New Bungie game Marathon gets April gameplay reveal after cryptic ARG sparks hype

Hype for newest Bungie shooter Marathon has gone into overdrive after the roll out of a community ARG last weekend, with players uncovering the date of the game's first gameplay reveal trailer: April 12.

After a few days of cryptic messages and codes to break, Bungie announced the full showcase would arrive in a week and even gave a little teaser on April 6. Between that and the discovery of community members who have gotten the chance to playtest the game, the new extraction shooter is fast becoming of the most hotly-anticipated games of 2025.

Last Friday saw Sony and Bungie accounts "hacked" with a series of posts referencing Marathon stuffed full of images and codes for the community to decrypt.

We've seen augmented reality games (ARGs) out of Bungie before, particularly related to events in Destiny and Destiny 2. Some ended with real-life treasure hunts, but this one took the community through a dive into some of the finer details of upcoming game Marathon.

At the end of the road, a post from the Marathon official channel with a short minute-long teaser. A figure runs through a river on a distant planet featuring bright, fluorescent colors before they're gunned down off-screen. In the distance as the character fades, a beam of light shoots into the sky as another team extracts.

This, plus a few shots shared by Bungie art director Joseph Cross, gives us more of a look at Marathon. We saw a preview of the game's theme in last May's announcement trailer. Since then, we've learned several other details about the extraction shooter via a developer's update such as its unique oxygen-based system that doubles as a round timer, and that you'll be able to partner up with two others.

Given the gameplay trailer arrives next weekend, plus confirmation that community members have had hands-on time with the game, we may not have to wait too long to play Marathon ourselves. Whether a full release is imminent, or if it's just an alpha/beta version of Marathon, we can only speculate.

Those details plus plenty more will no doubt be addressed in the Marathon gameplay reveal and showcase on April 12 at 10am PDT. We've included the time and date for several zones below:

Stay tuned to esports.gg for more Marathon news and announcements!