me; I had a blast in the 100+ hours I spent playing. For those not put off by the more hardcore nature of what Bungie delivered, I highly recommend you give Marathon a try. You might just become as hooked as I did.
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