It’s been a little over a week since Bungie finally pulled the curtain back on their long-awaited Marathon gameplay reveal — and let’s just say, the curtain wasn’t the only thing that dropped. So did fan expectations, hope, and whatever lingering faith remained in Bungie’s ability to deliver a new IP that doesn’t immediately become the punchline of every Destiny subreddit meme.
The Marathon Gameplay Reveal Trailer, posted on Bungie’s official Marathon YouTube channel, currently sits at a staggering 32K dislikes versus 21K likes. The ratio isn’t just bad — it’s like showing up to a job interview with a tattoo that says “I hate Mondays” on your forehead, while wearing a “Fire Bungie Leadership” hoodie. Over on IGN’s channel, the same trailer has fared even worse with more than double the dislikes at 4.1K likes against a tidal wave of 9.5K dislikes. Combine the two and you’ve got a collective view count just north of 1.1 million, and a community reaction about as satisfying as expired milk at the back of your fridge. One need not look further than the video’s comments to see exactly what we mean.
The audio? Widely praised. The core visuals? “Fine” at best. But scratch the surface — or read literally any comment — and you’ll see fans dissecting this thing with the precision of a disgruntled biology teacher. Complaints range from Marathon looking visually dated, to the reuse of Destiny 2 assets, animations, AI behavior and designs (like that Cabal seen at 1m04s), gunplay, and even weapon design. Honestly, if you told us this was just a Destiny 2 mod someone slapped a different title screen on, we’d believe you. Because that is precisely what it looks and feels like. Especially because it’s running on Bungie’s Tiger Engine — the same internal tech Bungie has publicly referred to as incredibly difficult to work with. So yeah, not exactly giving us confidence, especially with how poor Destiny 2 is handling things under the same engine and platform tools.
Now here’s where things start to feel like Bungie is sweating harder than that Jordan Peele meme.
Just days after the backlash began, Bungie began walking back some of their more iron-clad decisions — namely, lifting the NDA for the upcoming Closed Alpha. Originally, players weren’t allowed to stream or record anything. Now? Bungie’s practically begging you to put it on Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, smoke signals — whatever it takes to soften the blow and get people to see the game. Because they know. They see those dislikes. They hear the reactions. And they’re hoping that if more players try it out and give “feedback,” they can spin this around before September.
It is clear that Bungie is nervous. And they should be.
But here’s the kicker: the game is pretty much confirmed to cost $40 at launch — in a genre (Extraction Shooters) that is overwhelmingly free-to-play. Yes, they’re allegedly charging you $40 for something that’s currently in Alpha, releasing in just seven months — and launching head-to-head with Borderlands 4, no less.
Sure, early playtests aren’t new. But for Bungie? The studio that promised the world with Destiny only to spend years patching holes in its own hull or building the airplane while it’s in the air or the locomotive while it’s full steam ahead on the tracks? (We have a million of these). If they’re scrambling this hard now, what do you think the final months before launch will look like? And how much content are we really getting if they’re already bracing for backlash? Three maps and six heroes at launch? For 40 f*cking dollars? We pity those who are fooled enough to pre-order this game ahead of time.
To put it bluntly: fans have zero faith in Bungie to pull this off, and frankly, Bungie’s own decision-making suggests they don’t have much faith in themselves either. Either Bungie turns the ship around, or this game will be another entry in the long-running series we call “What the Hell Happened, Bungie?”
The Marathon Alpha kicks off April 23rd through May 4th, and the clock is ticking. Stay tuned. Or don’t. We get it.
