Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios threw out a lot of Arc designs while hashing out the themes, physics, and machine learning of its extraction shooter. The pile of unused Arc designs dwarfs the lineup of machines currently in Arc Raiders, and I got a peek at the cutting room floor during Embark's recent GDC panels, and in a follow-up interview with machine learning research lead Martin Singh-Blom.
At GDC, we heard tales of a circular "piston bot" that used hydraulic or similar pressure to propel itself around the world. The Baron husks found around the game's world were once vaguely Queen-like monsters roaming the fields. Singh-Blom tells me of "something that looks more like an ant, something that looks more like a dog, something that looks more like a ladybug."
