After 40 hours and counting, Arc Raiders has me convinced: extraction shooters are brilliant

There’s a rare experience with video games when an entire genre just clicks for you. A moment when the appeal makes sense. Crawling onto an elevator with a backpack full of loot, hastily initiating the extraction sequence with seconds left to live, Arc Raiders did exactly that. It let off a firework in my head. How was I ever not a fan of this?

Arc Raiders is, simply put, a third-person extraction shooter. It is a factory that mass produces tense moments, by its own nature a source of intense anxiety: high stakes, devastating losses, rapturous victories. Pulling back, it’s a game of gradual self-refinement, both of your inventory full of resources and your characters abilities, and likewise your own know-how.

The game is set in a world that’s already fallen to a dominant AI called Arc, which constantly surveys the world with a seemingly infinite army of drones and giant robots. Their initial purpose seems to be killing you viciously while your backpack is full of loot, but Arc also appears to be changing, subtly. There’s something afoot, and it’s up to you and fellow raiders to figure out what’s going on while stuffing your pockets with springs and apricots.

The loop is thus. You start off in Sperenza, a hub of surviving humans that acts as your home base below ground. There you equip the weapons and equipment you need and pick up any quests that may be available from a handful of vendors. You then head topside, either alone or in a squad, to a variety of different maps. Here, you battle against Arc and other players in the hunt for loot, for quest completion, or for the love of the game. If you can, you head home via an elevator or raider hatch, the latter only accessible if you have a key.

It’s a compelling experience from the jump. As of writing I’ve sunk roughly 40 hours into the game across both public playtests and a private press preview event. Those early hours were characterised by steady, exploratory romps through desolate buildings and ravaged highways: the bones of civilisation. Arc Raiders does a good job of directing you to points of interest with the in-game map, but the off-road travelers out there will find rich bounties away from such hubs.

All players are, one way or another, funneled into tense moments of player-versus-player encounters or harrowing robotic escapades through an ever-decreasing timer. Not only are you on the clock, but escape options shutter as time moves on, meaning the longer you linger, the more dangerous a match becomes.

Once you return home, you’re left to manage your haul of gadgets and gizmos and customise your raider. I absolutely love the player character in Arc Raiders. Visually they’re this mishmash of punky, space age equipment, plus a mullet. A spin on the typical forgone future wayward soul that dodges the usual stereotypes. In a game where you’d assume a full camouflage get-up would be the go-to, such an approach wouldn’t really fit. Embark Studios’ art team have managed to make a post-apocalyptic DIY aesthetic without things feeling too tryhard as to become embarrassing, a pitfall too often stumbled upon by others in the genre.

I’m also a big fan of the skill tree system in Arc Raiders. It’s split into three directions, rather than classes. You’ve got survival, conditioning, and mobility. What the developers responsible for this portion of the game have done is identify and provide progression tracks for distinct types of extraction game players. Survival is for the passive player, and the quiet looter. Noise reduction bonuses and expanded mid-match crafting options eventually lead to the ability to diffuse mines and breach otherwise inaccessible security lockers.

Maybe you’d rather get into the thick of things, in which case conditioning provides additional buffs to stamina regen and melee damage. Or perhaps you love the idea of moving fast, chasing other players, and tense escapes. Mobility offers distinct movement abilities to those who invest enough points. Eventually, you may be able to unlock all of these, as of writing there’s no confirmed level cap. But personally, I hope you aren’t able to max everything out. By forcing players to dedicate themselves to one branch of the tree for the most part, there’s a fulfilment of player fantasy made possible. A sense of expertise in certain approaches to difficult problems.

Your capabilities as a player are also improved by your hideout, where crafting benches and a cute little chicken called Scrappy can be found and upgraded. Here you’ll find another avenue or permanent progression in Arc Raiders, as certain upgrades require certain materials, but provide significant bonuses as a result. An upgraded medical bench will lead to better craftable healing items, this is true for weapons, gadgets, and so on.

You can then take your raider, hopefully a bit stronger than before, into a selection of maps. I’ve played four: Dam Battlegrounds, Buried City, Spaceport, and Blue Gate. All are distinct with different layouts, quirks, and secrets to discover. I’ve heard some people state that the maps in Arc Raiders are boring, or passable. These people do not know what they are talking about.

Take Dam Battlegrounds. The sprawling concrete dam at the centre of the map is a labyrinth of long hallways, primed for ambushes and hectic chases for those who have a taste for PvP. There are multiple paths up to the dam itself, be it exposed ladders around its exteriors. Makeshift raider hideouts with ropes hanging off the edges, or secluded pipes that lead into the guts of the mega structure. It’s a joy to explore the heart of Dam Battleground, to carefully rush up metal staircases and tiptoe around corners.

