Marathon is a high-energy first-person shooter where you’ll need quick wits and a quicker trigger finger to successfully escape the ruined planet of Tau Ceti IV. The first new game from Destiny 2 developers Bungie since Sony spent billions acquiring them in 2022 often plays like a glitzy mash-up of Fortnite, Apex Legends and Helldivers 2. Scratch underneath that shiny surface though, and you’ll find a knotty story about corporate greed and what it means to be human.
See, in Marathon you play as a hired Runner, a mercenary who’s given up their human body and has their consciousness transferred between artificial cyborgs (known as shells) to do battle with aliens, rival Runners and grumpy space cops. It’s all very Black Mirror and covers similar ground to Bong Joon Ho’s dark sci-fi comedy Mickey 17.
In every match, your goal is to scavenge the valuable artefacts, resources and weapons that are scattered across Tau Ceti IV, while trying to stop an AI known as Durandal who has his cold, robotic heart set on universal domination. “There’s a ‘Robin Hood’ aspect to the game that I vibed with from the jump,” composer Ryan Lott (of post-rock group Son Lux) tells NME. “In addition to all the nervousness, suspense and action that would obviously be necessary, I also wanted to capture a sense of a grander mission.”
The detailed concept art for Marathon’s different playable environments – from the colourful, overgrown ruins of Dire Marsh to the cold industrial nightmare of Cryo Archive – were a big inspiration for Lott’s compellingly otherworldly soundtrack, as was early gameplay footage. “From there, I could imagine the type of emotional contours I needed to create with the music. Then I just went nuts.”
In his first conversation after signing up to score the game, Bungie’s audio director Chase Combs told Lott he wanted Marathon to feel “more alive” than your typical space shooter. “Dark, synth-driven music conjures thoughts of other games, movies and stories,” explains Lott, so that was out. Instead, he had to figure out: “what is the sound of this story?”
“Coming onto the project, I knew we wanted to subvert player expectations in how we approached the score,” Combs tells NME. Early conversations between him and Lott were about “composers and artists that we thought took creative risks and built textures that added emotional weight or texture to their films, games or albums.” Björk albums ‘Post’ and ‘Homogenic’ as well as Jóhann Jóhannsson’s sweeping, orchestral work on Sicario and Arrival were all mentioned. Ultimately, Lott did his own thing though. “I write music I want to hear,” he offers. “I wasn’t looking to conjure the spirit of any specific musician. Sometimes Otis Redding inspires a synth patch, y’know?”
And doing things his own way meant filling an old piano with poster putty to create deliberately muted sounds. It’s probably not what you’d expect to hear in a futuristic sci-fi game, but nature is constantly threatening to reclaim every inch of the seemingly-abandoned Tau Ceti IV. “The stark contrast between the mystical natural environments and the human-made structures immediately made me hear music in my head,” says Lott. It’s also why he built a library of digitally distorted human voice recordings that he could play like an instrument to create brand new effects.
“Tau Ceti IV had clearly been recently inhabited by a large human colony, and there’s no explanation for where all those people went. This was a haunting plot point for me, and one that inspired the idea of ‘remnant voices’ [AKA] lingering aural shadows of prior inhabitants,” he tells NME. “I was also inspired by the concept that the [shells] you take on in the game are not human, but you are fully ‘you’ when present inside of them.”
Marathon takes place 100 years after the events of the first three games in the franchise, which were released between 1994 and 1996 and featured a chirpy, electropop accompaniment. “We really wanted to take a fresh approach with the music [this time],” says Chase. “The combination of the established lore from the original series and the bold visual direction gave us a great creative foundation to build from in our early experimentations.”
“You always want to do right by whomever came before you, but I never feel a burden to be anything but myself,” says Lott. You can hear that across the vibey Marathon anthem ‘In Death We’ve Just Begun’, on which Lott’s band Son Lux team up with modern metal superstar Poppy. “She was great to work with, very creatively open and enthusiastic to make something great,” says Lott. The track is a world away from what both artists typically create but that’s the sign of a great collaboration, says Lott. “Everyone involved finds a new ‘self’.”