Embark has “experimented” and won’t rule out second life system for Arc Raiders

Dying and losing everything is pretty core to the identity of the extraction shooter, and Arc Raiders is no different. When you go down, if your teammates don’t revive you and you bleed out before you can escape, you lose everything you brought with you that wasn’t stashed away in your safe pockets. 

But perhaps it doesn’t always have to be this way. Embark devs have experimented with a second life system for Arc Raiders and won’t rule out including one in the future. It could be a change to the meat of the game or it could be a limited time event like night raids and electromagnetic storms. 

“We've experimented a bit,” executive producer Aleksander Grøndal says. “It would be nice to get the squad back together, but also, the rounds are pretty short, so we haven't found the right balance at this point where we would add that back in. But that doesn't mean we won't ever do it. It’s nice that you don't have to commit an hour to this game.”

Grøndal goes on to say that the team couldn’t find that sweet spot between snackable rounds and a respawn mechanic, ultimately landing on the decision that it’s best, for now, if players just evacuate and regroup with downed teammates for another round. 

“I think that this will probably be an ongoing conversation for us,” Grøndal says. “So no promises there, but it's certainly on our radar of considerations.” 

At launch, regular matches come in at 30 minutes, but players can arrive into the match up to ten minutes late, giving them 20 minutes to escape before the map is obliterated in nuclear fire. But that’s also something map events allow Embark to play with: one mode during the preview was called Locked Bunker, where there’s a high loot area you have to crack into on Spaceport. Locked Bunker events give players 40 minutes to loot and scoot, and other map events could stretch round times in a similar way. 

“So the conditions can change the match length, particularly when there's quite a lot of objectives to complete,” Grøndal explains. “We want to give you time to complete those new objectives. We're tweaking the length as well. We want to keep it in the sort of ballpark we're in — we don't want to make it feel like you're [stuck with] this massive time commitment. We need to strike the right balance between it feeling approachable and fun, and these more immersive, longer sessions, which are also great, of course, but I think both have values.” 

Elsewhere, Embark detailed its plans for voluntary wipes in Arc Raiders.

Arc Raiders launches on October 30 for Xbox, PS5, and PC.