Arc Raiders gives Escape from Tarkov a run for its money, and the secret is making the shooter feel like an RPG that you can "almost play as a single-player game"

Extraction shooters are a tough nut to crack. But where titans including Battlefield and Call of Duty have failed to make a dent, Arc Raiders – the latest game from The Finals developer Embark Studios – has blown the vault door open and scrambled away with the loot.

I've got a very high bar for the genre, thanks to years spent playing Escape from Tarkov, but a morning spent in Arc Raiders' tense post-apocalyptic raids reminds me of how Fortnite managed to bring PUBG's already-booming battle royale formula to a broader audience. We all know how that went. All of this is to say: Arc Raiders has the sauce, so I caught up with Stefan Strandberg, founder and chief creative officer of Embark Studios to hear how it was made.

Up and out

Speaking from that Escape from Tarkov headspace, I've always found that few extraction shooters are willing to fully commit to its formula.

In trying to bring the genre to the masses, studios often dial back the difficulty (losing the tension that makes going into raids so exciting), or take a hatchet to post-raid elements like crafting and stashes (losing the tension that makes leaving raids so exciting). These attempts often take the genre towards a more diluted, casual middle ground – even if nobody is there to play it.

Arc Raiders is far more accessible than Tarkov, but it doesn't lose that mean streak. I've killed – and been killed – in shootouts that have lasted just seconds, bled through my stash's gear like it's going out of style, and had my shit rocked by more of the game's AI-controlled robots than I'm willing to admit. Arc Raiders' broader appeal comes from its shinier chrome: brilliant narrative hooks, a gorgeous splash of retro futurism, and the sort of big budget polish you'd expect from far larger shooters.

It's a brilliant angle, though Embark Studios didn't stumble upon it by design. "We started with PvE and invested in that and co-op, hence all of our PvE enemies, but we soon realized that it didn't hold up," explains Strandberg, pointing to that lack of tension. The "stars were aligning" when the studio moved towards more of an extraction loop, iterating itself into a space which other developers would have killed to find first. Yet while Arc Raiders evolved into a more traditional extraction shooter, Strandberg and the team made a conscious effort to stay away from the genre's typical tone.

"The style and tone of this game was trying to take a step away from what was out there. Without mentioning any [other extraction shooters] there are certain tropes of 'drab military,'" grins Strandberg. "I have to care about this AK-47, but really I don't!"

In other areas, Embark Studios doubled down. Outside of raids, there's an RPG-like feel to Arc Raiders' progression, with skill trees, quests from vendors, and a base that can be upgraded with loot scavenged from forays outside. There's a real richness to the world, with many smaller parts making up the greater whole. Strandberg says it was important to give players "purpose" – why are they living underground? Where are the legions of killer robots coming from? What happened here?

"If you strip [Arc Raiders] down to its Excel sheet version, it's pure mechanics," he explains. "But mechanics don't feel like anything in isolation. So we've invested heavily in trying to justify the motives of our quest-givers, and embellishing that together with the world-building and layers of lore, so it's all there. To me, that's what makes it compelling. I hope that gets more players into this, because you can almost play it as a single-player game if you want. There's a story there, a world to uncover, and plans to expand upon it – that's something we're committed to. I think that's a natural progression that goes beyond what the formula is now."

Better with friends

During my first few matches, I played Arc Raiders like an absolute bastard. The sound of an explosion or gunshot sent me hurtling towards it in the hopes of catching and killing other squads, leading to tense sniper battles across rooftops and scrappy ambushes with my equally-bloodthirsty squad. Gunplay is fantastic – players are squishy and will drop to gunfire fairly quickly, but the third-person perspective prevents that tension veering too far into horror territory.

To my surprise, not shooting has its own charm. Whilst looting The Spaceport, another squad engaged us with voice comms and invited us to hang out for a little while – and if that doesn't crack your cold, cold heart, certain robots are phenomenally hard to defeat with just one squad.

Not killing-on-sight is something that Embark Studios has consciously tried to support. An emote wheel allows for communication alongside proximity chat, and even internally, there were a few different playstyles. Strandberg admits that while some developers embraced pacifism, others did the opposite. Surprisingly, the more co-operative side has survived Arc Raiders' first contact with players.

"I've been murdered in completely uncalled for ways, but I've also had friends – that I didn't know – come to save me in moments of great despair," says Strandberg, who recalls hearing a GDC talk about EVE Online that touched on the subject. "Someone saying hi by the coffee machine at the office is zero-risk, but saying hi in the darkness of space? That can create real strong bonds."

"I think it comes back to what we talked about earlier, about the presentation," he continues. "We have utmost respect for Tarkov, but both its PvP and PvE enemies are humanoids. It's harder with the treatment in that world to think that there are any friendlies nearby, whereas in our world, the mutual enemy of the AI sort of opens the door a little bit more. When you see someone get shot and have clusters of enemies hovering on top of them, you almost feel bad for them! That's a little bit harder to do when it's humanoid. It's harder to read, because you just have a cluster of soldiers shooting at each other. The pure nature of us having robotic enemies makes that human connection easier."

As someone who's spent years praying for an extraction shooter my Tarkov-loving self can enjoy alongside more casual friends, it's deeply refreshing to see Arc Raiders do exactly that. There's so much more in play than 'get in, shoot, get out', and Embark Studios understands that better than most. That knowledge shines in the fleshed-out world and in the areas that feel more like an RPG than an extraction shooter. Once more: Arc Raiders has the sauce, and I'd be shocked if we don't see more studios attempting to cook with it in the years to come.

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