Arc Raiders, the new PvPvE extraction shooter from The Finals dev Embark Studios, arrived last week. And after a wildly successful weekend with more than 300,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, the clips and anecdotes of the most epic, hilarious, and absurd situations out there are pouring in.
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As an extraction shooter in which players must contend with threats from enemy AI as well as other players following their own agendas, Arc Raiders is primed to generate loads of unexpected emergent situations. It feels trite to say “you never know what’s going to happen” in a match of Arc Raiders, but after about 50 hours with the game, it feels very true. But don’t just take my word for it; have a gander at some of these wild moments from Arc Raiders’ first weekend.
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If you’ve been on the fence when it comes to jumping into Arc Raiders, behold everything you’re missing:
Who knew there’d be this much parkour in Arc Raiders?
While you may not feel very fast or mobile at first in Arc Raiders, investing in your “Mobility” skill tree dramatically improves how long you can run and how much of your stamina you hold onto while performing dodges, jumps and vaults. Here’s one such example:
What’s all that jumping good for, I hear you ask? Well, hop on top of an Arc drone and find out, as in this example here:
Or check out this “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” moment (it happens right at the very end) in which a player rides a drone straight into another one, destroying both of them. Action movie shit right here.
In what may very likely end up being a technique that gets patched out of existence, a few clips are showing off how you can leap from a great height, grab onto a ledge as you’re plummeting, and completely cancel out the fall damage. Here’s an example of it being used for what is certainly a Solid Snake-approved stealthy escape:
Or, seemingly, you can just use the technique to leap off of the damn tower in Spaceport:
Even if you’ve figured out how to mitigate fall damage without resorting to any questionable shenanigans, you still need to keep an eye out for Arcs that go Pop:
And this kind of stuff is only getting started, as one player shows off some of the sick moves you can pull off once you start finding the game’s more elite gear, such as the Snaphook:
Strange player encounters and sudden but inevitable betrayals
If you’ve played a decent amount of Arc Raiders, you’ve certainly experienced the strange prisoner’s-dilemma social experiments that emerge from players trying to determine who they can trust–and when might be the best moment for betrayal.
One player who just wanted to get out decided they weren’t going to risk it, and so held up another player at gunpoint, refusing to lower their weapon until the extraction train was ready to go. Behold this exchange:
Proximity chat has been one of the standout features in this regard, allowing players who aren’t partied up to coordinate, which is what this player did to betray some toxic extraction campers (language warning on this one):
Here’s another story of a player using prox chat to betray their non-cooperative teammates. It’s like a synopsis of a Walking Dead episode:
Meanwhile, another player reflects on their decision to kill someone who was only armed with…fruit?
And on Discord, an Arc Raiders’ player reveals they were tricked into believing another player was Embark Studios staff testing out a closed-off area of the map. The post reads:
Was scammed by a Raider earlier how do I report?
A guy at the research building on the Dam map was sitting behind the desk when I waked out. Said he was a game mod for Embark Studios and that part of the map was closed off due to development testing and that any loot I had was already considered exploited gear because I got it during a testing phase.
Made me strip all my loot for him to inspect it. Told me that indeed it was exploited as he expected then told me to get lost or he would be forced to ban me.
I hid outside and followed him to an elevator and watched him leave with my gear. This type of behavior needs to end.
As someone who convinced many people in Halo 3 to do weird stuff in non-ranked games under the pretense that it would earn them a special helmet, no, this behavior doesn’t need to end.
Not all encounters between players have been of this…toxic-adjacent variety. In Arc Raiders, you can find recorders (those plastic flute things that kids often learn music with) and can play them for other players. And it’s creating some odd situations:
Some other players are embracing their musical side by, well, singing. Prepare for one of the more disturbing renditions of “Do You Know the Muffin Man?” ever created. This is perhaps my favorite clip out of everything here:
But it’s not all silliness and toxic behavior. Check out this awesome moment involving quite an unexpected turn of events:
Here’s a large group of rando Raiders teaming up to take on our universal enemy: Arc.
Arc shenanigans and other explosive moments
Arc Raiders gives you a lot of liberty to toy with its robotic enemies, as well as its arsenal of lethal equipment. In case you need a refresher of the kinds of threats out there, let’s reflect on yet another Leaper showing off what it does best:
But it turns out that crazy jumping ability of the Leaper can come in handy:
Behold another player taking on a Leaper with…seven explosive Wasp drivers:
Okay, enough killing robots. Here’s a single grenade taking out multiple enemy players in a shower of fireworks.
It’s still early days for Arc Raiders, and as better loot gets discovered and is distributed amongst the community, I fully expect to see even more crazy shit in the weeks ahead. Stay safe out there, ya’ll. And keep recording; this game is a gold mine of potential.
