Marathon's release signals the dire state of shooters in 2026

Marathon lands with unmistakable style, but it’s an extraction shooter that forces players into a tense mode with little room for error. Instead of a directed campaign, up to three players are dropped into an exoplanet to gather loot and escape before time runs out; death at the hands of NPCs or fellow players sends you back to the start.

The game’s stories are emergent moments created by play, not a clear sequence of set pieces or narrative beats. The format follows the recent popularity of open-ended loot shooters like Arc Raiders, which sends teams into post‑apocalypse Italy with similar stakes and player-driven storytelling.

Those games draw crowds for that freedom, but they lack the turn‑off‑your‑brain pleasure of a traditional single‑player FPS: the big set pieces, point‑A‑to‑point‑B direction and the sense of being carried through a crafted story. Other attempts to revive or sustain single‑player campaigns have struggled.

Italy

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