Datamined Destiny 2 files namedrop Marathon pre-orders, spurring speculation that Bungie's FPS reboot could rear its head soon

Datamined Destiny 2 files seemingly hint that pre-orders for Marathon, Bungie's next shooter, are coming sooner than you might expect.

Bungie announced that it was rebooting Marathon, the '90s series that predates even Halo, last summer, and it's been very tight-lipped about the extraction shooter ever since aside from a secret trailer that confirmed we wouldn't hear anything else for a really long time. Prophecy fulfilled, I guess.

But Destiny 2's new update reportedly features clues about what to expect next. Dataminers began digging through Destiny 2's innards recently for hints about what's coming up in the evergreen looter shooter - though what they instead found was what's next for the studio. The Game Post reports that a text string called 'v820.offers.entitlement.d2.marathon.preorder' was datamined, obviously spurring speculation. 

Bungie apparently names all Destiny 2 updates with version numbers. For example, The Final Shape's files are numbered v800, while the ongoing Episode Revenant event is v810. Episode Heresy, which also has the same v820 numbering, is next in line and will debut on February 4, 2025, so it's very possible that we'll hear more from Marathon around that same time. Who knows? Maybe we'll see some new footage as early as this year's The Game Awards show before pre-order open early next year. That's all pure guess work, however.

Adding more fuel to the theory is the fact that Bungie recently invited several streamers and content creators to the studio - many of whom were in town for the Halo World Championship Series - specifically to play the new Marathon reboot. That isn't confirmation that any new news is incoming right now; more a sign that development is powering ahead, despite a reportedly rough production cycle behind the scenes.

Bungie’s Marathon looks the part, but do we really need another extraction shooter?