What Is Marathon? A Short History of Bungie's 30-Year-Old FPS

When Halo came out on the Xbox in 2001 as the must-have launch game for the console, players new to Bungie games heard bits and pieces about its older series, called Marathon. After being dormant for more than two decades, Bungie revealed in 2023 that it was bringing back the series in a new game, which will have its first full reveal on Saturday. 

Marathon is Bungie's newest game, taking place in the universe that started in 1994. As the reveal is only days away, it's a good time to look back at the series that was pushing the limits of the first-person shooter genre in the mid-1990s after Doom and Wolfenstein 3D set the foundation. 

What is Marathon? 

Marathon is a sci-fi FPS that was released in 1994 for the Apple Macintosh. Although all the revolutionary games were happening on PC at the time, Bungie viewed the Mac as a more open platform for developers to make games on. 

Taking place in the year 2794, Marathon has players take the role of an unnamed security officer on the colony ship UESC Marathon. An alien race known as the S'pht is attacking the ship, and it's up to this unnamed officer to stop them. 

What set Marathon apart from other FPS games at the time was how it had the story unfold through computer terminals, where the officer would receive messages from one of the three AIs operating on the ship, as well as crew diary entries and other databases. Over the course of the game, players learn that the S'pht are actually controlled by another race of aliens called the Pfhor, which were in contact with one of the ship's AI named Durandal. This particular AI has essentially become sentient and evil. It used the aliens as a way for it to escape the ship, and it's up to the player to secure Marathon. 

Marathon was a hit for Bungie, and at the time, some considered it a step up from Doom and Doom 2 with its innovative storytelling. 

Marathon 2: Durandal came out in 1995 for Mac and Windows. The sequel picks up right after the first game, in which Durandal abducts the security officer before it escapes the ship and has been kept in stasis for 17 years. 

The AI has taken the player to the S'pht homeworld, Lh'owon. Durandal manipulates the security officer, saying that the Pfhor are preparing to attack Earth. In reality, the AI is searching for an ancient S'pht AI to learn how to free itself from the universe. 

Marathon 2 received more praise than the original as Bungie made big strides in the game's graphics and gameplay. But some of the sequel's greatest innovations were with its multiplayer. Marathon 2 has several modes that would be mainstays for the Halo series, including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill and the novel Kill the Man with the Ball mode (which would later be referred to as Oddball in Halo). It also had a co-op story campaign. 

Marathon Infinity is the third game of the Marathon trilogy, released in 1996, but this time only for Mac. At the end of the previous game, the Pfhor unleashed a doomsday device into the sun of the system with the S'pht homeworld, Lh'owon. This unleashed an ancient being known as the W'rkncacnter. This entity is a threat to the entire galaxy, and the security officer has to stop it. To do so, he must jump through alternate timelines to try to get to the point before the W'rkncacnter is released. 

Much like its predecessors, Marathon 3 received high praise for its storytelling and gameplay. It even won the best Mac Game from CNET's Gamecenter back in 1996. The third game also had another mainstay for Bungie, the Forge system. Players could create their own Marathon level using tools similar to how they would be done more than a decade later in Halo 3.

How is Marathon related to Halo? 

Since the first Halo game was released in 2001, fans of the Marathon series have been trying to link the two franchises together. It seemed like the two must be linked as Halo makes use of multiple symbols from the Marathon games. 

However, all the similarities between the two games are less about the games taking place in the same universe and more about Bungie inserting cute but insubstantial references to the Marathon games. The symbols, names and even spoken lines found in the Halo games that directly relate to the Marathon games don't prove any connection. Could there be a sliver of a connection between the universes if someone were to theorize hard enough? Probably, but that is doing way too much work for two games that have almost no relation to each other, with the only tie being their developer. 

It remains to be seen whether Marathon is connected to Bungie's other property, Destiny, which it has built up over the past decade.

What is with the new Marathon? 

The new Marathon game will be something new for Bungie, which moved from Halo to its multiplayer co-op and player-versus-player franchise Destiny. Its new game is a PvP extraction shooter, a popular multiplayer genre nowadays. With extraction shooters, players are dropped onto a map and go search for loot while taking down AI-controlled enemies. The goal is to get extracted from the map with the loot, but other players are getting their own loot and shooting at you for your loot. 

In the new Marathon, players will take the role of cybernetic mercenaries called Runners who are on the alien planet of Tau Ceti IV. This will be an online-only game, but Bungie has said that it wants to make this genre more approachable to players. 

How does the new Marathon connect to the original games?

Bungie has yet to clearly link this new game to the older Marathon games that the studio built its reputation upon. There is a definite connection, as Tau Ceti IV was a colony from the first Marathon game, which appears to have been abandoned by the humans who lived there. However, aside from a few details, Bungie has not laid out much else to connect the games. Bungie has said this new Marathon game isn't a direct sequel to the older games. 

When Bungie revealed the new game in 2023, the team said players don't need to know the Marathon lore to understand it, but longtime fans will be excited by some of the references they'll find throughout the game. Bungie says the story of the game will unfold as players interact with the world. 

Marathon's reveal will happen on Saturday, and the game will come out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles sometime in the future. 

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