Earlier this year, Bungie's 1990s sci-fi shooter, Marathon , came to Steam for free . And Marathon 2 followed in July. But this series is a trilogy.
Where's the third one? I want the thir-- oh, it's here now. Yesterday, the final game, Marathon Infinity trickled onto the storefront , offering a neat little bundle for fans of retro shooters. But it's also a reminder that we've yet to see more of Bungie's upcoming reboot.
As a finale, Infinity followed closely after the second game, coming out in 1996, back when sequels were released not even a year apart. It adds bits and pieces to an ongoing story about warring alien factions and an AI gone rogue. Squint and you can see that Bungie have been rewriting the same sci-fi tale for decades, the broad strokes storytelling of their games rhyming in noticeable ways even as the mechanical components evolve.
(For a good breakdown of Marathon as a shooter, and its place in FPS history, I can recommend this video by Errant Signal .) It's also worth pointing out that the entire set of Marathons have been freely available for decades thanks to the work of the developers of the Aleph One port, an open source project that kept these aged FPS games going. They've now simply brought the full trilogy to Valve's popular platform for the first time, it seems with Bungie's blessings.
Like its predecessors, Marathon Infinity is listed on Steam as "Classic Marathon Infinity" - the "classic" no doubt appended to distinguish these from the upcoming reboot-loot-shoot, about which we know only a little . It looks to be a PvP extraction shooter, with a seemingly loose connection to classic Marathon lore. "It’s not a direct sequel to the originals, but something that certainly belongs in the same universe," said Christopher Barrett, who was game director when it was revealed last year .
Barrett has since been replaced with the former Valorant director Joe Ziegler, a result of a management shake-up in the studio. Bungie have also gone through at least two rounds of severe layoffs since the shooter's announcement, which is likely to have an impact on development. The bulk of the remaining team at the studio is working on Marathon, according to a report by Bloomberg , and the game is not expected to arrive until 2025 at the earliest, they say.
Given that we have still not seen a snippet of what the game actually looks like (only a stylish teaser trailer ) even that estimate may turn out to be optimistic. For now, at least we have old Marathon. I played through the first Marathon a decade after its release, in an impatient fugue state as I waited for Halo 2 to come out.
I had a good time reading ship logs and directives from an annoyed artificial intelligence and blasting tall aliens to bits. It was basically Doom with a bit of System Shock 's story (something must have been in the water in 1994) and I remember being impressed that a ten-year-old FPS could hold my attention for so long. It will be Marathon's 30th birthday in December this year.
If you want to see if it still holds up, go right ahead. And if you hate Steam, don't sweat, all three games are still available as Aleph One ..
