Bungie’s new version of its classic Marathon game will return as an extraction shooter on September 23rd, the company announced on Saturday. Bungie said as much during the opening of a Marathon preview that showed a quick trailer, but sooner than that September release date Marathon players new and old will be able to try the game out on April 23rd during an alpha playtest. Even sooner than that, you can sign up for the alpha now to hopefully get admitted, but Marathon fans aren’t having much luck with that right now.
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That full trailer for Marathon can be seen below courtesy of the game’s socials after it aired during the game’s debut event. During the same presentation, it was announced that you can join the game’s Discord to find a link where you can submit your info to be considered for the alpha. Bungie indicated that the keys for the alpha won’t be distributed via the Twitch stream as Twitch Drops or anything similar, so even those who can’t watch the event should be able to get in.
That is, of course, only true if the Discord is working, but that’s not the case right now. Likely due the sheer amount of people rushing into the Discord to get into the alpha, the Discord itself seems to be completely down right now. Trying to join it multiple times got me as far as the “are you a bot?” verification measures, but a warning afterwards indicated that the server was down for the time being.
The signup available via the Discord will of course just be for consideration for the alpha meaning that there’s a chance you might get passed over, but it seems like there will at least be some alternate ways into the alpha. Several content creators have already teased online prior to the announcement that they’d have keys available, but that again is largely left up to luck.
Bungie clarified that alpha invites will be sent out a few days prior to the launch of the alpha itself and can then be redeemed on Bungie’s site. If you get a code, you’ll get two invite codes for friends as well so that you can round out a full team of Runners during the alpha.
Marathon‘s closed alpha test starts on April 23rd. Marathon itself will be out on the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and PC platforms on September 23rd.
