Before I begin, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I have a lot of love and nostalgia for Bungie's catalog of games. From Halo, to Marathon Classic, to Destiny 1 and 2, it's difficult NOT to say that I am a very big Bungie Fanboy. That said, I am also someone who tries to be fair to all titles from every developer, and that includes criticism. And in the case of Marathon, there is quite a lot to say about it. Both good, and bad.
So what is Marathon? Marathon is a game that was developed and published by Bungie. A continuation of sorts from their late 90s IP, it takes the Extraction Shooter approach, while you explore the long-abandoned colony of New Cascadia on the planet of Tau Ceti IV. While on this planet, you take control of a Runner, an artificial shell housing your consciousness, and are thrust into one of four different maps currently available on the planet, where you search for loot like health packs, consumable buffs, and weapons. At the same time, the map is littered with other players looking for the same, and it essentially turns into a "kill or be killed" battleground similar to competitors like Escape from Tarkov. The loop itself is satisfying, rewarding players who are resourceful and cunning.
Despite its positives, I have personally found a few things that can be pretty jarring. First is the contract system. With this system, players are given tasks to complete by the many factions while exploring each locale. Difficulty increases with each completion, which is to be expected. That said, it is also not the most consistent system, as some contracts require tasks to be done in a single run, while others can be done over the course of several. This makes for an inconsistent difficulty that is unnecessarily tedious, and can potentially leave you feeling "stuck" in a contract for a prolonged amount of time.
Another issue I have found is with the way your Vault works. In game, the Vault is your storage space where all your equipment and consumables are stored. The issue stems from initial size, as the expectation is for you to gather as much loot as possible, yet the starting amount of Vault space makes it difficult to keep everything you have gathered. Even with the most recent changes to how items stack in your Vault, Vault space being as limited as it is when you first start playing feels unnecessarily restrictive. To make it worse, upgrades to Vault space feel too spread out between faction levels, making people who prefer keeping a larger arsenal have to choose what to keep, which feels unsatisfying.
While the gameplay is well designed and fun to interact with, getting to release was not without some bumps in the road. Before development was completed, issues began cropping up surrounding art theft . In May 2025, there were a number of articles released discussing Bungie's use of art strikingly similar to art originally made by AntiReal (@4nt1r34l on the site formerly known as Twitter) in Marathon's early builds (see an example of one such article, from Paul Tassi at Forbes, here). At the time, AntiReal expressed issues with similarities between their own art and in-game assets (see below):
Despite all that, the game that has been released has been nothing if not impressive. Gameplay is what we have come to expect with Bungie titles: solid movement mechanics, satisfying gunplay, and a rich lore heavy world for people to experience.
This sparked a lot of discussion surrounding the game's quality, as this wasn't the first time Bungie had faced similar allegations. Most notably, a lawsuit was settled in November 2025 for plagiarizing a storyline that was then used as the first story focused campaign in Destiny 2 (initial suit was filed in October 2024, as reported in this Gamespost article, and the settlement report in this Gamesindustry.Biz article). This, along with the apparent winding down of Destiny 2's PvP content, combined with the lack of quality narrative content that players were accustomed to, has left the community with a lot more skepticism about the studio's future direction.
Ultimately, despite the controversies that have plagued the studio, Bungie has managed to deliver an experience that both feels similar to current competition like Tarkov and ARC Raiders, while giving a unique and refreshing spin through their shell system and heavy focus on narrative. Marathon stands as a solid foundation from which Bungie can build something special. There is so much on the horizon, with their latest roadmap promising plenty of content worth getting excited about. And while the art and plagiarism allegations had given them some difficulty, it clearly didn't dampen their creativity when building this world. I look forward to the next update, as I myself will complete "one more run".
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