After weeks of anticipation, Bungie has announced that the endgame zone of Marathon, Cryo Archive, will be available to players on March 20. The game initially released on March 5, 2026.
According to a blog post, the Cryo Archive takes place aboard the UESC Marathon ship itself, which first debuted in the original Marathon game in 1994. In order to access the location, players will need to be in teams of three, be at least level 25, have all six factions unlocked, and have a minimum loadout value of 5,000 credits. This is the highest difficulty zone in the game, and will require you to unlock a higher security clearance as you access vaults, retrieve some of the most valuable loot in the game, and unravel the many secrets of the ancient ship.
The Cryo Archive zone, much like the recently announced ranked mode, will only be available on weekends. Numerous contracts will be available to give “structure with your suffering,” alongside unique rewards in the codex, including cosmetics for all six runners. Check out the trailer showcasing the Cryo Archive in Marathon below:
Bungie describes the story of the Cryo Archive as follows:
The UESC Marathon ship left Mars for the Tau Ceti solar system in 2472. It arrived 300 years later. Then… silence. Contact with the 30,000 colonists who set out to make a new home on an alien world was lost.
Decades later, the Marathon ship still hangs abandoned in orbit, a frozen snapshot of the past promising valuable resources and information for anyone brave enough to make the trek and survive.
Lastly, Marathon is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.
