Bungie claims Marathon is ‘on track’, but it’s not yet ready to show gameplay

videogameschronicle.com:

Bungie has provided a development update on Marathon, its upcoming sci-fi PvP extraction shooter.

Game director Joe Ziegler discussed the current state of the project in a nine-minute YouTube video released on Monday, which is viewable below.

Following Marathon’s announcement in May 2023, Bungie said it would be “going dark to focus on the game… and when we come back – we’ll have gameplay to show”.

Ziegler said in today’s update that Bungie isn’t ready to reveal Marathon gameplay yet. However, he claimed that development is “on track”, shared some new concept art, and teased plans to expand playtesting in 2025.

While a launch window for the game has never been announced by publisher Sony, Bungie was reportedly targeting a 2024 release prior to a delay.

Ziegler said in today’s video: “Where are we at right now in terms of making this game? Well, for the past couple of years, we’ve been doing a lot of aggressive change to the game and we’ve been iterating pretty heavily, and during that time we’ve been testing with a lot of players, a lot of players like yourself, also with creators.

“And so it’s sort of insanely awesome, and I’m filled with gratitude when I think about it, because there’s so many people who’ve just contributed by telling us, ‘hey, this thing sucks’ or ‘this thing is great’. In a way that really has helped us diagnose, analyse, and shape and shift the game in great ways.

“Where the game is at right now, there’s a variety of different things at different states inside of the game. Some things are a little bit more complete, like our environments are starting to come together in a really, really beautiful way. Some of the character models we’ve been iterating through, so they’re coming together but they’re not fully there yet. Our enemy models are still kind of a little bit in an early state, so we’re still iterating through and making those things land in a strong way, and a few of the items are still kind of coming online.

“So, it’s a little early to show you