Welcome to the Bakery!

In April 2025, Bungie dropped what is unquestionably one of the coolest and most insane cinematic trailers I have ever seen in my life:

I watched this trailer 3-4 times a day for the following few weeks. I did a deep dive and even found the specific track on spotify that Void literally died to recover in said trailer. What was given to me was eight minutes of what felt like someone having reached into my brain, grabbed a handful of all of my hyperfixations and created something truly breathtaking.

Bright colors. Cyperpunk vibes. Post-apocalyptic/post-society world-building. Eerie, horror but-not-quite atmosphere. Fast-paced action in a narratively strong world. Sign. Me. Up.

And then my hopes and dreams came crashing down around me when I saw the word’s “extraction shooter”. This is a genre I know very little about and purposefully as it has never captured my interest outside of DMZ in Call of Duty. But even then, I’d largely go larping as a PvE only character and occasionally get snuffed out by, well, AI-NPCs and/or the actual other living players on the map because I am rubbish at PvP. But the PvE elements, the wandering freely of the maps, and the tension at extract kept me coming back even after I would die and die and die again and lose all of my items. Enter Zombies a la MWII and I was in heaven. Turns out, while I hate a mission timer there is just something about having limited time on a map that just sparks joy for me.

So I decided that I NEEDED to play Marathon because even though the genre wasn’t my thing, this cinematic trailer was SO MY THING. I leaned into hope or what the chronically online may call “copium” and decided that Marathon would be a beautiful marriage between Destiny 2 – the lore, narrative, world-building etc that Bungie just nails so thoroughly – with DMZ – the open-world wandering, shooting and looting and tension at extracts plus the constant starting over because #skillissue. I went full send into falling in love with Marathon’s potential, similar to my dating life.

And then came the time to actually get to play. I was super lucky to get into the initial test, the one I can talk about and do have footage of which I can share – the very first non-NDA playtest. I hopped in and was hooked. Sure, I died…a lot. Sure, I rarely had anything but the stuff I’d find on the map, but when my team made it out? Euphoria. Also, it was an alpha test ie not even close to a completed game. So, I tried to keep my feedback in line with an alpha, a product that was very much still in development. My big complaints being the bright colors felt muted and the maps felt massive yet empty. There also felt like very little to no PvE, which was worrisome for my exquisite lack of PvP skills. I had issue with some UI and the feel of things, but again, kept in mind that this was an ALPHA. And when access ended, I was left largely with hope and excitement. I NEEDED this game to succeed.

But sentiment wasn’t great. Destiny 2 players raged that resources being taken from Destiny 2 to Marathon was destroying Destiny 2, so they wanted the game to be DOA, not so unlike my poor Runner in Marathon. Others instantly claimed this game was “Concord2.0”. (An unfair comparison for a game that deserved much more than it got.) Some of us held the torch and had excitement, but if I had a dime for every time I was called a “shill” or accused of being paid to be excited…let’s just say this Christmas would be a bit brighter for me and mine. However, I’ve been in the Destiny 2 community for almost five years, so a few mean comments don’t even turn my head anymore.

And just when the fear that this game was going to fail solely because so many people wanted it to, somehow it got worse.

A tweet went off like a nuclear bomb – an artist by the name of Antireal revealing her art and its unfortunate carbon copy in Marathon as decals scattered across its maps. The crux of the issue being this artist did not work for Bungie. Their art had been stolen. Rage bait and bad news make better news and while there is nothing “bait”-y about art theft, social media exploded. I was (and am) fully on the side of the artist. What was worse was reading this was not the first time this has happened to her. Her art? Incredible. But not enough to be paid, just good enough to steal. I can’t imagine what she felt or has felt in all of these situations.

However, this is the internet after all. Nuance was lost. Soon it wasn’t just decals but the ENTIRE art style of Marathon getting called into question (and despite the situation being resolved per Antireal themselves, any conversation about Marathon gets dogpiled by angry commenters who believe the entire theme was ripped from said artist). What’s worse was that all the people who wanted the game to fail now had a plausible reason to hold onto and a lot of the rage for Antireal didn’t actually feel like support for her. It was just their excuse to be mad. Sure, plenty of people did care and stood up for her, but her fight against a corporate giant as a smaller artist was reduced to hyperbole and mud to sling.

Art theft in and of itself is awful, never excusable, and just plain sad. What’s worse is that this is not the first or second time Bungie has had this issue and even as a long time fan you have to ask yourself “HOW does this keep happening?” Now, I won’t pontificate too deeply because 1) I do not work for Bungie 2) I am not nor have I ever been a game dev or worked for a game company so I cannot pretend to understand any internal process and 3) I was not there in the flesh so only know as much as anyone on the sidelines can. But as someone who has sunk thousands of dollars into Destiny 2 alone….it is concerning. Even Paul Tassi himself penned an article whose title was literally ‘Bungie Stealing “Marathon” Art is Probably the Last Straw’. And while I do think some of these works lean more into sensationalism for the sake of clicks, the title really drove the nail home. I lamented Marathon because I was sure it was dead. Dissenters rejoiced. I felt like someone promised me a puppy and then threw it off a cliff.

The release date was suspended into “god knows when” – at least externally. There was a dev stream that had to be scrubbed because of the art theft situation, leaving Joe Zigler and Joe Cross to endure the vitriol of the internet as they recited heavily amended – and HR approved – responses. I watched and it felt more like a hostage situation than a developer stream. (Yes, I linked that stream and a form of self care is not reading the youtube comments.) I felt awful for both men and any belief that Marathon was making it to the finish line really felt impossible.

But somehow? It didn’t end there. Closed playtests, NDAs, exclusive access for a select few; seemingly against all odds the train kept rolling. NDAs signed and broken, snippets of information released, changes people had begged for like prox chat being revealed. We were being fed scraps, but it kept the hope alive. (And while I won’t go into it here and now, ARC Raiders came out and blew up the extraction shooter genre; simultaneously making me excited and nervous for Marathon – a topic for another time.)

I followed so many creators making incredible fan art. And while I cannot list all of them, here are a few to get you started:

And finally a really cool project that, unironically, involves the aforementioned creators:

Fan art and fellow enthusiasts kept the hype and joy alive. Until Bungie sneak-dropped (I’m not 100% sure how sneaky it was to most, but it was a shock to me) this INCREDIBLE vidoc:

And after all of this exposition I will leave you here. While this is certainly not the end of the journey, it’s the end of this one. THIS is how I got here, as a hopeful fan. As an enthusiast. And yes, it might be a little bit of a cliffhanger to drop this vidoc and dash. It is not because I am done. Quite the opposite. Its because I’m just getting started with my personal coverage of a game I truly hope can live up to both the excitement it has created as well as the hope I have for it.

Will I see you on Tau Ceti IV?