It’s been nearly three and a half years since Embark Studios announced ARC Raiders. Originally, it was meant to be the debut game of the Swedish studio owned by NEXON. However, it was briefly put aside as Embark focused first on the free-to-play competitive first-person shooter game The Finals, currently in Season 6 of its live support after the December 2023 release.
In the meantime, Embark reworked ARC Raiders to be something completely different. The game was initially presented to gamers as a cooperative shooter, but now it has morphed into an extraction shooter that seamlessly combines PvP and PvE elements. However, the setting is the same: a ravaged future Earth ruled by mysterious machines called ARC. Not unlike in the Terminator, humans have had to go underground to survive, and only the titular Raiders dare venture to the surface to scavenge precious resources and technology. That’s what players will be doing, but they’ll have to fend off fellow Raiders, too.
As we found out when Embark provided advanced access to the upcoming tech test, there are solo queues and group queues for up to three players. Before departing for the surface, you’ll have to pick your loadout, which consists of guns, gadgets, armor, ammunition, and the melee Raider tool. There’s also a free loadout option that can be used as a fallback if you don’t have anything left (which can happen if you string a few bad initial matches) or just to avoid risking your items, which are usually gone after dying in a session. There is an exception: the Safe Pocket. You can ‘stash’ three items at first (it may be possible to increase the size of this storage) that won’t be lost upon death. Needless to say, these precious slots must go to your most prized possessions.
Communication within your group is essential, as it only takes a few bullets to put you in down-but-not-out mode. If you’re lucky, you can be rescued by a nearby teammate, but you can also be finished off for good by enemy players; at that point, you’re out for the rest of the round. Rounds last up to 30 minutes – after the countdown expires, you’ll forcibly extract from the surface. If you find enough loot, you can do it at any time during the session by going to the dedicated Extraction Points scattered throughout the maps. These can be elevators or metro stations. However, you should always keep in mind the potential risk of attracting undesired attention from other players during the extraction phase.
So far, it has been fairly standard extraction fare. ARC Raiders does have a few things going on for it, though. Firstly, it is played strictly in third-person view, whereas most games in the genre are played in first-person view. It may not seem like a big difference, but it is, leading to slightly less frenetic action.
The maps seen in the tech test were all very well designed, too, offering a lot of verticality. This aspect is further exploited through ziplines, which can be found already active in the maps or can be dynamically employed by the player if they have one in their inventory. The most important aspect of the game, though, is character progression. Whether you successfully extract or not, you’ll still get experience based on what you achieved in the match (defeating ARC machines or other players, completing various challenges, etc.). Upon leveling up, you can use a skill point to improve certain passive abilities, such as decreasing stamina spent when running or dodging, or even reducing the time it takes for items to appear in the loot window.
In addition to the leveling system, ARC Raiders features a Mastery system where players can chase specific challenges and reach high scores to earn rewards. Unlike regular XP, you don’t get to advance in the Mastery system without a successful extraction.
The game also places a huge emphasis on crafting. Ammunition is a finite resource and it’s also specific (there’s light ammo, medium ammo, and heavy ammo) to the weapon type, so you’ll always be on the lookout for new parts to craft ammo but also bandages to heal yourself and other resources that can be used to craft all sorts of items. Gear can also be upgraded to augment efficiency, while augments increase inventory capacity.
ARC Raiders does have ‘quests’, too. When off a match, you’ll be able to receive these missions from various NPC merchants, obtaining useful rewards upon completion. However, I was disappointed that this is all done via a menu rather than with a proper 3D world interaction, as expected from a triple-A game in 2025. Regardless, you can eventually build crafting stations to create more advanced weapons and weapon mods.
During gameplay, the titular ARC machines can be dangerous. There are various types, too. While the drones are relatively easy to take down, the rollbots are harder to nail down since they’re very quick, and then there are hulking metal beasts that you really should avoid unless you’ve got the gear and experience to take on. Of course, the most unpredictable aspect remains that of other humans. By the way, the game already has proximity VoIP, just in case you want to try and bargain with other Raider groups. Somehow, I doubt that will be commonplace, though.
Graphically, ARC Raiders looks great. It’s powered by Unreal Engine 5 and offers optional NVIDIA RTXGI support, much like Embark’s previous game, The Finals. The game already supports NVIDIA DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation, too; however, even on a high-end PC (Ryzen 7 9800X3D, GeForce RTX 5090), there were instances of stuttering. Hopefully, optimization can still improve in the coming months. This is, after all, just a tech test, and we don’t have an inkling of the release window for the game yet.
Last but not least, Embark shared some info on the game’s monetization. Battle Passes can be purchased for Raider Tokens, which players earn by playing the game and leveling up. Within a Battle Pass, players then purchase items inside it with Cred, a currency that the game provides upon completion of Daily Challenges. These are specific missions and tasks that reset every 24 hours. The Tech Test, which begins tomorrow for the public, has three Battle Passes: the Shuttered Storefront, the Back-Alley Market, and the Secluded Courtyard.
So far, ARC Raiders shows promise. It’s too early to tell whether it’ll be the next big extraction shooter or just a passing trend, but Embark seems to have mixed in enough familiar and new elements to create an exciting recipe.
