Arc Raiders devs wanted to make it an adventure game more than a shooter: 'We saw more potential in allowing players to explore rather than just shoot'

Arc Raiders: Promotional art for the Wasp Hunter outfit, showing two versions next to each other. The leftmost one has a character on one knee with a Hullcracker over their shoulder, while the rightmost character is holding the Equilizer at the ready.

Until Arc Raiders pivoted away from being a solely PvE boss fight race, production director Caio Braga said in a recent GDC talk that no one could really describe what the game was: "You'd ask someone who would say it was a battle royale versus Arc, or it's a co-op Shadow of the Colossus game, or it's a hero looter shooter… our Arc developers thought the game was a co-op Souls game." I don't know about you, but I don't think that's conducive to actually getting a game out the door.

We had the chance to chat with Braga after his GDC talk last week, and he expanded on the revitalised vision for the game during this pivotal moment—a chance the team was lucky to have.