by Bungie has shared a new video documentary about Marathon, its newly announced sci-fi PvP extraction shooter.
Announced at yesterday’s PlayStation Showcase, the new Marathon is the first entry in the franchise since 1996. The game is PvP-focused and will not have a single-player campaign, but will instead honor the mythology and history of the original Marathon games.
We’ve already learned even more details about the upcoming shooter, thanks to a six-and-a-half-minute video that Bungie posted after fans quickly solved one of the developer’s famous ARG (alternate reality game) puzzles.
We’ll get to the scavenger hunt that Bungie fans went on yesterday to discover the ViDoc, but first, let’s get down to the content of the video itself.
In Marathon, you play as a runner exploring the hostile world of Tau Ceti IV while searching for artifacts and weapons. Bungie displayed concept art for the Runners, describing them as a combination of fashion, science fiction, and cyberpunk.
Bungie says players will be part of the narrative in Marathon, which will unfold over the course of a season. For example, an extraction team might find an alien key that opens up a new zone. The onus is on these players to figure out how to unlock the zone for everyone else.
Marathon is launching on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and will feature full crossplay and cross-progression. No release date has been given, but Bungie has said it’s marching towards its alpha. The team plans to go dark for a while to work on the game, saying we’ll see gameplay the next time Marathon comes out.
Bungie Fans Follow a Trail of Breadcrumbs to Unlock the Marathon ViDoc
As it turns out, Bungie hid a ton of secrets in yesterday’s reveal trailer, including a puzzle that involved Bungie developers posting cryptic images on social media. When the community tracked down all 12 secret images and superimposed them, it revealed a sequence of dots.
Thanks to some tips from a Marathon’s well-hidden Twitter account, the community discovered that it was a binary string that needed to be run through a punched card decoder. This brought puzzle solvers to a stream that needed 7,777 viewers to unlock the full ViDoc. Destiny YouTuber Skarrow9 solved the final puzzle step last night and posted a video explaining the solution in full.
I SOLVE IT @MarathonTheGame CODE ARG LET’S GO!!!!!@We_Are_Mida
ALL IN THIS VIDEO NOW TO UNLOCK THE NEXT STEP!!!!https://t.co/y9bo0JMJgyhttps://t.co/y9bo0JMJgyhttps://t.co/y9bo0JMJgyhttps://t.co/y9bo0JMJgy
— Skarrow9 (@Skarrow9) May 25, 2023
There are even more secrets hidden in the Marathon reveal trailer. In fact, Skarrow9 shared a Google Doc that’s been tracking all the secrets Bungie fans are working to uncover. In less than 24 hours since the reveal, the Marathon community has already done a lot of legwork, as this document spans 37 pages of clues and discoveries.
Unsolved mysteries include decoding pages from a Marathon Zine, uncovering purchase order and memo documents, and much more.
Bungie is known for teasing fans with these scavenger hunts, digging a series of deep and meandering rabbit holes for Destiny fans to discover over the years. The developer’s ARG history dates back to the Halo days, when it promoted Halo 2 on a site called ilovebees.com.
To learn more, check out all of yesterday’s PlayStation Showcase 2023 announcements.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN, covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of gaming industry experience with subscriptions to IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
