WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.840 In case you never watched it, the general premise of the first video 00:00:03.840 --> 00:00:10.020 was that while the old titans of the games industry like Blizzard, Activision, Ubisoft, et cetera, 00:00:10.020 --> 00:00:13.720 have been mostly shoveling out slop for a while now, 00:00:13.720 --> 00:00:18.520 there was light at the end of the tunnel because just like what happened in the past 00:00:18.520 --> 00:00:23.200 with companies like Atari, people were splintering off and starting fresh. 00:00:23.200 --> 00:00:26.600 These new groups were releasing amazing games like Helldivers 2, 00:00:26.600 --> 00:00:29.800 and as much as they aren't technically a splinter group, Baldur's Gate 3. 00:00:29.800 --> 00:00:36.400 How are things going now? Pretty great, in my opinion. Well, see how I feel when Elder Scrolls 6 comes out, 00:00:36.400 --> 00:00:40.080 but for now, I wanna focus on one little company 00:00:40.080 --> 00:00:44.200 I didn't mention in that video, Embark Studios. 00:00:44.200 --> 00:00:49.880 They're a splinter group from the deeply prolific and rather legendary DICE Studios. 00:00:49.880 --> 00:00:54.600 They came out of the gate swinging with the finals in December of 2023. 00:00:54.600 --> 00:00:59.000 It's the first game they released, yet has over 140,000 reviews on Steam 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:04.240 with 80% of those being positive. Reading the comments on YouTube of reviews of the game 00:01:04.240 --> 00:01:07.520 also shows that the people who liked it really liked it. 00:01:07.520 --> 00:01:13.040 The gameplay loop is engaging and innovating. The sound design is crisp and punchy. 00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:16.720 The highly destructible environment makes the map feel alive 00:01:16.720 --> 00:01:19.840 and they even found a way for people to have fun 00:01:19.840 --> 00:01:22.840 when they lose, which is a big hurdle. 00:01:22.840 --> 00:01:26.360 Great, a splinter group has a big debut success. 00:01:26.360 --> 00:01:31.480 My theory has been backed up, right? Well, yeah, and the finals is great, 00:01:31.480 --> 00:01:35.280 but we're not actually here to talk about that. We're here to talk about something 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:39.600 actually much more impactful from Embark, Arc Raiders. 00:01:39.600 --> 00:01:43.240 Arc Raiders is a PVPVE extraction shooter game 00:01:43.240 --> 00:01:49.080 set in a world where humans were forced underground while the surface was taken over by a bot faction 00:01:49.080 --> 00:01:53.680 referred to as Arc. The gameplay loop has you gearing up, going topside, 00:01:53.680 --> 00:01:56.880 finding loot, fighting Arc bots and other players, 00:01:56.880 --> 00:02:02.720 then extracting back underground, but that wasn't what they originally even wanted. 00:02:02.720 --> 00:02:06.640 Arc Raiders was actually supposed to be their first release 00:02:06.640 --> 00:02:10.360 with the finals coming up second. Far way through development, however, 00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:14.400 they pivoted from a co-op based PVE game 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:17.440 to said PVPVE extraction shooter 00:02:17.440 --> 00:02:21.240 and significantly delayed their release. For what? 00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:25.120 To become just another Tarkov clone? 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:29.180 No, far from it. It's surprisingly different and is known for getting people 00:02:29.180 --> 00:02:33.300 who retired from multiplayer games altogether off of their single player islands, 00:02:33.300 --> 00:02:36.860 which is pretty wild considering the brutal losses 00:02:36.860 --> 00:02:42.100 extraction shooters are known for. So how did they accomplish this? 00:02:42.100 --> 00:02:45.300 First off, they did something different with their PVP, 00:02:45.300 --> 00:02:48.820 but to break down the raw beauty of Arc Raiders PVP, 00:02:48.820 --> 00:02:52.420 we need to understand it's PVE and to do that, 00:02:52.420 --> 00:02:58.220 we need to look back at the game that really popularized the extraction shooter genre escaped from Tarkov. 