On Marathon's two Runners cinematics and its fateful State of Play this week (EWMMP episodes 3 and 4)

We've been speculating about the oft-rumored State of Play for four weeks now on Escape Will Make Me Pod – my unofficial Marathon podcast with YouTubers Skarrow9 and JakeTheAlright – and it seems like this is finally the week. Sony announced a new State of Play coming this Thursday, and it's a massive 60 minute show.

As I've been saying the entire time, there is absolutely zero chance Sony misses this opportunity to show off Marathon to a much wider audience than normal. I personally expect we'll see a new cinematic at minimum.

As for the "free playtest" or "open beta" weekend (both terms feel stupid considering the game comes out in three damn weeks), my full expectation is that it'll be this weekend, likely Feb. 12-17. I'm not 100% sure we're going to get a "play now!" at the end of the trailer, but It's the smartest play as far as I can tell.

And for those hoping they announce it for a week later to not conflict with Valentines Day ... I think that's pretty unlikely. While Valentines Day weekend might not be the best choice (although I wonder how much of a problem it'll actually be), a worse choice would be "and you can play ... next weekend" and give people who would try the game a damn week to completely forget.

If you're interested in Marathon, assume the playtest will come this weekend, and I'll happily eat crow if I'm wrong.

Anyway, Bungie has been ramping up its marketing machine over the last few weeks, albeit a little bit slower than I would've expected.

Two weeks ago we got the very cool cinematic for Destroyer (formerly Locus), and last week we got the cinematic for Assassin (formerly Void). Both are neat, but we definitely get more sauce with the Destroyer one, as it showcases Artifacts for the first time in, like, three years. Still no idea what they are! But we talk about it a lot in episode 3 of the podcast.

Episode 4 of the show is partially devoted to Void and invisibility, but we also talk about the game's ranked mode. There's not much official info about the ranked mode out there, and all there really is is a leak. We talk very briefly about the leak before getting into our hopes for both the mode and matchmaking.

This show has been really fun to put together with Jake and Skarrow, and I feel really lucky to be a member of the gang. Doing a thing on YouTube also makes me appreciate our community, who I don't think has called me a "shill" one time, despite my obvious enthusiasm for this game.

Folks who've followed me long enough know that I just love the way Bungie games feel to play, and that translates to my excitement around Marathon.

You can check out the video version of the shows on YouTube (which I've linked above). You'll find the audio version of the show embedded in here as well, but you can also just subscribe to us on your podcast app of choice, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Please consider leaving us some 5 star reviews on those platforms, even if you're a YouTube enjoyer! We got a few review bombs we're trying to counteract, so we'd sure appreciate your support.

No matter what, this will be an interesting week for Marathon.

We'll have a new episode later this week, with or without the playtest.