Despite admitting earlier this week that Marathon didn’t reach as many people as it had hoped, Bungie is here to make sure people know that one of 2026’s best games isn’t dead. Instead, it has big plans for the sci-fi shooter that kick off later this year and extend into early 2027, including the addition of deathmatch, a new zone, a new samurai-inspired shell and more.
On September 24, Bungie posted a new, lengthy blog post titled “The Future of Marathon“ that goes into detail about what’s next for the studio’s extraction shooter over the next few months. And, as previously teased by Bungie, the biggest news is that moving forward, Marathon won’t just be an extraction shooter, but instead will offer more varied experiences and modes for all types of players.
“Some players want a quick, lower-pressure run after work,” said Bungie in the blog. “Some want to spend an entire night with their crew. Others want to test a build, compete directly against other players, chase a difficult challenge, or follow a strange clue deeper into the ruins of Tau Ceti IV. Marathon needs to support all of them.”
In a video about the future of the game, senior Marathon design lead Kevin Yanes was blunt about the game’s shortcomings, explaining: “We all thought we were gonna bring extraction to the masses, and we didn’t. We built very much an extraction shooter as you’ve ever seen one.” He also suggested that Marathon’s “constant loop of failure” didn’t connect with enough players, hence the team looking to add more experiences to Marathon in the future.
What’s coming to Marathon in October and December
Following Marathon’s Nightfall refresh, which Bungie describes as a smaller, more “targeted” update, the first big step toward this larger future arrives in December via the Symbiosis update.
In December, Bungie will add Marathon‘s first true, permanent PvE mode. The studio didn’t share any new details about what this previously teased mode will be in the blog, as it is still “finalizing” parts of this new experience. Another new way to play being added in December is an experimental deathmatch. I’m very excited about Marathon getting more traditional, classic competitive modes, as the gunplay is so good, and so often sneaky runs in the game don’t let that part of the shooter shine.
“This experience offers a more direct, lower-commitment way to sharpen your skills and compete without putting a full run at risk,” said Bungie. “We’ll be watching how players engage with the experiment and using what we learn to help shape the future of competitive play in Marathon.”
December will bring a new shell to Marathon, too. This new shell will be Bishop, which Bungie describes as “Marathon’s high-performance robot samurai.” Bishop is a fast and lethal runner built around ambushing and surprising enemies with “devastating bursts of melee damage.”
A social space with a firing range is also in the works and is set to arrive in December, letting players try out guns and shells and meet up with runners in a non-deadly environment.
Bungie also promised the starting zone of Perimeter will get a big visual overhaul, and the studio is adding more ways to get high-end loot to the map as well as introducing the game’s biggest boss fight yet against a large alien Tick Queen.
Marathon continues to grow in March 2027
Beyond Bungie’s plans for Marathon in 2026, the studio also outlined some of the content and changes it plans to roll out in a March 2027 update. Bungie claims that the various pieces of Marathon, including its original extraction mode, will come together as part of a “much larger evolution” for the shooter. The company didn’t go into great detail about what to expect in March, but did tease some of what it has planned for early 2027, including:
A new “interconnected system” of PvE, PvP, and PvEvP modes that will offer more reasons for players to return and reward people for however they decide to play. A new onboarding experience to make Marathon less confusing at the start. Changes to progression and the Cradle system. More focused questlines and new narratives. A completely new zone to explore. And perhaps most exciting of all, “new alien combatants.”
We don’t yet know what those aliens will be, but elsewhere in the blog, Bungie did say it wasn’t a Marathon game if players weren’t shooting the franchise’s famous Pfhor. I’d bet my bottom dollar some Pfhor will be showing up in 2027, though Bungie teased they might have evolved a bit since fans last saw them in the original Marathon trilogy back in the ’90s.
All of this seems to be Bungie making one thing clear: Marathon isn’t dead. While the game hasn’t been the runaway hit those involved likely wanted, the studio isn’t giving up on the game and has big plans for it, though following layoffs by Sony, it has to manage these plans with fewer people. Hopefully, Marathon and Bungie will be able to turn things around, and by this time in 2027 I’ll be playing Marathon’s new modes in new zones with a bunch of my pals who have yet to hop into the difficult shooter.