00:02:58.220 --> 00:03:02.700 Tarkov also features dynamic PVP friend or foe mechanics 00:03:02.700 --> 00:03:07.580 weaved in with PVE quite heavily in their trailers, 00:03:07.580 --> 00:03:12.620 including the original trailer for the game. There are two players originally locked in a fight 00:03:12.620 --> 00:03:17.820 who team up to fight scabs, the standard AI in Tarkov instead. 00:03:17.820 --> 00:03:22.980 This theme would repeat over and over, over the years in various cinematics, 00:03:22.980 --> 00:03:26.300 but as an avid player, it was all but absent 00:03:26.300 --> 00:03:31.060 from the gameplay because it was just so unnecessary. 00:03:31.060 --> 00:03:35.900 Some people may force it here or there for fun, but most players playing on their main character 00:03:35.900 --> 00:03:39.140 or PMC would never experience teaming up 00:03:39.140 --> 00:03:43.460 with random other PMCs to accomplish objectives mid-match. 00:03:43.460 --> 00:03:47.820 The AI enemies in Tarkov generally referred to as scabs 00:03:47.820 --> 00:03:52.740 in most cases are without exaggeration, just poorly coated cannon fodder. 00:03:52.740 --> 00:03:58.060 They're not generally all that feared by the player base unless they're just way over tuned some patch. 00:03:58.060 --> 00:04:01.940 And even then, they're usually pretty easy to exploit. 00:04:01.940 --> 00:04:05.220 Even the more advanced Raiders, Rogues or bosses 00:04:05.220 --> 00:04:11.060 all have pretty simple tricks to take them down by abusing shallow pathing and behaviors. 00:04:11.060 --> 00:04:15.340 In Arc Raiders, however, the Arc Bots are terrifying. 00:04:15.340 --> 00:04:20.260 These are no scabs. Not only are some of them the size of fricked buildings, 00:04:20.260 --> 00:04:24.940 but they're also super varied. There's pop drones I like to refer to as banelings 00:04:24.940 --> 00:04:29.940 if you ever played StarCraft, they're rolling around. Various spider drones are lurking on the walls 00:04:29.940 --> 00:04:33.900 or leaping at you, flying drones or poking away at you, et cetera. 00:04:33.900 --> 00:04:39.480 The AI is cunning, far more capable and just kind of a lot to deal with at times. 00:04:39.480 --> 00:04:44.060 The time to kill isn't all that short either and it's loud, attracting other bots 00:04:44.060 --> 00:04:49.560 and potentially unwanted player attention. They even trained the movement of these bots 00:04:49.560 --> 00:04:53.560 based on machine learning, so they feel kind of alive. 00:04:53.560 --> 00:04:59.400 It's a pretty serious part of the game. You will be hunted, your ammo and supplies drained, 00:04:59.400 --> 00:05:02.960 but surprisingly often, especially when playing solo, 00:05:02.960 --> 00:05:09.320 a friendly Raider might come by to bail you out, changing trust and taking on the Arc enemies together. 00:05:09.320 --> 00:05:14.000 Embark heavily incentivizes people to put themselves out there, to engage 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:19.720 in emergent player-driven interactions because the Arc are often just too damn hard 00:05:19.720 --> 00:05:24.880 to take down on your own. They use difficulty to drive people together. 00:05:24.880 --> 00:05:28.160 Now, of course, people do betray each other, 00:05:28.160 --> 00:05:31.400 people backstab each other, people exit camp degenerates, 00:05:31.400 --> 00:05:35.040 but this all happens much less than you might think 00:05:35.040 --> 00:05:38.760 if you've played other similar games and there are reasons for this. 00:05:38.760 --> 00:05:44.360 It's not just a random community difference. Embark made this happen. 