For three years, Embark Studios was a battlefield for the identity of Arc Raiders. Different teams pushed opposing visions: battle royale, hero looter shooter, cooperative in the style of Shadow of the Colossus or a cooperative Souls. This lack of direction generated daily contradictory tests, where a change in weapons was undone the next day to boost enemy AI. Only a radical shift in production unified the project into the extraction shooter we know.
Technology as a battlefield: engines and tools in conflict 🛠️
Design conflicts were directly transferred to tools and the engine. The team prioritizing PvP combat constantly adjusted the netcode and weapon balance, while the group focused on the PvE experience dedicated resources to improving AI behaviors and Raiders' patrol systems. This generated unstable test builds with disparate performance, slowing down iteration. Consolidation into an extraction shooter forced technical reengineering to coherently integrate progression systems, the raid cycle, and both PvE and PvP combat.
A game for everyone was a game for no one 🤷♂️
Imagine the scene: a player entered a test expecting an epic cooperative machine hunt, only to be eliminated in thirty seconds by a rival sniper hidden on a hill. The next day, the same sniper found his bullets absorbed by a boss with a health bar straight out of an MMORPG. The game was a puzzle whose pieces not only didn't fit, but belonged to different puzzles. Perhaps the biggest enemy in Arc Raiders wasn't the Raiders, but the weekly planning meeting.