March 2027 Could Be Make-Or-Break For Marathon

Bungie has big plans to revive not only Destiny 2, but to also evolve its extraction shooter, Marathon. Following its launch in March 2026, the studio says that it has been reviewing feedback around Marathon, and it revealed how it plans to evolve the experience as it heads toward a big update in March 2027.

One of Bungie's major points of focus is a Marathon experience that is more than just an extraction shooter. "PvEvP will remain an important part of Marathon, but it will become one point in a connected set of survival experiences," Bungie wrote in a blog post. "More approachable entry points will help new and returning players understand Marathon’s systems and build confidence before taking on its highest-stakes challenges. At the same time, experienced players will have more opportunities to test their mastery and pursue deeper challenges."

Bungie says it's building out connected PvE, PvP, and PvEvP experiences, as well as options for solo players and crews. A Nightfall Refresh is coming in October and the Symbiosis expansion will add more ways to play in December. Bungie will connect all these pieces together in a big March 2027 update. This will also include deeper progression systems for players, a refactored Cradle, a new onboarding experience, more narrative beats to discover, new enemies to battle, and an entirely new zone to explore.

There'll be plenty of new content along the way, but it sounds like March 2027 will be Bungie's chance to show what Marathon is truly capable of. This isn't the first time the developer has successfully turned things around; after numbers began to dip, Destiny surged back to life in 2015 with the critically acclaimed Taken King expansion. Destiny 2's audience also quickly nosedived after launch, but Bungie's focus on structural updates to the game and the Forsaken expansion that arrived a year later helped to turn things around. You might be noticing a pattern here.

All of those changes and updates to Marathon do sound positive, as Bungie is aiming to cater to multiple audiences. Again, this is something the studio achieved with Destiny 2, as players were spoilt for choice with various PvE, PvP, and PvPvE modes introduced across the game's seasonal and expansion model. The challenge isn't just to draw new and lapsed players back to Marathon, but to keep them around for the long run.

Bungie added that as it builds towards the big December and March updates, it plans to continue making meaningful quality-of-life improvements and running focused experiments to fine-tune the game. Beyond March 2027, Bungie says that it'll have a stronger foundation to continue building Marathon on from this point.

The last couple of months have been rough for Bungie, as mass layoffs hit the studio, Marathon game director Joe Ziegler announced his departure, and multiple projects were canceled.