Embark Studios is launching its Frozen Trail update for ARC Raiders tomorrow, and I had a chance to play a few rounds with it in a preview event.
I have to say it’s a fun addition to a dangerous world, where fun means you have to enjoy living dangerously. The question at hand is a good one. Will it save ARC Raiders? After all, the October 8 update is the only thing that could get lapsed players to come back to the game. Embark has tons of rivals now, from Bulkhead’s Wardogs that released a couple of weeks ago to Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 coming October 23. All of these games are landing now because no one wants to compete with Grand Theft Auto VI on November 19.
Of course, ARC Raiders came out swinging last year as it was sandwiched in between the Battlefield 6 launch two weeks before it and the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 launch two weeks after it. ARC Raiders went on to sell more than 16 million copies at $40 each. That’s about $640 million in gross revenue, and it was a rare hit intellectual property that was like David & Goliath, taking on the giants.
And so I was excited to play a preview of Frozen Trail and get a chance to see if the game I poured 193 hours into was going to start growing again. I’m happy to pour some time into it even though this is perhaps the most crowded game launch season in gaming history.
Pendola Pass is a harsh, remote mountain region and the most ambitious map to date, designed with increased verticality, dense interiors, complex terrain and new points of interest to uncover, including a massive fallen Emperor for Raiders to explore, if they dare.
The map also introduces dynamic Flash Freeze weather conditions that can sweep across the map at any time, forcing Raiders to seek shelter before the cold takes its toll. Avalanche Shelters activate as a freeze approaches, offering both protection and the promise of loot, but they can also draw the attention of opportunistic Raiders. I got to experience this freeze for just a few seconds before I turned around and ran right back into a shelter.
Fighting cheaters, escaping the Flash Freeze, and exiting in a ballistic gondola
J. Dodd, a community manager, noted that the company has been trying to address cheating on a variety of fronts. At the same time, the company doesn’t want to reveal its own strategy to the makes of the cheats and stream snipers.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” Dodd said. “We have to try and find the right balance in terms of what we communicate. We are proactively addressing this and talking about it publicly. We want to make it clear that we hate them just as much as you do.””
The team has also been trying to improve matchmaking, and it is testing a form of matchmaking where it will separate the peaceful players into their own lobbies, so that the player killers won’t run rampant among them. The team is amending its terms of service to enable firm action when it is required.
In our run, we were among the first in the world to see the Pendola Pass. Some things weren’t ready for us to see, like Frigates and Outposts. Frigates are enormous ARC ships that you can search inside, like a dungeon. The Outposts can be your home away from home, your living quarters that you can decorate and make your own.
Tahir Tanis, creative director at Embark on the ARC Raiders game, has been in the industry 12 years, including eight years at Embark. He said the central theme of the Pendola Pass map is the Fallen Emperor, a fallen ARC spaceship amid the frozen mountain plateau — it’s a big map. The maps has a derelict rail yard network. The snow and the environment can be just as deadly to the player as the ARC or other human player killers.
“When it comes to the vision of the map as well, we knew we wanted to include a fallen collector showing even the ARC make mistakes. The Fallen Emperor is towering on the the map, and also it made sense to set this up event in a harsh environment where it’s even challenging for a giant machine. This harsh environment also allowed us to put in a lot of new ways of challenging players as well.”
The Fallen Emperor is like a dungeon-like experience, Tanis said. The dungeon-like space reconfigures itself between sections, granting a lot of replayability that can lead to very different experiences for players. You can loot the Fallen Emperor.
There are various points of interest beyond the train station, like a supermarket, an observatory and loading platform. The weather is a factor in this map, with the threat of a Flash Freeze, or a localized storm that is active in the first half of the session. The freezes flair up in different parts of the map for a minute at a time, after a one-minute cooldown. After the 12-minute mark, no more Flash Freeze events will happen.
There’s a new type of extraction dubbed the ballistic gondola, where you hit a call button and the gondola lands in a random radius around the location. Each gondola has a player limit of three players. It waits for two minutes before it departs. You can get creative and attach yourself to the gondola with grappling hooks or snap hooks to get around the player limit.
