It’s been a tumultuous few years for Arc Raiders, the upcoming multiplayer game from Embark Studios. The original pitch was for a PvE experience, pitting humans against gigantic robots in a far-off future.
That's what was revealed at The Game Awards in 2021. But when multiple sources of feedback told the team something wasn’t adding up, they went back to the drawing board, reinventing the whole thing to be PvPvE.
It was a laborious, time-intensive process, at a point when everyone thought they were in the home stretch, but it’s brought us to now, with Arc Raiders coming out on October 30th. "We loved every aspect of what we were trying to design. But we came to the conclusion, after quite a long time: 'Guys, this game is not fun'," Peter Soderlund, CEO of Embark Studios, told Edge.
Or rather, it's just not fun enough - there were sparks, but they weren't producing fire. Thus, six months out from a launch date, they went back into development on the fundamentals, to take another swing at the concept and see if they can't make it more entertaining. Eventually, PvPvE emerged as the winning formula, a contentious choice both internally and externally.
The staff at Embark includes devs who've worked on Battlefield and Star Wars: Battlefront, who were done with PvP and wanted to explore other avenues. However, the 'vE' of Arc Raiders gave them enough room to incorporate their creative ambitions, particularly with influence from Shadow of the Colossus, with Kaiju-like enemies stalking the map.
Players weren't keen on any of this, but Soderlund knew what they were making was better than what they had. His faith bore fruit during internal testing, where feedback was supremely positive, and now again, as it has sat in the Steam wishlist charts for weeks. We'll all see for ourselves in late October, but at the very least, this is one game that slayed the giant of having to make a hard choice for a better outcome.
Arc Raiders is still the extraction shooter to watch, and it's coming this October.
