Marathon’s alien enemies could get very weird, if the original trilogy is any guide

I expected Marathon to be a relatively straightforward sci-fi extraction shooter. You play as a cybernetic Runner — a disembodied consciousness implanted into a disposable shell — investigating the ruins of an abandoned human colony on Tau Ceti IV. Each run sees you competing with other teams to collect loot and fight off UESC security robots before exfiltrating offworld, or dying and starting the cycle again. It’s a satisfying gameplay loop that, like other extraction shooters and even battle royales, doesn’t necessarily need deep lore to support it. But if the original Marathon trilogy from the 1990s — and numerous hints developer Bungie has dropped — are any indication, the new game may introduce something much weirder than rogue robots: alien civilizations, ancient precursor technology, and even primordial entities capable of breaking the laws of physics.