Playing preview in the cold of Pendola Pass
When I first stepped into the world of ARC Raiders’ new expansion, I was immediately accosted by a scout ARC, or a flying AI-based killer robot. It spotted me and attacked. I fired at it from behind cover until it broke apart in a shower of sparks, flames and smoke. Then more of the ARCs came, including a rolling one that charged into my hiding place. Shortly thereafter, I ventured outside my shelter again and a snowstorm nearly froze me to death.
It was not a friendly introduction to Frozen Trail, the update that Embark Studios has worked on for six months in an effort to draw ARC Raiders players back into the fold. I suppose the choice before me was to hide in the comfort of my shelter and then try to extract. Or head out into the dangerous world and risk getting shot by other human foragers in the world.
I, of course, chose peace. I just tried to gather some cool loot and then I stuck near the gondola call button, which is something new for visitors to Pendola Pass on the edge of the Rust Belt. This call button summons a gondola to help take you to safety. So I pressed it and went running for cover because the siren was so loud that it would attract hunters.
But then I didn’t see where the gondola came down, as it lands anywhere in a certain radius, rather than some easy-to-spot landing zone. So I looked around but discovered it was on the other side of a nearly impassable building. I couldn’t get to it in time. This happened again and I couldn’t figure out how to get out. So I got cooked as the deadline expired for my world.
Once more into the breach
The next time I got into a game, I went heavily armed. I happened to be upgraded with a temp trail account with all of the weaponry available. I stacked my inventory with weapons, including a Wolfpack grenade and more Seeker grenades. All you have to do with these is toss them into the air and they seek a target and blow it up. The Wolfpack is the most dangerous weapon of all.
I also took an epic assault rifle, the Bettina, leveled up and armed with attachments to make it more accurate. For my second weapon, I took a Hullcracker rifle that fires small explosives at its armored targets. I was ready to go hunting, even if I was playing solo.
This time, I stayed close to the gondola call button and watched as another player exited the map. I realized how far I would have to run and how quick I had to be to make it in time. I didn’t want to go off looking for other ways to extract on the map because I didn’t want to get caught in the freezing cold.
The trouble was that the call button was guarded. A giant Bombadier ARC was moving back and forth over the bridge, and I had to deal with that to be able to call in my means of extraction. So I summoned some courage and went hunting. The problem was there were two flying scout drones — Spotters — that I had to deal with first. So I wasted a couple of Seeker grenades on those drones to make the Bombadier blind.
That caught the Bombadiers attention and it started walking over to me. Then I tossed the Wolf Pack behind the Bombadier and watched its homing grenades hit the metal beast from behind. Smoke was pouring out of it, but it wasn’t down and out.
I started firing my Hullcracker at the Bombadier and hid behind a guard station at the edge of the bridge. But then it got off some extremely accurate cannon shots over the guard station. They hit me and I was downed. I had to crawl around. I was determined to survive so I crawled to cover until someone came to my aid.
And that friendly Raider used a defib device on me to revive me and then the Raider got me back on my feet. My mic was tethered to Discord and so I couldn’t thank the Raider, who almost killed me until I behaved decidedly friendly. I finally got up.
Then I went back to the Bombadier and saw it moving away from me. I fired at it and my first hit with a Hullcracker brought down the Bombadier. I went over to the downed machine and looted it. I waited until i found enough good loot to justify all of that trouble on the mission.
Then I press the call button for the escape gondola. I saw it come down and ran to the spot, jumped in, and called it a day for my trial of the Frozen Trail. I played peacefully, as I often do. I don’t go after anyone with my guns and grenades until they come after me first.
Conclusion
Was it good? Yes, I was happy to see the familiar world of ARC Raiders in a new light, with the dangers of the cold and new kinds of enemies mixed with new capabilities. I saw such a tiny portion of the world of the new map, but I can’t wait to try it out for real and get some more loot. I hope the likes of the Burnt Peanut come back to the world and make it popular again.
I am rooting for Frozen Trail because this is the small team’s version of a triple-A game. Embark Studios built the game with 60 people over six years. There’s now about 120 on the team, but I am still impressed with how much work they can get done and keep up with the demands of a live-service game. If you’re a lapsed ARC Raider fan, try it out.