Ten hours later Arc RaidersFor the first time I felt the acute pain of betrayal.
The round started with generosity. I met a fellow raider who tossed me a rare shotgun as well as a damaged radiator to upgrade my workbench. They didn't ask for anything in return. It was one of many friendly encounters I experienced while roaming the hostile maps of Arc Raiders, but I also felt my heart rate increase: when you die, you lose everything you're carrying, so I knew I needed to get to the extraction point quickly and quietly.
On the way I met another player. We exchanged “don't shoot” emotes and then our real voices in a non-contact chat, agreeing to cover each other until we left. I even threw him some bandages.
Fool.
As several pneumatic doors whirred open, a rolling, squeaking robot—one of the titular ARC drones—exploded in our faces, and in the confusion, before I knew what was happening, my companion turned toward me and fired. A red flash erupted from my body, hit the ceiling and stopped next to the smoking corpse of a dead robot. “Evil,” I said, although inside I admired his opportunism. “It's just a game, man,” he said, although there was a hint of guilt in his voice.
In the crowded world of escape shooters, Arc Raiders feels unique. It combines energetic combat and the genre's inherent tension with surprising social interactions: fragile alliances forged at gunpoint, hopeful pleas for help, groups of players gathered on rooftops playing musical instruments together. I called a truce during the firefight and silently formed bonds with the raiders while we fought on ARC. I've met players from Norway, Austria, Newcastle and Edinburgh and now we go on raids together, terrorizing both the ARC and the players.
In this world, people have been driven underground by robots roaming the surface. Your job as a raider is to go “up”, grab supplies and return within 30 minutes through extraction points that are scattered across Arc Raiders' four maps, from a city buried in swirling sand to an inactive spaceport. Loot is everywhere: in lockers, drawers, on tables, in boxes that you open with a crowbar, and on the bodies of downed raiders. Everything is useful either in battle, as a crafting item, or as a source of money that can be spent on better equipment.
It was advertised as a shooter for beginners – a simpler and more vibrant alternative to the militaristic shooter. Escape from Tarkovand it manages to help players get comfortable with the genre. You can take an unlimited amount of free gear, which gives you basic weapons and healing items, meaning you don't risk anything. Loot is color-coded based on its rarity so you know what to throw away, and the clink of purple items remains exciting even after 30 hours. You can mark items needed to craft recipes, missions are clearly explained, and locations are marked on a detailed map.
But hospitality does not mean ease, and even the simplest EPO can kill you. When that rolling Pop exploded, it tore through my armor and two-thirds of my health. Pesky Wasps and armored Hornets are easy to take out alone by firing their engines, but two can overwhelm you if you come out of cover. And if you see the Rocketman hovering or hear the demonic roar of its engines, run. The PvE difficulty is perfectly tuned, rewarding preparation and careful positioning, and the rewards for defeating the biggest enemies are well worth the effort.
ARC attracts noise and everything you do becomes excruciatingly loud. Every time I pry open a drawer or break down a door, the creak of metal rings through my bones, knowing that I'm communicating my location to everyone nearby. It's deliciously and painfully intense.
I love the unpredictability of encounters with other raiders: the awkward conversations, the emerging etiquette of certain voice lines, the uneasy agreements to put away weapons, the slightly panicked cries of “friendly, friendly” as you enter an extraction point and pray you don't get shot by a camper. When playing solo, you're as likely to exchange pleasantries as you are to exchange bullets, although some players will shoot on sight. Duos and trios are less friendly, although my squad once formed an unspoken alliance with another group to eliminate the rocket man.
The combat itself is a reward: shots feel quite heavy, bullets crack against walls and shield shards with a blue fuzz of draining energy. The weapons feel improvised and difficult to control. The more loot you carry, the more sprinting and rolling depletes your stamina bar, which always seems to evaporate at crucial moments. There are no damage numbers or hit markets, so you rely on blood spatter and changes in player behavior before knowing when to press, shooting until you see a flare (which in turn attracts other raiders to the area).
The sparse user interface anchors you to the world, adding tension. When you summon an extract via an elevator or, in the lost city, an underground train, there is no countdown timer. Just a loud voice promising that help is – too slowly – on the way. You cower in the corner, wincing at the sound of sirens and flashing lights.
I was never bored. Some rounds are non-stop shootouts, others are bits of horror games as you crawl through metal bars and dark hallways with a torch, dodging headcrab-like mites. Sometimes I go full circle off the map just to explore. Other times, I focus on my quests, completing one objective before inevitably getting distracted by gunfire. Sometimes I take free gear and just kill it. There is an entire map – the picturesque mountain town of Blue Gate – that is still a mystery to me, and I can't wait to learn its secrets.
Unfortunately, once a round is completed, things get a little more complicated and you turn in quests, craft items, or organize your inventory.
For example, you can't search for a single item in your stash, which gets more annoying the more loot you collect. You can break down items into their component parts for crafting or sell them for cash, but some items marked as “recyclable” end up being needed for upgrades in your workshop, something the game doesn't tell you. I burned all my rusty tools only to realize I needed them for my gun bench and spent several runs looking for them over and over again.
Most upgrades to your workshop, where you do most of your work, require multiple items, but you need to collect them. All before you can make a deposit anything. To upgrade the weapons stand, I needed rusty tools, mechanical parts and drivers from downed Wasps. While I was looking for tools, other items lay uselessly in my stash, taking up space.
Quest progress seems uneven. The earliest missions provide a good introduction to the basics, but after 20 hours I was asked to complete tasks that I had already completed several times. I hacked six Baron shells—giant, long-dead ARC corpses—before the game asked me to do so to complete the quest.
However, all these minor problems are forgotten once the round begins – moment to moment, Arc Raiders is simply good. I would happily play rounds without a goal, just enjoying the chaos and variety.
There is also an AI-created elephant in the room.
Embark's developers use generative AI for voice cues, such as when you ping a location or items, and is trained on the consent of voice actors. Aside from some odd intonations and the occasional mispronunciation, lab reagents become lab reagents. regents – it's not annoying.
But it raises a broader question about the use of AI for voice acting in games, as explained. eloquently by Edwin last week:
The generation of AI for voice work in video games has been the focus of discussions about whether the adoption of generative AI will lead to job losses and an overall reduction in work opportunities, with big-budget tools like Microsoft's Copilot often described as a way to magically increase productivity without increasing costs. Last July, the US actors' union SAG-AFTRA went on strike, demanding that video game publishers agree to proper restrictions on what companies can do with recordings to protect performers' livelihoods.
Final [Embark's previous game] was criticized for its use of text-to-speech, and back in 2023, Embark protested that “making games without actors is not the end goal.” In my Arc Raiders interview, I asked Grøndal to talk more about Embark's voice actor contracts—are there any restrictions on what developers can do with that voice data? Grøndahl was unable to go into detail, partly because he did not have the information at hand and partly for the usual reasons of confidentiality. […]
After some confusing statements, Embark also clarified that Arc Raiders does not include any weapon models based on Youtube videos, and that another AI project to create animations for enemies is purely research and not intended to replace any developer.
This project will inevitably become a reality. Whether it will be used in Arc Raiders and whether it will change or hinder the developers' work remains to be seen, but it may very well change my opinion of a game where the mere presence of genAI already makes me feel a little uneasy recommending it. This is something to keep an eye on as I'm sure there will be an RPS.
After all, Arc Raiders wants to be one of your “everlasting” games: it already has action plan for the rest of the year which includes a new map, as well as new enemies, items, and Arc quests.
Its long-term strength will depend on the quality of these updates. I'm not deep enough yet to know if Arc Raiders will still feel this exciting at hour 100 or if I'll still be dreaming about it in two months.
All I know for now is that his metal hooks are in me and I can't stop playing.