00:05:44.360 --> 00:05:49.200 They made the rewards for PVPing, comparatively lower than in something like Tarkov, 00:05:49.200 --> 00:05:52.880 by limiting inventory space and making general loot 00:05:52.880 --> 00:05:56.160 plentiful and balancing your risk to reward ratio. 00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:59.640 In Tarkov, you have way more storage space 00:05:59.640 --> 00:06:03.920 to haul all that loot away. Good loot is much less plentiful 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:08.360 and it's very likely that a lot of the overall loot value 00:06:08.360 --> 00:06:12.200 on the map is in the loadouts that players are bringing in, 00:06:12.200 --> 00:06:16.960 so you're gonna wanna kill them. You can also pitch your own gear and get it back later 00:06:16.960 --> 00:06:22.040 through this system called insurance, taking up the now dead player's gear to risk instead. 00:06:22.040 --> 00:06:26.240 There is so much incentive to direct PVP 00:06:26.240 --> 00:06:31.480 in Tarkov comparatively. In Ark, the loot is more individualistic. 00:06:31.480 --> 00:06:35.520 What matters to you is a little bit less likely to matter to others. 00:06:35.520 --> 00:06:41.040 There's also a much longer time to kill, which enables a much higher chance for a reversal, 00:06:41.080 --> 00:06:44.560 meaning higher risk for aggressing enemies. 00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:51.920 Other players can revive you when you're down, which is just, oh, chef's kiss levels of emergent gameplay. 00:06:52.080 --> 00:06:56.760 You can extract while you're down and no longer a threat to others. 00:06:56.760 --> 00:07:00.320 You can share extracts. Proximity chat is widely used 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:04.720 and voice maxing is already a thing in the game, which helps shy people. 00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:09.920 And the Emoot wheel prominently features a don't shoot button. 00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:14.800 Hey, don't shoot. The deep, juicy rewards in Ark Raiders, 00:07:14.800 --> 00:07:19.160 especially in solo queue, will quite possibly be found easier 00:07:19.160 --> 00:07:23.240 by working with your fellow enemy Raiders. 00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:27.840 Even the environment and story strongly promote these ideas. 00:07:27.840 --> 00:07:33.160 By all means, it's still a PVP enabled game. If after watching this, you could cuddle up with a care bear, 00:07:33.160 --> 00:07:38.320 load up the game and expect sunshine and rainbows from everyone, you're gonna get shot. 00:07:38.320 --> 00:07:42.600 It's a competitive world. Survival isn't guaranteed for anyone, 00:07:42.600 --> 00:07:47.160 but back at home, in Sparenza, people are generally in this together. 00:07:47.160 --> 00:07:50.560 And the real oppressive force of this world 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:54.120 is the arcbots up top, not each other. 00:07:54.120 --> 00:07:58.680 I finished my extra dick and I have to admit that she's gonna get away. 00:07:58.680 --> 00:08:02.680 Embark doesn't force you to be friendly by any means. 00:08:02.680 --> 00:08:06.260 They make sure you're able to kill each other at every opportunity, 00:08:06.260 --> 00:08:13.700 but they also made teamwork with strangers a much more reasonable and often logical thing to do 00:08:13.700 --> 00:08:17.420 than in the other games. Where by far, the biggest reward 00:08:17.420 --> 00:08:22.140 is to just attack everything that moves at all times. I hope the game doesn't entirely lose 00:08:22.140 --> 00:08:26.620 this aspect over time, but either way, what an amazing second release. 00:08:26.620 --> 00:08:30.140 I can't wait to see what they do next. And while writing this, 00:08:30.140 --> 00:08:33.820 they won best multiplayer game at the 2025 game awards. 