@InsiderTreat some interesting history with the art/logo theft and poor reception to earlier versions of the game that forced them to push it out.
My honest feeling is they are going for the hyper competitive crowd and they have a ton of things that are happening in the game from lore/story to systems (ranked, etc). It's the opposite of what ARC Raiders brought to market. Where ARC is a casual extract shooter; Marathon won't be. It'll have some initial buzz.