Everything We Know About Bungie’s ‘Marathon’: Release Window, Character Classes, and More

By Dean Blake - News

Published: 17 Dec 2025

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Readtime: 8 min

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After a less-than-stellar reveal earlier this year, Bungie’s Marathon has resurfaced with a fresh coat of paint, a deeper look at the systems players will be trying out on the decaying Tau Ceti IV, and a release month: March, 2026. There’s no specific launch date just yet, but it seems a six-month delay did some good: the game is looking a lot more complete, and assuming you’re into the stress and tension that comes with playing an extraction shooter, I think you’re probably in for a good time here.

Now – Marathon won’t be a free-to-play game, with Bungie targeting a US$40 price point (no word on Australian pricing yet, but that converts to around AU$60) which will give you “full access to the game”, and “free” updates throughout the first year of the game’s life. Plus, while many modern games hide rewarding content behind timed exclusivity, Marathon’s ‘reward passes’ won’t expire, and will be permanently available for people to go back and unlock later.

If you’re keen to find out a bit more about what Bungie’s looking up for its next big thing, read on.

Everything We Know So Far

Marathon is a PvPvE extraction-style first-person shooter set in and around lost Tau Ceti IV – a colony which saw all inhabitants mysteriously disappear, Roanoke style. For reference, PvPvE means you’re fighting against other players and hostile NPCs at the same time—it’s a free-for-all.

Players (as Runners, a group freelance mercenaries that have given up their human bodies for biosynthetic shells) dive into the colony in hopes of finding answers the the mysteries surrounding the colony, as well as to salvage whatever good stuff they can find in the process. Backed by mysterious factions, the Runners will extract what they can from the Tau Ceti IV colony, and eventually the Marathon ship hanging in orbit above.

Players can team up (or matchmake) into groups of three or two, or go solo, and dive into maps stationed across Tau Ceti IV. Once they have boots on the ground, a party will explore the planet looking for weapons, implants, and other gear, or just valuable items you can retrieve.

This new Marathon isn’t exactly a new series from Bungie—in fact, it was the series the studio helmed before kicking off the Halo franchise. Here though, this new version seems to take place many years after the original trilogy with the goal of learning about what happened on Tau Ceti IV, and onboard the Marathon, all those years ago. Yes—the Marathon is actually a interstellar ship, built within an asteroid, which orbits ruined Tau Ceti IV colony.

What are the Classes and Factions?

Likely the most important decision you’ll make in playing Marathon is which Runner Shell you’ll bring in to each mission. There’ll be six shells in the final game (plus one special one), and they’ll each serve as a foundation aiming at delivering a particular kind of play style.

1. Destroyer: A tank shell, with a riot shield to block incoming fire and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.
2. Thief: A mobile shell that focuses on looting more from the world around it, with grappling hooks and remote-controlled drones.
3. Blackbird: A scout shell which specialises in recon and revealing enemy positions.
4. Glitch: An agile shell which specialises in movement and flanking enemies.
5. Void: A stealthy shell, capable of turning itself invisible and using smoke to escape or disrupt.
6. Lifeline: A medic shell, focused on keeping its teammates alive.
7. Rook: A prototype shell that is far more disposable, and can be used to drop into matches to attempt to bring back loot without risk of losing your gear.

We don’t know much more than that at this point, honestly, but from there you choose the weapons and implants you bring in to each run – which can and should be tailored for what you’re intending to do. Are you diving in to hunt other players? Are you searching for secrets? Are you looking to get in, grab some valuables, and get out without running into any fighting whatsoever? Choosing the right shell, weapons, and implants will be key.

Each shell will also be customisable to an extent, though you won’t be creating your own player character as you do in Destiny – rather, you’ll use skins and unlocks to change the way each shell appears and plays.

You can also side with factions, which can give you a leg up. We know about three so far: Traxus (who seem to be your typical evil megacorp), Arachne (a PVP-focused death cult), and MIDA (a name that should be familiar to any Bungie veteran, and which prizes destruction). The more you do things for these factions, they more they’ll support you with goods and upgrades—though it was also hinted these would reset each season.

What Are the Maps?

While Runners are the characters you control, Bungie was sure to note that Tau Ceti IV is the true ‘character’ of the game. Each game, players are loaded into a big, shared map and are tasked with gathering as much resources as they can within a limited time frame. You typically do this by scouring the map for valuables and weapons, though other players can interfere with you, leading to tense shootouts over valuable regions of the map.

Finally, if a player is killed they tend to drop all the items they were carrying, making each run highly risky, but with a high level of reward attached to victory. If you are killed in such a skirmish, you’ll have the option of returning to the map in a new body though you’ll lose access to the gear you were holding at your time of death.

Each map scales the difficulty and reward differently, so you’ll have somewhere to start fresh from if/when you lose everything.

Here are the maps we know of so far:

1. Perimeter: An unfinished expansion of the Tau Ceti IV colony, ‘Perimeter’ serves as the basic, low-level map of Marathon. Here, you’ll be risking less, and be in less danger, but will also see fewer rewards.
2. Dire Marsh: A wet, soggy marshland. Here, you’ll start to see more fantastic elements at play, such as floating shipping containers, and luminescent colours seeping up from below ground, as well as a centralised, overlapping building which brings players in conflict with each other more often.
3. Outpost: A well-secured UESC facility, crawling with security bots. It’s a smaller map, Bungie says, but one that is more vertical and will force players to engage with one another and PvE enemies at the same time. It has “some of the best loot opportunites” in the game, but is a riskier location to dive into.
4. Cryo Archive: Aboard the titular starship. It’s an end-game zone, and far more dangerous than the other three launch zones. Here, you’ll need good gear going in—it’s probably akin to Destiny’s raids in difficulty. Within the Cryo Archive, there’ll be seven vaults for you to plunder, with each successive vault becoming more and more lucrative.

While it isn’t clear what the max player count will be for each map, Dire Marsh, for example, has a max player count of 18, meaning that your group of three (or one) will be sharing the space with another five groups of three, and you’ll all be vying for the same goodies found across the map. Other maps may have a larger player count, while others will have fewer players involved, meaning each area of the colony will see a different level of engagement between players.

Assuming you can complete a match with some valuables, you’ll be able to cash them in, keep any weapons and gear you may have found, and decide on your next run into the colony. The more you extract, the more you earn, the more you win.

What Happened in the Original Games?

I mentioned above that Marathon is a new entry in an old series which seems to follow up what happened back then. So, what happened in the original games?

Well, it’s pretty complicated, actually.

In the original games, you’re a security officer aboard the Marathon who has to fend off an attack by aliens and work with the ship’s AI to save it from a hostile takeover. Only, there’s another AI, Durandal, which takes over the aliens’ computers and, eventually, begins to see himself as a god in the machine. You end up becoming Durandal’s slave in a war with another group of aliens and eventually start jumping through alternative dimensions and realities and worlds and… yeah, it becomes a bit of a mess.

Somewhere in there, though, the Marathon is “destroyed” above Tau Ceti, where it hangs in orbit to this day. If you want to find out what happened for yourself you could either read this comprehensive rundown of the series’ lore, or check them out on Steam—all three games are free!

When is ‘Marathon’ coming out?

Marathon is slated to launch in March 2026 for US$40. It’ll launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.