During the early development of Arc Raiders, even the developers weren’t sure what kind of game they were making. Different teams at Embark Studios had completely different ideas about its direction, and the game only began to take shape after a major shift in production.
Production director Caio Braga explained at a panel during the Game Developers Conference that when he joined the studio in 2020—about a year into development—no one could clearly define the project.
Some team members believed the game would be a battle royale-style experience, others thought it would be a co-op adventure similar to Shadow of the Colossus, while some described it as a hero-based looter shooter. There were also ideas of it being a session-based raid game or even a challenging co-op experience inspired by the Dark Souls style.
Braga himself initially saw the concept as a “boss fight race,” where players would spawn, rush across the map toward a major boss, and try to defeat it before anyone else—because whoever killed the boss would win while everyone else would lose.
Over time, the project evolved and eventually became the extraction shooter that Arc Raiders is known as today.