Brush up on Marathon’s lore with this awesome fan-made timeline

On Saturday, Bungie is slated to premiere the first gameplay reveal of Marathon, the studio’s upcoming team-based extraction shooter suspected to be released sometime later this year. Marathon is not only Bungie’s first non-Destiny project in more than a decade, but the first new entry in the Marathon franchise in the nearly three decades since 1996’s Marathon Infinity.

With so much excitement and attention buzzing around Bungie’s latest game, audiences unfamiliar with the franchise might appreciate a quick way to get up to speed on this universe and the events leading up to its latest installment. If you don’t feel like playing through the original trilogy (which is available to play for free on Steam), you can check out this sleek, well-produced breakdown of Marathon produced by YouTuber Jake The Alright and video editor Michael Veselovsky (aka vslvsk) to celebrate the series’ 30th anniversary last year.

In just over 15 minutes, Jake details over 10 centuries worth of lore and backstory, including the reign of a technologically advanced race of ancient aliens known as the Jjaro, the machinations of a powerful alien empire known as the Pfhor, the events of 1994’s Marathon and 1994’s Marathon: Durandal, and a fateful encounter between a Jjaro diplomat and President Bill Clinton. It’s a lot of information, but the video does a terrific job of sifting through the minutiae and delivering the straight facts concerning the stakes of Marathon’s universe.

If you, like me, didn’t experience the Marathon franchise during its initial peak, Jake The Alright’s video is a great way of bringing yourself up to speed with all things Marathon just in time before Bungie’s big event on Saturday. It’s also worth watching if you count yourself as a fan of the Halo series, as many of the ideas and themes present in that series (ancient alien technology manipulated by fanatical empires, rampant artificial intelligences, soldiers wearing “Mlojnir” armor, etc.) were first explored by Bungie through the Marathon games. 

If you have trouble with the video’s bright green aesthetic and flashy black bitmap visuals, don’t worry; Jake and Veselovsky have put together a companion website that allows you to scrub through the events of the Marathon timeline at your leisure. And if you want to get really deep in the weeds, you can check out Marathon mega-fan Hamish Sinclair’s Story Page, which has been keeping the lore of the series’ universe straight as far back as 1995! Now that’s some dedication.