I was racking my head trying to figure out why I loved Marathon's artstyle so much and finally figured it out when I saw a tweet (final collage is from said tweet) from Marathon's own Franchise Art Director at Bungie, Joseph Cross.
They're calling back to the y2k era of TDR and WipEout. I ADORE the WipEout series and the artstyle from that time period had a profound impact on me growing up and seeing this style being iterated on 25 years later is so refreshing and exciting.
Wipeout 2097 on the PS1 still looks futuristic and has a banging soundtrack in 2022 (how will it hold up in 2097?)
The original PS1 passed me back in the 90's, my family had an N64 and then I picked up a PS2 with GTA3 some years later - but that's another story.
I love being able to play iconic games from previous eras that I didn't get to experience at the time. It's like finding buried treasure (admittedly after someone has given you a map)
Retro Gamer recently covered the Wipeout series in detail, which is I think that started the germ of an idea to track down a copy from the PS1 era.
I decided to get 2097 rather than the original, as it's generally regarded as an improvement over the first game. It also runs in the PS1 high res mode, providing much smoother and sharper visuals than most PS1 games.