Players Team Up to Unlock the Final Level in Marathon Shooter

Before the weekend kicked off, Bungie activated some intriguing terminals in its newly launched extraction shooter, Marathon. This sparked an alternate reality game, and over the past 72+ hours, players and content creators across platforms like Twitch, Discord, Twitter, and Reddit have banded together to crack the puzzles, all in hopes of unlocking the final level of Marathon.

On March 6, Bungie quietly turned on previously dormant computer terminals scattered throughout the first map of Marathon. These terminals resembled the ones from Bungie’s original Marathon trilogy, and players quickly realized that interacting with them in a specific order would trigger messages from an unknown voice, believed to be Durandal, the infamous AI antagonist from the earlier Marathon titles. Exciting stuff!

These terminals also directed players to a website showcasing scrambled camera feeds from a location dubbed “Cryo Archive,” which is the name of the previously teased “endgame” map for Marathon. Once Bungie shared this website, the community’s puzzle-solving efforts ramped up significantly.

Players found that the various scrambled camera feeds on the Cryo Archive site featured progress bars that updated every 15 minutes. However, progress seemed to stall over the weekend, prompting Bungie to drop hints in a new channel on the official Marathon Discord server. This guidance helped players realize they needed to conduct numerous terminal runs.

Eventually, players figured out that if enough of them activated specific terminals on Marathon’s first map, Perimeter, during designated 15-minute intervals, they could fill the progress bars and unlock the cameras on the website, leading to further progress. Much of the puzzle-solving effort has been spearheaded by content creator and streamer MrRoflWaffles, who has successfully rallied entire lobbies of Marathon players to collaborate on this ARG.

At midnight on Sunday, players managed to unlock all the cameras on the Cryo Archive website. Now, the community eagerly awaits Bungie to initiate the next phase of the ARG puzzle, which will likely involve activating terminals on Marathon’s other maps, allowing players to decode more from the website. According to dataminers, this is step three in a 13-step puzzle that will incorporate additional websites, some of which have already been discovered, and require even more community teamwork.

The culmination of all this effort will likely lead to a new map to explore, potentially filled with significant ties to the classic Marathon games. Plus, it’ll be another spot where players can quickly meet their demise at the hands of a sniper. And that’s all part of the fun!