by Toussaint Egan

From the moment I saw it, one thing leapt out and has stayed with me ever since the announcement trailer for Marathon all the way back in 2023: the art style. It's the one quality that's inspired arguably the most divisive opinions of Bungie's extraction shooter reboot of its pioneering sci-fi franchise. Whether you love it or hate, one thing is certain: There's no other game that looks quite like 2026's Marathon, and I can only hope it sets a precedent for more to come.

Last week, Artstation Magazine published a Marathon "art blast" — a feature organizing the collective portfolios of the many artists who have contributed to the game's production. For fans of Bungie's previous titles such as Destiny 2 (RIP), certain names like Tobias Kwan, Dima Goryainov, and Patrick Bloom may ring familiar, accompanied by several new names like Kejun Wang, Allan Parker, Sigurd Fernstrom, and the Berlin-based Design Studio Karakter, each of whom have lent their considerable talents in cracking the distinctive look of Marathon's deadly and beguiling universe.

Clean geometric forms, strong compositions, stark color accents, and an emphasis on a high-contrast color palette set Marathon apart from its contemporaries, both within and adjacent to the extraction shooters genre. It still feels like the same universe from Bungie's classic Marathon FPS games from the early '90s, albeit now seen from the cold, inhuman gaze of corporate entities hovering over the detritus of an abandoned colony, combing for treasures among the remains of the dead and missing.

From Winter Olympian skiing suits, boundary-pushing graphic design, avant-garde animation, and Potash Ponds, the components of Marathon's art style are the culmination of deriving inspiration not from the tried and tired tropes of existing sci-fi entertainment, but a bold and adventurous attempt to pull references from the far-flung corners of our world where the future as we know it burgeons on the periphery of the everyday.

I don't know when exactly we can expect to see a physical, hardbound art book for Marathon, given how early we are in what I can only assume will be a long intended lifespan for the game. However, art blasts like these make the wait that much easier. Keep 'em coming, Bungie.

/out of frame

🚓 Toussaint: Stumbled across this gorgeous shot-for-shot stop-motion recreation of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" music video this morning. Composed entirely of card stock, foam, cardboard, tin foil, and cotton balls, the video took up to five years(!) to produce, and the result speaks for itself.

🧸 Rollin: Saw Toy Story 5 with the kiddos over the weekend, and boy, that was… a movie that released. Something quite that blockbuster doesn't usually make it to re:frame, but I can't stop thinking: why was Woody even in this one? The mind boggles.