But let’s say you’re not keen for that part of the map, luckily Dam Battlegrounds has alternative options that are just as rich a field for unique exploratory and combative moments. The swamp is a highlight, little islands of greenery that act as natural cover while destroyed Arc shells and makeshift metal shelters dot the landscape. But my favourite little spot isn’t even a marked place on the map. On the south border, by the scrap yard, there’s a lonesome tower far away from all the action. I’ve never seen any other player here, but those who do reach the spot will find great loot for their troubles.

Every map I’ve played is like this. Weapon boxes hidden in high towers on Buried City, the chaos of the central tower on Space Port, the massive subterranean roads and hallways on Blue Gate. Every map has locations big and small, obvious and hidden, that offer valuable rewards for those who brave them. Each is also dotted with interesting environmental storytelling. The water on the East side of Dam Battlegrounds is red. Why is it red? That’s iron in the water buddy, that’s Arc in the oceans. Or the giant walkers outside of the map on Buried City that emphasise how small a problem raiders are to the artificial rulers of the surface world. Here’s something interesting: Blue Gate’s most dangerous looting spot is littered with the bodies of humanoid robots. Maybe these robots were a bigger part of civilised life before everything went pearshaped. Arc Raiders is rich with this stuff.

So the game is good, but why is it special? I think it’s the tone. Arc Raiders is, somewhat counterintuitively, a hopeful game. That may seem odd given both the setting and the survival-of-the-fittest genre it’s a part of. You would think that makes Arc Raiders intrinsically lonesome, or its atmosphere dire. It really isn’t. Arc Raiders feels bizarrely collaborative, even for those playing solo.

I chalk this up to several factors. For one, the safe hub of Speranza is where your player as well as many surviving humans live. It’s not a dingy, ruthless hole in the ground. Instead, it’s a bright, busy, colourful place. Raiders sit and drink together at bars, people weld and carry and support each other. Early on it establishes that raiders are going topside not only for the sake of themselves, but for their fellow man.

Then there’s the social aspect. This is something I’ve written about recently, but Arc Raiders encourages socialising between players. You don’t have to kill things to gain xp, in fact you can sour up in levels from looting alone. When you do fight a player, most of their stuff isn’t anything you’ll need. In tense moments, a spin on the emote wheel or a conversation over voice can diffuse tension quickly.

There are risks to this of course, I have been stabbed in the back by players – and it still stings today – but such are the risks when trusting someone. I’ve also managed to extract alongside two “enemy” players, and I’ve played the flute after a tense PvE battle while another squad danced away around me. Everyone can grab what they want and make it back home safe and sound, and when it works out it makes for wonderfully memorable moments.

Finally there’s how the game is presented, especially compared to its peers. Escape from Tarkov is obviously the granddaddy of extraction games, and it’s a brutal, complicated monster. In that depth comes the fulfilment of mastery, but it also arguably encourages the kill-or-be-killed mentality you’d expect from such a game. That’s not a bad thing, I’d wager that’s a big part of why it’s so popular.

There are some caveats, though. Embark Studios has made no secret of its use of AI in development. Like its prior game The Finals, the studio has used real voice actors’ performances and replicated them (with permission) with AI in-game. They’ve also used machine learning to animate many of the Arc enemies’ movements, like when you shoot one of the propellers off a Hornet and it tumbles to the ground.

If you’re absolutely against the use of AI as a tool in game development, then it’s something you should know about. If you’re personally okay with it being used as a tool alongside human-lead development – a perspective the leads at Embark likely fall into – then you could perhaps draw a line that permits Arc Raiders. Regardless, something to consider. It’s something I’m still a little uneasy about, frankly, even if Arc Raiders is careful with its use of AI during development.

It’s also worth noting that my experiences come from a variety of tests, rather than the full release build of the game. There are doubtless more maps, more quests, more things to discover. I know how the things like the expeditions work, a seasonal feature that allows you to opt-in to a character reset for rewards, but given I didn’t actually experience it myself it’s not something I can write about with much insight.

But caveats aside, Arc Raiders seems to me like something truly exemplary. I’ve not felt this way about a big multiplayer game since, maybe, the original Destiny. Arc Raiders is a fantastic first step on what I hope is a long road for Embark, who has shown a deluge of talent here. And like Destiny did for so many others at the time, Arc Raiders has pulled me into an entirely new genre of shooters as a result.