ARC Raiders design director shares how proximity chat is the secret sauce for looting

Let me set the scene. My friend and I are trying to deliver a cache to a Field Depot, a decent spot for loot in ARC Raiders‘ maps. Suddenly, another squad emerges, and we all immediately encourage them to lower their weapons over the microphone. Rather than riddle my shield with bullets, this ragtag band of players begins telling us they’re from Germany and proceeds to dance with us in the darkness of a desolate factory. That’s just one of many ways an interaction can unfold in Embark Studios‘ new extraction shooter. As I speak to design director Virgil Watkins in a recent interview, I’m eager to know how the developer crafts these moments.

The beauty of ARC Raiders’ social dynamics is that it doesn’t necessarily force you into interacting with them. You can play without any voice chat options enabled, roaming the Rust Belt as a road warrior just trying to make sure your trusty rooster Scrappy has food to eat. The emotes at hand do the job of signifying the basics, namely one key instruction: “Don’t shoot.” Because ARC Raiders isn’t trying too hard to make you team up with anyone, I quiz Watkins on how the game lets you experiment with other players.

“You know, we went back and forth on this a lot in discussion. Do we put systems around it? Do we enforce it even? And it kept coming back that it never felt right when we were trying to really drive down those roads too much. It kept coming back to ‘we provide the option to the player, we give them the tools to do these things, but we don’t prescribe it'”, Watkins shares with me. While Embark’s new extraction action game lays down the basics in a brief tutorial at the start, it doesn’t harp on all the possibilities it may present socially. Instead, you’re left to uncover a whole other side of the game that could go unnoticed for hours.

That’s because you need to toggle proximity chat in the game’s settings, and I highly recommend you do, whether you’re in solo or with friends through ARC Raiders crossplay. It adds another dimension to encounters, because you’re trying to gauge whether you can make a friend or an enemy in one fell swoop. But what if you favor playing alone? Watkins relays how Embark is paying attention to this section of the player base, while keeping the stakes interesting.

“We really try to favor matchmaking solos with solos. So if you go in solo, you should expect that you’re on even playing ground. And then if you run into a squad of like three people […] you’re no longer on an even playing field. I think it becomes really strong that you have that sort of tenuous alliance,” Watkins says. For me, there’s a thrill in knowing when to use pings even if I’m not using a headset. Other players can hear these pings, giving them an indicator that someone might be coordinating an attack or moving into another area. You can even toggle the volume of your emotes on the fly to factor in these situations.

However, there’s a feature that feels like a hidden toggle, as I don’t see many people using it: voice changers. It’s one of the many highlights in my 10/10 ARC Raiders review. If you’re not used to speaking to random people or feel a little shy, that’s perfectly fine – Embark has got your back. Watkins tells me about Raider Voice, saying it’s a way “you can augment the way your voice sounds while doing proximity chat […] we kind of put that in as like an affordance feature for people who maybe aren’t comfortable speaking as themselves in this context.”

He adds that this is a way to “still make use of prox VoIP in a fun way, or even, I’ve seen people, even here in the studio, kind of using it to role play as a person way. And it’s been pretty cool to see that come about. And I’m really curious to see if people find it interesting on launch.”

ARC Raiders is out now on handheld and desktop PCs, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. You can get up and running with ease by using our ARC Raiders Steam Deck guide. For more from my chat with Virgil Watkins, check out how Embark may expand Speranza in the future, and how one of the game’s coolest features came to be.