Arc Raiders is one of the most exciting surprises of 2025: the chilled-out extraction shooter that somehow managed to get everything right. Embark Studios now has the considerable job of building out the game's world and delivering the kind of ongoing content that keeps players interested, but so far it's managed the task well, and not a little of that is down to the game launching with four beautifully realised and huge maps (swiftly bolstered by the addition of a fifth, Stella Montis).
In a new interview with Games Beat, Embark's CEO Patrick Söderlund went into some detail on how the studio built the game's maps, and the big surprise for me was how closely they hew to certain real world inspirations.
