ARC Raiders is the Only Game
Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2025 11:49 am
A couple of weeks ago, during the beginning of a little vacation I took away from my offline job, I was meandering through Youtube, as you do, and I came across this clip of a guy wandering through industrial architecture in some game I'd never heard of. He was moving through hallways and rusted corridors with a long hammer, and climbing over rocks, and I was like, "What in the entire hell is this?" What I saw was entirely mundane at the time, but there was just something about it that spoke to me in a way that nothing else has in well over a decade. Obviously, that game is ARC Raiders.
Fast forward to near the end of last week, and I'm in that game, standing atop the launch tower in the spaceport map.
But this was a day after my very first experience in the game, which was to have my hand held for the thirty seconds the game takes to explain things to you, before you're dropped into a real lobby out in the Dams. And damned, I was. Walking through a dusty bowl of dead vehicles and broken buildings, with a gun that couldn't hurt a flea, opening chests and looking through small silos. I turn around, and there's another player staring at me. I had no idea I'd run into someone so early, or at all. And before I knew it, he had deposited his bullets into my face, and I was dead. This was a surprise to me, but I wasn't really holding any items worth anything. So, not much of a loss.
This is probably the point that some people would become angry. Maybe they'd refund the game, or descend into the community Discord to rage about PVP in a PVPVE game.
I kept going, though.
I figured out how to operate the different voice channels, and then I joined new lobbies. I got better guns, better stuff, and started crafting. I started running into players more frequently and learned how to say, "DON'T SHOOT!" And ... most of the time, so far, at least, this works in keeping yourself alive.
But it's exactly this dynamic that makes ARC Raiders so unique, I think. And maybe you'd say, "Well, Escape from Tarkov is kind of like this, too!"
I don't care about Tarkov, though. Games that don't work on Linux, or games that intentionally don't work on Linux, are of no interest to me. Double that for games where you can only be a man.
ARC is mostly a game about working through the apocalypse, after most of civilization has left on a ship to some other planet, or star system (it's unclear to me), and everyone else is left back on Earth to deal with the extremely aggressive and deadly AI husks that roam the surface. You scavenge for items to supply the population that lives underground, and supplies are scarce. On top of that, while you're topside, you only have thirty minutes to do what you're going to do, every single time, before those same bots, or ARCs, bomb you and the entire playfield from orbit. This creates tension, and anxiety, and every single player who's working toward their own goals have only a few choices when it comes to encountering other players.
You can shoot on sight, but the few times I've done that, it's almost always ended in myself being shot to death, and losing everything I have.
You can announce yourself to other players, which almost always has a different outcome, in varying levels of violence and peace, but most of the time has resulted, at the very least, in not being shot, and at most, in a temporary team. Even sometimes in a temporary team where myself and a stranger will be up against other strangers who are actively shooting at both of us, and then yelling through their mics about how unfair it is that others are teaming up against them.
Or, you can ignore everyone and acknowledge that this is Raiders versus AI. Or, adopt some kind of ethos that is a combination of all of these things.
It's up to you!
The core of the gameplay, I feel, is that the constant threat of death and loss makes scenarios where people actively choose to be good, feel special, and profound, while we all currently live in a society and a world that is rapidly descending into hate and violence. Maybe this was intentional and by design, but it has the effect of directly showing you that a lot of people are generally capable of being decent, rather than evil, or antagonistic. And that's what makes ARC Raiders so unique.
Sure, there are other games where people can be good. But, like in No Man's Sky, it's not really a PVP game, so people are generally not antagonists. Or, in EVE Online, where one of the only actual interesting things to do is PVP, there's no real incentive to be good. Games that setup the environment for players to be either this or that, without a lot of wiggle room, or reasons to go against the grain, don't feel as special as this has the potential to continue to be, in ARC.
And this is why I pray that Embark ignores all of the people who don't get it, and refuse to add a "PVE only mode." There'd be no point to it. Go out, raid, fight the bots, and repeat? No other threats? No room for teamwork that feels like intentional moral decisions people are either making, or not making?
