Bungie's new extraction shooter, Marathon, will start its Season 2 on June 2, 2026, and with that comes a lot of changes to the game. Every player will have their Vaults completely wiped as each new season brings with it a seasonal reset, new content will enter the game, and, just as Bungie did in Season 1, new experimental queues will be introduced. One of which, game director Joe Ziegler has confirmed, will be a PvE-only mode.
In an extended reflection about how the launch and first season of Marathon went overall, Ziegler addressed many aspects of the game. Beginning with what Bungie's vision for Marathon was ahead of launch, then getting into what the team learned once the game was in players hands, and what it is looking towards for the game's future.
Part of all that included a brutally honest section where Ziegler acknowledged some of the game's biggest drawbacks, like pointing out that Marathon can be "overwhelming" to get into, and that even when you've gotten over that hump, there's a downward spiral that's easy to hit, which could very well push players further away.
Sponsored Kit-only queues on Perimeter and Dire Marsh have been part of Bungie's response to that, but Season 2 will take experimental queues a step further to achieve what Ziegler describes as the game's north star: "We want players to experience the thrill and danger of surviving on the edge of the explored universe."
"We want to build on it with new content and systems that challenge you in new ways to grow, collaborate, and compete with one another in your quest to thrive in Tau Ceti's deadly environments. New zones, zone changes and variants, new shells, new weapons, new equipment, and loot galore," Ziegler writes.
"In Season 2 we'll be starting that journey with some things we'll be adding to the mix, including a new dimension of challenge with Night Marsh, a new defensive Runner shell Sentinel, new weapons and equipment, a revamp to how you acquire Runner shell stats to give you more options with the Cradle, and increased progression rates for faction and Runner levels."
Ziegler goes on to list several ideas the team is currently exploring, like changes to priority contracts and the entire contract system, reintroducing the Duos queue as a rotating queue, a new matchmaking system for more balanced matches, expanding the maximum size of players' vaults, and a better onboarding experience. Some of those changes though won't arrive until Season 3 later this year.
You don't have to wait for Season 3 though to try out Marathon as a PvE-only game. Season 2 will introduce two PvE-focused modes, one that still has light PvP elements, and another that is entirely PvE. "Options where you can go full sweat or lean back and chill," Ziegler writes.
"The experimental mode at the beginning of the season will focus more on PvE, but with a light touch of PvP. The second experimental mode will be a PvE-only mode that's focused on crews being tasked with completing objectives together and making some progress across matches."
When Marathon launched, a big part of its draw was how cutthroat it was. It even became a talking point online to distinguish ARC Raiders and Marathon as two sides of an extraction shooter coin, with ARC Raiders being the more casual side and Marathon the more hardcore side. But the reality of Marathon's player base constantly decreasing, paired with the reality of the kind of commercial success Bungie requires from each of its releases due to the scale it operates on meant it couldn't keep running the same playbook.
Things had to change, and Ziegler's very long blog post here is not just recognition of that, but a plan for the game's future. Whether it works is what we'll have to wait and see, but if you're a Marathon player who doesn't want to see it become yet another live service game to hit the graveyard in a year's time, it's at least reassuring to see Bungie taking big swings to improve and grow the game.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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