Arc Raiders is the first extraction shooter to reach Escape from Tarkov's highs, and the secret is making it feel like an RPG that you can "almost play as a single-player game"

Arc Raiders survivors in metal and fabric armor.

Extraction shooters are a tough nut to crack. But where titans including Battlefield and Call of Duty have failed to make a dent, Arc Raiders – the latest game from The Finals developer Embark Studios – has blown the vault door open and scrambled away with the loot.

I've got a very high bar for the genre, thanks to years spent playing Escape from Tarkov, but a morning spent in Arc Raiders' tense post-apocalyptic raids reminds me of how Fortnite managed to bring PUBG's already-booming battle royale formula to a broader audience. We all know how that went. All of this is to say: Arc Raiders has the sauce, so I caught up with Stefan Strandberg, founder and chief creative officer of Embark Studios to hear how it was made.