Either way, ARC Raiders is my definite game of the year. 10 out of 10. 15 awesomes out of awesomes. Never thought we'd seen another game that is actually exciting to play. And even then, I remain cautiously optimistic, as it is really easy for a studio to mess up a good thing. But, let's just hope that doesn't happen.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/gaming/2025/11/04/arc-raiders/
Fast forward to near the end of last week, and I'm in that game, standing atop the launch tower in the spaceport map.
But this was a day after my very first experience in the game, which was to have my hand held for the thirty seconds the game takes to explain things to you, before you're dropped into a real lobby out in the Dams. And damned, I was. Walking through a dusty bowl of dead vehicles and broken buildings, with a gun that couldn't hurt a flea, opening chests and looking through small silos. I turn around, and there's another player staring at me. I had no idea I'd run into someone so early, or at all. And before I knew it, he had deposited his bullets into my face, and I was dead. This was a surprise to me, but I wasn't really holding any items worth anything. So, not much of a loss.
This is probably the point that some people would become angry. Maybe they'd refund the game, or descend into the community Discord to rage about PVP in a PVPVE game.
I kept going, though.
I figured out how to operate the different voice channels, and then I joined new lobbies. I got better guns, better stuff, and started crafting. I started running into players more frequently and learned how to say, "DON'T SHOOT!" And ... most of the time, so far, at least, this works in keeping yourself alive.
But it's exactly this dynamic that makes ARC Raiders so unique, I think. And maybe you'd say, "Well, Escape from Tarkov is kind of like this, too!"
I don't care about Tarkov, though. Games that don't work on Linux, or games that intentionally don't work on Linux, are of no interest to me. Double that for games where you can only be a man.
ARC is mostly a game about working through the apocalypse, after most of civilization has left on a ship to some other planet, or star system (it's unclear to me), and everyone else is left back on Earth to deal with the extremely aggressive and deadly AI husks that roam the surface. You scavenge for items to supply the population that lives underground, and supplies are scarce. On top of that, while you're topside, you only have thirty minutes to do what you're going to do, every single time, before those same bots, or ARCs, bomb you and the entire playfield from orbit. This creates tension, and anxiety, and every single player who's working toward their own goals have only a few choices when it comes to encountering other players.
You can shoot on sight, but the few times I've done that, it's almost always ended in myself being shot to death, and losing everything I have.
You can announce yourself to other players, which almost always has a different outcome, in varying levels of violence and peace, but most of the time has resulted, at the very least, in not being shot, and at most, in a temporary team. Even sometimes in a temporary team where myself and a stranger will be up against other strangers who are actively shooting at both of us, and then yelling through their mics about how unfair it is that others are teaming up against them.
Or, you can ignore everyone and acknowledge that this is Raiders versus AI. Or, adopt some kind of ethos that is a combination of all of these things.
It's up to you!
The core of the gameplay, I feel, is that the constant threat of death and loss makes scenarios where people actively choose to be good, feel special, and profound, while we all currently live in a society and a world that is rapidly descending into hate and violence. Maybe this was intentional and by design, but it has the effect of directly showing you that a lot of people are generally capable of being decent, rather than evil, or antagonistic. And that's what makes ARC Raiders so unique.
Sure, there are other games where people can be good. But, like in No Man's Sky, it's not really a PVP game, so people are generally not antagonists. Or, in EVE Online, where one of the only actual interesting things to do is PVP, there's no real incentive to be good. Games that setup the environment for players to be either this or that, without a lot of wiggle room, or reasons to go against the grain, don't feel as special as this has the potential to continue to be, in ARC.
And this is why I pray that Embark ignores all of the people who don't get it, and refuse to add a "PVE only mode." There'd be no point to it. Go out, raid, fight the bots, and repeat? No other threats? No room for teamwork that feels like intentional moral decisions people are either making, or not making?
Either way, ARC Raiders is my definite game of the year. 10 out of 10. 15 awesomes out of awesomes. Never thought we'd seen another game that is actually exciting to play. And even then, I remain cautiously optimistic, as it is really easy for a studio to mess up a good thing. But, let's just hope that doesn't happen.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/gaming/2025/11/04/arc-raiders/