After years of teases, dramatic lighting, and a title card that looked like it wandered in from Tron Legacy, Bungie has finally unveiled actual gameplay footage for their upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon. And fans had one collective reaction:
“Wait… is this just Destiny 2’s Crucible in a different hat?”
To put it bluntly, Marathon looks less like a fresh start and more like a reskinned Destiny PvP mode that took too many edibles. It’s like Destiny’s Crucible modes sat on each other’s shoulders and put on a trench coat and tried to sneak into the Extraction Shooter Genre thinking nobody would notice. Anyway, here’s the trailer:
We’re talking identical reload animations, nearly copy-pasted melee swings, familiar jump arcs, and weapons that might as well be repainted pulse rifles with a Blacklight poster filter slapped over them. The whole thing screams, “Hey, remember Destiny’s Crucible? What if we made that into a full-priced game, added extraction mechanics, and hoped you wouldn’t notice?”
Spoiler: We noticed.
If you’ve been wondering why Destiny 2’s PvP has felt like a neglected houseplant for the last several years, Marathon just explained everything. Bungie didn’t forget about Crucible—they siphoned its soul into an entirely different game.
Don’t get us wrong, Bungie’s best traits are all front and center- the visuals, sounds, and the unique feel of different weapons are all here. But we have seen this before. So sure, the art and sound is outstanding but the issue we have, and so many others are expressing online, is that almost every single aspect of combat looks like it was pulled from Destiny 2 and covered with a new coat of paint.
The Warlock hand-held Nova, the Hunter Knife throw, Titan Punch and Barrier, the jumping, the reload animations, the sliding around, the looks of the weapons themselves- EVEN THE ENEMY AI NPCs! Just look at 1m04s and tell me that is not a digitalized Cabal Legionary. It was also revealed that Marathon is running on the Tiger Engine, the same internal infrastructure platform that Destiny has been running on since 2014. Even with modern updates, Marathon looks dated.
All of this feels like Bungie straight up ripped off themselves.
And the lack of innovation here could most certainly be harmful for Bungie in the end, and it feels like that’s where this is headed, all of which is to say this the precise thing that has been plaguing Destiny for more than ten years now.
The PvP team, or at least whoever was left standing after Bungie’s brutal mass layoffs, clearly packed their bags and went full throttle on Marathon. Same tricks, same animations, same “three-shots-and-you’re-dead” combat rhythm. It’s all here, just wearing a trippy new jumpsuit.
And to reiterate, these aren’t just spiritual similarities. This is Crucible’s DNA cloned, dressed in cyberpunk neon, and shoved into an extraction shooter costume. If Destiny’s Crucible and Escape from Tarkov had a weird little lovechild and abandoned it halfway through development—this is what we’d get.
Oh, almost forgot- Marathon is not free to play, either.
In the midst of showing off gameplay that most fans describe as “Destiny PvP with a hangover,” Bungie reminded us of another bombshell: Marathon will not be free-to-play. Nope. It’s a premium-priced title, because apparently nothing screams confidence in your new product like charging full price for something your fanbase already thinks they’ve played before in a genre that is almost always free-to-play.
Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves that Bungie laid off a sizable chunk of its workforce just last year, including people critical to Destiny’s ongoing success. And now it’s clearer than ever that those “leadership decisions” were less about salvaging Destiny and more about funneling resources into a neon-colored Crucible clone.
Just go check out the Gameplay Marathon trailer comments (above) or the official reveal stream (below) and you’ll see a symphony of side-eyes. Longtime fans are unimpressed, unenthusiastic, and deeply skeptical. Many are calling out the gameplay for looking “too similar,” “uninspired,” or straight-up “recycled.” All things that have been looming over Destiny 2 since it went free-to-play with its seasonal model. Others are scratching their heads at the idea of yet another extraction shooter in an already bloated market where even the giants (looking at you, The Finals) are struggling to keep attention.
And you don’t have to take it from me. If you really need a respectable industry perspective, you need to look no further than Skill Up, one of my personal favorite game reviewers:
The sentiment is clear: Bungie, your gunplay might still be tight, but your direction is loose, confusing, and way too familiar.
So, what now?
We get it—Bungie wants to try something new. But if “new” means cutting-and-pasting Destiny PvP into a new box and slapping a price tag on it, maybe it’s time to reassess the creative pipeline. Marathon might have the movement and shooting that Bungie’s always been praised for, but player excitement is low, and faith in leadership is even lower. And that goes for both Marathon and Destiny 2.
If Bungie wants this to succeed, it’ll take more than flashy lights and reused jump animations. Because right now, Marathon doesn’t look like the future of PvP shooters—it looks like Destiny 2’s Crucible trying to sneak out the back door wearing a fake mustache. And unfortunately, we’ve seen this trick before.
You can watch the full Gameplay Reveal Showcase below. We took the liberty of skipping the nonsense and starting the video to the actual reveals stuff:
