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Arc Raiders is hopping on the extraction shooter trend like Warzone 2

Embark Studios has revealed that PS5 and Xbox co-op game Arc Raiders has shifted to become a PvPvE shooter like Escape From Tarkov during development.

Arc Raiders development update survival extraction shooter: an image of a woman in a retro-styled space suit from the shooter

Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders has been quietly in development for some time now and the shooter’s executive producer has just popped up to confirm that Arc Raiders – what was a co-op based PvE game – is actually going to be releasing as a PvPvE survival extraction shooter – something somewhat similar to Escape From Tarkov and Warzone 2 DMZ. We know the Arc Raiders release date is a little while away yet, but this shift really could elevate Arc Raiders into one of the more promising upcoming PS5 games out there – or upcoming Xbox games, if you’re someone who plays your games on one of those.

Explaining just what is going on at Embark Studios with Arc Raiders, the aforementioned executive producer Aleksander Grøndal has explained that “over the course of development, Arc Raiders has taken shape of what we believe to be a truly promising PvPvE survival extraction shooter – a game that stays true to the Arc Raiders universe”.

A game that “drops players into a lethal but stunningly beautiful future Earth”, Arc Raiders is still throwing you (as humans) against machines. However, it looks like you’re going to have to contend with other players (as humans) too, now.

If you’re here looking for more of an insight into what to expect from this game, we hate to be the ones to tell you that Grøndal wasn’t quite as forthcoming about that. He did share an interesting snippet of lore, which sort of sets the scene for this game, but we don’t properly know how it’s going to play just yet. That being said, there are other extraction shooters out there – and other survival games. In fact, you can check out the best survival games on Xbox right now, and best survival games on PS5 at the moment, right here. Who knows, Arc Raiders might be joining that list when it arrives.

Either way, we can certainly put two and two together and get a very general idea of the type of game Arc Raiders is going to be.

What Grøndal did confirm, though, is that a Closed Alpha test is coming up – so Embark Studios can “get feedback on the game’s core systems and loops”. This is the first time external players will get their hands on the game, so it’s certainly an exciting time for its’ development. However, this will be under NDA because the game isn’t quite finished yet. If you want to sign up for said Closed Alpha test, you can here.

If you want to know what we’re in for, you can check out the reveal and gameplay trailer from a year ago below. This might be the only official footage we’ve seen from Embark Studios at the moment, but we can only imagine the chaos that will ensue when you throw PvP combat into this already-impressive gameplay teaser.

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Is this going to be one of the best games of all time? It would have to be a very good extraction shooter to get onto that list, looking at the competition. That being said, we do think Arc Raiders has the potential to shake up the genre – which is being dominated by EFT, really – and that’s exciting.