Marathon's story is told like it's a single player game and that's no good when my friends are talking on Discord
Marathon is set in a cyberpunk future in which the air is thick with data and information. You play a runner, a human that's given up their body to become a being of bits and bytes whose consciousness can be transferred into whatever artificial shell they choose. We can't begin to perceive life in that world. A world where to see the data as it flew through the air it would be an onslaught to the senses, overwhelming and impossible to make sense of.
Scatch that. The experience of a tsunami of stimuli is easy to recreate: you simply need to try and follow Marathon's tutorial popups and story cinematics while also on a Discord server with your friends.