00:08:33.820 --> 00:08:39.100 Arc Raiders! I'd be remiss to not mention Expedition 33, 00:08:39.100 --> 00:08:42.500 which just swept, but I haven't had time to play it yet, 00:08:42.500 --> 00:08:46.260 so I couldn't really include many details of it in this video, 00:08:46.260 --> 00:08:49.300 but it's just another example of an awesome new studio, 00:08:49.300 --> 00:08:53.620 just crushing. For those who come after, he doesn't get it. 00:08:53.620 --> 00:08:56.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Embark team is super cool. 00:08:56.780 --> 00:09:00.380 There's an awesome three-part mini doc on the making of Arc Raiders 00:09:00.380 --> 00:09:06.740 on their official YouTube channel. And man, hearing the devs talk with that much passion 00:09:07.140 --> 00:09:12.340 is just so exciting. Hearing them talk about how important gameplay and fun is. 00:09:12.340 --> 00:09:15.860 Man, it feels like watching the old gaming documentaries from the golden age, 00:09:15.860 --> 00:09:20.540 which I used to love, not just some soulless corporate slop, 00:09:20.540 --> 00:09:25.100 which feels so common these days. My two favorite parts is first, 00:09:25.100 --> 00:09:30.220 when the founder and CEO says, we're seeing productions with over a thousand people. 00:09:30.220 --> 00:09:33.700 Are the games themselves better? They're more of them. 00:09:33.700 --> 00:09:39.020 They're at higher fidelity, but are they actually better games? How do we move away from productions 00:09:39.020 --> 00:09:42.100 that are so large that they're difficult to manage? I enjoyed hearing that 00:09:42.100 --> 00:09:45.420 for what is probably obvious reasons at this point. 00:09:45.420 --> 00:09:48.660 And then in the second video, their creative director says, 00:09:48.660 --> 00:09:53.380 that's why we wanna use gradual destructions on the drones. 00:09:53.380 --> 00:09:58.060 You would shoot up a thruster and that disables its ability to fly. 00:09:58.060 --> 00:10:02.300 Of course it does. Like it's physics talking back to you. 00:10:02.300 --> 00:10:06.140 You can just feel it. These guys care and I'm so here for it, man. 00:10:06.140 --> 00:10:09.780 Take my money and maybe take off 00:10:09.780 --> 00:10:13.660 because this is the end of Luke week. Thank you for coming along with me. 00:10:13.660 --> 00:10:18.180 All of the content this time is pretty long, I think, ideally. 00:10:18.180 --> 00:10:22.820 Hopefully this makes up for the super mini gaming video last time. 00:10:22.820 --> 00:10:26.260 Man, I watched it in preparation for this video 00:10:26.260 --> 00:10:30.260 and I did like it. But yeah, even I was surprised at like, 00:10:30.260 --> 00:10:34.580 wow, that was really short. Especially if you take out the like more wind history thing. 00:10:34.580 --> 00:10:37.940 It's like, it's not four minutes, man. It's like two minutes. 00:10:39.020 --> 00:10:43.100 Hopefully this made up for that. I actually wanted this to be even longer. 00:10:43.100 --> 00:10:48.260 Hence the X-Vision 33 thing and multiple other things, but been a little bit too busy trying to fix up mold issue 00:10:48.260 --> 00:10:52.260 and my condos. I couldn't really dedicate all of the time to the script that I wanted. 00:10:52.260 --> 00:10:57.620 But thanks to all of you for coming along this journey on full plane in general and for Luke week more specifically, 00:10:57.620 --> 00:11:01.300 I wouldn't be here without you guys. I have to recognize that. 00:11:01.300 --> 00:11:05.180 And thanks to Sammy for dealing with me and making this happen. 00:11:05.180 --> 00:11:10.220 I'm not exactly the easiest person to work with on projects like this because my schedule is like wildly chaotic, 00:11:10.220 --> 00:11:14.340 but I had a great time doing this. Have a great day, get some sunlight, 00:11:14.340 --> 00:11:18.380 get a good night's sleep, and maybe just maybe don't shoot.