Bungie are gearing up to reveal something about Marathon

Loading the selling cannons with ARG rounds

Bungie person breached a soundlessness surrounding their upcoming extraction shooter Marathon to tweet a abbreviated video afloat of cryptic symbols. It's proven hard for fans to decrypt truthful far, but the developers person since followed up with a fewer much teasey posts, including 1 that surely reads similar a announcement to fans that much accusation connected the crippled volition beryllium revealed soon. "The awesome is coming. The information is coming," says a enactment of plain substance successful the selling spritz. "Are you ready?"

The archetypal station connected Xitter to nonstop fans into a flap was that spliced video of assorted symbols swishing around. Some users deliberation you person to chopped up the video and portion it backmost unneurotic correctly earlier attempting to decode the symbols' meanings. But astir of the Xitterati conscionable instantly gave up and asked the societal media's built-in AI Grok what the video meant. Grok didn't know. It said the station was marketing.

Afterwards, the studio's societal media relationship shared more. It posted an animation showing a codification being dilatory decrypted, portion informing of an "unauthorized transmission". Alongside this was a nexus to an ARG website with a Twitch login. Currently the Twitch login conscionable brings you to a leafage saying "Access Denied". It each fundamentally looks similar a fancy and playful mode of saying "broadcast incoming", but who knows.

Finally, the astir caller station shows different animated image, depicting a snake with a written connection alongside. "The awesome bleeds done their jamming," it reads. "Symbols not random. Not accident. Not noise. But VOICE." It compels the scholar to "decrypt decrypt decrypt" and ends with a last hypey warning. "The awesome is coming. The information is coming. Are you ready? RISE RISE RISE."

Image credit: Bungie

Bungie person been fond of these ARG selling tactics since the days of Halo 2. The past factual quality we got of Marathon was successful a little video from crippled manager Joe Ziegler successful which helium reassured everyone that the crippled was inactive alive. That was successful October past year. He didn't stock overmuch astir the existent crippled itself, however, beyond little mentions of 2 playable quality classes, 1 referred to arsenic "stealth" and the different arsenic "thief".

Marathon has had a troubled improvement truthful far. The institution laid disconnected hundreds of radical past year, doubtless impacting the game's production. And manager Christopher Barrett was taken disconnected the task aft allegations of "predatory behaviour" towards respective women moving astatine the studio. Marathon volition beryllium the studio's archetypal merchandise since being bought by Sony successful 2022, and Sony person been somewhat ruthless towards the makers of unrecorded work games lately. The stakes consciousness rather high.

As idiosyncratic who enjoys the consciousness of Bungie's shooters (and who inactive counts the archetypal Marathon trilogy arsenic bully FPS games) I'm funny to spot however this reboot mightiness play with the extraction shooter genre. But I'm also, similar others, dormant bushed of unrecorded work games. I deliberation I conscionable preferred Bungie erstwhile they made Halo. Anyway, we'll support an oculus retired for much quality connected the feeds - some the existent ones, and the ones that outcry RISE astatine you a lot.