Earlier this year, Bungie’s 1990s sci-fi shooter Marathon arrived on Steam for free. And Marathon 2 followed in July. But this series is a trilogy. Where’s the third? I want the third… oh, it’s here now. Yesterday, the latest game, Marathon Infinity, hit the store, offering a nice little bundle for fans of retro shooters. But it’s also a reminder that we haven’t seen much more of Bungie’s upcoming reboot yet.
As a final note, Infinity followed hot on the heels of the second game, released in 1996, at a time when sequels were being released less than a year apart. It adds to an ongoing story about warring alien factions and an AI gone rogue. Squint and you can see that Bungie has been rewriting the same sci-fi narrative for decades, with the narrative thrusts of their games carrying over noticeably even as the mechanical components evolve. (For a good analysis of Marathon as a shooter and its place in FPS history, I can recommend this video from Errant Signal.)
It's also worth pointing out that the entire Marathons trilogy has been available for free for decades thanks to the work of the developers behind the Aleph One port, an open-source project that kept these old FPS games alive. Now they've simply ported the entire trilogy to Valve's popular platform for the first time, seemingly with Bungie's blessing.
Like its predecessors, Marathon Infinity is listed on Steam as “Classic Marathon Infinity” – the “classic” presumably added to distinguish it from the upcoming reboot, about which we know little. It appears to be a PvP extraction shooter, with a seemingly vague connection to the classic Marathon story. “It’s not a direct sequel to the originals, but something that’s definitely in the same universe,” said Christopher Barrett, who was game director when it was revealed last year.
Barrett has since been replaced by former Valorant director Joe Ziegler, the result of a management shakeup at the studio. Bungie has also seen at least two rounds of mass layoffs since the shooter was announced, which is likely to impact development. Most of the studio's remaining team is working on Marathon, according to a report from Bloomberg , and the game isn't expected to arrive until 2025 at the earliest, they say. Given that we still haven't seen a snippet of what the game actually looks like (just a slick trailer), even that estimate could prove optimistic.
For now, at least, we have the old Marathon. I played the original Marathon a decade after its release, in an impatient fugue state waiting for Halo 2 to come out. I had a great time reading logs and instructions from an annoyed AI and smashing large aliens to bits. It was basically Doom with a bit of System Shock history (there must have been something in the water in 1994) and I remember being impressed that a decade-old FPS could hold my attention for so long.
Marathon will be celebrating its 30th anniversary this December. If you want to see if the game still holds up, feel free to do so. And if you hate Steam, don't worry, all three games are still available under the name Aleph One.