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In case you never watched it, the general premise of the first video

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was that while the old titans of the games industry like Blizzard, Activision, Ubisoft, et cetera,

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have been mostly shoveling out slop for a while now,

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there was light at the end of the tunnel because just like what happened in the past

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with companies like Atari, people were splintering off and starting fresh.

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These new groups were releasing amazing games like Helldivers 2,

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and as much as they aren't technically a splinter group, Baldur's Gate 3.

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How are things going now? Pretty great, in my opinion. Well, see how I feel when Elder Scrolls 6 comes out,

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but for now, I wanna focus on one little company

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I didn't mention in that video, Embark Studios.

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They're a splinter group from the deeply prolific and rather legendary DICE Studios.

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They came out of the gate swinging with the finals in December of 2023.

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It's the first game they released, yet has over 140,000 reviews on Steam

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with 80% of those being positive. Reading the comments on YouTube of reviews of the game

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also shows that the people who liked it really liked it.

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The gameplay loop is engaging and innovating. The sound design is crisp and punchy.

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The highly destructible environment makes the map feel alive

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and they even found a way for people to have fun

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when they lose, which is a big hurdle.

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Great, a splinter group has a big debut success.

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My theory has been backed up, right? Well, yeah, and the finals is great,

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but we're not actually here to talk about that. We're here to talk about something

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actually much more impactful from Embark, Arc Raiders.

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Arc Raiders is a PVPVE extraction shooter game

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set in a world where humans were forced underground while the surface was taken over by a bot faction

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referred to as Arc. The gameplay loop has you gearing up, going topside,

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finding loot, fighting Arc bots and other players,

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then extracting back underground, but that wasn't what they originally even wanted.

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Arc Raiders was actually supposed to be their first release

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with the finals coming up second. Far way through development, however,

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they pivoted from a co-op based PVE game

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to said PVPVE extraction shooter

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and significantly delayed their release. For what?

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To become just another Tarkov clone?

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No, far from it. It's surprisingly different and is known for getting people

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who retired from multiplayer games altogether off of their single player islands,

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which is pretty wild considering the brutal losses

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extraction shooters are known for. So how did they accomplish this?

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First off, they did something different with their PVP,

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but to break down the raw beauty of Arc Raiders PVP,

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we need to understand it's PVE and to do that,

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we need to look back at the game that really popularized the extraction shooter genre escaped from Tarkov.

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Tarkov also features dynamic PVP friend or foe mechanics

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weaved in with PVE quite heavily in their trailers,

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including the original trailer for the game. There are two players originally locked in a fight

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who team up to fight scabs, the standard AI in Tarkov instead.

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This theme would repeat over and over, over the years in various cinematics,

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but as an avid player, it was all but absent

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from the gameplay because it was just so unnecessary.

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Some people may force it here or there for fun, but most players playing on their main character

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or PMC would never experience teaming up

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with random other PMCs to accomplish objectives mid-match.

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The AI enemies in Tarkov generally referred to as scabs

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in most cases are without exaggeration, just poorly coated cannon fodder.

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They're not generally all that feared by the player base unless they're just way over tuned some patch.

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And even then, they're usually pretty easy to exploit.

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Even the more advanced Raiders, Rogues or bosses

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all have pretty simple tricks to take them down by abusing shallow pathing and behaviors.

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In Arc Raiders, however, the Arc Bots are terrifying.

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These are no scabs. Not only are some of them the size of fricked buildings,

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but they're also super varied. There's pop drones I like to refer to as banelings

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if you ever played StarCraft, they're rolling around. Various spider drones are lurking on the walls

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or leaping at you, flying drones or poking away at you, et cetera.

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The AI is cunning, far more capable and just kind of a lot to deal with at times.

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The time to kill isn't all that short either and it's loud, attracting other bots

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and potentially unwanted player attention. They even trained the movement of these bots

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based on machine learning, so they feel kind of alive.

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It's a pretty serious part of the game. You will be hunted, your ammo and supplies drained,

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but surprisingly often, especially when playing solo,

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a friendly Raider might come by to bail you out, changing trust and taking on the Arc enemies together.

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Embark heavily incentivizes people to put themselves out there, to engage

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in emergent player-driven interactions because the Arc are often just too damn hard

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to take down on your own. They use difficulty to drive people together.

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Now, of course, people do betray each other,

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people backstab each other, people exit camp degenerates,

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but this all happens much less than you might think

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if you've played other similar games and there are reasons for this.

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It's not just a random community difference. Embark made this happen.

