ARC Raiders dev says Embark may “evaluate” adding a Destiny 2-style hub to Speranza
Every time you boot up ARC Raiders, Embark Studios’ anamorphic lens swoops down into the depths of Speranza. Scurrying residents disappear into their workshops or homes, and traders flog their wares to passersby. In the middle of it, my character lingers near the local watering hole, waiting for the next deployment. There’s another place beyond what lies Topside in the Rust Belt, and I need Embark Studios to let me explore it. In my chat with design director Virgil Watkins, I asked him whether it’s something the developer is considering.
Right now, Speranza is a somewhat forbidden land in ARC Raiders. Embark’s extraction shooter presents facets of the underground city through interactions with traders, each of them taking up a corner of the main market square. You can’t actually walk to them in person, but you can get a glimpse of their lives through smaller environments rendered in-engine while accepting quests or purchasing resources. From a design perspective, it’s snappy and to the point. Get your essentials, claim your rewards, and get ready to head out again.
Despite how clean it is to navigate, part of me yearns for something akin to FPS game examples, such as The Tower from Destiny 2 or the highly underrated Headquarters area from Call of Duty: WW2. Interacting with fellow raiders beyond reluctant team-ups or intense battles feels like a natural fit in this universe. The makeshift bar emanates the seedy underworld of Mos Eisley in Star Wars or The Continental in the John Wick movies. With ARC Raiders crossplay enabled, getting together with my squad could be a blast here. However, the reason why it doesn’t exist isn’t too complicated.
Watkins tells me that “honestly, it’s far more on just the practicality side. Developing something like that takes a significant amount of time and resources to do it correctly, and with the amount of staff we have, and the time we had to build things that just, unfortunately, it was not very high in the priority of things.” That doesn’t mean Embark doesn’t recognize there’s a growing number of players looking for an expanded Speranza.
“We completely understand why people want it. And then it becomes a matter of striking a balance. I’ve played plenty of games that do have walkable hubs, and after a while, I find it to be a chore,” Watkins jokes. If Speranza did receive a dedicated area to uncover, he adds that “it’s making sure that we have a solid menu system and a hub in this context, If we were to do that, so that when I don’t feel like literally having to run to the trader and then run to the quest board and then run to my inventory and then go ‘oh, I forgot that thing at the store, and run back.’
On the current version of Speranza, Watkins shares his own perspective, telling me that “personally, I don’t find it to be the most effective way to play, certainly for [the] long term.” However, he sees the value in adding it as an extra option for players, especially for immersion purposes. “Still having it there as an option to [be] like ‘I feel like walking around Speranza today’ […] that’s when we would like, you know, evaluate adding that, once we feel confident that the primary experience is doing what it should.”
ARC Raiders is out now, and you can stay tuned for my full review of the game. Aside from checking more of the interview here, you can get your ARC Raiders Steam Deck settings ready to go, or squash that pesky ARC Raiders Outdated Server Client error for good.
