As Embark Studios will get prepared for the October 30 launch of its extraction shooter ARC Raiders on PC, PS5 and Xbox Sequence X/S, the developer has revealed that it has additionally been being attentive to different upcoming video games within the style—specifically Bungie’s Marathon. In an interview with PCGamer, design director Virgil Watkins spoke in regards to the issues Embark Studios realized from the reception of the Marathon playtest, and the way it affected ARC Raiders’ growth.
Referring to a playtest for Marathon that was held across the similar time earlier this yr because the playtest for ARC Raiders, Watkins referred to it as a “nice A/B take a look at” which allowed Embark Studios to study extra in regards to the choices it had made with its recreation versus the choices that hadn’t but been made.
“It was very coincidental that they’d their take a look at across the time we did,” stated Watkins. “To my information, I don’t assume any of us knew that was going to occur. It was a really nice A/B take a look at for us, as a result of clearly they made choices that we didn’t, and vice versa. So we might type of evaluate and distinction how a few of these issues shook out.” He went on to notice that “[It] was fairly fascinating to observe in what gamers thought of these sure issues, or what did work of their context and didn’t, and what might have labored in ours.”
Talking general, Watkins did point out that he wasn’t precisely paying shut consideration to Marathon in any other case, because of its limited-access playtests. Nevertheless, he did reward some points of the title that he had seen, together with discovering “the artwork type very evocative … I’m personally curious to see how that finally ends up. I hope to see extra of that sooner or later.”
Watkins has equally revealed fairly a couple of different particulars about ARC Raiders, together with the truth that, because it was designed from the ground-up to be a third-person shooter, it is rather unlikely that the studio goes on so as to add a first-person mode to it.
“I believe a lot of our immersion and world and the interactions that your character has with the issues on the earth, the enemies, the opposite gamers, is so amplified by the standard that’s come from our animation group and our audio group and our surroundings group, that it really works collectively as this very good bundle that you may actually place your character in that world,” stated Watkins.
“That’s to not say that’s not potential in first particular person, however [third person] did work so properly for us that we by no means even actually checked out first particular person. And I do know there are hybrid fashions, like Helldivers 2 and some different video games, however I believe for us to attempt to try this, it might trigger us to should re-evaluate a lot of how our areas are constructed and the way in which they’re laid out, since you get very particular sight traces when you go first particular person.”
ARC Raiders just lately had a Server Slam playtest over the weekend, which noticed fairly a little bit of success. The PC model alone – by way of Steam – was capable of get nearly 190,000 concurrent gamers. Within the meantime, Marathon can be slated to get a playtest beginning on October 22.
