Marathon, the troubled new FPS from the Destiny developers, gets a potential shot in the arm as external playtests reportedly get underway

Early external playtests of Marathon, Destiny developer Bungie’s new shooter, appear to have been underway this week.

In a tweet last night, Halo YouTuber HiddenXperia announced that “I’ve been at Bungie all week playing Marathon.” While the YouTuber wasn’t able to provide any details about his time at the studio, he said that it was a “surreal experience.”

Bungie originally revealed Marathon in the May 2023 PlayStation Showcase, and it wasn’t long after that before players unlocked a new trailer that suggested Marathon details would still be a long way off. Back then, Bungie general manager Scott Taylor told players “we are going to go dark for a while – for an extended period – while we focus on developing and playtesting the game.”

Taylor also suggested that the next time we hear from Bungie about Marathon, the studio would be ready to reveal gameplay, but that’s not what’s happening here. While it’s a positive sign that the studio is bringing in outside perspectives on the game, bringing experts in from outside the development process is a relatively standard activity that could take place across any of a wide array of developmental milestones.

Marathon hasn’t had a particularly easy time. Plans around the game and were said to have become “overly ambitious,” leading to layoffs at Bungie and a whole new studio being spun out of the company. Back in August, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said that development was going “not great,” and that it had had to slip “a whole year.” It could be that this round of playtests is evidence of a shot in the arm since that time, but I’m still not expecting to hear much from Bungie for a little while yet.

Bungie’s Marathon looks the part, but do we really need another extraction shooter?