Announced at The Game Awards in 2021, ARC Raiders was pitched as a sci-fi, third-person co-op shooter that pits you against lethal robotic enemies that rain down from the sky. However, developer Embark Studios has changed its plans significantly since that initial reveal.
While the overall theme and aesthetic has remained the same, ARC Raiders has not only undergone a shift in genre but it’s also been pushed back in Embark’s pipeline. It was initially going to be the Swedish studio’s debut title, but then it decided to launch free-to-play FPS game The Finals first instead. So what do we know for certain about ARC Raiders? Here’s everything we’ve got right now on one of our most highly-anticipated new PS5 games and new Xbox games.
ARC Raiders gameplay
Despite being initially billed as a PvE co-op game, ARC Raiders is now going to be a “PvPvE survival extraction shooter”. This change in approach was confirmed by Embark in May 2023.
The game is played in a third-person perspective, so it’s not a first-person shooter like The Finals.
You and your friends can team up and use weapons and gadgets to not only defeat various types of robotic enemies, but other players as well. Within the game’s first gameplay trailer, we see traversal tools like a jetpack and gear like a grenade launcher.
The robotic enemies you face range from small, scouting sentry bots to towering mech-like machines, like the one you see at the end of the gameplay trailer above.
Some sort snippets of pre-alpha gameplay can also be seen in the trailer below, which revealed the game was getting a closed alpha in June 2023.
ARC Raiders story
ARC Raiders focuses on the “struggling” underground colony of Speranza, and you are a Raider who is enlisted to fight and protect the colony as deadly machines roam the world above. The remaining survivors are in need of vital supplies, and you’ll need to be daring enough to leave the safety of the colony to save their lives.
According to the game’s Steam page, Speranza is located in a place called Calabretta – it’s currently unclear if this is a fictional region of our Earth, or the name of an entirely different Earth-like planet.
ARC Raiders platforms
ARC Raiders is confirmed to be coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The game is also going to be free-to-play when it launches.
That’s all we know about ARC Raiders right now. It hopefully won’t be too long until we see and hear more about this incredible-looking extraction shooter, but while you wait, we definitely recommend checking out The Finals. It’s one of the best multiplayer games around right now and will give you a sense of what Embark is capable of cooking up.