One of the most unexpected announcements at Sony’s recent PlayStation Showcase 2023 was the debut trailer for a reimagined version of Bungie’s long-dormant Marathon series . Although details remain scarce about the sci-fi shooter’s gameplay, Marathon’s futuristic setting opens the door to establishing connections between it and Bungie’s wildly popular Destiny 2. While the duo might seem like an odd pairing, tying these two universes together even tangentially could be a great idea and help deepen the lore of both franchises.
If Bungie wanted to establish links between the Marathon and Destiny 2 universes, one developer it could look to for inspiration is Remedy Entertainment. Establishing a name for itself with 2001’s seminal third-person shooter, Max Payne, Remedy-developed titles like Alan Wake and Control are regarded as classics by many gamers and critics. Seizing upon the similarly supernatural storylines of the latter titles, Remedy filled Control with numerous Easter eggs referencing Alan Wake that could be spotted by eagle-eyed players. A more definitive link between the two franchises was established with Control’s AWE DLC, marking the official start of Remedy’s connected universe.
Remedy’s Connected Universe Establishes a Model Bungie Could Follow
Similarly to how Remedy Entertainment tied together the world of Alan Wake and Control, showing how the former series was indirectly responsible for some events in the latter, the universes of Marathon and Destiny 2 could have some impact on one another. While it would likely be more than a bit jarring to see Destiny 2’s armor-clad combatants squaring off against Marathon’s decidedly more cyberpunk fighters, that doesn’t mean that the two franchises can’t overlap in other, more indirect ways.
Crossing over the two franchises would make financial sense for Bungie, incentivizing players of each title to give the other a shot in order to get the whole experience, and could make for an intriguing narrative choice. With Destiny 2’s current, decade-long story arc coming to an end with the release of The Final Shape expansion in 2024, it’s the perfect time for Bungie to do something bold with the franchise and tie it into Marathon’s far-future setting. If Bungie does decide to blend the worlds of its two sci-fi shooters, Destiny 2 even has pre-established lore that could help explain the connection.
Destiny’s Past May Hold the Key to a Future Bungie Connected Universe
One way that Bungie could tie Marathon and Destiny 2 together is by revisiting a concept introduced when the origins of Destiny 2’s Awoken species were revealed in the game’s Forsaken expansion. Making their first appearance in the original Destiny, the Awoken are an advanced species of aliens descended from the crew of a human colony ship, the Yang Liwei, that became trapped inside a pocket universe. Expanding on this idea by placing Marathon inside a previously unknown pocket universe located within the world of Destiny 2 would let Bungie link the two franchises while also helping to explain their drastically different settings.
Rather than being a consciously-shaped creation like the Awoken’s home, the Distributary, Marathon’s setting could reflect a world where humanity followed a dramatically different path than the inhabitants of Destiny 2. Set in 2850 on the planet Tau Ceti IV, the dystopian, cyberpunk-inspired Marathon could be introduced as a pocket universe resulting from a timeline where humanity never met The Traveler, instead expanding out into the galaxy of its own accord. The relative timelines of the two games even match up surprisingly well. Many Destiny 2 fans speculate that Bungie’s popular shooter takes place somewhere around 1,000 years in the future depending on how long each of Destiny 2’s historical Ages lasted.
Bungie could choose to simply scatter some Destiny 2 Easter eggs across Tau Ceti IV for Marathon players to find and call it a day, but providing a deeper connection between the two franchises could help both grow going forward. If handled well, it could even sew the seeds for a future Bungie connected universe that could entertain gamers for years to come.
Marathon is currently in development for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.