Following its biggest closed playtest to date, Embark Studios’ upcoming extraction shooter ARC Raiders has just dropped its first ever gameplay trailer, featuring six minutes of stunning gameplay. From lengthy segments of raw, third-person combat to a brief glimpse inside your home base of Speranza, it’s finally giving shooter fans a truly deep dive into its machine-ridden world.
It’s safe to say that it hasn’t been a straightforward birth for ARC Raiders. Initially billed to be a co-op PvE shooter and Embark’s debut game, it was pushed back in favor of competitive FPS game The Finals. Then it was revealed that it was being transformed into an extraction shooter that could rival the likes of Escape From Tarkov and Hunt Showdown. After a period of silence, it re-emerged this year with trailers and playtests, but Embark also announced that it was shifting models from free-to-play to premium. So yeah, never take anything to do with ARC Raiders as gospel.
However, ARC Raiders has remained extremely high on my list of upcoming PC games that I want to play – after attending a preview event in August, I even labelled it my most anticipated new extraction shooter, and that’s high praise given the amount of competition also in the pipeline. Now you can see for yourselves so many of the elements that got me excited about ARC Raiders, thanks to a new trailer that features gameplay from its recent playtest.
The trailer begins with a quick look at Speranza, the underground settlement that is in desperate need of resources from above ground – resources you are tasked with getting. Up on the surface, you’ll encounter hostile ARC machines that range from small drones to massive, almost insect-like robots that will scurry after you if detected. This is your PvE element, but of course other teams of Raiders will represent a PvP threat too.
The trailer shows how a red flare will shoot into the sky when a rival Raider is downed by either another player or by an ARC machine, luring you into a potential loot grab or a showdown with another team. It also highlights how you can communicate with other players to show you’re a friendly face and attempt to recruit them to your own team.
This trailer is also a great showcase of the many elements to ARC Raiders’ third-person combat and traversal – ziplines, vaulting, dodge rolling, shoulder swapping for peeking corners, and more is all on show.
While ARC Raiders doesn’t really seem to offer much in the way of innovation when it comes to the core extraction shooter gameplay loop of spawn in, fight, loot, survive, and extract, it absolutely stands out as one of the most visually impressive projects in the genre. The darker tones or milsim aesthetics of so many of its current and future rivals feel done to death at this point, so the bright and rich color palette of its post-disaster world is refreshing. The sound design too, much as it is in The Finals, strikes me as being particularly impressive in this trailer.
Still, we’ll only know for sure if it will establish itself in this crowded space when ARC Raiders launches in 2025. Embark says more playtests and opportunities to try the game will arrive before launch, so there will be chances to play it sooner.
For more similar experiences, be sure to check out our lists of the best multiplayer games and best co-op games.
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