The reset has arrived, Runners. Marathon enters Season 2, Nightfall, today with new content, a new Runner shell (playable character), new characters and more.
The Dire Marsh map, the bog, swampy leftover of a NuCaloric farm is now played at night. New equipment for dark operations including flashlights, night vision scopes and signal flares are now in play.
Marathon Season 2 introduces a new Runner shell, Sentinel. This is a defensive shell whose kit includes the ability to shoot incoming grenades and missiles, a proximity mine that can snare enemies trying to rush into your position plus a short-range motion tracker. As the name implies, Sentinel can hold the fort.
Of course, there are new loot in general, so go out there, loot and hopefully come back safe with all them. Or die trying. Again and again. One of them is a new pistol-frame SMG called the KKV. An intentional nod to the original Marathon trilogy’s SMG.
Season 2 introduces The Cradle, a new progression system. Unlike Season 1’s faction-based system of gaining rep, The Cradle allows you to dump points into specific stat points. You can do so by effectively sacrificing your loot to feed The Cradle. The points allocated into The Cradle can be freely distributed at any time, shared across all Runner shells. However, progression resets by the end of this season.
If you’re still not sold on Marathon, developer Bungie is opening the servers for its first Open Play Week.
From today until June 9, play Marathon from free on PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S, with any progress made during the week transferable to the full game should you purchase the game, so long as you purchase it while it’s still in Season 2 that is (Marathon’s progress wipes every season, each should last about three months).
If you’ve been playing Marathon, now’s the time to rope your friends in to give the game a go.
As with the recent news of Bungie ending live service updates for Destiny 2, Marathon is now the only live game the developer is actively building. The hardcore extraction shooter isn’t what most Destiny fans would play, especially right now. But looking at all the additions here, Bungie isn’t slowing down on tinkering with what this new interpretation, perhaps continuation, of Marathon can be.
Marathon (2026) is out now on PS5, PC (Steam) and Xbox Series X|S. Check out our review of the game based on Season 1 here.