Bungie has shared a new documentary video about Marathon, the newly announced sci-fi PvP mining shooter.
Announced at PlayStation Showcase yesterdayThe new Marathon is the first entry in the franchise since 1996. The game focuses on PvP and won’t have a single-player campaign, but it will honor the mythology and story of the original Marathon games.
We even learned more details about the upcoming shooter thanks to a six-and-a-half-minute video Bungie posted after fans quickly solved one of their popular ARG (Alternative Reality Game) puzzles. Developers.
We’ll begin the hunt for Bungie fans that continued yesterday to discover ViDoc, but first, let’s get to the bottom of the video itself.
In Marathon, you play as a Runner who explores the hostile world of Tau Ceti IV while searching for artifacts and weapons. Bungie introduced concept art to the Runners, describing them as a mix of fashion, science fiction, and science fiction.
Bungie said players will be part of a story in Marathon that will take place over the course of a season. For example, a mining pool might find an alien key to unlock a new area. Then it’s on those players to figure out how to unlock the area for others.
Marathon is releasing on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and it will feature full cross-play and cross-development. No release date has been given, but Bungie says it’s moving towards alpha. The team plans to go into the dark for a while to work on the game, saying we’ll see the game the next time Marathon comes out.
Bungie Fans Follow the Bread Trail to Unlock Marathon ViDoc
It turns out that Bungie has been hiding a lot of secrets in yesterday’s reveal trailer, including a quiz involving 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 suggestions from a Marathon Twitter account is well hidden, the community discovered this was a binary string that needed to be run through a punch card decoder. This led puzzle solvers to a stream that needed 7,777 viewers to unlock the full ViDoc. Destiny YouTuber Skarrow9 solved the last step of the puzzle last night and posted a video explain the solution fully.
I SOLVED @MarathonTheGame ARG CODE GOOOOOOOOO!!!!!@We_Are_Mida
EVERYONE GO TO 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 trailer. In fact, Skarrow9 shared a Google Docs it’s about keeping track of all the secrets that Bungie fans are trying to uncover. In less than 24 hours since it was revealed, the Marathon community has gone to great lengths as this document spans over 37 pages of clues and findings.
Unsolved mysteries include decoding pages of Marathon Zine, finding out orders and memos, etc.
Bungie is known for teasing fans with these scavenger hunts, dug some deep, winding rabbit holes for Destiny fans to explore throughout the years. The developer’s ARG history stretches back to the Halo era, when it promoted Halo 2 on a website called ilovebees.com.
For more, check out every announcement from yesterday’s PlayStation Showcase 2023.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN on video games and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the games industry with sublines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