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They made the rewards for PVPing, comparatively lower than in something like Tarkov,

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by limiting inventory space and making general loot

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plentiful and balancing your risk to reward ratio.

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In Tarkov, you have way more storage space

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to haul all that loot away. Good loot is much less plentiful

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and it's very likely that a lot of the overall loot value

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on the map is in the loadouts that players are bringing in,

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so you're gonna wanna kill them. You can also pitch your own gear and get it back later

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through this system called insurance, taking up the now dead player's gear to risk instead.

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There is so much incentive to direct PVP

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in Tarkov comparatively. In Ark, the loot is more individualistic.

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What matters to you is a little bit less likely to matter to others.

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There's also a much longer time to kill, which enables a much higher chance for a reversal,

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meaning higher risk for aggressing enemies.

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Other players can revive you when you're down, which is just, oh, chef's kiss levels of emergent gameplay.

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You can extract while you're down and no longer a threat to others.

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You can share extracts. Proximity chat is widely used

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and voice maxing is already a thing in the game, which helps shy people.

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And the Emoot wheel prominently features a don't shoot button.

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Hey, don't shoot. The deep, juicy rewards in Ark Raiders,

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especially in solo queue, will quite possibly be found easier

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by working with your fellow enemy Raiders.

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Even the environment and story strongly promote these ideas.

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By all means, it's still a PVP enabled game. If after watching this, you could cuddle up with a care bear,

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load up the game and expect sunshine and rainbows from everyone, you're gonna get shot.

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It's a competitive world. Survival isn't guaranteed for anyone,

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but back at home, in Sparenza, people are generally in this together.

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And the real oppressive force of this world

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is the arcbots up top, not each other.

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I finished my extra dick and I have to admit that she's gonna get away.

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Embark doesn't force you to be friendly by any means.

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They make sure you're able to kill each other at every opportunity,

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but they also made teamwork with strangers a much more reasonable and often logical thing to do

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than in the other games. Where by far, the biggest reward

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is to just attack everything that moves at all times. I hope the game doesn't entirely lose

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this aspect over time, but either way, what an amazing second release.

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I can't wait to see what they do next. And while writing this,

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they won best multiplayer game at the 2025 game awards.

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Arc Raiders! I'd be remiss to not mention Expedition 33,

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which just swept, but I haven't had time to play it yet,

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so I couldn't really include many details of it in this video,

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but it's just another example of an awesome new studio,

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just crushing. For those who come after, he doesn't get it.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Embark team is super cool.

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There's an awesome three-part mini doc on the making of Arc Raiders

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on their official YouTube channel. And man, hearing the devs talk with that much passion

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is just so exciting. Hearing them talk about how important gameplay and fun is.

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Man, it feels like watching the old gaming documentaries from the golden age,

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which I used to love, not just some soulless corporate slop,

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which feels so common these days. My two favorite parts is first,

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when the founder and CEO says, we're seeing productions with over a thousand people.

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Are the games themselves better? They're more of them.

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They're at higher fidelity, but are they actually better games? How do we move away from productions

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that are so large that they're difficult to manage? I enjoyed hearing that

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for what is probably obvious reasons at this point.

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And then in the second video, their creative director says,

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that's why we wanna use gradual destructions on the drones.

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You would shoot up a thruster and that disables its ability to fly.

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Of course it does. Like it's physics talking back to you.

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You can just feel it. These guys care and I'm so here for it, man.

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Take my money and maybe take off

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because this is the end of Luke week. Thank you for coming along with me.

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All of the content this time is pretty long, I think, ideally.

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Hopefully this makes up for the super mini gaming video last time.

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Man, I watched it in preparation for this video

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and I did like it. But yeah, even I was surprised at like,

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wow, that was really short. Especially if you take out the like more wind history thing.

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It's like, it's not four minutes, man. It's like two minutes.

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Hopefully this made up for that. I actually wanted this to be even longer.

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Hence the X-Vision 33 thing and multiple other things, but been a little bit too busy trying to fix up mold issue

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and my condos. I couldn't really dedicate all of the time to the script that I wanted.

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But thanks to all of you for coming along this journey on full plane in general and for Luke week more specifically,

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I wouldn't be here without you guys. I have to recognize that.

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And thanks to Sammy for dealing with me and making this happen.

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I'm not exactly the easiest person to work with on projects like this because my schedule is like wildly chaotic,

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but I had a great time doing this. Have a great day, get some sunlight,

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get a good night's sleep, and maybe just maybe don't shoot.