Bungie’s Marathon Reboot Gets a Cinematic Introduction

Before they took the video game world by storm with the Halo franchise, Bungie released the Marathon trilogy, which paved the way for the Master Chief’s exploits. Much like Halo, the Marathon games were first-person shooters in which you played an augmented soldier trying to protect humanity from an alien race, with twists, turns, and shocking discoveries along the way.

Back in 2023, Bungie announced they were rebooting Marathon as an “extraction shooter” in which players battle each other in teams and seek to acquire loot before returning to an extraction point. (Other extraction shooters include Helldivers 2, The Forever Winter, and Escape From Tarkov.)

Another break from the original Marathon is the reboot’s slick, vibrant look, as evidenced by this cinematic short from writer/director Alberto Mielgo. Mielgo previously directed the award-winning “Jibaro” episode in Love, Death & Robots’ third season, and his distinctive aesthetic is on full display here in the form of bizarre alien environments, flashy violence, and highly stylized visuals. (The voiceover reciting Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is quite apropos given Bungie’s fondness for inserting literary references into their games.)

As much as I would’ve liked this new Marathon to offer a single-player campaign, it apparently has some semblance of a narrative that connects to the original Marathon storyline. In the 29th century, a mysterious event nearly wiped out the colony on the planet Tau Ceti IV. The remaining colonists have since divided themselves into factions vying for survival. You play a “Runner,” a cybernetic mercenary hired by one of those factions to eliminate the other factions’ forces and scavenge the planet for supplies, artifacts, and resources.

The rebooted Marathon will be released in September 2025 for the PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S platforms.