Bungie’s ‘Marathon’ Art Director Responds to Criticism That the Game Is Too “Bleak”

A Bungie developer for Marathon responded to mixed fan opinions about the extraction shooter’s graphical style. The game’s art director explained why the 2025 title looks the way it did in its reveal trailer. And, in all fairness, the explanation actually makes a lot of sense.

Is ‘Marathon’s’ Art Style Too Bleak?

After years of anticipation, Bungie fully unveiled Marathon with a special gameplay and story trailer on April 12. While the shooter showed off incredible gameplay, its unique art style was divisive among some fans. As a huge Destiny 2 player, I actually found myself falling into that camp as well. While I appreciate the striking visuals of Marathon, I couldn’t help but feel that something was off about how it looked. Its “clean” and “realistic” visuals just felt jarring to me.

Well, as I said, I’m not alone in this opinion. However, one fan actually received a response from Marathon art director Joseph Cross on Instagram. The user had replied to the Bungie employee’s social media posts, stating: “the more you feed us the more i feel the game getting bleaker, and bleaker, and more matte, and matte.” In response, Cross commented: “It’s pre-Alpha! We’re definitely working on a lot of things trying to make it as compelling as possible. It’s always hard to compare to these sultry blender renders though. Thanks for the support!”

the internet never forgets

It should be pointed out that Cross has since deleted the comment. Although not before fans of the game were able to screenshot it. Regardless of the reason, his explanation actually makes a lot of sense. While Marathon is only five months out, footage shown in reveal trailers is often from builds further back than most players might expect. And in developer time, a lot can change in five months.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time the Marathon art director has responded to fan feedback about the game. Over on Twitter, a user explained that they found the design of the Glitch Runner “unappealing” due to the character being visually “too loud.” Cross replied to the fan and said: “No cooking happening today, everyone is entitled to their take! There is room for both and more.”

Bungie Fans Are Divided

So, what is going on with the divisive response to Marathon? First off, I just wanted to applaud Bungie for taking a risk with this game. Whether you like it or not, the art direction is striking and incredibly unique. And while I’m personally not sold on the way it looks yet, I do see the vision with the game’s bold character designs. The Cyberpunk-esque runners in the game genuinely stop you in your tracks when you first see them.

While I am by no means an expert, I actually think some of the Marathon trailer’s visuals heavily draw from level lighting and fog effects. I’ve seen other Bungie fans echo a similar sentiment. As I said earlier, I also think the game’s mix of stylish visuals and hyper-realistic graphics is another culprit for why some aren’t feeling the trailer. But I think it bears repeating that the game is still half a year out, and we don’t even know what build we saw in the reveal trailer. So, it does seem premature to harshly judge it.

How ‘Marathon’s’ Art Style Has Evolved Over Time

Joseph Cross gave more insight into how Bungie approached the look of Marathon during the April 10 episode of the Learned Squared podcast. In the interview, the art director said: “The game has gone through stylistic changes too, evolutions. But at the time when we started, we were going for just, like, high fidelity realism. That was sort of Plan A, [it was] literally like in the classic video game ‘better graphics’ sense, you know, Marathon was gonna have better graphics then Destiny because it was the next game, and so that was a very natural thing and we were going to lean into material definition and fidelity and detail and all that stuff.”

The Marathon developer then went on to explain how the game went from “realism” to a more “stylized look.” “So, the pivot from that kind of realism ambition, to a more [stylistic] graphic simplified approach, that was the biggest, most important change from an art directional point of view. And also for the project itself, and even when [the announce trailer came out], we were still actively evolving the style, and so there was a very deliberate choice to not try to reflect the exact art style in that announce trailer too. So, you know the game won’t look exactly like that trailer, but it will have the same sort of inherent qualities, and I’m still very happy with how that trailer came out.”

in conclusion

All of this sounds reasonable to me and explains the blend between the two visual styles. It will be interesting to see how fans feel about Marathon‘s art direction when the final game launches on September 23, 2025. And even though I’m still not sold, I think Bungie deserves the benefit of the doubt. I mean, Destiny 2 is still one of the best-looking games of all time. Plus, there’s still a lot we don’t know about Marathon—especially when it comes to its lore and character cosmetics. Opinions could easily change once players get their hands on the shooter and experience its maps.